Archives June 2015

Last night after work we spur of the moment decided we were going to let the 11 young chicks out loose in the back yard.  I told Cindy we would be near by keeping watch the whole time and the fact that the area is fenced means they aren’t going anywhere.  Lucy and Lola were already out walking around so we figured it would be a good time to see how everyone got along.

When the chicks were left out they instantly started sprinting around happily although they always loosely stayed together.  Cindy put some corn down which brought Lucy into the mix.  As expected Lucy pecked at the smaller chicks several times.  Cindy and I scolded Lucy when she did it so there was never more than one poke. Lola, who is slow and weak only was face to face with the chicks briefly.  She poked Katie on the nose once but that was it.

For a period of time we had all 11 chicks in the run.  They immediately started enjoying the amenities with a bunch of them jumping on the natural perches and another half dozen or so digging in the sandbox in the corner, something Lucy and Lola never bother with.  They seemed quite happy in there.  I felt a little guilty as Lucy and Lola patrolled around the outside of the run, seeing the 11 chicks inside their home, their lives were going to get a lot more congested.

I’m actually worried about Lola’s safety as the young chickens get older.  She still is not doing well.  When I put some corn on the ground she “ran” over which is more like a fast walk for her.  When she stopped at the corn she lost her balance and fell on her side.  Instead of getting up she just laid on her side and pecked at the corn.  Of course I picked her up to let her keep eating.  It breaks my heart to see her so weak.

Well I seemed to really tweak my already troublesome right leg problems at the gym yesterday.  After my lower body weighted routine yesterday I was walking horribly.  Not only did the IT band and right knee hurt like mad, my groin on that side felt mildly aggravated as well.  I attribute the additional pain to the weighted dumbbell lunges I decided to do at the gym, a movement I have not done in many, many years.  Although when healthy, this is an excellent lower body movement, the opposite appears to be true when you try to do the exercise with a bad wheel going in.

Last night and this morning I was truly walking around like a gimp and using my arms to get my right leg into certain positions.  It’s just crazy how my last couple years have been health wise, it seems like I just roll from one injury/ailment to another.

My Saturday was very, very busy.  Cindy was out the door early to go volunteer at the kids triathlon.  Since I was up and had a list on the counter of things to do I got busy.  Weeding and weed whacking the property took me close to two hours, I was finishing it up when Cindy pulled back into the driveway with Nicki and Sadie in tow.  She picked them up from Ali’s after the race for a weekend stay.

After we ate lunch I launched a massive pressure washing session where I cleaned the most amount of things that I can recall.  Bird cages, gutters, flashing, sidewalk, plastic lumber, sheds, pool cage frames, pavers, fence posts, stucco, rain barrel stands, concrete pads, and more were all targets of the 25 degree wide, 3000 psi stream.  It was a brutal session that did not wind up until close to 5PM.

Certain areas do not respond to pressure cleaning alone.  The back wall of the small shed is one of these.  Even after blasting the shit out of it there was still black spotting on the vinyl siding.  Hitting the wall with a bleach/water mix was necessary to get the siding looking normal again. I was a bit stupid when I initially was brushing straight bleach on by hand with a brush over my head.   Of course this resulted in bleach splashing on my face and narrowly missing my eye.  After shooting my face with water I changed my technique.

On Saturday night Cindy and I went to see Jurassic World, one of the summer’s big budget films.  I was a big fan of the first couple Jurassic films with the first obviously being the best.  I was skeptical what a 4th iteration of the series would produce but the previews looked interesting to me.

The movie started out pretty well, it had what you want in a dinosaur movie, cool dinosaurs and good action.  However as the film went on it seemed like the writers of the script phoned it in.  The story got very predictable, silly, and campy. By the time it was over I wasn’t sure if I just watched Jurassic World or Godzilla versus Mothra.   When the lights came back on Cindy asked if I liked the movie.  I told her I felt like it was made for someone with an IQ of 85. It just got really, really dumb.   Overall it may barely touch B+ status but I really felt the story was so dumb that I need to officially rate it a B to maintain the legitimacy of my movie rating reputation. 😉

In addition to the movie we had sidebar “entertainment” 4 or 5 seats to our left.  There was a group of four young people, I think it was two girls and two guys.  I am guessing they were late teens, early 20’s.  They were being annoying a good portion of the film.  Of course they were unable to keep their hands off their smart phones during the movie.  Asking a kid that age to not touch their phone for a period of two hours is almost like asking them to hold their breath an equivalent amount of time.

