Archives 2014

Since I realized I have poor ROM in my left elbow the other day I have been asking a bunch of people to do the elbow test.  Simply try to touch the your right shoulder with your right hand and vice versa.  When I try to do this with my left arm something in my left elbow throws up a road block.

I am curious how long this lack of mobility has been the case.  Is it some thing I only developed as another symptom of old age recently or has it been this way all my life?  I can’t recall ever trying to this simple movement prior to this past Wednesday.

Regardless of how or when this came to be it explains some issues I have doing certain things, the most recent example is a muscle up.  As you are going through the transition portion of a muscle up your elbows normally will need to be fully retracted.  Since my left elbow does not bend as much as the right it throws the whole movement out of balance.  If you watch my reps slowly you will see my right arm gets into the proper position while the left side drags behind, causing the movement to get all sorts of messy.

I am not sure how successful I can be restoring full flexion to my left arm.  For now I am just going to try to pull my wrist towards my shoulder as part of my stretching routines to see if I can break down whatever adhesions are holding it back.

The next 48 hours for me are going to be quite filled.  I have to work late tonight at the office, go home to pack up the truck for a race tomorrow, time the race tomorrow morning and then head directly back to the office to continue working.  It is going to be a whole lot of suck.

I have become a big adopter of SSD “hard drives”.  The IO performance increase they offer is pretty incredible versus a conventional platter hard drive.  I have now installed a total of 5 of them, including the one I did last night.  Last night’s install was the most risky as I installed it in my Windows 2008R2 home server which serves my home network and houses my email.

The server has been slow for a long time, I figured a SSD drive would be a good way to give it a shot in the arm.  However I was also nervous installing a SSD drive in a server environment since drive activity is quite high and the system is on 24/7.  I opted for a Samsung 840 Pro SSD drive which offers some of the best reliability out there.  Plus I LOVE the Samsung data migration utility that makes moving to a SSD drive extremely easy.

I took a few steps before starting the transfer like shutting down all MS Exchange services and any other services not needed to keep the OS running.  After that I connected the new SSD externally via USB and started the transfer process.  Once it completed all that remained was to crack the case and mount the SSD in the old HDD tray using some velcro.   The system booted up in less than 15 seconds, it was pretty amazing.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I fired up email on my computer and saw incoming mail start to flow, mission accomplished.  If you don’t have a SSD drive in your computer you really should consider getting one.

Last night Cindy and I headed for the fair.  It was quite warm yesterday but past experience made me throw on a long sleeve t-shirt, I always seem to wind up being cold at the fair.  Well I was glad I donned the long sleeves, as soon as the sun went down the temps felt like they dropped like a rock. This was Cindy’s first time fair visit, being a decade+ fair veteran I was happy to show her the ropes.

The first thing we checked out was the jousting show.  The show was intentionally very cheesy with a bunch of guys doing fake accents but entertaining nonetheless.

We were both hungry afterward so we started our fair food experience by splitting an arepa and a basket of maduros (plaintains).  The arepa was awesome, the maduros didn’t do much for me.

We then headed for the animal exhibits.  We really took our time looking at and interacting with them.  Some of the chickens were for sale, as cheap as $10.  Cindy said we should get a chicken.  I told her she was welcome to get one if she was the one to take care of it.  I am not interested in chicken maintenance.  She had similar ideas when we saw the cute rabbits but I squashed that be relaying stories of how Sadie killed a baby bunny years ago.

We then headed over to the larger farm animals, the goats, sheep, pigs and cows.  Cindy immediately was drawn to a cow that was laying down.  She was surprised that it seemed quite open to being rubbed/petted.  She sat down there with it for a long time.

I was interacting the most with a relatively small pig, about the same size as Sadie.  He looked like he was really sick of being stuck in the pen and was jamming his nose out the crack in the gate.

I knelt down and started rubbing his snout and side of his face. He seemed to like it.  I stood up to walk away and he stuck his nose into the grid of the gate and tried to lift it with his head, like he was saying “don’t go…”

Well of course this broke my heart and I went back to him and rubbed him some more.   Cindy suggested a pet pig would be awesome too.

