Archives January 2016

So yesterday it was off and on rain for most of the day.  When we were eating dinner one last heavy deluge rolled through, almost like Mother Nature giving us a nice FU before the nearly 3 days of wet weather relented.  I am pretty sure outside of tropical storm and hurricanes, this is the MOST standing water we have had at the house, ever.  The fact that this occurred in the middle of winter is flabbergasting and a testament to the power of climate change.

Once the rain stopped I got a head start on race prep loading up all of the timing mats, 15 in the Tacoma and another 9 in the Prius.  The mats in the Prius and a bunch of other stuff I won’t be needing for the race will be dropped off to the running club today as part of the equipment purge.  I have been housing all of the timing equipment and a bunch of other race related stuff in my house for close to 10 years, it felt good to get some of that space back.

As I mentioned before, having this race be the last I time for the club feels appropriate. It is the 10th year for the event dreamed up by Ali in response to our adoption of Nicki.  The early versions of the race website that I created had Nicki’s puppy picture plastered all over the place.  This year the race could potentially draw close to 1000 participants which is simply awesome.

This race has it’s own set of challenges, the biggest of which is the distance between the start and finish line which is damn close to a 1/2 mile.  Luckily I should have the club golf cart to transport me back and forth.  The thermometer will add more excitement since race time temperature is forecast to be in the 40’s.

By this time tomorrow the race will be well underway and I will be coasting towards my own personal finish line of close to a decade of involvement with the running club.  I am proud of the countless improvements I have helped facilitate over that time.  Life is all about change and doing what makes you happy. My relinquishing of my role as the dedicated club race timer will be big examples of both.

The extreme standing water we had yesterday morning only accumulated throughout the day, bolstered by the unrelenting storms.  When I got home the visual was pretty unbelievable.  It was the most standing water I have EVER seen on the property outside of a tropical storm or hurricane.  The fact that it was the end of January seemed surreal.  This just doesn’t happen.

There was just a ridiculous amount of water in the front and back yards.  The chickens of course were soaked but didn’t seem to care all that much.  The big shed that they often like to hang under was totally flooded out underneath.  The standing water seems to be wreaking havoc with my internet connectivity in the coop.  Although the coop has power it seems like the buried, ground rated ethernet cable isn’t getting very strong signal out to the back yard, making some of my tech out there malfunction. I drove to work today in a steady light rain and I saw a chance of showers still in the forecast for tomorrow.  Please, make it stop.

Warning a couple paragraphs of WoW talk follow.

A little while ago WoW introduced something called Timewalking Dungeons.  They are basically a way for current players to play old 5 man dungeons that have been part of the 11 years of WoW’s existence.  Last night I did one of them from the Cataclysm expansion which was something like 4-5 years ago at this point.  I ran it as the “tank” aka. the guy that leads the group and tries to get all the bad things to attack him.

Despite not setting foot in this dungeon for approaching a half decade somehow “muscle memory” kicked in and I was able to know exactly where to go and what to do as a result of running through this dungeon dozens upon dozens of times when it was current content.  It almost felt similar to how I feel when I am back in the Reading area, still able to more or less get around despite not living in town for over 15 years.  It just felt weird in a good way.  Anyone that has played WoW and only someone that has played MMORPG’s like WoW will understand that playing these games is literally like living in a different world, complete with it’s own set of road maps, hot spots and rules.

So you may recall a week or two ago I mentioned how Cindy was getting a heavy metals blood test based on some health issues I heard Howard talking about on his show.  It turned out his fish heavy diet had resulted in him having high mercury levels.  Cindy has been having a lot of issues that most people would quickly write off as just the side effect of getting older.  However our diet was very heavily seafood based with us having seafood for dinner 5-6 times a week and possibly a couple more times on the weekend in the form of a tuna wrap for lunch.

Well after a long wait the test results came back earlier this week, Cindy’s levels were indeed high.  The test results are going to result in a change of our diet where the majority of our protein will come from plant based sources instead of seafood.  Fish is ok to eat in moderation and there are certain types of fish that are much more prone to high mercury levels than others.  However in our case we need to take steps to remove the heavy metals in our bodies that become embedded in many organs which causes a myriad of problems.  Over time the metal leaves your body through body fluids but it is a good idea to kick start the process as much as possible.

