Archives May 2013

So yesterday the new garage looked at the Tacoma and confirmed what I already indicated, the driver side rear wheel bearing was bad.  They recommended replacing the bearings on both sides because of the age of the truck just as Tuffy did.  The dollar number was actually a few dollars MORE than what Tuffy quoted.  Well the truck is there already, I told them to just do it. The guys I dealt with at least were much more customer friendly.

I picked up the truck last night and the wheel bearing noise is gone, but the noise was gone before I spent one dollar on the tire replacement task.  That is the bitter irony of all of this expenditure.  Even $1600+ later the truck now doesn’t feel significantly different than before I dropped a dime, despite 4 new tires, a new tie rod and 2 wheel bearings.  It still will vibrate around 70 mph and the steering wheel is now slightly off center. Yea the new tires look better than the 5 or 6 year old Firestone’s but the bang for the buck equation is woefully in the red.

Spending that much money repairing a truck that might be worth $4-5k tops is a frustrating reality.

My robotoaster showed up yesterday.  I wasted little time unboxing it and plugging it in.  Working the toaster was very easy.  Select the toasting level from 1-7 and hit the TOAST button.  The bread is slowly lowered into the body of the toaster and then guards pop in from either side to keep it centered.

Once the toast is in position there is a bar graph on the front display that graphically shows how much time is left before the toast is done.  When finished the bread is lifted out of the toaster and an “all done” noise is sounded, cool!

I ran the toaster through a number of cycles to play with it.  I shot a quick video of one of the cycles. 

I was going to simply discard the crude Toastmaster that has adorned the house for a dozen years.  However Ali reminded me that we got that toaster at a second hand store when we moved here.  For whatever reason that instilled a sentimental value into the old thing that makes me pause to toss it.  If anyone needs an old reliable toaster let me know.

This weekend I have no huge plans although I will be heading to a local triathlon to both cheer on my various friends that are participating and to help Bill with setting up and tearing down equipment that the running club is loaning the event for the race.

My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is yanking the Start Menu out from under me.  Thankfully, there’s an app for that…

Nothing much to say today.

My truck is in the shop to hopefully be repaired without causing major blunt trauma to my wallet.

My super toaster is supposed to show up today, breakfast prep will never be the same.

So yesterday Tuffy was supposed to call me to let me know the cost for getting the rear wheel bearings replaced on the Tacoma.  I waited till 10am I never heard anything so I called them.  Brad answered the phone.  I reminded him he said he was going to call me.  He said he was just checking the price now (yea sure), and he would call me back.  Ok fine I gave him my office number and waited.

1:30 came and I had not heard back.  I was getting annoyed as I normally do when someone tells me they are going to do something and then do not follow through.  I call again and get the assistant manager.  He looks up my name in the computer and sees that Brad did indeed get pricing yet for whatever reason neglected to call me.

He gives me a repair price of almost $700.  I was like WTF?  The number sounded ridiculous.  He started breaking down the various parts which included doing both rear wheel bearings something that evidently is recommended.  In his numbers were no price breaks or discounts taking into account that the bearing noise was non-existent until their mechanics laid their hands on the truck, which I pointed out to him.

So I told the guy no thanks, I will look elsewhere to do it.  I hung up frustrated that I now got to add the local Tuffy to the growing list of garages that  I won’t be frequenting.

I did a search online and found a small two guy garage that has TONS of positive feedback regarding their customer service, fair pricing and knowledge.  I called them up and made an appointment for tomorrow to have the work done.  Hopefully my 10 year search for a garage I can trust can finally come to an end.

I’m not really sure what I will do at the gym today.  My knees still hurt from running and my forearms hurt from tire flipping.  I guess I could do glute squeezes.

So on Friday I decided I was tired of farting around regarding the Tacoma tire situation.  I had spent a couple weeks scouring both new tire prices and Craigslist ads, looking for a cost efficient way to get new rubber on the truck without spending an arm and a leg.  I had mentioned last week I had a goal of getting it all done for less than $600.