As we walked around the pig area we saw tons of them sleeping back to back, an indication of how they like to be near each other as it offers them comfort and assurance.  Personality and intelligence-wise pigs are right there with dogs.  One of them was laying in a pose I see Sadie do all the time with her chin down in between her two outstretched paws.

As has been the case for a long time, seeing these animals was bittersweet.  I love interacting with them but feel very sad that the majority of them will wind up being on somebody’s dinner plate.  I just can’t imagine looking into the face of an innocent animal and pulling the trigger. I just don’t have it in me to view them as a thing instead of just another being sharing the planet that has feelings and emotion.

Cindy and I also went into two other animal areas, one was the petting zoo and another housed more exotic animals including lemurs, kangaroo, a small tiger and more.  Again Cindy was not shy about interacting with the animals.

She was particularly fond of some Scottish cattle.  They seemed to love to have their necks rubbed.  Both of them leaned against the fence so Cindy could scratch them.  It was very cute.

We wandered upon a female escape artist act, she went by the name Lady Houdini.  She did the famous water cell escape trick.  Her husband, who was also the announcer claims she is the only person in the world doing the escape in full view instead of being only partially viewable behind a curtain that is pulled open and shut during the stunt.

In total she had to release somewhere around 6 locks to get out of the water filled tube.   Seeing the trick in plain view made the technique used to escape crystal clear, she pulled a pin from her hair to pick the handcuffs and various locks.  However it did not really minimize the tension and anxiety since it still took a LONG time for her to get them all undone.

Being able to remain calm and steady while holding your breath that long was pretty impressive.  I didn’t look at my watch but I would estimate she was underwater for over two minutes getting herself free.   When she popped out the top it was pretty exciting, an impressive act for a county fair if you ask me.

Cindy and I grabbed some more fair food before heading out, a not so great “vegetarian pita” from some barbeque stand and a chocolate dipped vanilla cone, both of which we split.   It was getting colder and I had to finish up my SSD migration so we headed out.  We didn’t even bother wandering into the carnie filled ride area.

We both had a good time, fairs are fun.  All of the pictures I took can be seen here.

Last night was a running club board meeting.  It ran a little long and got a little more heated than necessary at points.  As usual I came out of it with a to do list to accomplish.

The post meeting South Street get together did not go down.  Instead I wound up meeting up with Cindy who was having dinner with friends at the bar inside of Whole Food Markets.  I had eaten at Subway before the meeting so I just sat there, chatted and drank a beer.

This morning I had my follow up appointment with our employee health clinic.  When I had my physical a couple weeks ago my BP was on the high side (145/85).  I attributed to downing a big cup of coffee and the anxiety associated with doctor office visits.  My PA wanted to be cautious and gave me a portable BP machine to check my pressure over a two week period.

So I have been checking my pressure twice a day and as expected the numbers are better, hovering around 120/80.  I returned the machine today and got the green light to continue muddling my way around the planet.

Tonight Cindy and I may attend the County Fair, yeehaw!

I wonder where that Malaysian plane is….

The past few days Cindy has been telling me that she was not seeing my blog posts on my Facebook wall.  It didn’t make any sense since when I looked at my wall the posts were there clear as day.  Well apparently it wasn’t just her that was not seeing the posts, nobody else was.  It had something to do with the mechanism the blog uses to post to Facebook.  Somehow it is posting in a way that makes it visible only to me, despite the FB view settings for it being “Friends”.  So the simple fix is a quick cut and paste of the link instead of using the plug in.

Last night both Cindy and I made an attempt at this month’s BB challenge which is maximum duration wall handstand hold.  I shot the attempts with my GoPro.  The video quality is great, the audio quality is not.  I didn’t give any consideration to what happens when you have the GoPro mounted in the waterproof case.

I knew Cindy would be able to hold longer than I could based on past experience.  I didn’t expect her to crush me like she did.  I stayed inverted for 65 seconds before my shoulders gave out.  Cindy stayed up for nearly double that time, coming off the wall at the 1:55 mark.  The handstand beat down will give me motivation to hang in there longer next time.