So if the glowing screen during the movie wasn’t annoying enough, they also had periods of prolonged whispering and giggling that drew stinkeye glances from me but especially Cindy which made them settle down slightly.  When the movie was over the group of four got up before the lights were turned on and started exiting on the side opposite us.  All of a sudden we heard the unmistakable sound of somebody falling down the steps.  One of the girls took a major spill down the stairs, perhaps because she was busy texting on her phone or chemically altered.  Whatever the cause, I did not have a millisecond of concern regarding her well being when she fell.  It actually was a better ending than what was on screen.

Yesterday Cindy was gone the majority of the day at an aqua instructor course, giving me a very rare day at the homestead myself.  I took the girls on an errand run with me which included a stop at Pinch A Penny.  The pool pump was dead and just humming on Sunday morning, a symptom I knew was from a dead capacitor, since I had it happen in March 2013.  Two years seemed like a brief lifespan for the capacitor, especially since they cost $50.  I dropped another 50 bucks Sunday, hoping it is the last cap replacement I have to do on the pump.

I attended to a number of small to do’s around the house during the day but I also had some time to just do some mindless WoW sessions.  I did use one of my free level 90 boosts for Cindy’s virtual WoW character so if she ever gets the bug to play she can do so without being 100 levels behind me.

The baby chicks are doing well and seem to enjoy their L shaped living arrangements.  They happily run around pretty much all day long.  Even though the square footage the 11 birds have is pretty substantial, one day is all that patch of grass is good for thanks to the incredible amount of waste products fast growing chickens generate.  By the end of the day the grass the coops are on is a poopy mess.  Even once the 11 chicks are moved into the big permanent coop there is going to be a lot of daily mess to deal with, even with the bigger accommodations.

Last night another ferocious storm blew through.  I would not be surprised if some of the gusts approached 50 mph.  Lucy and Lola were out when the wind kicked up.  It was so windy that Lola laid on the ground and leaned into the gusts to prevent her less than 2 pound body from blowing away. Cindy grabbed her and put her in the coop.

Once the storm passed Cindy and I headed outside to do some more chicken work.  My goal at first was to just investigate what I would need to make a tunnel connector between the chicken tractor and the new coop we bought last weekend.

Well as the sun was setting not only did I investigate, I completed the connector.  I used left over plywood that was sitting in the attic for over a decade.  I then took a few measurements and pulled out the sawhorses and circular saw.  The end result was low tech and definitely unpolished but effective.  The plywood tunnel allows us to arrange the two coops in an L configuration, allowing the chicks full access to both during the day.

This morning before we let the chicks down from the top of the tractor we pushed the two coops together using the tunnel to join them.  It wasn’t long until they discovered their new expanded floor space.  I think they will be quite content living in this arrangement until we migrate them into the main coop.

That integration might not be all that hard.  Lucy and Lola have been hanging around the small coops quite a bit when they are free ranging.  They aren’t acting particularly mean or aggressive around the baby birds but more curious than anything.  Of course when it comes time to actually sharing food, water and housing arrangements there could be more fireworks.

This weekend I will have more solo time than normal.  Cindy is going to be volunteering at the kids triathlon on Saturday and then on Sunday she is going to be taking an aqua-intructor course that will run a good portion of the day.  I have plenty to keep me occupied.  2 months of raising chicks has left certain areas of the house/property a bit of a mess, I want to get things back where they belong.  I also will be grabbing the pressure washer to blast the scuzz off the sheds and anything else I deem necessary.

I was considering going to the show being put on by the cast from the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show at the casino in Immokalee on Saturday night.  On the two days Howard doesn’t broadcast I will often have Bubba on, who used to be on Sirius with Howard and is based out of Tampa.  The comedy show has limited free seating available or VIP tickets for 70 a pop.

