AWS awesome, too many tasks, too much gas, no happy ending

Woot off today.

I have been digging heavily into an option for addressing my hosting issues with the Bar-barians web site, Amazon Web Services.  Amazon not only is the biggest online retailer in the world, they also have developed an incredible infrastructure for allowing businesses and individuals to quickly and easily utilize Amazon’s vast resources to host their web identity.

Homey is the one that got me thinking along these lines after he attended a training course regarding AWS.  He told me how they have a free usage tier where you can get started with AWS for free for up to a year.  The pricing structure for AWS is very competitive, you pay per hour.  Your hourly rate is based on how powerful of a server you are implementing.

When you first sign up for AWS, the control panel seems very confusing because there are so many different things that Amazon can do for you.  However after a quick search I was able to find instructions that literally allowed me to get a brand new dedicated “server” online in the AWS cloud and running WordPress in about 10 minutes of time.

The flexibility, scalability and power of AWS is pretty staggering.  I strongly suggest you take a look.  Yes it is more involved than a traditional hosted web service situation but it is worth the effort.  Netflix is run on AWS for cripes sake.

So I had a lot I wanted to get done over this long 3 day weekend.  As I headed into it, my hope was to drill through it in my typical fashion, hopefully leaving a good portion of the weekend free for me to relax.  It was a lot of to do’s, to help motivate me I created the infamous list of tasks.

My Saturday started at 4:15 am since I had a race to time.  The event went smoothly with no major hassles.  I was pulling out of there by 9am which is great. Once I got home after completing my post race tasks I dug into my list at full speed.

For the second week in a row one of my tasks was fixing ripped pool screen.  I replaced two sections, one of them being part of one of the doors.  I have almost used up the 100 foot roll of super screen I bought a couple years ago at this point.  To tell you the truth, I have fallen out of love with the product.

The selling point of super screen was it is supposed to be very strong and lasts forever.  Well I have had to replace sections of screen that were already super screened, they seem just as susceptible to tearing along the spline as the regular screening it replaced.

On their website there is a picture of a section of super screen with 800 pounds of cement on it, a testament to it’s strength.  What they don’t show is how the screen looked afterward, stretched out and saggy.

Super screen stretches.  It seems every section I have installed has become loose despite being tight when it was installed.  Once this roll of super screen is used up I won’t be buying any more, it just was not worth it’s premium price.

Part of my to do’s for Saturday was to prepare for the forecast cold temps utilizing something else I bought in bulk last year, frost cloth.  For years I tried to prevent the landscape from getting wrecked by cold temps utilizing various fabrics and items with limited success.  Frost cloth is designed specifically to protect plants.

I covered the tomato and pepper plants in the garden.  I also wrapped a croton, poinsettia and the banana trees that get destroyed when temps even start to sniff 40 degrees.  The temps over the weekend touched the upper 30’s out at the house and to my surprise the frost cloth did it’s job, nothing died.

The rest of my daylight hours on Saturday consisted of more chores inside the house.  I was exhausted and actually took a nap.

Saturday night I saw Identity Thief, a comedy with Jason Bateman and the funny chick from Bridesmaids.  I enjoyed the movie, it was funny although not quite as funny as I expected going in.  I’d give the movie a B+.  I actually went to the late showing thanks to my long nap.  I didn’t walk out of the theater until well after midnight.

Sunday morning I woke up around 8.  A quick look outside and at the thermometer revealed the forecast very cold air had rolled in overnight.  The temp was 41 even with the sun well into the sky.  Despite being out late the night before, a tired body from the prior day of chores and the cold temps, I had an idea in my head that I should go do a 10 mile run just in case I commit to doing the Hooters Half Marathon. (which I still have not done)

On the plus side, running in cold temps is generally a good thing for me, the lower the thermometer is (within reason) the better I feel as I run.  On the down side, my after work 10 mile run the week before felt terrible and I was very slow.  I felt like I needed to redeem myself.

So I decided I was going to do it.  I put on my long sleeve Under Armour cold gear shirt and headed out.  I decided I would get my 10 miles via one circle around the 10K Oakes loop and then two 2 mile laps around the inside of the water park grounds.

The Oakes loop went ok, I kept what felt like a decent pace.  I didn’t look at my watch till I stopped to grab water at the truck.  It showed I did the 10K in something like 54:45 which is very close to a 9 minute mile pace.  The two laps inside the park did not feel great but at least I didn’t hit the wall like I did the week prior. My total time of 1:30:55 worked out to a 9:06 pace, probably my best 10 miles since I ran the half marathon last year. It was about 6 full minutes faster than the crappy 10 miles I pulled the previous Monday.

In an ideal world, running 10 miles would be enough physical exertion for most days.  Unfortunately in my case, this was just a warm up.

I pulled jeans over my running shorts and swapped out my UA top for a t-shirt, sweatshirt and gloves and headed to Lowes for supplies for my big project of the weekend, redoing the border around the pond.

When we first moved into the house I utilized a lot of landscape timbers to frame out areas.  They were cheap and easy to fit into various situations. Well there is also a problem with them, they rot out, especially in Florida’s hot temps, regular rain and blazing sun.

In recent years after having to replace various wooden borders several times I finally got smart, realizing that investing in borders that last forever is worth the additional upfront cost if it eliminates future work.  I am all about minimizing upkeep at this point of my life. The border around the pond was the last landscaped area utilizing wooden timbers, everything else either has a castlewall concrete border or plastic edging, both of which will outlast me.