Well it became pretty obvious I was not going to be able to hit that goal.  So Friday afternoon I called my local Tuffy, the place that handled my SSR tire problem last year for free.  I figured I may as well give them my business as a thank you.  I called them up and got a quote of $674 out the door for a set of General Grabbers, a nice looking, raised white letter tire.

So it is a little more than I was looking to spend but at least it would be done.  The garage ordered the tires.  I told them I would be in first thing Saturday morning to have them installed, good deal.

So I roll into the garage a little after 8 am and see Brad, the manager I dealt with before.  Brad is a bit of an enigma.  His demeanor is very subdued and you would almost get the first impression that he was annoyed to be even speaking to you. However despite his somewhat unfriendly outward appearance, he does try to take care of customer needs.

So I handed over the keys and took a seat in the lobby.  I had a conversation with Brad and another customer in the waiting room about how things used to be in Collier county and how much things have changed in the last 20 years.  The convo went much along the lines of what Mitch told me the week before with stories of drugs, gangs and crime being the norm.

So the mechanic that was working on the Tacoma came in and talked to Brad.  Brad tells me that the driver side tie rod is bad, allowing lots of back and forth movement.  Replacing the rod and doing the required alignment afterwards was going to tack another $200 onto the bill.  Well I knew I had little choice, you don’t want to throw new tires on a loose front end.  Brad said they could get the part in less than an hour.  I told him to go ahead and do the repair.

Well the tie rod and alignment of course meant I was spending more time waiting.  I didn’t get out of there until 10:30.  By that time I was quite tired of waiting but glad to have the work finished.  I hopped in the truck and headed home.

Well almost immediately I noticed an odd noise once the truck got over 40 mph, it was like a droning sound.  At first I thought it could possibly be the little rubber nipples that are on new tires however it didn’t make any sense that it would be that loud and that the noise would come and go.  Instead of turning around and going right back to the garage I went home, I had stuff I wanted to get done around the house before it got too damn hot.

I did call Brad when I got home and told him about the noise.  He told me to bring it back in and they would look/listen to it.  I told him I would stop back later in the afternoon after I got some work done.

I got my work done and drove back to the garage, still hearing the noise, and frustrated that I had yet another vehicle issue to address.  When I got there the mechanic that worked on my truck went for a drive with me.  He clearly heard the noise and agreed it was coming from the left side.  I described the noise as sounding like something was rubbing or similar to how it sounds when you drive over rumble strips except the noise fades in and out.

When we got back to the garage he put the truck up on the lift.  He called me out several minutes later and handed me his amplified automotive stethoscope.  He had me hold it against the back of the driver side rear wheel as he spun it.  I heard what sounded like the brake shoes lightly rubbing against the drum, he told me what I was hearing was the wheel bearing.

I immediately questioned the diagnosis.  I told him that before the tire/tie rod replacement I never heard the noise.  I assured them I was pretty in tune with what noises my truck makes after all this time.  It made very little sense to me that changing the tires, a tie rod and an alignment would have caused the rear wheel bearing to fail, yet the noise did sound like it.

Replacing a wheel bearing is nothing I am equipped to do and it is a part that is only available from a dealer, meaning it was not going to get addressed on Saturday afternoon.  I am going to be getting a quote on the repair later today and am going to have to make arrangements to get the truck there sometime this week.  I am hoping it isn’t too steep, my total expense could reach double what I was looking to spend originally, fantastic.

Saturday night before going to the movies I was an inadvertent accessory to fatally maiming an anole,  it somehow got itself wedged under a sticky sliding glass door I was trying to pull shut.  I felt absolutely horrid when I looked down and saw it’s small tail frantically thrashing.  I lifted up the door off the track and got the poor guy out.  He was still alive but the damage was done, the 3/4 of his limbs were wrecked and the skin on his back was torn back.

