Archives 2012

So after I got home and made the dog’s supper, Ali and I headed over to the county fair which is literally a mile away from our house.  It is one of the very rare things that we don’t have to drive a minimum of 15 minutes to reach.

We have had a mixed experience with the fair over the years.  The first few years after we moved out there the fair used to actually give people on our street free tickets as a thank you for putting up with the noise the event generates for 10 days.  That good neighbor policy ended about 5 years ago.

There was a number of years when the fair ran in February that it landed in the middle of horrible weather.  I recall several years it rained almost the entire week and others where it was ridiculously cold by Florida standards.

There have been a couple years where we were disenchanted enough with the fair that we didn’t bother going at all.  The revocation of the free passes and the bullshit parking fee just made the event not seem worth the money.

Moving the fair to mid-March was a wise move as far as more friendly weather conditions for sure.  They have had great weather, last night being no exception.  They also wised up and stopped charging people extra to park.  On top of that, last night was half price night since Tuesday night isn’t typically a big crowd time of the week. We got to the fairgrounds around 6:30.

Going into the fair I had two loose agenda items.  I wanted to see what this years “big” ride was, since it was advertised as “The scariest ride in America”.  I also was interested in seeing the high dive act, something I never saw at the fair before.

We planned to eat at the fair so the first thing we did was walk the grounds, checking out our various food options.  As we did we passed the “Beer Tent”.  I have never had beer at the fair for some reason.  I decided I would try it to see if it enhanced my fair experience.  The answer was definitively, YES.

I sipped my beer as we entered the hardcore carnie area of the fair, it is an atmosphere that I really do not like.  I hate having these people getting in my face to play dumb games with prizes I don’t want.  I had various tactics tried on me during our walk through the area.

Several people tried to appeal to my manhood, insisting I should try to win one of these ridiculous oversized stuffed animals for my woman. One guy offered to let me play for free because I was drinking Budweiser.  Another held two quarters out to me and said I could play for free.  All of these people got the same response from me, “No thanks buddy…” with no eye contact.

I was somewhat bummed when I saw the the BIG ride was actually something I had ridden before.  It was called SPEED. It is basically a large rotating arm with a car on either end that has two seats.  It simply rotates you around at a high rate of speed.  Because of it’s large size it is pretty intimidating.  I recall getting the sensation of flying when I did it years ago.  However I would not classify it as the scariest ride in America.  Oh well it saved me 10 bucks.

On the way back I was ready for my second beer.  Since I was drinking on an empty stomach at this point I was feeling the effects pretty quickly.  Plus the beer was reasonably priced, $3 for a draft filled to the absolute rim.  When I got the second beer the old woman taking the money clued me in that after 7PM happy hour started where I could get TWO beers for $5.  I thanked her for the tip.

Speaking of tips, I wound up handing out a number of them while at the fair.  Each time I hit the beer tent, a total of three times, I threw an extra dollar in the tip bucket.  Two food vendors got tips and the friendly bathroom attendant got a couple bucks out of me as well.  Why there was a bathroom attendant at a county fair is beyond me but he did a nice job of keeping the area clean so I had no issue throwing him a couple bills.

Generally speaking, I try to be kind and courteous to people working at the fair.  I always am conscious of just how tough it has to be to try to carve out a living in that environment.

I decided to try something different for dinner, I got an arepa, a Cuban item.  It was two corn meal patties with cheese in between them.  It was really good.  Ali had a few bites of it as well and agreed it was some good stuff.

Ali scored a slice of pizza for her dinner which we ate in an area with some small picnic tables.

We then headed over to the “barn” and looked at the turkeys, ducks, chickens and rabbits that were on display.  I always enjoy seeing the animals but I need to keep my displeasure of seeing them in small little cages tucked away.

We also went into the petting zoo where you could pet and feed various animals (if you paid $1 for a small container of carrots).  I fed goats, yaks, sheep, and ponies.  Ali opted to not feed the animals this year.  She always feels bad realizing the life of captivity that most of them must endure.

It was now getting close to 7:30, high dive show time.  I told Ali I wanted to hit the bathroom again and take advantage of the happy hour beer deal before we headed to the high dive.  While I was in the bathroom I also had Ali pick me up another Cuban food item, some sort of stuffed, fried potato.  It was good but not up to arepa standards.

I was surprised that Ali actually claimed one of my two happy hour beers for herself since she historically is not a beer drinker at all.

Well by the time I was done it was already a few minutes after 7:30, damn it.  The walk to the high dive area which was near the entrance to the fair was pretty long as well.  By the time we arrived at the show we only caught the grand finale, a young kid jumping into a 10 foot tank from 80 feet high on a tower.  It was cool to see but bummed me out that I didn’t catch the entire show. Oh well, it was my fault.