As I was listening to Bubba’s show this week he said if you want a free seat you better show up at 6PM for the 7PM door opening else you risk being shut out. Well although I like the show, I’m not into it enough to stand in line for an hour to see them and certainly not enough to drop 140 bucks.  Instead Cindy and I will probably fall back on our preferred weekend entertainment and go see another movie. 🙂

After watching some more Dodge Hellcat videos recently, the idea of parting with my SSR to eventually slide behind the seat of a 700 HP super car is sounding more  and more appealing.  It doesn’t mean it will happen but the thought is dancing around in my empty head which is where every silly idea of mine that has come to fruition starts.

So yesterday was move out day for the 11 chicks.  Cindy spent a lot of time yesterday using various building materials to segment off half off the garden as chicken area.  I appreciated all of her work but I don’t know how workable/ durable the set up will be long term.

When I got home Cindy was still in the process of getting stuff ready for the big move.  The chicks were having fun running around the garden, little did they know that they were about to become full time outdoor residents.

Lucy and Lola’s reaction to the chicks were different.  Lucy didn’t seem to care much. Lola was over by the garden for a long time face to face with the chicks, occasionally trying to peck through the fencing. Lola didn’t seem very happy about sharing her grand chicken estate with others.

So we had to figure out what we wanted to do for the first night accommodations for the chickens.  We decided the safest option was to have all the chicks in the chicken tractor, up top, with the ramp closed which basically turns the coop into a bomb shelter, immune to all predators.  The big concern was having all 11 chicks that still clearly break into their respective family of 5 and 6, coexist in relatively cramped quarters up top. Eventually we want to come up with a connector between the chicken tractor and the new small coop we bought, giving the chicks a large L area that they can live in until they are old enough to move into the big house.

So shortly before dark we went out and got all the chicks up top.  As we were getting the last couple up top a thunderstorm was rolling in.  When we went inside all hell broke loose with torrential rain, booming thunder, and dangerously close lightning.  Cindy and I were very concerned for the chicks and felt terrible their first night in the yard was in the middle of a bad storm.  I imagined them being terrified.

Once the rain slowed down Cindy and I went out with the flashlight to check on the chicks to make sure they were ok.  When we cracked one of the side doors we saw a bunch of chicks huddled together like they normally do.  They didn’t seem freaked out, despite the commotion from the storm which made us feel better. This morning as soon as there was a hint of light in the sky Cindy went out and lowered the ramp.  Slowly all 11 chicks came down.  They all seemed fine and immediately started running around and eating breakfast.

I am sure there will be some challenges with this next phase of chicken wrangling but we will work through them like we always do.  My biggest concern is how Cindy and I feel so attached to the birds, knowing ahead of time that a chickens life can be fragile and dangerous.

So we are coming up on the point where the baby chicks will be living outside full time.  We have been waiting the 10 days after their Mareks vaccination before sticking them outside behind the fence line as the vaccinated chicks could potentially pass Mareks to the adult hens inside that quarantine range.  For the last couple weeks Cindy has been putting the chicks outside in the front yard for good chunks of time to start the transition.  The chicks seem to love the change.

Of course one of the concerns for them once they are outdoors full time is safety. Once they move to the backyard they will have another wall of defense since it is fenced in, protecting them from things like stray dogs but because of their size they still will have lots of potential predators.   The chicken tractor should be sufficient protection for them but we both will feel better when the babies move into the fortress we built. Cindy and I look forward to having all 13 chickens coexisting happily soon.

I wonder how many blog entries over the last 6 months have had the word “chickens” in them?

Yesterday Cindy was quite busy, going around the house with the pressure washer, cleaning the aluminum gutters and eaves of the house which have several years of crud accumulated on them.  I was skeptical of her being able to run the pressure washer for very long because of the issues she has with her hands but she did a nice job.  It certainly is great having home maintenance tasks that have been exclusively mine to perform over the years get handled while I work. 🙂  She has a bit more to do around the house before she tackles the two storage sheds which turn green on a regular basis.

Last night my major task was getting the Ipico equipment that was being traded in to MyLaps packed up.  This was a task that I knew would be a pain in the ass as shipping the timing mats require odd sized boxes.  The purchase of the auxiliary chicken coop actually turned out to be an unintended stroke of good luck, I was able to pile four of the six mats into it.   I then had two custom boxes  in the small shed for the remaining two boxes.