I already assume my heavy metal number is elevated as well since for the most part I eat whatever Cindy eats although perhaps because of my larger dimensions I am affected to a lower level.  I do have memory issues at times and my eyesight has definitely gone downhill dramatically since seafood became my main animal based protein.  It will be interesting to see how the next few months go as we try to “get the lead out”.

The incredibly odd winter weather in our area continued last night.  Winter in Florida usually means high temperatures in the 70’s, blue skies, and long, long stretches of no precipitation whatsoever.  This morning we woke up to SEVERE standing water on our property, possibly more than we saw at any point during the summer rainy season.  I woke up several times during the night from the sound of hard rain but it still did not prepare me for the very wet landscape pictured above.  Winter is not supposed to be about sloshing through ankle high water.  The chickens will get to work on their swimming skills today.

Yesterday I got a couple automated messages on my home phone supposedly from the IRS, stating they were filing a lawsuit against me.  A quick Google search revealed this has been an ongoing scam for quite awhile and can be safely ignored.  It seems unreal to me that the perpetrators of this scam are able to do so for months on end without any repercussions.  Sadly there are surely some people that have fallen for this scheme, after all the words “lawsuit” and “IRS” make for a potent combination.

I am in the process of building a new application server for the office.  It is going to be the first time I will be implementing a RAID 10 configuration for the hard drive array.  One of the most vulnerable parts of a computer is the hard drive which consists of platters spinning as fast as 15k rpm’s 24 hours a day.  In order to provide protection from hard drive failure, servers normally have multiple hard drives that use RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks).  There are different type of RAID that are identified by number.

RAID 5 is what I have used for most of my IT career.  In this configuration you need a minimum of 3 hard drives.  RAID 5 allows you to lose any one of the drives to failure and not lose your data.  If a drive goes bad you can remove it, slap in a new drive and not lose a beat.

With RAID 5 there are some drawbacks. The parity bit stripe that has to be written across all disks inflicts a performance penalty.  Also when a new drive is inserted to replace a dead one, the rebuild process is very resource intensive, causing server performance to drag.  The rebuild also hammers the good disks, in some rare situations the rebuild process is intense enough that it will cause a SECOND drive to fail in the middle of it.  (this has happened to me)  If you lose a second drive it is game over.

There is RAID 6 which uses a similar method that requires a minimum of 4 drives but will allow you to lose up to two drives and still have your data intact.  The con of this is even more of a write/read and rebuild penalty than RAID 5 has.

The server I am working on will have a total of 12 hard drives, 10 of which will be used for a RAID 10 array.  The remaining 2 drives will be “hot spares”, meaning if a drive goes bad one of the spares will be fired up and used in the array automatically.  RAID 10 uses a combination of data striping and mirroring which gives you MUCH better performance than RAID 5 or 6.  In my situation with 10 drives I have 5 mirrored drive sets in the array.

The con to RAID 10 is you lose HALF of your drive capacity to redundancy.  In my situation my 40 terabytes of drives will only deliver 20 terabytes of usable space.  RAID 10 can only be guaranteed to be able to lose 1 drive without data loss but potentially could lose more drives and still function depending on your luck.  Since the drives are in mirrored pairs, as long as you don’t lose both drives in a mirror you are still ok.  So in my situation, in theory, I could lose as many as 5 drives and still have my data intact.  Of course that would require incredibly good luck.

Now I assume the vast majority of the blog audience won’t really be interested in server RAID discussion but it just happened to be the thing on the top of my thought barrel today so that is what comes out.

So on my commute to work this morning there was an accident on Immokalee Road that had a lane closed, causing traffic to have to merge to the left.  I was already in the left most lane so I didn’t have to do much but slow down.  I started to hear a horn going off repeatedly to my right.  I look over to my right and see a Rogue that for some reason refused to let a small pick up truck from the right lane merge in.  The truck was trying to get in the middle lane in front of the Nissan repeatedly as there was little room left in the road before a merge was required.  Each attempt was met with a horn and the Nissan quickly darting ahead to make sure there was absolutely no space for the truck to merge.

When I recognized what was going on I had to get a look at the Rogue driver that apparently valued being one car ahead in the traffic jam so dearly that they had to be a complete and utter asshole.  The driver was an obese black woman who had one unbroken slope of flesh that flowed seamlessly from head to body.  She looked ahead stoically as if being inside the confines of the car somehow separated her from the rude driving behavior.  Thankfully the person behind this bitch had a degree of common courtesy and let the pick up truck in.