In the tent towards the front of the fair there were a number of exhibits including art, tables for politicians, people handing out bibles and an anti-abortion group, which I thought was totally inappropriate.

However the we were quite interested in an animal organization that had some pit bull puppies along with a huge Great Dane named Prince. For $1 you could have Prince “sit on your lap” and take a picture with him.

At first I encouraged Ali to do it but she seemed to think I would be a better choice for some reason.  Well of course I was happy to do it so we handed over our dollar and I sat on the “throne”.

Prince has obviously done this drill many times and of course he was much to big to sit on anyone’s lap.  Instead he just sort of backed up to me and plopped his rear end on my knee, it was funny.

Ali never got a chance to kiss the pit bull puppies.  The one time we stopped by they were asleep, the other they were busy wrestling with each other.

So we walked back into the heart of the fair to score our desert.  As we did, we walked by the main stage where various acts perform.  I saw a young man and a woman doing tandem juggling which of course peaked my interest since I am a basic juggler myself.

I also thought it was funny that there were like four people watching the show.  As we watched the act, where they were tossing juggling pins I had to chuckle a bit as they routinely dropped pins.  I then spotted the baby carriage on stage, complete with baby inside.  To be honest I had a bit of a car wreck mentality at first as we watched them perform.  The beers I had definitely were helpful in the situation.

Well then out of nowhere comes an older guy.  Wow he just exuded energy.  Part of his intro included claims he was a world class juggler, named Steve Mills.

He was simply a FANTASTIC entertainer.

Sure he was a great juggler but that was only part of why he was so good.  He was funny as hell and able to improvise on the spot, repeatedly involving the audience in creative and funny ways, including myself.

At one point Steve brought out a mountain bike with a simple challenge.  If anyone in the audience could ride the bike for 20 feet he would give them $20.  He followed up with a brief demonstration where he performed the feat pretty easily.  He showed us why it would be difficult, it was a trick bike with reversed steering.  If you turn the handlebars left the wheel goes right and vice versa.

Well when he asked for volunteers in the small but growing crowd (it grew exponentially once Steve got involved), there was no initial response.  My Bud Light’s kicked in and I raised my hand to be a volunteer/victim.  I hopped up on the stage as I heard Ali laughing, something she did pretty much non-stop during the act.

I hopped on the bike and as predicted was unable to ride it for even that short of a distance without my feet touching the ground.  My brain was just not wired to compensate for the reversed steering.

I stayed up on the stage for awhile, riding the bike around in circles as Steve continued to entertain the crowd.  I eventually conceded I just couldn’t do it.  Steve thanked me for my participation.

The show continued from there with the difficulty of the juggling/stunts intensifying.  They did some impressive team juggling and then compounded the difficulty by bringing out the unicycles and juggling while mounted on them.

It was SUCH a good show and provided so much more entertainment than I ever expected to receive from the fair.  After it ended and the crowd was dispersing I walked up to the stage and told Steve personally how good his show was.  He appreciated my compliment.  His show pushed this year’s fair undeniably to the top of the list as far as the enjoyment scale goes.  I was really having a good time.

We still had to score desert.  Ali and I both grabbed small cones of soft serve, something we may have two or three times a year at most.

On the way back we stopped back at the barn to walk through the other half which was closed our first time through.  This was the side that had the pigs and cows/steer.

I was surprised how many of the pigs were sleeping, I bet over half of them were out cold. They really didn’t look all that different from when Sadie is catching some ZZZZ’s. There was a cute black and white pig laying against the front of his pen that I interacted with a bit. I petted him for a bit, despite the warning signs all around that advised against it.

Then there was a cow laying down that had a very sad aura about him.  I commented to Ali how sad the animal looked.  Ali said she would be sad too if she was tied to a fence and knew she was going to be nothing but hamburger. Although I said nothing I agreed.

Walking around the pen made me sad, made me feel compassion for these innocent animals that are slaughtered to feed human beings. It just didn’t feel right.

Truth is my consumption of meat is DRAMATICALLY less than it used to be.  Seeing the animals that wind up on grocery shelves and freezers down the line face to face and eye to eye just makes me want to keep going along that path.

After we finished our cones we finally headed out of the fair after spending over two and a half hours there.  It was without a doubt my best fair experience ever.

I walked out of there with $2 left in my wallet and felt like the $50+ I spent was totally worth it.

Tonight Ali and I are going to venture to the county fair right down the street.  Tonight just happens to be half price admission night, meaning the two of us can get in for a total of $10.  When you add this with the new policy of no parking fee this year we will be getting in the door for a bargain basement price.