This morning Cindy and I loaded up the boxes in the truck so she can take them to FedEx to ship them out.  I am expecting a large bill, probably in excess of $200.  It felt good to get the stuff boxed up and out of the house, it cleared up some space in the hobby room and marks the start of my MyLaps timing journey.

I stayed up late last night watching Kickboxer, which Cindy never saw.  I told her it was epic and awesome.  She didn’t believe me.  Unfortunately for her she dosed off before the historic fists in broken glass final fight scene.  The movie was like popping open a fresh bottle of the 80’s that still had it’s carbonation.

So on Friday after work I was pretty sure I was going to wind up driving home with a new TV.  I brought the truck to work so I would have the hauling capacity needed for a 75 inch tv.  In total I went to three different retailers, Best Buy, Costco, and Sam’s.  I went to Best Buy first as they obviously had the biggest selection.  The 75 inch tv’s are on display in the “Magnolia” area of Best Buy, the high end room where there are sofa’s and lot’s of big screens.

I wound up talking to a couple of the sales guys there.  They all pushed 4K tv’s hard, saying there was really no choice to be made, 4K is the future.  I discussed with them some of the info I had read regarding 4K like how after you are more than a half dozen feet away from the screen, your eye can no longer discern the difference in resolution.  I told them with my layout at home my couch is approximately 12 feet from the tv.  They did not agree with my statement and wanted me to see for myself.

In front of one of the couches was 70 inch Sony 4K tv that was currently playing Avengers in 1080p via an attached Blu-Ray player, it looked good.  I estimated my distance from the set as about 10 feet.  The sales guy then popped in a USB drive that had native 4K video on it and asked me if I saw a difference, even at 10 feet back.  The 1080P Avengers video looked great, the native 4K content looked amazing.  The detail and visuals almost seemed better than real life if I was standing there.  Ok they made their point.

My other counter 4K argument was the lack of 4K content currently.  3D tv originally was touted to be available everywhere eventually and instead the exact opposite happened, it dried up and went away.  I think the odds of that happening with 4K is less but still possible.  The sales guys pointed out that Netflix already has streaming 4K content with others reportedly ready to hop on board in the near future.

I then mentioned to them that my current intention was to buy a 75 inch 1080P set, specifically a certain Samsung model.  They immediately tossed mud at that idea, first because it was ONLY 1080P and that it was Samsung’s low end model which only has a real refresh rate of 60HZ, despite it being advertised on the box as 120hz through some fuzzy math.  Hearing that the tv I was close to pulling the trigger on was a low end set sort of let the air out of my balloon.  Thinking about dropping a good chunk of money for a non 4K set that has now been flagged as “low end” did not excite me.  I thanked them for the info and headed out with much less tv buying spring in my step.

I swung into Costco which was a few doors down to see my options there, which was the same Samsung 75 incher Best Buy staff just looked down their noses at.  I then headed to Sam’s where I was buying some groceries and looked again there.  By the time I was walking in from the parking lot I had already had an internal dialogue with the impulsive, illogical portion of my brain that was obsessing about a new tv.  I realized that for what I would spend on a new tv I could basically pay for an entire western road trip, which I value more.

The bottom line is my current 73 inch set has a few annoying holes in it’s capabilities due to it’s age, (lack of enough HDMI ports, no digital audio port, no internet connectivity) but it still works and looks fine.  Until that is no longer the case I need to just sit on the sidelines and reap the rewards as the prices of 4K tv’s drop as is always the case the longer a technology is on the market.  When I get a tv I will likely hold onto it for a good 7-8 years so I want to make sure I invest wisely.

On Saturday while Cindy was doing some of the seemingly endless baby chicken maintenance, she picked up Jaina, the cornish hen and took her inside.  Jaina is huge, something common for the breed as they are primarily raised for meat.  Cindy wanted to see just how huge she was.  So she weighed herself while holding the bird and solo.  The number was a pretty amazing 4 pounds.  For her to weigh that much this quickly was incredible.  For reference you may recall that when the vet weighed Lola she came in at scarce one pounds and three ounces.  We can only imagine how large Jaina will be as a true adult chicken.  Unfortunately cornish hens do not typically have a long life span, if allowed to they will literally eat themselves to death.  Cindy is hoping that her being allowed to free range will help stave off morbid obesity.