The Rogue, that was so intent on not letting anyone in front then inexplicably turned into the ultimate rubberneck, slowing down to below walking speed to look at one of the two vehicles involved in the crash.  Both I and the truck she cut off swung out around her as she continued her turtle paced gawking.  About 30 seconds later the woman apparently had her fill of staring and went zooming up the middle lane, once again passing us before she had to slam on her brakes at the traffic light.

People like this just annoy the shit out of me.  I can only wish a lifetime full of flat tires for these individuals.

I sent a couple of our coop Ring videos with chickens mulling about to the company via their community sharing link.  They like to post interesting, unique videos captured by the smart doorbell.  They responded back with a release form, indicating they wanted to post the videos.  Evidently nobody has installed a Ring on their chicken coop yet.  Imagine that.

This has been the oddest winter weather I have ever experienced since moving to Florida.  At first it was like there was no winter at all with highs near 90 degrees for extended periods of time.  Recently we have been having summer-like storms as well including the storm last weekend that cancelled the half marathon. Last Friday’s storm was bad enough that it actually placed standing water on our property, something that has NEVER happened in January.  Usually this is the the heart of the dry season where the time between precipitation is measured in weeks or even months. On Saturday we had extreme amounts of wind as a cold front blew through with some gusts topping 50 mph.

Of course our weather didn’t hold a candle to the massive snowstorm that pounded the northeast.  I saw pictures from my old stomping grounds in PA with snow 2 1/2 feet deep with drifts much, much higher.  I was also shocked at the pictures of many of the Jersey/Delaware shore areas I used to vacation in under water from terrible flooding. Despite the bad weather we have been experiencing locally, pictures from the NE this weekend make me feel quite glad to be 1200 miles south.

We picked up Sadie for a weekend visit after an errand run that included stops at Home Depot, Rural King, and Pet Supermarket.  While we were at Rural King we saw they got a new shipment of baby chicks.  I joked around with Cindy about picking up a couple Sicilian Buttercup chicks that looked particularly cute.  We could accommodate a couple more birds if we had to but I hate to mess what seems to be a pretty good balance with our chicken family now.  I also think we are forgetting just how much maintenance the chicks required while they were in the house.

When we got home I decided to finally rip into the Tacoma which has been sitting in the driveway all week.  I had my new set of plugs and wires that I ordered on Amazon.  The winds had not only continued but intensified at that point.  My tools and supplies were blowing around everywhere.  The hat I was wearing got thrown in the garage after it blew off my head four times.

The first step was to gap the 6 new plugs.  Since the Tacoma uses dual electrode style plugs gapping them takes twice as long as normal.  I then got under the hood and got busy.  My plan was to do one wire and the two corresponding plugs as a set to make sure I don’t get any coil/wire connections screwed up.

Normally any automotive project I do I will film as they are some of my most viewed entries on my YouTube channel.  Unfortunately with the amount of wind going on I knew it would be pointless as either you wouldn’t be able to hear me or the camera would get trashed from blowing over.

The plugs on the passenger side are easy to get to.  Once you remove the intake rubber tube there is nothing in your way. The driver side is much more annoying because the intake plenum looms above the plugs.  I ran into various problems with the driver side plug/wire removal.  I had to use my long extensions with a swivel attachment to get on the plugs.  Plug six, in the right rear of the engine compartment was especially tough to get swapped out for a couple reasons.

I had mentioned last week the entire reason I went down the plug/wire path to address my cylinder 4 misfire was I discovered the terminal in that wire was falling apart.  Well when I pulled the wire for cylinder 6 once again the insulating boot stayed down in the hole, requiring another tedious fishing session with my hooked small wire so I could pull it out.  I am really disappointed with the quality of these Duralast wires that I bought from Autozone,  I installed them maybe three years ago.  To have two of the three wires fall apart already was very aggravating.  I have used Duralast parts for many other repairs and have had good luck.  I won’t be getting their plug wires ever again, that is for sure.

I also had an issue with my spark plug sockets.  I had two 5/8″ sockets, one from my big socket set and an Autozone socket.  I had different problems with each.  The one socket had a loose rubber boot that is used to keep the plug in place as you stick it back in the hole.  The end result was after I would get done torquing the plug back in the socket would come back up sans rubber boot, it was stuck on the plug terminal.  So I had to jam the socket back on, back out the plug and try again.  The Autozone socket had a maddening precise fit, making it very difficult to get the spark plug securely inserted.  In total between the two socket issues I bet I wasted another 20 minutes of futzing around.