In addition to the animal displays which I like to see there are a couple acts that interest me, especially the high dive act.  I heard once again this year they have a “big ride” which the fair was missing last year.  It is described as the “scariest ride in America” .  I will make an evaluation when I get there if I want to ride it or not since I am willing to bet they will be charging $20 to do so.

For a few weeks when I take the dogs out for their last bathroom break of the night I have been noticing two very bright objects low in the western sky (around 9pm) .  I have since heard that these objects are Venus and Jupiter.  I have found it interesting to see the difference in their position relative to each other change on a nightly basis.  At one point they were parallel to each other but now one object is at about 1pm in relation to the other.

I assume the bigger, brighter object is Venus since it is much, much closer to us than then much more physically massive   but distant Jupiter.  I wonder if off the shelf telescopes offer enough magnification to make out any detail on either of these planets.

When I was younger I was fascinated by the stars above and would spend a lot of time simply looking upward at night.  I wondered what exactly was out there and how awesome it would be to find myself magically transported to one of those stars looking back at the rock we are all stuck on now. It was incredible for me to try to wrap my head around the idea that the light I was seeing actually left many of these stars thousands of years ago.

Astronomer was actually one of my earliest ideas as a grown up profession.

I spend precious little time gazing at the sky any more, but when I do the feeling of wonder comes back pretty quickly.  There is so much out there, we are literally a speck of a speck in comparison.

I have been quite surprised at some of the collateral damage from Peyton Manning’s search for a new team.

At first I thought he was going to Miami or the Cardinals, two teams without very successful or popular QB’s. However recently the focus has shifted to the Broncos, 49ers and the Titans, three teams that had QB’s that all were successful last season to varying degrees.

The Titans have Matt Hasselback, an older QB with a history of injury but statistically he had a good year throwing for over 3500 yards with 18 TD’s.  Even so Peyton Manning would be a step up and he has a Tennessee connection since he went to college there.

The interest by the 49ers really surprised me since Alex Smith had a breakout year last season.  It seemed odd to me that they would be willing to so quickly walk away from that momentum although I did not realize that Smith was a free agent right now.

Then you have the Broncos and Tim Tebow.  Tebow, despite by all accounts being statistically horrendous, was a certifiable league sensation last year.  Somehow he managed a number of comeback wins despite posting numbers that would make most high school QB’s take a seat on the bench.

Of course during the season there were rumblings of overall dissatisfaction with Tebow as the team QB of the future since he seemed very poor at doing the one thing a QB is supposed to do, throw the ball.  Even so, I imagined that dramatic win against the Steelers in the playoffs would have at least bought him one year as the de facto starting QB where he would get a bonafide chance to prove if he can be a real NFL QB or if last year was just a series of flukes.

Well the latest headlines seem to indicate that Denver will be the winner of the Manning sweepstakes.  To be honest, of all of the teams that were mentioned as real contenders for his services, Denver seems like the least logical fit. I can hardly believe that God would allow this to happen to Tim.

Oh well, it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

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 in the past, replacing the hard drive required me to utilize my PC and a special Linux boot CD.  I would boot to the cd and use a series of commands to perform the hard drive operations.  This time I tried a new approach, using a hardware based SATA disk duplicator.

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.

This morning I was awakened by ear pain between 3 and 3:30 am.  Basically as soon as the Advil wears off the pain gets pretty severe.  I popped two more Advil but was not able to fall back asleep so I rolled out of bed around 4:30.

When I got into work I called the clinic and reported that even though I am on my 4th day of antibiotic drops, I have not seen any lessening of the symptoms.  The PA said she would call in a prescription for an oral antibiotic.  In the past this almost always seems to be the final resolution to my ear woes.

If my ear pain continues as is it will definitely put a damper on any weekend fitness plans, there is no way I am doing cardio with a throbbing head plus my body just feels weakened from fighting the infection.

Saturday night we are supposed to go to a party.  If I am on antibiotics that means I shouldn’t drink which means my ability to efficiently party will be significantly impaired.

I read that fecal matter Santorum would like to outlaw pornography if he gets the big chair in DC.  This goes along with the myriad of other bible mandated ideas that he would like to impose on the country.  Have to love people that view themselves worthy of being the morality police for others. Idiot.

I finished season 2 of 24 last night.  It was as entertaining as season 1.  Now if I actually allowed myself to say out loud everything that Jack Bauer went through in a 24 hour period it would sound ridiculous beyond belief.  I just keep reality safely tucked away in a back pocket while I am watching the show.  I am debating if I want to go full steam ahead into season 3 or give myself a little break.