I immediately felt a heavy wave of sorrow hit me as I picked up the little lizard in my hand.  I took him outside, thinking he would prefer to die peacefully outdoors under a plant or tree.  However when I tried to put him down he acted like he preferred the warmth of my hand.  I realized that in his condition he was likely to be attacked by ants or other insects while he was still alive and unable to do anything about it.   That certainly wasn’t what I wanted to happen.

So as I held him in my hand I lightly rubbed his tiny head with my fingertip, wondering what I was going to do, I was already late to leave to go to the movies.  So I did the only logical thing, took him along to the movies.  I knew he wasn’t going to last long but I thought the least I could do was let him die with company instead of alone since I was responsible for his fatal injuries.  By the time I got to the movie theater he was almost completely faded away.  When the movie was over he was gone for good.  I felt really bad about the whole ordeal.  When I got home the little guy was buried in the garden even though it was pushing 11:30 at night.  Sorry buddy…

Speaking of the movies, I saw Fast and Furious 6.  You would think a movie with 6 sequels would be rather long in the tooth.  Well the FF series seems to buck that trend.  This was not only a pure action film, it was old school, relying on honest to goodness car chases, explosions and fight scenes that were real and not CGI creations.   I can only imagine the budget involved with destroying that many things.

The Rock  is f’ing huge.  He looks like he washes down his Revita-T with steroid milkshakes.  The guy is just a monster, tons bigger than his days a s a WWE wrestler.

The movie was just fun.  Yea the plot is predictable but with a movie like this you really don’t care.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself from start to finish.  Maybe the most amazing thing is they are clearly making a 7th installment, and you know what, I will go see that one too.  It gets a solid A from me as long as you are just looking for brainless entertainment on a grand scale.  If you are looking to boost your IQ, look elsewhere.

You may recall I had this dumb idea to replace my dishwasher with a higher tech version for no good reason.  Well the higher than expected Tacoma repair charges did a good job of derailing that idea.  I did make a tech appliance purchase this weekend though, a toaster.

A toaster, much like my dishwasher is an appliance that sees a lot of usage in the house.  This particular toaster injects some fun tech into the process.  It has no traditional lever to drop the bread.  Instead you place the bread in the slot, hit a button and it is lowered into the toaster.  The unit has a LCD screen where various info is displayed, including a count down till your toast is done.  It looks super cool, at least as cool as a toaster can be.

The purchase satisfied my gadget itch without putting a major dent in my wallet like a dishwasher potentially could have, a good compromise.

On Sunday I did another training brick, this time just a run and swim.  Since I omitted biking I felt like I should stretch the run, doing 6 miles instead of 4.  This was the first time I have run 6 miles since doing 16 with Tracy what felt like eons ago.  It almost wound up being another 4 miler.

As I was coming close to completing lap two of the two mile loop I was in the midst of heavy internal conversations.  One voice was really interested in stopping at 4 miles, I just was not feeling great. Stopping short was sounding really good.  However thankfully the “don’t be a pussy” voice was louder and pushed me into lap 3.  Despite feeling pretty shitty the entire run I averaged slightly over a 9 minute mile pace which isn’t terrible for me.

In the pool I stretched things as well, doing three 500 yard segments instead of the 400’s I normally break my swim into.  I was quite pooped by the end of it all.

I picked up the dogs on the way back to the house.  They had fun hanging there as always as I worked on various things around the homestead.  They both just seem so happy when they get to run around (fast walk for Nicki) the yard with no tether.

My Memorial Day started early as it has the past few years due to timing a race.  For awhile it was just Bill, who drives the running club supply truck, and myself.  We seem to be the only two that are on site two hours before a race consistently.  Bill was actually there far earlier, having to do some last minute changes to the course due to a large soccer tournament that was going on at the same time.

The race wasn’t all that big with around 300 entries.  Timing the event went very well with no major issues at all.  It almost felt relaxing compared to some races I have been part of.

I had a bit of downtime early Monday afternoon so I thought I would fill it with a physical challenge.  I targeted the big 300 pound tire in my backyard as my exercise, specifically flipping it.  I have done some flipping of the tire before, it was tough.  For the holiday I wanted to push the envelope, flipping it from the parallel bars to the fence line and back, somewhere close to 500 feet in total.

