Tidying up, rotated, messed up March, looking for lunch
On Friday I received another hard drive to put in my Tivo Premiere. Our unit has been having some pretty regular lock up problems that are typical of hard drive problems. Hell I was considering if I even wanted to spend the money to fix it. Tivo at this point is really on the fringe of necessary items with my use of internet provided video via Hulu, Netflix and Playon.tv. Really the ONLY reason I still have the Tivo is the convenience of being able to access the latest versions of our shows with only a couple button presses and the ability to completely bypass commercials in a couple seconds. To pay $15 a month for this minor convenience seems less and less feasible all the time. To be honest if Hulu Plus was a bit more user friendly and had no commercials I would have totally dropped Tivo awhile ago.
Anyway I have done a lot of work on my Tivos over the years. Hell back in the early 2000’s I had a second, hacked Tivo that I had hooked into an assortment of tools running on my local pc that provided guide content on the down low. I also have replaced/upgraded Tivo hard drives many times.
Now if you were upgrading your hard drive to a larger capacity drive this would not be a good choice since it will only duplicate what is on one drive to another, it will not expand the partition on the destination drive. Since I was replacing my drive with the exact same size drive this was a viable option.
It worked great. After removing the old drive from the Tivo I placed it and the new drive in the duplicator and hit the start button before going to bed. I woke up Saturday with a perfect copy on the new hard drive which worked perfectly once I installed it back into the Premiere.
On Friday my ear was still hurting me badly so I had our health clinic call in a prescription for an oral antibiotic. I was surprised that the medicine cost me exactly ZERO dollars at the local Publix. Evidently there are certain generic meds that you can get for free, Cipro is one of them.
Anyway it didn’t take long for the pills to start working, I was already feeling better on Saturday and went the entire weekend without having to pop any Advil, something I lived on for the previous 4 days.
Although I was feeling better, I opted out of doing the Saturday club run just to be safe. I also knew that Ali was talking about that 90 ride / 60 run thing on Sunday so I figured I would save myself for that anyway since I don’t want to run on back to back days if I don’t have to.
Before mom left for work Saturday I ran over to her place with the dogs in the van. I had her taxes paperwork and some extra vegetables to give her. It was a quick visit where I got a brief update on how things have been going. Her job has been very busy during season which is good from a boredom standpoint. Since mom has started working there the shop has had it’s highest grossing sales ever. I wish the shop owner would reward my mom a little more for her contribution, some sort of small commission in addition to her hourly wage would sound more fair to me.
Mom recently had routine normal blood work which had some less than good numbers. The doctor told her that smoking is one of the reasons. If mom would have only taking my hiding her cigarettes as a child as a cue that maybe she should quit once and for all, I wonder how her health would be today? Sigh….
As is the norm, I kept quite busy on Saturday. I rotated the tires on the Tacoma, you know the service I was promised by Tire Choice that they forgot about? Spending some time around the bottom of the truck reveals how just how long in the tooth it is becoming. It is really starting to look like an old vehicle, complete with a shoddy looking exterior and an under carriage that is showing it’s age.
After completing the tire rotation I had ideas of installing the new plugs I bought online for the truck. These were supposed to be part of the treatment of the warm starting issue although they obviously were not the cause.
I was a bit confused when I looked at the engine. The drive side of the motor had what looked to be conventional spark plugs in conventional locations. However when I followed the spark plug wires over to the passenger side of the vehicle I saw they terminated in modules that are adjacent to the plugs on that side. When I casually looked at these modules over the years I assumed they were fuel injectors. They are not.
Evidently the Tacoma has these weird (to me) coils that serve two plugs each, one on each side of the engine. To remove the plug on the passenger side requires you to remove this coil module first and then the plug is buried underneath that. I was somewhat deterred from performing the swap when I realized this. This was compiled with difficult access to the plugs on the driver side which looked like they would require me to use my recently acquired wobble socket extensions. I also was concerned that since these are probably the original, 13 year old plugs that they would be practically welded in the sockets at this point.
Well I had the new plugs, I may as well jump in, or so I thought. I ordered the new plugs online from Autozone at the same time as when I ordered the new IAC valve. At that time I plugged in my vehicle specs to make sure I got compatible plugs. I even went upscale and got the Bosch Iridium plugs.
When I pulled a plug out of the box I scratched my head, it was a single electrode plug. On the timing belt cover on the truck it specifically says to ONLY use twin electrode plugs in the engine. WTF? Well that was enough to scuttle the project for me until I could find out exactly what model plugs I should put in the truck. I figure I should also grab plug wires while I am at it this time.
I then turned my attention to the van, adding some antifreeze. As long as I have had the van it has always had a smell of antifreeze coming from the engine compartment although I have never seen any apparent leak. I once again filled up the reservoir tank, started the van and looked for any signs of leakage. Once again I saw nothing. I am wondering if the smell is coming from the radiator cap which is in poor shape.
After completing the normal indoor chores I turned attention to my desk, specifically my top two desk drawers. These drawers have become a dumping ground for various items over the past decade. For whatever reason I decided it was time to finally clean them out.
Methodically I went through the various items. There were a lot of screws, computer parts and other knick knacks that I just didn’t need so into the trash they went. After about 45 minutes of sorting/organizing I had the drawers cleaned up to my satisfaction.