I am feeling pretty miserable with this ear infection.  I have a constant pounding on the right side of my head with pain that radiates down into my jaw.  I am now into my third day of the anti-biotic drops without any lessening of the symptoms.  If I am not taking Advil or aspirin to help dull the pain it gets really bad.

If by tomorrow things aren’t improving I may have to revisit the clinic and push for oral antibiotics even though I would rather not go that route if possible. It’s always good to keep your use of antibiotics to a bare minimum.

This misery will be good reinforcement for me to use ear plugs more often.  This sucks.

The weather sure has been beautiful around here lately.

I have to say it was nice yesterday being able to leave the gym without having to deal with a sputtering truck for the drive back to the office. Although I paid dearly to have the issue fixed, at least it is fixed.

Early yesterday afternoon I touched my right ear and felt pain.  I knew immediately I was once again developing an ear infection, something I do on a pretty regular basis.  I can only assume it was the end result of my 1600 swim on Sunday for which I did not wear ear plugs.

I typically never wear ear plugs when swimming in a pool, figuring the chlorinated water negates the problem.  When I swim in something like the gulf or ocean I would always try to use ear plugs.  I have a life long issue with ear infections / swimmers ear.  I guess the way the inside of my ear is laid out it makes it very easy for water to collect in there.

So anyway, I had no doubt I was on the road to yet another infection so I called our onsite employee clinic and was lucky to be able to get in right away.  The PA looked in my right ear and said it looked very red and inflamed already.  I was given a script for antibiotic ear drops which I started last night.

Despite catching the infection early and having two treatments of drops in my head already my ear hurts badly today.  The pain is radiating outward, into my jaw and even a little bit into my throat.  You know the pain you feel when flying and your ears won’t “pop”?  That is pretty much what it feels like full time.  I am hoping the symptoms start to improve instead of worsen soon.

After my series of failed repair attempts on the Tacoma I was due for a win.  I got it the other day when I successfully resurrected our Hayward Navigator although again, it took multiple tries to do so.

The pool vacuum has had an issue where it was hardly moving around the floor of the pool.  The first thing I tried was replacing the rubber feet.  Over time these harden and get smooth, losing their ability to push the vacuum efficiently.  The new feet did nothing to improve the problem.

The next thing I did was get a new set of hoses since the old ones were getting brittle on their ends with pieces of plastic breaking off. My theory was the hoses were leaking, causing inadequate suction.  A new set still made no difference.

My final purchase was a Navigator “tune up kit”.  This included new feet, wings, front/rear flapper and pods.  I didn’t swap out the feet and wings since they were still in good shape.  I did replace the flappers and the pods. I was quite happy when I saw the vacuum once again scampering quickly across the pool floor after the tune up.  I am pretty sure the actual problem was the pods.  When I took the old ones off a spring fell out in my hand.

I am happy we now have an extra hour of daylight in the evening.  It helps me get more stuff done on weeknights.  Last night I took advantage of the daylight by repairing the rear view mirror on the Tacoma (fell off) and giving the SSR a much needed bath after it inadvertently got sprayed with scummy sprinkler water over the weekend.

I am collecting info for the next SSR project which will be replacing the bent panhard bar.  It appears to be something I can replace myself utilizing jack stands and my floor jack however I will probably need to get a 4 wheel alignment after I am done.

I read this morning that Santorum won the Alabama and Mississippi primaries.  Supposedly it was somewhat of a surprise but I am not quite sure why since those states are breeding grounds for white trash stupidity.

Of course I am not saying that Mitt is a good choice either but people voting for Santorum is such a sad statement about the mindset of our country.  Check out this link if you aren’t sure why that is.

The absolute primary reason he is getting votes is because he is a bible thumper and precious little else.  If you look at his political track record you quickly see he has precious little else to offer.  There is a reason he was catapulted out of congress during his last reelection bid, he simply sucks.

So like I said, yesterday I finally broke down and took the Tacoma to the garage to get looked at for it’s warm starting problem.  I have been trying to resolve the issue myself  for more than 4 months at this point and had had enough.  Trying to drive the truck after a warm start had become blatantly dangerous.

I took the truck to Master Tech Imports, a place that is run by two ex-Toyota dealership mechanics so they know Tacomas.  I have used them several times over the years based on a recommendation by a co-worker, a co-worker whom doesn’t use them anymore either.  They are a competent garage and have always resolved whatever problem I have presented them with.  The problem is what they charge to do so.

I stopped using them a couple years ago when I tired of never being able to get out of there without spending at least $500, no matter what the issue seemed to be.  Since that time I have done a lot more hands on work on my vehicles and have a better understanding of what is and is not involved in some aspects of their repair.  I am now the type of person that a place like Master Tech doesn’t really want as a customer since I know what stuff SHOULD cost.  I will be granting them their wish. Read on.