Before we were ready to head out to run some errands I was in the driveway.  I spun around and all of sudden had a male pit bull looking at me.  He seemed friendly so I called him over.  After letting him give me the sniff test I started petting him.  Cindy was startled by the dog and her first thought was keeping him away from the garage since the door was open with the 11 chicks inside the coop.  Pit Bulls and chickens are not going to mix well.

Cindy got the door closed and came over to the dog as well.  He had a collar but no tags.  He had a few small open wounds, one on his ear and a couple other places.  Of course my first assumption was the dog was from one of the idiots that unfortunately live in our area that think nothing of leaving their dogs outside full time.  These same people also often don’t put much priority on making sure their animals are safely contained.

We filled a container with water which the dog drank from several times.  I wanted to give him some treats/food but Cindy didn’t think it was a good idea unless we wanted him to stick around.  If I didn’t have a long list of things I wanted to get done on Saturday, the best option would be to load up the dog in the truck and take him to domestic animal services where his owner could hopefully find him although for the dog’s sake, he may better off being re-homed. Instead we let the pit bull head off with us hoping he knew where home was and was heading that way.  I felt guilty and somewhat irresponsible as we drove off.

So as I mentioned, Cindy has been finding that very large portions of her days are being consumed by chicken maintenance, specifically trying to keep ahead of the baby chicks and the mess they create.  In retrospect, getting 11 chicks was probably a bit more of a bite than we should be chewing.  Part of the problem is space.  In order to clean the chicken tractor properly the chicks can not be in it.  For the last couple weeks we have been using the run portion of the chicken tractor for that purpose, flipped upside down in the yard so we can grab the chickens easier.

Well the unannounced arrival of the pit bull put a scare into Cindy.  She imagined if the baby chickens were outside in the run when the dog showed up.  It could have been potentially disastrous.  Well when we got to Rural King a viable solution was in front of me.  They had a small, put together yourself chicken coop and run on sale.  It was constructed in much the same manner as the original coop I bought off Ebay which I quickly unloaded due to it’s lack of long term viability.  This coop cost less than half of what I paid for the first one and after unboxing and assembling it at home, seemed to actually be built a little better.

At first our thought was to just let the chickens hang in the new secondary coop in the front yard during the day, giving Cindy free access to clean the main coop.  After putting the chicks in there they looked cramped.  Even though the coop is elevated with space underneath, 11 chicks add up quickly.  I then came up with a secondary idea, mating the run from the chicken tractor with the new coop via one of the doors.  When I first mentioned the idea to Cindy she was skeptical but once we worked out a few logistics it actually was pretty cool.  Adding the run into the equation gave the chicks a lot of real estate to run around in and they took advantage of it.  It seems like this will be a good stop gap measure until we are able to do a full merging of the babies with the two adult hens in the backyard.

Saturday night we attended the final home game for the Tarpons which was morphed into a championship game as I described last week due to one of the teams being suspended.  The Tarpons were scheduled to play the Rio Grande Valley Sol, a team from Texas that had the second best record in the league.  For this reason I was very confused when we stepped into the arena and saw RAIDERS listed on the scoreboard as the away team.  When I saw the players from the other team on the field it confirmed that actually the Florida Marine Raiders were here.  What the fck??

So I looked online for some explanation of why the conjured up championship game was changed once again, with no prior notice.  No explanation was available online.  The following morning I saw a post that stated that on Friday the Sol pulled out of the game, citing transportation issues as the problem, probably meaning they had no money to pay for the trip to south Florida.  Since the Raiders are just across Alligator Alley I guess they were the best fit, regardless of their actual placement in the standings.  It was just another comical twist in this season.  The past few years have just been one lol moment after another as the league tries to prop itself up as legitimate where the reality is the entire thing is a house of cards.