Cindy and I considered going out last night for St Patricks Day even though neither of us have any track record of doing so in the past.  We instead decided to stay home and drink a couple beers.  It’s safer and I have 3 cases of beer left over from the Super Bowl party to get through anyway.

For the second day in a row I saw this truck on my way into work in the morning.  Both days my eyes were drawn to it via the left leg that was resting on the driver side fender.

The old Chevy S-10 had a bare frame in the back, no doors and looked like it has lived a very rough life.  The driver of the vehicle looked as you would imagine they would.  No Florida state vehicle inspections leads to cool sightings like these.

The rest of this week is going to be very busy.  The first sign of daylight isn’t going to come until Saturday evening.

On Saturday morning I ditched running as my back was still not feeling great when I rolled out of bed.  Instead I started off my early AM at a much slower pace playing some WoW and Hearthstone.  Around 9 I took the party van over to Cindy’s apartment to get the last couple large/heavy items that would be going to my house, her big screen TV and a large potted desert rose.

I had to load these in a way to still allow access to the bed in the back of the van since I was picking up the girls on my way home.   They didn’t seem to mind the 50″ tv that was lined up behind the front seats.

Once we got home I got to work distributing the items to their new spots.  The desert rose went out front in between the two existing potted plants.  The tv went into the guestroom, replacing the diminutive 15 inch LCD set that was there before.  The tv transformation was dramatic.  Cindy’s tv takes up pretty much all available wall space between the open bedroom door and the closet.  Future guests will have quite the AV experience available to them.

I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon doing a full yard mowing followed by weed whacking.  It was my first time mowing everything with the new sun canopy installed.  As expected extra care was necessary mowing certain spots and other spots could no longer be traversed with the canopy installed.  I’ll exchange another minute or two of weed whacking for being able to mow without the sun beating on my head on the tractor.  I wish I would have done this 10 years ago. After the yard work I was actually warm enough to jump in the pool, giving Sadie her first 2014 splashy splash session.  The water felt quite cold for about 30 seconds but after that I was able to settle in and splash Sadie for 5 or 10 minutes.

When Cindy got home we promptly gave both of the dogs a bath.  They both suffered through the indignity with flying colors.

We spent Saturday evening at home.  It included watching my latest Netflix rental, Bad Grandpa.  To be quite honest I was hesitant to even put this in my queue.  The last Jackass movie was so lame that I was almost not willing to watch anything with Johnny Knoxville’s name all over it.  I was totally prepared for this movie to be horrible and even envisioned myself turning it off mid-flick if it was as bad as I feared it could be. Well I was wrong, very wrong.

Both Cindy and I laughed a ton, it was sort of a mix of Borat with a sprinkle of Jackass.  The little kid in the movie was a great part of the chemistry, despite the age inappropriate things he had to do/say.  The movie was really, really funny, believe it or not I am giving it an A-.

On Sunday morning after dropping off the dogs at Ali’s, Cindy and I took on a bike/swim brick.  The first part of the ride when we were heading north had a very quick pace, topping out at 24mph + for a brief period of time.  Of course I knew this meant we had a big tailwind pushing us along which was going to be in our face on the way back.

For most of the south ride Cindy was in the front being a wind breaker, she likes to put herself in those difficult riding conditions because it offers better training rewards.  I took over for a brief part towards the end of the south ride before we did a final U-turn to head north back towards the water park.  With the wind once again at our backs Cindy took off like a bat out of hell, she likes to see what sort of top speed she can hit during the last segment of this ride.  She said she touched 28 mph at one point.  I couldn’t tell as I was a couple hundred yards behind her at that point.  I only caught up to her right before getting back to the entrance to the park.

We had a decent swimming session.  I logged three 400 yard segments at a mundane 9:15 pace.  Considering this was only my second swimming session of the last 6 months I was ok with it.  Cindy put in 1000 yards.  It was her first time swimming since the Key West tri in December.

