Unlimited no more, Re-chickened, Jupiter Descending, Fury, Topdeals madness

On Friday I stopped by one of the local ATT stores with the new iPad, looking to activate the LTE service on the device.  As soon as I stepped into the door I was greeted with a chaotic environment.  There were two young kids whose mother thought needed no supervision. The boys, both somewhere around 5 were sprinting around the store, screaming, treating the place like a playground.  This went on the entire 10-15 minutes that I was waiting to talk to someone.  I could not believe the mother or the the ATT staff did not do anything to curb the behavior.

I also got to listen to an old man that was in front of me give an ATT clerk a shakedown over his bad phone reception.  The clerk politely listened to the old guy rant about how he can’t make calls from his home but in other areas of the state he has no problems.  The clerk told the guy that it sounds like maybe there is a signal issue from whatever tower he is closest to but explained that was outside his jurisdiction.  The old man did not like that answer, snapping back “The logo on your shirts does say ATT doesn’t it??!!”, meaning that any ATT employee should instantly be able to address any issue any customer has.  The clerk shot me a glance during the exchange where he saw the smirk on my face.  The old man asked to talk to the manager who I think basically said the same thing however I think they gave him some free phone accessories to shut him up and get him out of the store.

So finally after watching these various sideshows a clerk came free.  I explained to him what I was looking to do and that I had looked online ahead of time and was thinking I was finally ready to let go of my “unlimited” data plan on the two iPhones and team them with the iPad on a shared arrangement.  I picked a good time to add a tablet to my plan as ATT was running a special of a $100 credit when you add a tablet to a data plan, presumably because they assume you will gobble up data faster that way.

By dropping my mom’s old phone off my plan and utilizing the 17% break state employees get I was able to score a 15GB shared data plan for almost exactly what I was already paying, plus the $100 kick back.  I also pick up unlimited texting, calling, and hotspot usage in the deal.  I was a little paranoid about letting go of my unlimited data plan but with ATT’s new rollover data policy which allows me to include unused minutes from the prior month into the current month, the odds of me ever exceeding my monthly allowance is nearly impossible.

This weekend was one Cindy and I had looked forward to because it was open without a race or other event cramping our style.  Of course this didn’t mean we were going to lay around and eat bon bons all weekend, it just meant we had our schedules cleared to get stuff done and that is what we did.

I had a number of small things to handle outside, some of which Cindy helped me with as well.  There are just a ton of little things that need regular attention when you have a house with a good chunk of land. We also tackled one larger job, removing the stone path that used to split the orchard in half.  This was tedious as we first had to shovel the stones from the path, clean them to some degree with a hose and then dump them at various spots around the house stone border where coverage was light.

After that shitty job was done we started skimming mulch from the border around the pool cage and repurposed it in the strip where the stones used to be.  The reasons for this rotation of ground coverings is two fold.  The rock path in the orchard was something I thought would be useful way back when when I created the orchard area.  The reality was it was just another spot that I had to weed.  Plus, the chickens will appreciate one large unbroken area of play where they can dig and scratch as much as they want.

The mulch relocation is something I want to do around the entire border of the pool.  Betty, Wilma, and Pebbles were all quite fond of digging in that area and as they did they would constantly be throwing mulch up against the pool screen which in turn dumped mulch dirt onto the pool deck. I want to pull all of the organic mulch, putdown fresh weed block and then refill the area with the shredded tire mulch.  I have used the rubber “mulch” in a few other spots and it is nearly maintenance free and pretty much lasts forever.  There is a large up front cost to put down the synthetic stuff but when you factor in the time and cost of re-mulching an area a minimum of once a year, that cost can be quickly justified.

After we finished up we headed out to run some errands as I needed a few things that were quite different.  At Home Depot I picked up a couple 8 foot 2×4’s to rebuild the garden gate which is falling apart from rot.  At Costco I picked up a second, awesome 27″ Samsung monitor so I had a matching set, allowing me to use my old second monitor to provide Cindy her own two monitor set up.

When we got back I resumed work, including the gate tear down and rebuild as well as doing some server work for the office via remote control.   Pretty much all day Saturday was spent working on something for both of us.

We decided to do something slightly different on Saturday night.  Instead of going to the movies, we went to dinner and THEN a movie.  For dinner we went to a place I had not patronized in years and years, Olive Garden.  I never went to the location in Coconut Pointe.  The restaurant was really nice both inside and out.  We had a surprisingly enjoyable time, the food was good, the atmosphere was pleasant and really the only negative was the woman 20 feet from us that had a disgusting, persistent, hacking cough that made it seem like that the last place she needed to be was in a public dining establishment.  We will definitely add that Olive Garden to the rotation.  I was glad we showed up at 6PM to eat, we only waited 5 minutes.  When we left closer to 7 there were people stuffing the lobby and outdoor waiting areas.

The movie we saw was Jupiter Ascending.  From the previews it looked like a decent sci-fi action flick so we figured it would be fine.  When we got to the theater the 3D showing was the next showing so we handed over the premium to see the movie in 3D which added absolutely nothing to the experience.

We were paranoid about having a similar experience as the last time we were at the theater to see American Sniper, where our late arrival wound up depositing our rear ends in the very front row of the theater.  There was no such problem this time around, I doubt if there were 20 total people in the theater.  I guess they read the reviews of the movies ahead of time, something I hardly ever will do.

Well I could tell the movie was going to suck within the first 5 minutes, it just had that vibe.  The story made no sense and the acting was moronic. Both Cindy and I laughed out loud at the main bad guy who spoke the entire movie in a creepy whisper except for a couple outbursts where he went into Jacquin Phoenix in Gladiator, “AM I NOT MERCIFUL!” screaming mode.   He was simply a ridiculous character.