So their garage evidently was not busy on Monday as they said I could bring the truck right over.  I got a call from them a couple hours later saying they found the problem, a bad upstream 02 sensor.  They said to fix it would be $250 plus $90 for the “scan charge”.   When I first heard the scan charge the bullshit meter went off the charts, thinking they were charging me $90 for reading the CEL code, something I can do myself with my cheap code reader or something a place like Autozone does for free.

I later got a clarification that they actually hook the truck computer up to a dealer style diagnostic computer that not only reads codes but also shows real time status of the various engine electronic components to assist in troubleshooting. Ok, well that’s nice but making that scan a separate $90 line item seems excessive.

So I authorize the inflated repair cost, at this point I just want the issue to go away.

I get a call back an hour or two later.  There is still a problem, now they show the mass airflow sensor is ALSO bad.  He throws out a quote of an additional $285 to replace the MAF.  That is when I threw on the brakes.

I replaced the MAF myself maybe a couple years ago. The idea that it was bad again seemed improbable.  I tried to logically talk through the problem with the guy, saying it didn’t make any sense to me that the sensor would work fine if I started the truck cold and then drove until the motor was hot but not if I simply started the truck when it was hot.

The guy was not able to logically offer anything besides this is what his computer is showing him.  Of course the idea that both the O2 sensor and MAF would be bad at the same time was highly unlikely as well but when I mentioned that improbability I was once again only offered, “that is what the computer is saying”.

Ok fine, but now I moved on to what they wanted to charge me to replace the MAF.  I told him I was going to check on the price of the part, $285 sounded outrageous.  A quick check on Autozone revealed I could get a MAF for $79.99, I laughed out loud.

I called back the garage and told them of the price discrepancy, made more egregious by the fact I was quoting a RETAIL price, I am sure the garage pays significantly less than that.  They said that if I wanted to provide them the part they would install it and just charge me labor.  Ok great.

So I now borrow my bosses vehicle, go to Autozone and then drive to the garage to drop off the part.  After verifying I got the right thing he said he would call me and let me know the result.

It was now getting late in the afternoon. I was getting nervous that I was going to be getting another call saying the problem still was not fixed after two overpriced sensor replacements. I called back asking for a status update.  The garage said that he thought they had the problem fixed, they just needed to do a another test drive to verify it, great.

So I got dropped off at the garage after work and saw the truck was indeed done and parked out front.  The total bill for the repair was just under $500.  The one owner quickly added up the line items, I signed off and got the hell out of there without making an additional fuss as I should have. After getting frustrated all day I just wasn’t in the mood to bang my head against the wall again.  However when I got home I took the time to analyze the bill line by line.  It looked like this.

Engine scan – $90
Labor to replace O2 sensor – $90
Labor to replace MAF sensor – $117
O2 sensor – $159
Misc expenses – $12.50

The $90 to scan the engine (hook it up to their computer) still seemed ridiculously expensive.  I am quite sure the problem could have been diagnosed with a normal engine code reader as well.

However two other line items REALLY annoyed me.

The $159 part charge for the O2 sensor was almost double what I saw the same part go for at Autozone.  Again knowing the garage probably is paying wholesale for their parts means they are marking them up to the customer by almost 100%, that is just inexcusable to me.

Second, charging $117 labor to install the MAF sensor was a joke.  Again my insight into the process since I did it once myself, meant I knew it took at most 15 minutes if you are going slow.  The labor charge for the O2 sensor was actually less ($90) so that was probably even easier.

The bottom line was for the repair, that probably cost the garage maybe $75 in parts, I was charged $500.  Sure every business needs to make money but this sort of price gouging is offensive. On top of the large amount of dollars that were sucked out of my pocket, the interior of my truck reeked of cigarettes. Evidently whomever was doing the test drives is a chain smoker whose clothes stink from cancer sticks.  I drove with both windows all the way down, all the way home to try to air the Tacoma out.

I was annoyed enough to make a follow up call this morning to the garage about the bill.  Once again there wasn’t a hint of compromise from the garage perspective on the labor since they charge book rate (although of course the customer never sees the book) for repairs instead of basing it on the actual time spent on the repair.

When I asked about the inflated parts pricing I was once again told they just charge whatever the “standard” price is. Lol, yea whatever dude.

Hell I have doubts that the O2 sensor was even bad at all.

This scenario is exactly why I tried to avoid going to a garage for the issue in the first place.  I knew in all likelihood I would get overcharged for whatever services they provided. Trying to get a garage to change the price of a repair based on your understanding of the true cost/time of a repair is fruitless.  They are far too accustomed to preying on the automotive ignorant, charging them inflated dollars to perform repairs.