After we were done we got right out of there as we had two stops to make on the way home and list of things to accomplish once we got back.  Sunday afternoon seemed to fly by in a blink.  Cindy made a nice dinner followed up with an even better homemade apple pie.  We enjoyed both while finally watching the third part of the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo  series.

It was good but the whole reading subtitle deal really is not my thing and distracts from my overall enjoyment of the film.  As a whole I would give the movie series a B+.

So last week I finished up my second week trying out Gunnar glasses at work.  The first week I had them I wore them basically full time, 8 hours a day at work and my eyes felt like shit.  They were bloodshot, aching and dry at various times, the exact symptoms they are meant to lessen.

Last week I did them more in shifts, wearing them for a period of time and then going without for a bit.  It seemed to work out better, my eyes felt much better than the week before.

I still have not noticed any improvement in the problem that caused me to by Gunnars in the first place, distance focus.  We’ll see what week three brings.

Most of the week I have been dealing with pain in the lower right section of my back.  The odd thing is I can’t attribute it to any exercise related activity.  Some days the pain has been enough to force me into a limp, other days it has been less severe but still there.  Today the pain level is somewhere in the middle.  All I know is it has sidelined any near term plans to run.

Cindy has the majority of the things she needs moved into the house at this point.  Most of the stuff left at her apartment will either be going into storage or with her daughter when she finds her own place.  It’s been nice having her around more or less full time.  Her energy level and seemingly endless supply of positive thinking is a good counterbalance to my up and down outlook on things. She helps smooth out my bumps in the road.

Last night her and I played a couple head to head games of Hearthstone, it was fun.

This weekend we may check out another movie.  The county fair, a half mile from my house, opened up last night.  We will probably check that out as well but save it for a weekday night to avoid some crowds.

The weekend chore list right now is standard size although I do have a couple things that could/should be done at anytime.  Those things are mulching the property and redoing the front brakes on the Tacoma which are pulsating badly.  I really don’t feel much like taking on either of those things at this point and time.

I haven’t felt very inspired to write much the last few days.  It happens from time to time.

Where I just don’t feel like saying much

Yesterday after work I stopped at Costco to get something.  Even though it was a Tuesday night there still were a quite a few people milling about.  I have complained in the past about how I dislike my shopping experience at Costco, despite my support for their business model where they pay their employees real wages, despite being in the highly competitive retail market.  Unfortunately, there are just too many human beings that crowd the aisles of my local Naples store and I find it extremely annoying.

Last night in the span of 30 seconds I ran into 4 different individuals, all women, blocking the aisles through thoughtless cart placement.  Two of them stuck their cart in the middle of the aisle at an angle, making it impossible to pass on either side.  Two of them pulled the classic bonehead move, park your cart on one side while you look at stuff on the other side, turning yourself into a shopping cart/human barricade. Each successive female got an increasingly frustrated sounding , “Excuse me…” as I tried to snake around them.

When The Bachelor first came out nearly a decade ago I watched the first season of it and never have returned as I deemed it as not worth my time.  Well Cindy has been a long time Bachelor fan and indirectly got me watching this current season with the infamous Juan Pablo.  Well even though I realize the show is trash tv at it’s finest, I have to admit I found last night’s finale fascinating.  The guy has cemented the crown as the biggest d-bag bachelor in the history of the show.  He is the male equivalent of a beautiful woman that has air between her ears and a horrible attitude to boot.  The most amazing part of the show was how Juan Pablo’s family basically told both of the final two girls that JP is more or less an asshole.

There have been a lot of press down here lately regarding vehicles hitting cyclists and pedestrians.  In the past couple months there have been a number of these cases.  As someone who has a road bike and has put a decent amount of time in on two wheels on our local roadways I have seen a lot of this firsthand where vehicles get far too close to me as I am pedaling in the bike lane.  Luckily I never had an impact with a car/truck.

Just yesterday I saw a guy on a bike that got knocked over on my way to the gym and then on my way home saw a driver making a right hand turn lay on his horn and narrowly miss a guy in the crosswalk.  There is no excuse for a driver to hit a pedestrian or cyclist.