Before the attempt I applied one of the temporary Bud Light Platinum tattoos that Ali gave me awhile back.  For some reason it felt appropriate.

As expected, flipping the heavy tire that far was pretty brutal.  It didn’t help that my knees both felt shaky from the run the day before and that my forearms were still feeling mildly irritated.  None of it mattered though, I was going to get the tire to the fence and back if it killed me.  It probably took me close to 15 minutes but I completed the challenge, sucking wind majorly by the end. On the return trip I tried to count the number of tire flips, I think it was 38 flips meaning for the round trip I probably flipped the big ass tire somewhere between 75-80 times.

Late Monday afternoon was the GCR Memorial Day picnic.  On the way there I drove through torrential downpours, I was hoping that the picnic would have different weather conditions since it was located much further south and on the coast.  For the most part, it was.

There was a period of 45 minutes where it rained quite hard.  I stood over the grill with a big umbrella, trying to keep our grill master Dave dry as he cooked the burgers and hot dogs.  There was a great spread of food this year once again.  Unfortunately we also were once again plagued with a large amount of flies trying to get their fair share.

Although the food was great, I actually had very little of it besides a small veggie burger and some healthy pasta salad.  Most of my consumption was the alcohol variety.  I didn’t keep an accurate count but I think I downed something like 5 BLP’s, an equal amount of Miller Lites and a couple jello shots to boot.

I was drunk, really drunk.  At one point I was trying to bump a volleyball around and was physically unable to do so, shanking nearly every ball towards the water.  Much like last year, I was one of the few that basically closed out the picnic sticking around till the very end.  All I can say is thank goodness Cindy, the woman I am dating, knows how to drive stick.  Otherwise I may have still been sitting there in the SSR waiting to sober up.  It was a fun time for sure.  I am still feeling the side effects though.

So I forgot to mention the other day when I got home this baggie was laying on the shelf of my mailbox that is intended for newspapers.  I found out that everyone in my neighborhood had the same thing stuck on/in their box.

Inside the baggie were a number of religious pamphlets.  I found the one titled “Love the Jewish People” most intriguing.  I flipped through it briefly.  The message was basically that history has shown that anyone that has gone against the Jews winds up “cursed”, so don’t go against the Jews.

I was confused because the other pamphlets seemed to be more about conventional Christianity.   I always thought that many Christians have a mild disdain for what Jewish people believe, mixing in a “Love Jewish people or be cursed” handout was a head scratcher.

Whatever the intent, I can only hope our area has not become a new focal point for some religious organization trying to spread the word.  People should be free to believe whatever they want to believe, just please don’t tell me I have to believe it as well.

Last night after work I wasn’t feeling great.  First I tried a max push up attempt, hoping to possibly hit 80 reps, instead I quit at 55.  Within minutes of my failed attempt I started feeling shitty.  My right ear was hurting a little, my eyes felt red, sore and tired and my state of mind was poor.  I thought it would make good sense to try to get my ass to bed early.  My sleep amounts recently have felt insufficient.

So instead of doing the smart thing, I sabotaged it.   After cleaning Tuki’s cage and starting two loads of laundry I sat down to eat dinner while watching my latest Netflix dvd, Bridesmaids.  Yes I am one of the few people that never saw the movie yet.  It lived up to it’s billing as a female Hangover, it was very funny and a solid A comedy, although you already knew that.

During the movie I found myself fighting the urge to treat my bad state of mind with sugar.  Visions of slamming Pop Tarts were dancing through my head even though I had no physical hunger to warrant it.  I was happy I didn’t give in to the craving, it subsided after 15 minutes or so.

So the movie finished up a little after 9, if I was going to load up on shut eye I should have headed straight back to take my shower, read a magazine and fall asleep.  Well I didn’t do it.