I found some old ID cards during the process, including my Meridian security id that I used when doing PC maintenance back in the 90’s. It’s always weird seeing old pictures of yourself. It feels hard to believe that this picture is now 17 years old, geezus…
Saturday night we went to a birthday party for one of the elder statesman of our running club. He will be 80 years old this week. Despite being around for going on eight decades he is still very active and mentally all there and then some.
The party was held at our running club president’s home, I had never been there before. All I can say is wow, the house was borderline palatial. It was just massive and beautiful. The house needed every available square foot of space though because there were a TON of people there. I bet the number was damn close to 100 at one point.
Of course big crowds and I don’t typically mix very well. I tried to address the problem by drinking a few beers, including a brand I never tried before, Stella Artrois? It wasn’t good with a bitter after taste but it had the required ingredient of alcohol.
I didn’t go balls to the wall like I did at the GCR Xmas party since I knew I wasn’t going to let Ali relearn stick shift in the SSR if I was too hammered to drive. I had maybe 4 beers total, enough to take off some of the edge.
Even with the alcohol it was a lot of people, I just have a rough time functioning well in that environment. After the cake was cut and happy birthday was sung Ali and I headed out. She was fine with leaving as she was tired and we had the plans to be at the water park at 7:30 am Sunday to do the 90/60.
So I woke up with the alarm at 5:30 am on Sunday. It was not one of those pop out of bed mornings. I was feeling pretty low energy and lightly motivated, something that has plagued me for the majority of this month. (more on that later) Regardless, I drug myself out of bed with the orders to wake up Ali around 6:15.
After I informed Ali it was her designated time she came out to me in the office a few minutes later and asked me how invested I was in doing the workout. I told her that I didn’t really care as I was feeling pretty crappy myself between the alcohol the night before and residual ear issues. We officially called it off and Ali went back to bed.
Even though I told Ali I was fine with missing the workout, which I thought I was, it bothered me for whatever reason. When I saw 7:30 come up on the clock I thought how we would be getting ready to head out and then when it was 9:30, how we would be well into the run, on the way back to the water park.
The fact that we decided to bow out of the work out made me feel like a failure as odd as that seems. It’s just the way I am hooked into exercise I guess. My entire Sunday felt somewhat tainted by the omission of our morning 90/60, which was supposed to be followed by some hanging out at the water park.
Late in the morning we decided we would take the dogs to the swamp. We had a nice walk although the dogs both were obviously struggling with the temperatures that shot up quickly to the low 80’s. We saw several gators, a turtle, a hawk and a number of butterflies.
Sunday afternoon I decided to tackle another long standing organizational task. I wanted to clean up the workbench/pegboard that I have in the garage. I use this area frequently, as a result it has become a bit of a mess from stuff haphazardly being piled/hung wherever I could find space.
After pulling both vehicles out of the garage I set up our fold up table as a temporary holding spot for the tons of stuff I had in the workbench area. I decided the best plan of attack was to pull EVERYTHING off the bench and pegboards to start fresh.
This method also allowed me to do some additional housecleaning, getting rid of many worthless or unneeded items. It seems like over the years whenever I had some left over fasteners from an item or project I kept them for a rainy day. Well a huge number of those things wound up in the trash since I still have thousands of various size nuts, screws, nails and washers waiting to take their place.
I tried to be more thoughtful and logical when putting stuff back into the area. I was pleasantly surprised that when I was done I actually had a little spare peg board real estate available for future expansions. I probably spent around two hours on the project altogether. Cleaning shit up feels good.
I tried to make up for not doing the cardio session in the morning by taping my first attempt at hard mode for this month’s Bar-barian challenge. The 17 reps I managed weren’t great, but not horrible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFL6gmjhFk8
I think my beloved lunch box that has been my trusty sidekick for somewhere around 22 years is getting close to kicking the bucket. The plastic that surround the handle inserts is deteriorating rapidly. Today walking in from the parking lot the box abruptly dropped off the handle onto the asphalt below. I am sure I looked like an idiot to the passing vehicles as I reassembled my lunch box on the spot.
Once I got inside I tried to McGyver the lunch box by applying some super glue to the broken plastic to try to reenforce it. At best I expect this to only buy me a little more time before the box becomes completely unusable. In the past I have searched for a replacement box but only saw smaller models at retail stores that would not serve my needs.
I did a new search today, I saw some used boxes that appear to be the same size as my beloved lunch box. I would have no issues buying a used box since I know how long they can potentially last. Regardless of my ultimate direction, the day I dump my old lunch box in the recycle bin will be a sad day indeed. I’ll always remember when it was a brand spanking new red box sitting by my side as I rode around in the Goodwill delivery truck picking up old shit that other people didn’t want. This box has been by my side for literally half of my life.
My March has been pretty crappy so far. It started out nicely with my surprisingly good performance at the half marathon, soundly knocking out one of my 2012 fitness goals. However after that the month has slid downward.
I had the annoying issues with the Tacoma, culminating with the inflated bill to ultimately fix it at a garage. The ear infection of the past week was a downer as well and knocked my sense of well being down several notches.
But even without those items I have just been feeling like I am lacking otherwise. My motivation level feels low and my overall outlook on things is not rosy. The rut is feeling pretty deep. I am not sure where to turn.
Jeremy
Have you considered a pair of plaid shorts to heighten the mood?