However I have also seen the side of this coin.  You see, in these incidents there is one common factor, human beings are involved.  Human beings do stupid things and this is often the case with pedestrians and people on bicycles.  I can’t tell you how many times I have seen both cyclists (on sidewalks) and pedestrians cross in front of cars or enter intersections without so much as a momentary glance to ensure they are seen.  Yes, drivers are responsible for making sure they spot people on bikes or on foot but that does not absolve cyclists/pedestrians from doing their part to avoid potential accidents as well.

Hell 5 or 6 years ago when I was going to the gym I knocked over some Hispanic guy on a bike that crossed in front of me as I was looking the other way at oncoming traffic.  Yes I should have made sure the other direction was clear but he should have made the effort to determine if I saw him or not.  Instead he just went straight ahead like he had a set of blinders on.  As I said, I see this behavior ALL the time, so much so that I just assume the other person will not bother to look at me.  Failure to exercise common sense in your own personal safety is your problem first.

Yesterday I missed my lunchtime gym session due to being out at one of our remote branches.  I wanted to make sure I got some type of workout in.  Thanks to the time change last weekend I am once again able to enjoy ample amounts of daylight after work.  I decided to put it to use out in the barpark.  I was able to finish up a 5 circuit Ray’s Way workout before Cindy got home which added up to 50 pull ups, 75 dips and 100 push ups. When Cindy got there she used the back yard as a track, putting in a fast pace 2+ mile run before doing some work on the bars as well.

Last night we watched the finale of True Detective, the HBO show that crashed HBOGO on Sunday since so many people were tuning in.  It was really a well written and acted show. The finale was appropriately suspenseful and tense.  I’m not sure if they are going to do multiple seasons of the show with each season getting a fresh set of cast members or not.  Having Woody and Matt on a show is a chemistry that is going to be hard to match moving forward.  Great show, watch it if you haven’t.

Last night in bed we were watching another suspenseful show, 24. (somewhere in season 6)  During one very loud scene where shit was blowing up we were startled by a crash in the bathroom.  The clock I had on the wall had fallen off courtesy of the vibrations of the subwoofer that is on the other side of the wall, talk about realistic sound….  Unfortunately the clock, which I happened to be fond of, broke on impact with the tile floor. Thanks a lot Jack.

Last night I recall having several odd dreams but I only remember sparse details of one of them.  I was suddenly transported back to PA present day.  I was driving down the street at night behind the outfield of the high school baseball field, near the intermediate school.  More than half of the houses still had their Christmas lights on their house and lit up.  I recall saying out loud “What the fck? It’s March.” End of dream.

Saturday morning I drug myself out of bed to go do the club bagel run.  The bagel run is a run of varying distances, anywhere from 3 miles up to 13, the duration is up to you.  Afterwards everyone meets at the running store and enjoys some free bagels, juice and coffee.   Cindy and I only ran 5 miles as I am trying to increase my run distance slowly to avoid knee pain complications.

For the second half of the run we were joined by an older guy named Eric that I never saw before.  It turns out Eric had only been in the Naples area for a week and was trying it on for size as he is looking for a place to relocate to from New York.  Eric has had quite an interesting life which started off in Albania and found him living all over the country including Alaska, California and Manhattan.  He also was a tremendous endurance athlete in his younger days.  He ran something like 27 marathons with a personal best of 2:56, that is VERY fast.  He also did the Kona Ironman, geez.

Here I was thinking my 5 mile run at a 9 minute mile pace was actually half decent, lol.

On my way home from the run I had an unplanned stop at Ali’s.  I had been talking to her about buying her office furniture she wanted to unload since she plans to get new stuff when she moves into her new place.  The furniture is nothing fancy but at least I knew it fit the corner at the house well since that is where it resided for many years.  Well I wound up picking the furniture up.