So finally I had all six plugs and three wire sets replaced.  I hopped back in the truck and turned the key, hoping to hear the engine roar to life.  Instead it fired up for a split second and then shut down.  I was not happy.  I jumped out and did a quick survey under the hood, hoping I just forgot to reconnect something.  Luckily I quickly spotted a coil connector on cylinder 5 that I forgot to snap back in.  After clicking it together the truck fired back up and sounded normal.

Now last week during my testing the truck also sounded normal briefly until I got it out on the road so I knew I was not in the clear yet.   I took the truck east on Immokalee Road and was encouraged that I did not feel the chugging engine the truck had when the misfire was present.  In total I did a 10 mile test and the Tacoma passed with flying colors.  I drove it a few more times over the weekend and to work today without a problem so I feel confident declaring the issue as fixed.  I feel very fortunate that the simpler solution fixed the problem this time.  Replacing fuel injectors would have been a much, much larger pain in the ass.

On Saturday night we decided to stay home and plow through the remainder of the Making a Murderer.  If you are looking for a happy ending out of this documentary, look elsewhere.  The story is such a bizarre collection of situations all cross contaminating the other.  The theme of the documentary is basically how Steven and his nephew Brendan are unjustly in prison for a crime they did not commit, largely in part to shady activity by the local police department.  Although Steven’s guilt or innocence is a bit foggy, it is crystal clear that Brendan had nothing to do with the crime, yet he is in prison until the year 2048 at the earliest.

My friend Cheryl found this well thought out explanation that does a good job of unwinding the various evidence and points the finger in a direction not really touched on in the documentary.  After you watch the series, read this explanation.  It makes a lot of sense and connects a lot of dots.

We woke up Sunday morning to some cold for Florida temperatures in the upper 40’s.  We decided to go out and do a short run, something I have note done for at least a couple of months for a myriad of reasons.  Our goal was a simple two miles around the middle school track.  I really like running in colder temperatures, I just feel better.  Cindy does not, the cold air can make her lungs feel like they are closing up.

Despite the cold Cindy was actually the pace setter, I constantly was a stride or two behind her, working to keep up.  I was surprised when Cindy said we averaged right around 9 minute mile pace, 30-45 seconds per mile faster than what we were carrying for a normal pace for most of our runs in 2015.  Of course it was only two miles of running but still it felt like a minor accomplishment.

I added two more pieces of tech to the chicken coop on Sunday.  The first thing was adding a Ring doorbell to the front of the run.  It allows us to take advantage of the coop based wi-fi network to monitor back yard motion and do two way communication if one of us is in the house and the other in the yard.  Is it overkill? Yes.

The other addition was another WeMo smart outlet that is used to control the LED light in the coop.  The light is used at dusk to provide light in the coop so the hens can get themselves situated on their perch.  Since the chickens like to push their bedtime right until the edge of darkness, without light in the coop they would be nearly blind in there.

With the WeMo switch I now have the light on a precisely controlled time cycle that is controlled by my phone.  I can use the phone to also turn the light on and off whenever I chose from anywhere I have internet service.  Plus the coolest thing of all is we can control the light with our voice via the Amazon Echo.  A simple, “Alexa, turn on/off the coop” gets the job done.

Early Sunday afternoon I was debating if I wanted to tackle the rear brakes on the Tacoma.  I really hate taking on an automotive project on a Sunday.  I decided to be productive in another way, hopping on the tractor (after jump starting it with the Tacoma), and mowed the front and back yard.  Nearly a month of no mowing with ample precipitation had left areas looking somewhat ratty.  A couple hours later things were looking much more uniform.

I got to catch a good amount of the Patriots/Broncos game.  It was what you would hope out of a conference championship.  Although I was pulling for the Broncos for Peyton Manning’s sake, there was no denying just how great Tom Brady and Gronkowski are.  Brady got hit CONSTANTLY the entire game yet somehow managed to convert on a do or die 4th down situation twice to put the Patriots in the position to tie the game with time running out.  Only a deflected pass on the two point attempt halted the epic comeback attempt.  It was a hell of a game.  The Panthers/Cardinals game was a different story with Carolina winning in a blow out.  The Carolina offense versus the Denver defense should make for an interesting Super Bowl.