I had heel to toe walked the perimeter of the pond to determine I needed roughly 50 stones to complete the job, I also grabbed 20 bags of red mulch to top off the area.  Just to make sure I didn’t run out of work to do, I stopped at Publix and rented a Rug Doctor.  The truck was riding very low as I pulled into the driveway.

The border replacement project took a few hours.  After ripping up the rotting timbers I used a shovel to scrape along the border, rounding it out slightly as well as getting rid of the vegetation that was pressed up against the old timbers.

I then started laying down the castlewall stones.  I put strips of weed block under them to combat the endless weed onslaught.  There was a section of the pond that was home to a nasty colony of fire ants.  Bordering that section required quick work and a lot of brushing of ants off my hands.  Despite wearing DeWalt work gloves, one them actually was able to deliver a bite through the thick material.

My crude foot measurement worked out pretty well, I wound up using 49 of the 50 blocks I bought.  After applying a fresh thick layer of red mulch I stood back to admire the fruit of my labor.  It looked much better.

I had enough bags of mulch left over to cover a few of the other smaller landscape beds on the property.  I still need to buy a shit load more to cover the orchard and pool border.

If you want to see all of the pics I took of the project go here.

I was pretty beat after the work outside.  Replacing the border required a lot of time on my knees, something that never goes over well, especially after running 10 miles in the morning.  However the list was my taskmaster, I still needed to use the Rug Doctor.

I have a Bissel carpet cleaner that I typically use to shampoo the carpet in the house.  It seems to do a decent job but I was curious to see if a Rug Doctor would deliver more cleaning punch.  The Rug Doctor is supposedly a commercial grade machine.  It is big and heavy compared to the Bissel.  It’s also a bit clumsy to maneuver, I managed gouge the wall of my freshly painted bedroom as I tried to get close.

The machine felt substantial, with a big holding tank, high power vacuum and a vibrating brush that shook you from head to toe.  The rugs looked good when I was done but to be honest they didn’t look appreciably better than when I use my Bissel.  I think the biggest difference was the Rug Doctor was able to pull more moisture out of the rug via it’s high suction.  Other than that, it wasn’t really worth the $40 I spent when you throw in the cleaning solution.

I was totally gassed by the end of the day.  The list was finally done, except for the trip I was supposed to make to my mom’s Monday morning to work on some stuff.  I vegged out Sunday night and watched my second movie of the weekend, Haywire.

Haywire stars that good looking female MMA fighter, Gina Carrano.  Her acting wasn’t bad although she didn’t have tons and tons of dialogue.  Her main role was to kick men’s asses, a lot.  She did quite a good job of doing that but the novelty of it wore off pretty quickly.  The movie ran out of steam quickly. It had an odd/annoying sound track, a convoluted plot and totally predictable outcome.   I’d give it a B-

So Monday the plan was to pick up the dogs and bring them along to mom’s place to hang out while I did the work she needed.   The girls of course were thrilled to see my mom as always.  What mom needed seemed pretty straight forward.  She had some window treatments put up recently.  They were a little low and the curtain in front of the sliding doors was dragging on the floor.  Mom wanted me to raise it a bit, ok, no problem.

So as I took it apart I saw the track holding the curtain was a mess, specifically the supports that are attached to the drywall.  One of them was broken and others were half hanging out of the drywall, pulling loose of their anchors.  At first I thought this was because of simply poor installation.  I later realized it was from excessive torque.

I took everything down, marked level, attached the brackets along the lines using fresh holes and put it back together.  When you tried to extend the curtain using the pull rope it extended with a reasonable amount of effort.  However when you tried to retract the curtain, you hit a point where everything would bind up.  The only way I could get it to fully retract was using my hand up top to manipulate the accordion style linkage.

It became clear that the brackets were pulled loose from mom pulling hard on the cord.

I was frustrated and looked for any obvious cause of the binding but came up empty.  My only diagnosis was the track is bent slightly, just enough to cause binding at that spot.  Mom was given these window treatments for free so it is hard to complain.  It’s just a shame.  So as a work around mom will only use the half of track movement that is unimpeded.

I wound spending a lot more time at mom’s than planned, I didn’t get home until after noon.  I brought back with me mom’s tax paperwork and the Magic Jack I bought her for Christmas.  She no longer has the need for it since Century Link is now including free long distance in her phone service.

My plans for a clear Monday quickly evaporated.  I managed to find things to get done like doing mom’s taxes, hooking up the Magic Jack and doing race associated homework.

Sadie made a lot of these tasks extremely smelly.  She had diarrhea the past couple days which she was now mostly over.  However she was plagued with horrific, toxic farting that she was letting rip every couple minutes.  She would rip a fart, I would pull my shirt over my nose and say “Sadie can you please stop farting!” which of course is a ridiculous request.  However my calling her name in that manner encouraged her to come sit right next to me because she thought I was mad at her, where she would continue to blast away at point blank range.

Eventually I put her outside for a period of time so I could get away from the stench.  It was truly awful.

So before I knew it 9:15 had arrived and I realized had basically blown through my 3 day weekend without any prolonged periods of my just being lazy and enjoying myself as I hoped.  Yes I got a lot done. Yes if I don’t do it no one else will. It just felt like there was minimal payoff for all that effort, which was very substantial.

This is a theme that has echoed a lot recently.   Perhaps this is just the role I am destined to play.