My only real recourse is to speak with my wallet and not frequent Master Tech Imports in the future.  Since I moved to Florida I have tried at least a half dozen different mechanics, trying to find one that was the right mix of fair pricing and competency.  My search continues.

So over the weekend I had a chance to test my latest repair effort on the Tacoma, which was replacing the engine coolant temperature sensor on Friday.  I brought the engine up to temperature, turned it off and back on and once again, the horrible sputtering idle returned.

I have now officially given up diagnosing the problem myself and am taking the truck to a place I have used before that is run by two ex-Toyota dealer mechanics.  It just isn’t worth the hassle/danger I have been dealing with since the problem started several months ago.

Saturday morning I got up bright and early with Ali who was going to the club run.  I wasn’t going to the run but I had an early morning destination as well, I was heading back to Tire Choice.  I wanted to have something simple done, the slow leak fixed in the driver side front tire of the SSR which has been a problem since I bought the truck.  Every week or two I have to add air to the tire as the pressure drops all the way down to 20 PSI.

You may recall I ranted about my last Tire Choice visit where I wound up waiting nearly three hours for them to fix a nail in a tire after being told it should take about 90 minutes.  I followed up that visit with a complaint email to their offices which was responded to apologetically.  I even got a call from the manager at that location saying they were interested in making it up to me.

So anyway, I looked online and saw the garage opens up at 7AM.  My plan was to get there right after they opened, figuring it should be an easy fix.  I pulled into their parking lot at 7:08 and walked into an empty customer area.  The chime on the door prompted the clerk to come out to greet me.

I told the guy that I simply had a slow leak I needed fixed.  The guy tells me there are already two people ahead of me, two people that evidently were not waiting in the lobby I assume.  When I asked him how long it would take to get in he said 90 minutes to two hours.  Once again he used the line I have heard almost every time I walk in the place, “I only have one guy here right now”

I pushed him about this since I hear this line so much, asking if someone called in sick.  He said no, they only schedule one guy first thing in the morning and then bring in other crew as the day goes on.  What really got my annoyed was he said this after a few sentences ago he stated that they are ALWAYS busy first thing in the morning, especially on a Saturday.  He said it is normal to have people waiting at the door.

Well what the fck then?  If you know that it is always busy first thing in the morning, why do you not staff for it?  It is like you are deliberating creating a back log first thing in the morning. That is ridiculous.  I told him I couldn’t wait that long and got the F out of there.

So on the way home I knew there was another garage/tire place that I could check out.  Maybe they would be able to do the repair without a massive delay.  Well this place was even worse.  I was told they only worked by appointment on Saturdays and the earliest they could look at my slow leak was 11:30, some 4 hours in the future.  Haha, f that, no thanks.

Well I was ready to take my slow leak back home with me when I remembered there was another garage, a Tuffy, right around the corner.  As I pulled up I saw one thing that looked promising, there were at least three mechanics there.

So I went inside and met up with Brad, whom I later found out was the manager.  Brad’s first impression was not good, not good at all.  I asked him if he could look at the slow leak and without so much as a “hello” or “can I help you”  he just blurts out “give me your keys”.

Well although I was put off by the lack of a friendly greeting it was balanced by the fact they were going to take my SSR in right away to look at it, cool.  My view of Brad didn’t get much better when a guy came in stating his wife got an oil change there recently and now the check engine light was on.  Brad was very indifferent about the issue and sort of just mumbled something although once again, he immediately took the keys from the guy and took the SUV in to look at it.

As I was waiting in the lobby with the oil change guy we traded different war stories of dealing with local garages, it seems like shitty service is more the norm than the exception.   As we were talking Brad came back in and joined the conversation.  He offered up a few opinions about other garages.

For example when I told him that Tire Choice told me there would be a two hour wait to look at my slow leak, Brad said that was because they don’t want to do that sort of work, there is no money in it.  However he said he approaches it differently.  He thinks that if he takes the time to handle the little issues that customers will come back for the bigger issues as well which will benefit him in the long run.

I was quite surprised to hear that come out of his mouth based on my interaction with him up to that point but it made me all of a sudden view him quite differently.  Despite his outward indifferent/grumpy exterior maybe he actually gets what makes a service industry work?

As an example, Brad said he didn’t plan to charge me for the slow leak repair.  I was shocked by this, and told I have no problem paying for it.  He said it was fine, as the manager he has the ability to do this in certain situations.  Maybe he just liked my cool truck? 🙂

My additional reservation by oil change guys issue was lessened when Brad found out his wife did not JUST get the oil change, it was a month ago and the check engine light was simply due to a loose gas cap.