This week I begin my final week of preparations as the running club timer.  To have the finish line so close is intoxicating.  To have it all wind up with the race Ali started in Nicki’s honor seems fitting as well.  By this time next week this chapter in my life will be written and I can move on to whatever comes next.

Sorry for being mostly incommunicado the past few days.  My attention has been needed elsewhere other than my daily brain dumps.

I had heard the discussion in the news the past few weeks about the Netflix documentary named “Making a Murderer” .  I had no idea that it was literally a series, I thought it was something like a two hour film.  Well by the time we went to bed last after 1 AM we had plowed through 5 episodes.

The sequence of events in this story just seem incredible.  The layers of deceit, corruption, tampering, and all around shadiness are countless.  Make no doubt about it, Steve Avery is an uneducated, simple man with a history of making some bad decisions and exhibiting poor behavior.  When you see the various members of his family interviewed it is clear this bloodline did not spend a second in any sort of higher education.  They seem to be Wisconsin rednecks in simple terms.  However being a redneck does not mean you are not entitled to fair treatment by the local law enforcement and court system.

In a nutshell, Steve served 18 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.  The county sheriff department apparently knowingly ignored evidence that would have exonerated Avery.  When he got released after DNA evidence proved his innocence, he filed a 36 million dollar lawsuit against the county.  Shortly before that trial was to begin he got accused of being involved in the murder of a woman.  This documentary is all about unwinding the incredibly complicated story surrounding all of this.

It is compelling for sure, hence our 5 hour binge watch on a Thursday night.  It really puts an exclamation point on just how corrupt, deceitful, and dangerous a good old boy local government system can be.  I am sure Cindy and I will finish up digesting the documentary this weekend, tonight perhaps. Do I know 100% that Avery is innocent? Hell no.  Is it clear as day that the sheriff department had an axe to grind and clearly ignored/altered evidence  to fit their agenda?  Absolutely.

This weekend I need to spend some time under the hood of the Tacoma that has been sitting dead in the driveway all week.  I am crossing my fingers that the set of plugs and wires that I bought will fix the cylinder misfire problem I have been experiencing.  If not I have a much more involved and potentially expensive problem to deal with.

I’m just busy.

So with the bad forecast for the half marathon I came up with an idea on Friday to make timing in stormy weather more feasible, rent a box truck.  I secured a 16 foot truck for $35 a day and 99 cents per mile, far less than I expected.  With that size I would have plenty of room to set up two or three tables loaded up with the computer equipment used for race timing.  The only thing that would be left outside would be the timing boxes themselves which are able to be operated with their lids closed, making them pretty weather resistant.  I picked up the truck on Saturday after getting permission from the running club to do so.

When I rented the truck I had a funny interaction with the guy that ran the office.  When I walked in he had a gamer headset on and he appeared somewhat annoyed I interrupted him.  After I took a look at the monster PC he had on the desk which I immediately recognized as a gaming rig I asked him questions about it, letting him know my computer background.  Once he knew he was talking to a fellow computer geek the conversation flowed.  He told me about the specs of his big full tower box that he built himself which were impressive.

We exchanged stories of our gaming experience.  I found out he was an old WoW player and a quite high level one at that.  He played the game the first three years it was out.  I told him I have been plugging away for a solid 10 years.  In addition to completing the paperwork for the rental he took the time to show me some details of Fallout 4, which is what he was playing when I walked in the door.  It was a geeky interaction out of nowhere that I appreciated.

On Friday after work I went over to the running store where I stayed until packet pick up wound up at 7PM.  I worked on getting current with any entries that came in during the day. On Saturday afternoon I headed back down there to do the same.

Now of course the potential for bad weather was on everyone’s mind.  The weather forecast for Sunday was consistently bad but the time frame seemed to be shifting around.  Unfortunately it seemed like the worst weather was forecast to hit during the time everything would be set up.  The plan was to show up as normal and if the weather conditions were really bad we could slide the race start time back to accommodate it.  Cindy and I used the 16 foot truck to hold most of the stuff which was a good thing since I had the most equipment I ever used at a race with four timing systems and 24 one meter mats.  We went to bed early, hoping to compensate for the 3AM alarm I had set for Sunday morning. Unfortunately I wound up waking  up somewhere around 1AM and not really falling asleep afterward.  During my tossing and turning I heard several bursts of storm activity outside.