Instead I get the idea in my head that I want to do some more online investigation into a tire solution for the Tacoma.  First I loaded Craigslist to see if anyone else had pulled their factory Tacoma wheels/tires and were trying to dump them.   When that turned up nothing new I went back to browsing conventional sources.  I found a few tires that would work but unfortunately the 255 70/R15 size that is on the truck are not common, thus not stocked by anyone. So in order for me to get this done I am going to have to order the tires, wait and then schedule an install later.

I am already having a hard time justifying spending in excess of $600 for tires. I don’t want to pay an additional inconvenience price as well.  I want to go to a local tire store, pay $600 or less and walk out with a new set of tires that will last me 5 years an hour or so later.  It doesn’t sound like that is too much to ask but it appears to be an impossible request.

So after I wasted time doing that when I should have been sleeping I followed up wasting more time looking at dishwashers.  You may wonder why I would be looking at dishwashers?  I have not mentioned there being anything wrong with my dishwasher.  You would be correct.

My dishwasher is 100% fine yet for some reason I have become interested in replacing it with a more high tech unit.  I love my LG washer and dryer, most notably for the tech built into them.  I love the LED’s, buttons and sounds they make, admittedly not the best reason to buy a home appliance but hey, I am a geek, it’s cool.

So anyway I have this idea that having a dishwasher with a similar feature set would be something I would like since a dishwasher is something I interact with even more than the washer/dryer.  My web search revealed a few interesting models but I realized that truck tires need to be addressed before thinking about adding more tech to the kitchen.

So now that I wasted a good half hour on unnecessary web searching I had to still do more necessary things like fold laundry, make my grocery list and feed Tuki.  Even after finally taking a shower, I further retarded my arrival in bed by deciding to shave even though I really didn’t need to.  All of the screwing around meant my actually lights out time didn’t hit until 11, too late to help me tip the scales on my sleep deficit.

I think my random disconnected acts like last night are more than likely tied into the moon once again being full in the sky.  I glanced at the calendar last night when I realized how scattered my head was feeling and confirmed that we are in the sweet spot for moon madness, at least for me which is typically the few days before the moon is at it’s fullest.

So I woke up today not feeling as frazzled and not as tired as I expected.  Hopefully it holds up the rest of the day.

A holiday 3 day weekend is on tap.  Part of it will be timing a race on Memorial Day, the rest of it only has a loose framework.

So yesterday I got an email from my buddy Rich letting me know he recently changed jobs.  Ironically I had sent an email to his old work address a couple weeks ago and got a bounce so I was wondering what was going on.

Rich (on left) has been a good friend of mine that I met early on in my hard core volleyball days.  He was a member on a team I was recruited for back in the early-mid 90’s.  I recall how Rich and I would pepper the volleyball warming up. He loved when I would hit hard at him so he could try to dig it up, which he was pretty adept at.  For whatever reason from that time on we were friends and regular volleyball partners.  We were both lefties so it made for an interesting combo on the court.

Despite being close in height (I am a little taller), we had two very different roles on the court.  I was more the enforcer, preferring to just hit the ball hard, serve the ball hard with little else going through my head.  Rich was a far better defensive player, quicker, more cerebral and adept at mixing in power with finesse.  He also had a unique ability to bump set me just right, allowing me to take good rips at a ball more often than not.

Rich has a very dry but incredibly quick and witty sense of humor that I found endlessly entertaining.  He is responsible for most of the volleyball opponent nicknames I have listed here .  He also has been a huge part of the massive volleyball tip list I have created over the last decade or so.

We had a super successful run as vball doubles partners for two or three years, the highlight of which was our epic win in the 1999 Pottstown Rumble where we outlasted over 120 other teams to win our division.

Rich and I also had a stint as work out partners when I was in my beefy creatine days.  Once a week he would come over to my townhouse in Wernersville where we would push big weight in my finished basement while listening to a CD I burned with some of our favorite “pump you up” music. (anyone remember Ramstein?) After working out we would celebrate by pigging out, typically on meatball sandwiches.