To get the stuff out of Ali’s condo was a bit of a chore.  I had to disassemble the L shaped desk most of the way to be able to get it down the steps and into the bed of the Tacoma.   In addition to the desk I grabbed one of the two file cabinets and a small bookshelf.  To give Ali a place to work we moved ANOTHER small desk to be used temporarily for her computer equipment.  Yes the process was on the tedious side.

When I got home I wasted little time getting busy.  I first removed the used ottoman I had bought with hope of Nicki using it as a resting spot.  She never showed any interest in it whatsoever so I carried it out to the road and plopped it down for someone to take. I then used my furniture sliders to relocate the treadmill to the master bedroom and tucked it next to the far wall where Cindy can use it while having the TV on for a distraction.

I then brought in the desk parts and reassembled them.  The desk was quite a few years old and never felt all that sturdy as is often the case with much furniture you put together.  I decided I wanted to try to stiffen things up.  I did so by utilizing countersunk 2 inch deck screws at various spots.  They worked as I hoped, there is no more wobble or squeaking, the desk feels much better.

I also had a lawn tractor project to knock out, installing my new sunshade.  I saw it as an opportunity for my first ever tractor maintenance video.  The install was very straight forward and simple but I never want to miss up an opportunity to monetize a video for ad dollars.

The new shade is nice.  After I finished installing it I quickly mowed the front mound of the house to test it out.  Even though the sun was out and shining brightly I felt quite comfortable with my head and neck being completely in the shade.   It should make those August mowing sessions more bearable and less UV intensive, something my skin cancer filled history appreciates.

Saturday night was when Cindy and I went to go see the new 300 movie.  I was quite excited to go for the reasons I outlined in the blog last week.  I also was apprehensive since I think every single Zack Snyder movie after 300 was disappointing.  I didn’t want the new 300 to suffer the same fate.  We met up at the theater with our friend Alfred.

Well I am happy to report the movie was good.  Now if you didn’t like the first 300, you won’t like the second.  This isn’t Gone with the Wind, this is blood soaked, smash your face violence where the bad guys (and girls) get what is coming to them. At one point Cindy told me I was hurting her hand from squeezing it too hard during some of the battle scenes, it’s just epic action. I had no idea that for the most part the movie timeline takes place along the original 300 story.  For some reason I thought the new movie was sometime in the future.  They did a good job tying the two together.

Of course for this to be a true 300 movie it had to not only have CGI enhanced violence, it also had to have sex and nudity.  The way the sex was delivered was unexpected.  All three of us exchanged confused looks when it went down.  When you see the movie I am sure you will understand our confusion.

So anyway I thought the movie was good, close in delivering the same straight to the vein testosterone injection as the original 300.  No it won’t incite any deep thoughts or  warm and fuzzy feelings.  Instead you will feel like going out in the parking lot and wrestling an alligator.  I give Rise of an Empire a shiny A, deal with it. Cindy liked it too.

After the movie the three of us hung out at the nearby Fridays for a bit and drank a couple beers.  I hadn’t seen Alfred in a little while so it was good to catch up.

On Sunday I originally had some loose ideas about doing bike/swim brick.  However the clock change forward after a late night, early morning fog and a lack of motivation derailed those plans.  Instead I spent a good portion of the day just being lazy.

Sure I did a few things like help Cindy pull some more stuff out of her apartment, set the Roombas loose on the pool deck, and a few other items but for the most part I just fked off.  I played a lot of WoW and enjoyed doing so, it’s weird how all of a sudden I am liking it again.  Cindy and I also finally got to try out the portable ping pong net I bought her for Xmas.

We utilized the dining room table and it worked out well.  It was a little more narrow and shorter than a regulation ping pong table but it was close enough that neither of us really noticed.  I left the table cloth on the table just to minimize the possibility of ball damage. Doing so took a little bounce out of the ball but not much.

It turns out the dining room is a nice spot to play some ping pong.  We played three very close games and except for a couple times, had no issues with anything getting in the way. The portable net system is really good quality.  Cindy is quite a capable ping pong player, I struggled to beat her all three games and each game was only decided by two points.

I had fun partaking in my lazy Sunday but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like a bit of a slob for doing so.