When we got up I immediately looked at the latest weather conditions.  I was not happy to see a tornado watch had been put in place that ran until 8AM.  I called the race director who was already in the process of setting up the course just to let him know about the watch and suggest we wait until that watch clears to start the race which was scheduled for a 7AM start. Cindy and I pulled out our race caravan with me leading in the box truck and Cindy following in the Tacoma.

On the way to the race I got a message that they were officially postponing the start until 8 to give the weather a chance to clear, a good move.  When we got there the roads were wet but it wasn’t raining and the wind was minimal.  However when I looked at the radar before leaving home I saw Naples looked to be on the tail end of a long line of storms that was moving northeast very rapidly.  It was not a matter of if the storm was going to hit but when.

Cindy and I started working on setting up stuff.  We dumped the timing gear at the start and finish lines.  I parked the big truck in position by the finish line and set up tables inside of it.  I looked at my temporary timing shelter with a weird sense of pride for coming up with a way to get the job done despite the very challenging weather conditions.  We started setting up the registration area over by the bank under a covered parking area that we hoped would provide shelter if the storm got really bad.  With the one hour delay we suddenly had a much longer window to get everything set up.

So Chris, who was there to help me do data entry had his iPad along.  On it he had the live radar view on loop which showed the line of red was almost on us.  The wind started to pick up along with the rain so the group of us around the registration area took cover.  As the wind and rain picked up it started blowing in so we quickly pulled all the tables and computer equipment that I already had set up back as far as we could to minimize it’s exposure to the elements.

The storm was bad but didn’t seem like anything beyond a typical Florida summer thunderstorm, until it wasn’t.  All of a sudden there was a few minutes where the wind ratcheted up to an entirely new level.  The huge flag that hangs over Cambier Park sounded like it was ready to be ripped from the pole.  I stood up and leaned on the huge, heavy wood tables in front of me for fear they could actually be blown around.  The sound of the wind, which was reported to be 80+ mph,  was dangerous.

So we all huddled underneath the overhang for around 15-20 minutes while the worst of the storm blew through.  I honestly felt a bit exposed there and had my eyes scanning for any flying debris that could come our way.  We took a look at the race banner hanging over the start line in the street.  We saw a mangled mess as one of the tether lines snapped from the force.  When things started to die down we did a brief survey of our immediate area and things seemed more or less intact with just some palm fronds down at various spots.

Just as we were getting ready to start drying stuff off and resume preparations we got word from the volunteer coordinator that the race was now cancelled.  Evidently there was much more extensive damage on the course with not just branches but entire trees down, severe flooding and even power lines down.  There was no way the event could take place with those sort of hazards on the course.  Later we were told that this storm had the characteristics of something called a “meteotsunami”, which very quickly and dramatically pushed a wall of water from the gulf on shore which caused the flooding.  The hurricane force winds were just the icing on the cake.

After we were told of the cancellation I just sat there for a few moments, shell shocked.  There has never been a race cancellation due to weather conditions, for it to happen with the biggest event the club puts on just seemed unbelievable.  I immediately felt very badly for the race participants, many of whom travel from out of the area to be here for the half marathon. I thought of all the preparation that went into the event by both myself and others.  To have all of that nullified by a 15 minute storm seemed crazy.

With a race of this scope there is no rescheduling possible so basically people are just SOL as “acts of God” do not qualify runners for refunds.  While I was on site I remote controlled to my home computer so I could quickly get information posted to the official race website.  Luckily the majority of racers had been following the updates and did not show up on site.

So the undoing of the race prep began with the crew of volunteers and ourselves picking up everything that had just been laid out.  Luckily for me I had not fully set up all my stuff at that point.  We packed up the stuff we set up at the registration area and I then took down the tables in the back of the box truck.  We drove the truck back to the start line to pick up the timing equipment we set there.  I was surprised to see some of the very heavy rubber mats had gotten blown off the stack. As we were throwing the wet mats into the back of the truck a reporter from the Naples Daily News snapped a picture of Cindy and I as we were standing under the mangled half marathon start line banner.  That picture wound up on the front page of the sports section of Monday’s paper which was unexpected.