Since I moved to Florida, Rich and I have fallen out of touch quite a bit.  Since I relocated he has married, bought a house, got a job in the IT industry and now has two children which keep him very, very busy.  It is a big change from the Rich I knew but a good one in the big picture.

So anyway he and I had an email exchange where we updated each other on the status of our lives currently.  Despite a lack of recent communication I had no problem jumping right into sharing personal feelings and information with Rich.  He was and always will be one of the few people in a very small circle of mine that I am comfortable sharing that sort of stuff with.

Rich has a unique ability to make me laugh out loud, often, a rare thing.

I handed out an invitation for him to come visit with the family anytime he chooses, I’d love to be able to  hang out with him again.  Who knows, we could maybe even find our way back onto a volleyball court somehow…

For years and years I have been lugging around a collection of keys fitting of a prison guard.  The collection has slowly grown and grown due to my lack of maintenance and regular evaluation of the keys that lived there.  I always had a fear that I could be getting rid of a key that I could possibly still need.

My key collection was annoying.  It was heavy and cumbersome.  When the keys were in my pocket they were always poking me.  When I tossed them on a table or counter it sounded like I was dumping a bucket of metal shrapnel.

I had considered going through my key collection many times, thinking it would be nice to not have such a mess jingling around. However my aforementioned fear of not being able to open some lock somewhere had kept from following through.

Well yesterday I saw a Kickstarter campaign for a key organizer that looked like a Swiss Army knife.  It’s promise is to make key management easy and almost fun.  For whatever reason this was the kick in the ass I finally needed to dig into my own jingling mess.

So I went key by key, trying to recall the last time I used it.  If I had absolutely no recollection it came off the ring.  I was pretty sure the plastic headed keys were for various padlocks.  I haven’t opened a padlock in several years so I felt pretty safe pulling all of them.  Some of the keys I did not recognize but had numbers/codes stamped into them.  I assume that means they are kind of important but I did not know why.  I took them off anyway.

All in all I pulled 10 keys off my key chain, removing over half of what was originally there.  It was amazing how removing a few ounces of keys felt like a ton off my back.  My key collection now feels fresh and hip instead of fat and lazy.  It feels good.

Just in case, all of the removed keys were put on an auxiliary ring and will be stored in a drawer.

Wow Sergio Garcia is really, really stupid. His little spat with Tiger Woods at the players championship evolved into something uglier yesterday.  Some reporter asked Sergio if he planned to have Tiger over for dinner.  He said he would and “We will serve fried chicken.” Sergio went scrambling into damage control shortly afterwards saying he was just joking.

Now I am no fan of the political correctness that in my opinion  has run rampant over society the last couple decades.  I think everyone is too easily offended by everything generally speaking.  However when it comes to a comment like that, even I cringe.  To me, true racism IS offensive and making a fried chicken comment is reflective of that in my opinion.

Sergio is getting blasted for the comment of course.  To me he deserves every bit of venom spit his way.

So I was hoping to get the grass mowed last night.  I was thinking the odds of this happening were slim to none while I was driving home in the second afternoon storm as in many days.  However shortly after I got home the rain stopped and the sun came out. I messed around a little bit inside first on Iron Lou’s parallelettes and then more back lever attempts, neither of which were very successful.

I then ate my dinner while watching part of the Celebrity Apprentice finale allowing another hour or so to pass.  Somewhere around 7:20 I decided I was going to shoot outside and try to speed mow the property before daylight expired.

I hauled ass around the yard, assisted by the fact that some areas of the property had minimal growth, allowing me to fly over them at a high rate of speed.  I got finished around 8:15, just as it was getting really dark, mission accomplished.

I saw some of the pictures and video from the awful Oklahoma tornadoes.  The destruction is just incredible and sadly the death totals are very high, including a number of children.  Yes tornadoes are an ever present threat if you live in that area, hell they are commonplace.