Thankfully the two 20 ounce Shocktop beers I downed at Olive Garden had made me sleepy. I slept through at least half of the movie.  Cindy dozed off as well.  Whomever fronted the 179 million dollar production budget for this big steaming turd is going to be writing out a lot of IOU’s.  The film grossed $19 million for it’s opening weekend and I am sure it will plummet from here as word spreads of its suckitude.  The only thing good I can say about the movie is it has top notch special effects, but that can’t come even close to saving the film.  I give it a D, don’t even watch it if it comes on free tv.

On Sunday morning we were supposed to pick up our new chickens but I wanted to get a bike ride in beforehand.  Cindy was not very enthusiastic about the idea.  The temps were in the upper 50’s and she had not ridden in awhile.  I assured her if we dressed in a manner similar to how Randall and I dressed last week it would be fine.  I told her she would be glad we did it once we do it.  She eventually agreed although she said I would probably have to be slowing down to accommodate her. I knew that would not be the case.

I lead the entire way to Dunking Donuts and just like last week, held good speed, 20-21 mph for a good portion of the 10 miles which Cindy was able to hang with just fine.  We did the first 10 miles in right around 30 minutes.  After refueling with small coffees we reversed direction which was into the wind to varying degrees.  Little Miss “I doubt I can do 16 mph”, was pulling for well over half of the return ride and did so maintaining 17-19 mph pretty much the entire time.  I only took over with a little more than 3 miles to go.

As we pulled back into the driveway I stopped my GPS and checked out the stats.  For the entire ride we averaged 18.6 mph, only a couple tenths slower than I did with Randall.  As predicted, Cindy was glad we got out there and she found out that despite a long cycling lay off she is still quite capable.

The chicken lady had called just before we got back at 10.  I called her back and made arrangements to pick up the 4 chickens at 10:30 at the same convenience store we used before.  After changing our biking clothes we grabbed the two cat carriers and were out the door in the party van.  We got there first and waited a few minutes for Anna and her husband to pull up.  The husband, who is very odd, did not leave the drivers seat, leaving Anna alone to handle the chicken transfer.  I opened up and sat our carriers by her small cage so the birds could be shuffled between them.

The chickens were scared as expected.  They also looked smaller than the three girls we adopted before which made sense since they are approximately a month younger.  Anna said she THINKS they were all hens but if one of them turned out to be a rooster we could swap it out.  A rooster just won’t work in our situation, I don’t need to annoy the neighbors.  Both Cindy and I are hoping they are all girls, it would sort of suck to have to get rid of one after we get attached to it.

The chickens were very, very quiet on the ride home and equally quiet as Cindy and I prepared the coop, filling it with wood shavings, food and water.  The chickens were hesitant to leave the confines of the cat carriers and into their new home.  It probably took five patient minutes and some cracked corn bribery to get all four of them out.

Once we had them in the coop you could tell they were disoriented.  Anna said they were in a crowded situation at her place so perhaps it felt weird to the 4 chickens to have some peace and quiet along with space to move.  We got them all situated and secure before we headed out to Rural King, we needed to get feed designed for younger chickens, the stuff we had is for chickens four months and older.

We took the SSR, as it was a beautiful sunny day with temps in the 70’s.  When we were in Rural King we got sidetracked by the live chicks they had for sale.  They literally had hundreds of baby chicks covering at least a half dozen varieties.  We were teetering on the edge of adopting a couple until a store employee said we would have to take at least 6 at a time, which would eventually put us over our current chicken housing capabilities.

During the day I developed an issue with my brand spanking new computer.  Earlier my Mcafee virus protection was complaining about some malware trying to load.  I found it odd since the only site I had open was Facebook.  After I clicked block 4 or 5 times I simply X’d out the notification box.  Well that apparently is the same as saying “load the shit”, my pc was now infected.

The malware would overlay incredibly annoying and disruptive ads on top of normal web pages.  It was something called TopDeal ads.  When I looked up removal recommendations for the malware the search results were filled with trap site links that actually will load more shit onto your computer instead of helping you remove it.

I did a full sweep in safe mode which supposedly found, identified, and removed the culprit.  However after a reboot the fcking shit was back, I was pissed.  At first I figured I would just load a system restore but was frustrated to see the feature was turned off.  I wasn’t sure if Windows 8.1 has it off by default or if the malware flipped it off to make it more difficult for me to dispose of it.

Ok well my next plan was to utilize the full system image back up I had that was roughly 10 days old.  Nothing major changed during that time period.  Well after completing the restore the system was not booting.  Windows would not load and kicked me to the recovery screen, nothing I did in there fixed the problem.  In total I went through three system restore cycles, only the third try was successful when I used slightly different recovery options.  When my desktop finally booted up clean I breathed a sigh of relief.  I had nightmare scenarios of a total reload dancing through my head.

So as dusk arrived Cindy and I were waiting for the chickens to head up the ramp to the their coop so we could close it up.  Well the four birds didn’t seem to understand the way this was supposed to work.  When I went outside in near darkness to check on them the four chickens were all piled on top of each other on the ground under the hanging feeder.  Of course this couldn’t be allowed as a racoon could easily grab one of them through the wire and cause all sorts of problems.

I called Cindy out so she could help me manually place the chickens up top after I raised the ramp to the closed position.  The chicks were not thrilled with being forcefully moved to the second floor and seemed a bit confused by the whole thing. This morning when I lowered the ramp they again were hesitant to change floors, they all stayed up top.  I’m sure they will figure it out quickly, I think they are just scared of everything being different.

Last night we watched Fury on Blu-ray.  It was a good war movie that depicted the horrors of war in an in your face manner.  I thought the acting in the film was very, very good.  Brad Pitt has kept his personal streak with me alive, never appearing in a movie that I disliked.  I’d give it an A-.