On the drive home we saw all sorts of damage with tons of branches on the roadways along with a ton of uprooted trees.  When I saw substantial wind damage at the developments near our house I was quite worried about damage at our house, especially to the chicken coop.  We both breathed a sigh of relief that other than some smaller things scattered around the yard our property escaped basically unscathed.

I’m sure the chickens were scared to death. Having the shed/run pull through such extreme weather intact made Cindy and I feel good about the extra work we put in to make sure both structures were built to be as storm resistant as possible.  The one nuisance we did have to deal with from the storm was a power outage which lasted around half the day.

By the time we got home the weather seemed almost nice.  I pulled out the 24 wet mats and laid them out to dry, one side at a time.  We had some other stuff that needed to dry out as well.  All day I couldn’t help but feel weird about doing all of that prep and not actually getting to time the race.  After the huge timing disaster we had at last year’s half marathon I was really looking to make things run like clockwork this year, despite the conditions.  Since this was also the last half marathon I was timing for the club, not getting the chance to get that redemption was a little depressing.

The rest of our day Sunday felt incredibly long, a byproduct of starting your day at 3AM.  After getting all of the race equipment dried out and put away I turned my attention to the Tacoma.  While we were driving to the race Cindy told me the truck was acting weird and shaking.  When she first mentioned it to me I thought she meant just a tire vibration which I wrote off as no big deal.  I then got a clarification that it was an engine related problem.  The truck was missing and Cindy said she really couldn’t go any faster than 50 mph.  The check engine light had come on as well.

I hooked up my car computer scanner and got a P300, P304 and P304 error code which meant that cylinder three and four were misfiring.  I cleared the codes and took the truck out for a very brief test drive.  The misfiring was still there and the CEL came on again, great.  So I did some research about the issue on my phone as Cindy drove us home after we dropped off the box truck at the Penske lot.

The easy causes of the problem are stuff like bad wires, coil, or plugs.  Tacomas have a different coil arrangement.  Instead of having one coil there are actually three of them, each one drives two of the plugs.  The recommendation was to swap coil packs around to see if the problem follows the coil.  I swapped the coil pack on cylinder three assuming it also drove cylinder four.  After clearing the codes and doing another test drive the misfire was still present although I only got a P304 error this time.  After feeding these test results into Google it seemed like a more likely cause of the misfire could be a failed fuel injector, something very much in the realm of possibility for a vehicle with 186,000 miles on the odometer.  Unfortunately changing one involves pretty extensive tear down, similar to what I had to do to change the valve cover gaskets.  I called it good for the day with the intention to resume diagnostics on Monday.

On Sunday night we watched True Story, our latest Netflix rental.  With no naps during the day I knew I risked nodding off during the movie, which I did several times.  The drowsiness was not because of the movie which was interesting, seeing Seth Rogen and James Franco play very serious roles in a true life story about a man that killed his family.  I had Cindy help fill in some of the blank spots while I nodded off laying on her lap.  It added up to a solid B+ film that is a quality rental title.

Having Monday off was quite welcome after the events of Sunday.  We headed out relatively early to go pick up some oil change supplies.  Both the Prius and Tacoma were overdue for oil changes.    We also dropped off the left over race bibs from the race at the running store where runners were able to pick up race shirts and medals since they would go to waste otherwise.

I dug into the oil changes early Monday afternoon, completing both oil changes in the span of 45 minutes.  I then resumed my diagnosis of the Tacoma.  One of the things I did not do on Sunday was pull the plug in cylinder four to take a look at it.  When I pulled the spark plug wire something didn’t feel right.  When I looked at the boot of the wire something didn’t look right, the attachment terminal was missing.  A look into the spark plug hole revealed it was still attached to the spark plug.

This scenario was good and bad news.  The good news was that possibly the misfiring could have simply been caused by a defective spark plug wire.  The bad news was I now had to figure out some way to get the broken terminal off the spark plug so I could remove the spark plug itself.   This turned out to be a VERY challenging task that tested the limits of my patience.

At first I tried using a simple needle nose pliers to grasp the broken terminal.  Because of the lack of space it was impossible to get a grasp on it.  I then began a long and arduous session with a long flat head screw driver.  I stuck it into the plug hole and tried to work the terminal back and forth so it would loosen up.  I then tried to pin it against the side of the hole so I could pry it upwards.  After a couple dozen attempts over the course of 45 minutes I got it to pop off the top of the spark plug.  I was able to fish the terminal out of the hole with my retractable magnet.