The mechanic that was working on my wheel called me out to the garage area to take a look at the bare rim.  The inner surface was pock marked with severe pitting/blistering, another side effect of the poor quality chrome job that was laid over the original factory satin wheels.  The blisters were preventing the tire from forming a good seal.

The mechanic said he can grind the blisters off to fix the seal.  He and I agreed that the other three wheels surely have something similar going on inside.  I really need to get some factory chrome wheels at some point for the truck.

So in all I bet the shop spent between 30-45 minutes fixing my problem and true to his word, Brad didn’t charge me a penny.  The only thing he asked was I take one of the cards on the counter that had their website on it so I could fill out a positive review which I did shortly after getting back home.  The reviews on them were about a 50/50 split negative to positive.

When Ali got home I relayed my surprising story of good customer service.  She could hardly believe it either.  You just don’t see many places that go out of their way to impress a customer.  I plan to give the place a chance to further impress me in the future with my other auto repair needs.  With a fleet of four vehicles those needs come up pretty routinely, even with me trying to play junior mechanic from time to time.

Ali was going back out during the afternoon to help at a social event.  I stayed behind to buzz through various items at home.  I was QUITE busy.  I even attended to some low frequency maintenance items like changing the oil in the tractor and generator.

The dogs got to go on two different rides in the process.  The second ride was to pick up some more sod to put in a couple areas of the yard that had ugly looking bare spots that used to be occupied by weeds that died off during the winter cold snaps.

I finally took the time to redo the neighborhood email list sign that was looking ratty.  Originally I used stick on letters covered in packing tape.  The weather conditions eventually made them almost completely fall off.  After removing the old letters I redid the sign by painting the info on.    I originally was going to use stencils to do it but could not find the set I bought awhile back.  Instead I just drew the outline in magic marker and then painted inside the lines.  No it doesn’t look classy but it will get the job done.

Saturday night I suggested to Ali we check out Zookie’s, a sports bar that is not too far away from us.  The place is always busy at night, Ali and I commented multiple times we needed to check it out so we finally did.

We arrived around 6:15 to a predictably full parking lot.  Our initial experience with the hostess was not a great one, she appeared to have poor communication skills.  We walked in, she asked for our name but didn’t say anything about a wait and then walked over towards a table so I assumed we were supposed to follow her.  She then rather rudely told me, “Um no, there is a wait”  Ok whatever, Ali and I had a seat at the large bar.

Looking around there were a couple dozen tv’s, lots of memorabilia, a pool table and a few other games.  In addition there is a no frills conventional seating area.  I was pleasantly surprised when the tab for my draft beer was only $2.25.

The poor people skill girl came up to the bar maybe 10 minutes later and said indifferently, “There is a table open now if you still want it”  Of course we want it.

One thing that was obvious from looking at the almost entirely female staff was Zookies was trying to steal a page from the Hooters formula.  Every woman was wearing short shorts with a top that emphasized whatever they were carrying up above.  Hey why mess with a formula that obviously works, T&A in a sports bar?

Thankfully our waitress although very busy, was nicer than the hostess.  Ali ordered a custom thin crust pizza and I got some tomato basil pasta.  We both were very pleased with our meals.  Unfortunately I wound up wearing a nice portion of mine when a piece of pasta dropped off my fork and rolled down my shirt.  I have a long history of food collateral damage.

We boxed up our left overs so we had room to split a piece of very good peanut butter pie. We both left there with an overall positive outlook of Zookies and I am sure we will frequent it again in the future.

Sunday morning Ali was supposed to do a big brick involving 90 minutes of bike time followed by 60 minutes of running.  She was surprised that I offered to do the entire thing with her, especially since I was banged up early in the week from the half marathon.

We got started early since we had two and a half hours of cardio in front of us, we arrived at the water park around 7:30 am.  The time felt even earlier due to the time change this weekend.

We hopped on the biked and headed down the road to the near by neighborhood area that Ali prefers to bike in.  I let Ali set the pace which for the most part was on the slow side, but fast or slow, sitting on the bike for that long isn’t much fun.  By the time we got back to the water park 90 minutes later we had put in between 21 and 22 miles.

Christy had agreed to come meet us to do the run portion of the brick which would be the big 10k Oakes loop around the park.  After hydrating, changing our footwear and taking a Goo we headed back out.  I wasn’t looking to break any land speed records.  I just wanted to run at steady pace and hope my legs would feel ok, which they did.

After we stopped to drink the water we planted ahead of time around the halfway mark Ali ran ahead and I stayed back with Christy who was feeling a bit fatigued.  Since I was just taking it easy I had no problem keeping her company.