I could hardly believe an interview with the mayor of the town that was hit, he relayed stories of how people on the streets were generally in good spirits and how he was quite confident the town would recover fully from the disaster because they have done it before.  Moore Oklahoma was hit by a tornado with the highest ever recorded wind speeds something like 15 years ago, topping 300 mph.

Whenever I see stories about tornadoes I always think about our road trip a few years ago that took us through Greensburg Kansas, a town that was more or less wiped off the map by a mile wide tornado.  The power of a tornado is staggering.  At least hurricanes frequency can be counted on one hand over the span of a lifetime.  Living in an area where tornadoes pop up by the dozens year in and year out would be enough for me to pack my bags and head for calmer pastures.

Most blog readers love rants, here are a few.

So today’s gym news wasn’t anything I saw or heard, it was something I smelled.  The entire place smelled like sewage.  There is nothing like the smell of shit to get you pumped up for a few extra reps.  I asked one of the employees if the awful smell was coming from the bathroom(s).  They said no, they aren’t sure where it is coming from.  Well I certainly hope they track it down, poop is bad for business.

On a side gym note, that young girl that was responsible for turning the place into a mind numbing rave concert a couple weeks ago has been MIA for the last 10 days.  I am wondering if I indirectly contributed to her getting blown out.  Hopefully not, I was just trying to avoid taking anti-depressants just to get through my work outs.

So I had contacted UnderArmour.com last week to see if I could get information  regarding where the fraudulent $600 order that was paid for with my CC was sent to.  I was told I would be contacted by somebody in their fraud department.  Well of course, I never was.

So I call back today and tell the girl on the phone that I was never contacted.  She looked in the notes of my case and it says the fraud department must have overlooked contacting me but that they have marked the transaction as fraudulent. “Ok great, what exactly does that mean?”, I asked.  She said that it meant that if the bank contacts them they will clear the charge.

I told the rep that I suspected the charge could be connected with a local transaction and that I wanted to find out the address the merchandise was shipped to to assist in the investigation.  She said they were not allowed to do that.  I said to her, “So even though the items were paid for with my credit card, you won’t tell me where they were shipped?” “We aren’t allowed to.  That information could only be requested by the bank in certain situations”, she replied.

Well this is asinine.  After thanking the woman for basically telling me nothing I hung up annoyed.  The reality that the person charged $600 of shit on my card and more likely will see no punishment for doing so really pisses me off.  More than likely the bank will just write off that $600 as the cost of doing business in a world where CC fraud is the norm instead of the exception.  There has to be a way to pursue these scammers.

So I might be heading up to the Orlando area for a long weekend next month.  I thought maybe I would try to take advantage of the timeshare arrangement Ali and I bought into a decade ago.  My thoughts about our purchase of that timeshare and my dealings with the points program provider, RCI, have been well documented in the blog over the years.  The timeshare purchase is number two in the all time worst purchases list behind the investment land we bought during the boom which I will be paying for until I am dead.

So anyway, one of the small perks the place used to offer owners was a discounted rate on units if they were just staying up in Orlando for a few days.  I remember it was very reasonable, something like $30-$40 a night.  I was hoping they still had the plan in place despite ownership of the resort changing hands a year or two ago.

So I call the place up and ask about discounted rates for owners.  The woman said they no longer offer that benefit to owners.  If you want to stay there you pay the same rate as anyone else.  Wow, how nice.  Glad my thousands of dollars spent are so well appreciated by the new resort management.

Not only do you get no discount, they won’t even tell you the rate on the phone.  The only information you will get is if there is any availability on a certain date, if you want to know what they will charge you, you must go to a website to get a quote.

So I go to the website, punch in some dates and am presented with prices no better than local hotels.  What a crock of shit.  It seems to me that there should be some sort of legal recourse when you enter into a contract with a facility and they change the rules after they have your money.  Unfortunately it is easier and less expensive to just shrug your shoulders and say “they fcking blow”.  Exactly what they are counting on.