The game itself was pretty good in the first half with only one point separating the teams on the scoreboard.  The second half however was all Tarpons with them pulling away for a 30+ point victory.  I drank a lot of beer, four large Budweiser drafts.  As they took affect I found myself less interested in the game and more interested in the man I referred to as “the seat nazi”.  This was the same guy that a couple games ago asked to see our tickets, despite us not being in his assigned section, to make sure we weren’t seat jumpers.

He is older, has a big belly and a scraggly looking goatee.  He peers out thorough his glasses at the sparsely filled seats, looking incessantly for people not following the rules and or sitting in a seat not assigned to them.  Don’t get me wrong, generally speaking I am a fan of rules and in an event where seating is at a premium, people jumping down to better seats is annoying.  But this is a Tarpons football game, 65-75% of the seats were unoccupied.  To me common sense needs to be applied in a balanced manner with the rules.  The seat nazi did not share this belief, repeatedly Cindy and I watched him walk up into the seating area to reprimand seat offenders for no good reason outside of stroking his personal need to wield power upon others.  It just was stupid.

Cindy and I stayed to the very end to watch the Tarpons nail down their “championship” but it sort of rung hollow.  Despite the Tarpons best efforts it didn’t prevent me feeling like it was a fake accomplishment from a league that makes up the rules as they go to compensate for the very shaky financial footer it is built upon.   My post to the Taarpons FB page asking if they planned to be back for 2016 has gone unanswered.  I suspect the silence means Cindy and I have watched the last game in franchise history.  At least it ended on a positive note, sort of.

Sunday morning Cindy and I slept in a bit.  The four beers and getting to bed after midnight lent itself to the late departure from bed.  Sunday was the Naples Fitness Challenge, an event I participated in a few times, including last year as a team effort with Randall and Cindy.   Not even being on site made me feel a bit like a loser and for a period of time made me feel like I should get my ass on the bike or something, despite my still present knee/IT band pain, just to prove a point to noone but myself.  I did not act on that feeling and instead distracted myself with more chores/projects around the house.

I did some work getting the four MyLaps timing boxes configured for real world use.  Before they are put into real world testing I need to set up a practice 5K in the back yard where I totally simulate the steps I will go through on race day.  It’s very important I have that blueprint laid out ahead of time, backed up with real testing of that blueprint to identify flaws before they matter.

I had an unexpected task laid on me when my neighbor asked if I could take a look at her laptop which was not connecting to the internet.  I expected the fix to be easy, instead I was working on it on and off for several hours as I watched Spiderman on tv.  It’s still not fixed. This is the very reason that I avoid working on people’s computers as a favor.  Those favors more often than not translate into hours of frustration for me.

Sunday evening we watched 3 Days to a Kill, what I thought was a Liam Neeson, Taken style of flick, except with the lead role played by Kevin Costner.  It was an odd film.  It did have aspects of a regular action movie but then it also had a slapsticky side with a side order of chick flick.  As a whole the movie was ok but the weird mix kept it from getting higher than a B rating in my book.

Cindy was worn out by the time I got home by chicken chores.  She said she spent roughly two and a half hours cleaning the baby chickens coop, trying to get it as clean as possible.  Of course this is like an egg timer with no bottom, in no time at all the chicks will make their coop a big mess again, it’s just what they do.  Once we are able to at least get the chicken tractor moved outside with them in it the daily cleaning will get a little easier since we can simply pick it up and move it to a clean patch of grass daily.

I told Cindy I would go out and let SOME of the baby chicks out to roam freely under my supervision, something we have done before, mostly with the 5 younger birds.  Well I decided all 11 would appreciate a few minutes of total freedom so I opened the end of the chicken run, giving them an opportunity to stretch their wings, which is exactly what most of them did.  They took turns running, jumping and flapping around the yard.  It was contagious, once one chick started running another 4 or 5 had to join in.

Now of course I was conscious of keeping all the chicks somewhat together and close enough that if there were any predators around I could cut them off.  For the most part they just buzzed around maybe a 50 square foot area and loved every minute of it.  Cindy was not very happy with me for letting all 11 out at once because of safety reasons.  She was afraid some of the chicks, especially the older black ones would try to run away.  None of them did and collecting all 11 to put them back into the main coop wasn’t nearly as challenging as we feared.