When we got back we thanked Christy for running with us and then headed into the water park.  I wanted to make my training day to be similar length-wise to an Olympic distance triathlon which includes a 25 mile ride, 10k run and .9 mile swim (1500 meters).

I hopped in the pool and knocked out 1600 meters in something like 34:45, completing the circuit.  It was a tough swim since I have done very, very little swimming in the last 6 months.  To be able to pull off a 1600 out of the blue was encouraging.

After I was done I was understandably beat.  Ali was nice enough to wait in the incredibly slow moving food line at the water park while I vegged out at a table.  After eating our lunch we headed home with a pit stop at Dunkin Donuts for an XL coffee that I hoped would help replenish my energy stores.

Ali retired to for a nap shortly after we got home.  The coffee helped me for a short period of time.  I even had ideas of starting my garage/workspace clean up/organization project.  Well as soon as the caffeine surge wore off I was dead and retreated back to the bedroom as well for a two hour nap.  I was quite glad I got everything done on Saturday because very little got accomplished around the house on Sunday.

Last night I pryed my eyes open until 1:15 am watching season 2 episodes of 24.  I am getting close to the end, it’s very addictive.  Yes, I am tired.

So last night Ali needed to get down a container from the hobby room.  She came out with a confused look on her face.  She asked me if I bought her some Under Armour shorts.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  She took me into the hobby room and showed me three pair of UA shorts that were on top of the container.  Then I remembered.

I bought those shorts when I went to the outlets with Randall.  They were indeed intended to be Christmas presents for Ali, I just forgot that I stuck them up there as a hiding place.  Well I wished Ali a Merry March Christmas.

So this morning I had to stick around the house to wait for the wind mitigation inspector to show up.  He had a window between 8AM-11AM.  I figured the odds of him showing up right at 8 was very low so I decided to make my spare time productive.

The first thing I wanted to do was put in the new ECT (Engine Coolant Temperature) sensor I bought for the Tacoma.  I am hoping this sensor will succeed in fixing my warm start issue where the IAC valve failed.

Replacing this sensor was a bit of a challenge.  I had a hard time just getting room to pop the electrical connector off the sensor.  In order to do so I had to temporarily remove a small piece that connects the two sides of the fuel rail together.

Once I got the connector off I had another issue, my 19MM socket was nowhere near deep enough to fit on top of the sensor to turn it out.  I grabbed the dogs and made a quick run to the hardware store where I found a deep enough socket and a 1/2″ extension bar.

With the proper tools removing the sensor wasn’t very tough.  I really need to get a good torque wrench though, doing this by “tight enough” feel is not a great thing.  Putting the fuel rail connector piece back on was a bit of a challenge because of the tight space and dual washers that are used.  After about 10 minutes of futzing around I got it back on.

The truck started back up and ran fine, but it always does when it the engine is cold.  I can only hope I have finally squashed the warm start problem.

Another less annoying issue has been my Hayward pool cleaner.  I have had an issue for awhile where it is moving about very slowly in the pool, not coming close to covering the entire area.  So far I have made two attempts to fix the problem, first by replacing the rubber feet on the bottom of the cleaner and then second by replacing the vacuum tubes since the old ones were brittle and had plastic breaking off in the connector portion of the hoses. Neither of these things fixed the turtle-like pace of the cleaner.

I just bought a maintenance kit that includes the feet, the wings, the front and rear flapper and the “pods” which are all of the items that get worn from the friction with the pool.  If this doesn’t fix it I will be giving up and buying another pool cleaner.  I don’t think I will be going the Hayward route if I do.

So the wind inspector guy showed up about 9:45.  Originally I had anticipated a somewhat confrontational encounter with this guy as I viewed him as the enemy, sent out by the evil insurance company to try to f me out of money.  It took me all of 15 seconds to change my viewpoint.

Mark was a big, chubby, friendly guy who let me know right up front that he is just contracted out to do the inspection, he was just there to document what we have.  He let me know that my self installed anchor/plywood system which successfully protected our house through various storms in 2005 would be flagged.  He said that they want anchors EVERY 6 INCHES!  I laughed out loud, that sounded just ridiculous.

His inspection was very simple.  He just took some pictures around the house and in the attic.  He said he wouldn’t think this inspection would reveal anything different than what the state funded inspection did since nothing significant has changed in that time period.  He was a nice guy, we talked pretty much non-stop as he walked around the house.  I definitely got no sense he was going to try to screw me in anyway whatsoever.

Of course the same can’t be said about my insurance company.  It will be quite interesting to see if they try to ramp up my rate based on what the inspection did or did not show.

This weekend we have no races to run or time.  I am hoping we get to go to the water park at some point.  I have stuff to do around the house but not a mountain size collection of items.