Saturday I grabbed the dogs relatively early and brought them back for a day of home labor.  It was one of those days where it seemed like despite my consistent hard work that I was making slow headway, not a feeling I enjoy.  To make things worse it was brutally hot and humid Saturday, especially for mid-May with temps scraping 90 degrees. The highlights of the chores was replacing a defective sprinkler in the front yard and utilizing the battery powered pruning chain/pole saw Todd got me for Christmas. It made short work of the huge seed branches on the coconut palm.

On my way to drop off the girls later I made a pit stop at mom’s place to give her my garden harvest for the day.  It was also nice for the dogs to get to spend a few minutes with grandma, they always are very excited to see her.

Saturday night I got out to see the new Star Trek movie.  I have never been a hard core Trekkie but I always enjoyed both the tv series and movies.  I have seen every Star Trek movie that was released in the theater.  I had not read anything in advance about the storyline of this installment, only seeing the previews leading up to it, which looked pretty bad ass.

The movie was good, I enjoyed it.  There were a few things that went down that I mentally lol’d at because they made no sense but I won’t reveal them here to protect from being a spoiler.  I came away from the movie satisfied but not blown away.  Official rating of A-.

On Sunday morning I was on my way to the water park to do another training brick.  As I passed under the interstate I noticed something large against the left curb of the three lane wide road.  As I went by I saw it was a large turtle.  Instantly I went into my animal saver mode.  The closest place I could turn off was a turning lane about 300 yards away.

I hop out and start running towards the turtle.  At first I ran up on the raised median.  I saw the turtle had made it’s way to the center of the three lanes, a prime kill zone by some idiot not paying attention.  Luckily there was not that much traffic on the roads yet at that hour.  However as I was about 100 yards away I saw a decent amount of cars stopped at the traffic light just before the unofficial turtle crossing.  I get off the median and am now running in the center lane, against traffic.  My thought process was if someone did not see the turtle, they would at least see me.  The last thing I wanted was to witness the turtle getting obliterated as I was only a few seconds away from getting to him.

My strategy seemed to work as cars slowed and avoided both myself and the turtle.  I didn’t bother to make eye contact with any of the drivers, I am sure quite a few “wtf is he doing?” looks were shot my way.   I scooped up the misguided turtle and carried him across the road to the side next to a canal, figuring that was his intended destination.

When I picked him up he hissed, not realizing that his turtle guardian angel had arrived.  As I was making my way down the steep embankment I was rewarded for my efforts with a stream of turtle urine running down my leg.  I wasn’t sure if it was fear or another defense mechanism.  I sat him by the waters edge, told him it was ok now, and climbed back up.  That was one very lucky turtle.

For the second week in a row I did a three headed brick, a 4 mile run, a 12 plus mile bike and a 1200 yard swim.  It went better than the week before where I found myself dying at various points.  Of course I was still quite tired this time around, especially on the bike, but it was less severe than the prior session which is progress in my book.

This weekend I installed a SSD drive in my home computer.  Of course having the experience of doing the same thing at work helped tremendously when migrating my home system, allowing me to avoid a couple pitfalls.  I am now enjoying similar performance at home as I have been at work.  A cold boot is super fast, the longest part of the process is the initial computer POST and the network authentication time.  Anything related to hard drive access is done nearly instantaneously, it’s pretty awesome. 🙂

Sunday night I threw my latest Netflix dvd in the 360, The Dictator.  I was a big fan of Borat, I thought it was quite funny.  I thought Bruno was much more stupid than funny.  Well The Dictator was 100% stupid, well the 15 minutes of it I endured.  Yes, it was so stupid I turned the damn thing off.  I can not tell you the last time that has happened but it is a testament to how awful the movie was.  I did not laugh once during my brief time watching it and I could pretty much guarantee it was going to be a monumental waste of my time to watch anymore.

I’m not sure if it is fair to give a rating to something I only could stomach for a few minutes but I will anyway. It gets a “don’t waste a rental on this piece of shit even if it’s free” F.  What I saw was so utterly ridiculous I have no plans to watch another Sascha Baren Cohen movie, ever. It really sucked.