This weekend I have a lot to do, as usual.  The list includes the usual suspects but also includes some unusual projects like working on the new timing gear, working on a worm composter, and a few other oddball items.   The main entertainment for the weekend will be catching the Tarpons in their exciting championship game (sarcasm mode).  It very well may be the last time we see them take the field based on the financial realities of minor league arena football.  If so hopefully they can go out with a bang.

My knee problems over the last couple months have seemed to become more and more IT band related.  IT band problems can be chronic and very tough to deal with.  Yesterday I ran a couple miles over lunch on the treadmill and the band tightened up almost immediately afterward.  The IT band starts around your hip and extends down the outside of your leg down to a little below the knee.  That is exactly where my discomfort radiates from.

Last night when I got home I did some painful rolling on the area to try to loosen things up.  It felt better briefly but later on in the night I was limping around the house with a gait that looked like I was 77 instead of 47.  The only real treatment I know for the ailment is regular stretching/rolling.  Running on the treadmill yesterday probably didn’t help matters much.

Yesterday I saw on the Tarpons FB page that this Saturday’s game was for the X-league league championship.  I was confused.  According to my tickets for Saturday, this was supposed to be the fourth and final regular season home game against the team from Cape Fear.  I expressed this confusion as a reply to the post on Facebook.

David Albers/Staff
Timmy the Tarpon is announced at the first Florida Tarpons arena football game on Friday, March 9, 2012 in Estero.

I received a reply rather quickly.  The explanation was the team from Cape Fear was “suspended” from the league this past weekend for some unpublished reason.  They decided they would just convert that date into the championship game where the 5-2 Tarpons would play the 6-2 Rio Grand Valley Sol.  Evidently the head coach from the Sol has also been suspended for not following “roster guidelines”.  There seems to be a lot of rule breaking going on in the league.

Going into this season I was hopeful that the Tarpons joining up with a new league this year would elevate the situation both on the field and in the stands attendance-wise. Unfortunately that has not been the case.  The level of play has not improved, attendance is probably the worst I have ever seen and this league appears to be held together with bubble gum and shoestring, just like the previous league.  I see no possible scenario where the Tarpons will be back on the field in 2016, despite admirable efforts by ownership to make arena football viable in the area.

Yesterday the 3000 timing chips from MyLaps arrived which meant I could do some more realistic testing of the system last night.  I have the timing box and mat in the dining room.  I had the box of chips on the dining room table when I opened it.  When I turned on the timing box it started making an ear piercing noise, very similar to a smoke detector.  I didn’t know what the f was going on so I turned the timing box off.

At first I wondered if there was some sort of malfunction with the new timing hardware.  Then I realized what I was hearing was the sound of all of the chips in the box being read, which causes the system to emit the tone.  When I moved the box to the far side of the office the noise stopped.  I quickly found the setting to change the volume of the detection tone from the default, ear bleeding high setting, to low.

In my testing I was pretty impressed with the read range of the system.  I had the detection mat in the middle of the dining room.  I had a timing chip on the left side of my desk, some 20 feet away.  All I had to do was wave the chip over my head and it was read by the system, wow.

I had a few hurdles to clear but eventually I was able to get chip reads to go into my results software.  There is a bunch more testing to do.  I will have to rethink the way I do much pretty everything prior to the start of the race.  In the long run I think it will actually be simpler than what I currently have to do.

On the chicken front things have been odd, yet positive.  Yesterday Cindy said Lucy was crowing like rooster for a short period of time which is bizarre.  Obviously we know Lucy is a hen as we have been collecting her eggs for several weeks, yet Cindy said it sounded exactly like a rooster crowing.  The first thought in my head was I hope we did not mistakenly cast off Nona, Kathy, and Curly for rooster crowing.  Perhaps one of them was simply gender confused as well?

The baby chicks hardly look like babies anymore, they are growing so fast.  I never knew that chickens could be so entertaining.  I really enjoy watching them, especially when we allow them to roam around for short periods of time.  They are just funny.  I can only imagine what it will be like to have 13 chickens roaming the backyard on a daily basis.

Lola appears to slowly be acting better.  She is once again holding her wings in a more normal way and whatever growth that was one her eyelid has mysteriously disappeared.  Cindy and I are hoping that her malady was all parasite related instead of an avian STD.