I then confidently stuck my spark plug socket in the hole, ready to finally remove the plug after all that futzing around.  Despite removing the terminal it still felt like my socket was just spinning around on nothing.  WTF?  I brought out my stick light so I could get a better view down the hole.  What I saw was a circle of rubber on top of the spark plug.  Not only did the terminal of the spark plug wire break off, the rubber boot that normally surrounds it was down there as well, awesome.

This discovery lead to another incredibly aggravating session of trying to get the rubber removed.  I was able to spin it around with my screwdriver but not remove it.  I alerted Cindy to my issue and said I needed a small wire hook to snag the rubber.  She found an old wire plant hanger in the shed.  I was able to snip off one  of the wires and then bend the end into a very small hook.  As I stuck the wire into the hole my eyes were watering as I tried to focus, it was very hard to see.  Finally, finally I snagged the rubber boot and managed to lift it out of the plug hole.  Instinctively I said “f you” out loud to the remains of the spark plug boot as I removed it.  It was the end result of close to two hours of digging around in a little hole with no clearance and the wrong tools for the job.  I finally was able to get a socket on the plug and remove it.  The plug itself looked ok but I ordered a complete new set of plugs and wires on Amazon.  My hope is the misfire was all wire related and I can avoid ripping off the entire intake of the truck to do injectors.

After the Tacoma work I suggested to Cindy we take out the mountain bikes out for their first test ride of Bird Rookery swamp, something we had wanted to do for a little while.  The cool air in the low to mid-60’s left us both feeling quite chilled on the 3 mile ride to the trail head.  Once we got off road both of our bikes felt good on the mostly grass trail.  In total we went around 2.25 miles into the swamp before turning around.

Doing the trail on a mountain bike is different than doing the same by foot.  You obviously cover territory at a much faster clip.  I think you also get to see less since you need to concentrate more on the ground under you to avoid obstacles while riding.  We stopped several times so Cindy could take some pictures of especially scenic locations.

By the time we started the return ride out we were both feeling some aches and soreness.  Mountain bikes are double the weight or more of the road bikes we are used to riding,  Riding them over uneven terrain introduces a new sort of effort level which also carries a discomfort penalty for your rear end, back, and hands.  By the time we rode the 3 miles back to the house we were BEAT.    Our eventual goal is to do the entire 12 mile circuit in the swamp which when added to the ride to and from the house will be around 18 miles.  The way we felt doing the roughly 10 miles yesterday makes me only imagine how we will feel when we take on the whole deal. The rest of our Monday, the little that was left of it was more low key with us enjoying a nice dinner and dvr’d tv content to wind up the 3 day weekend.

Of course I saw the news that the Eagles hired a new head coach, Doug Pederson, who was the offensive coordinator for the KC Chiefs.  I wish I could say I liked this hire.  Eagles fans remember the name Doug Pederson.  He was the starting QB VERY briefly right before the Donovan McNabb era began.  I remember feeling very unexcited back then when we were told that Pederson, despite not having much actual NFL play time, had been a back up in good programs which somehow meant he should be decent by osmosis.  Well the reality was he was extremely unimpressive  in his Eagles stint.  His starting record as  a qb was something like 3-14.

Well Andy Reid always liked Doug and eventually brought him on staff as a coach.  First as an “offensive consultant” and later as a QB coach for the Eagles.  When Andy was fired from the Eagles he took Doug with him to KC and named his as offensive coordinator.  During his three years there the Chiefs offense was ok, but certainly nothing dynamic.  Plus since Andy Reid is very much involved in the offensive play calling, being an OC on an Andy Reid team means you aren’t really calling the shots.

The overwhelming consensus is the Pederson hiring is underwhelming.  I read an ESPN article that said out of the 6 coaches hired this off season, Doug is the least impressive of them. I assume that Jeff Lurie is hoping that somehow Doug will be Andy Reid-esque since he has been in his company for a long time.  We saw how that “greatness by association with greatness” theory worked out in Pederson’s QB career.  I have a bad feeling his head coaching career could follow a similar story line.  Hopefully I am wrong.

It’s very rare for me to talk much about tv shows on here but since I did it twice already this week I may as well hit it one more time.  I was a big fan of the original Heroes when it first came out years ago, or more specifically, the first season or two of the show.  The writers on that show went crazy and ran the show right into a wall with absolutely horrible writing that resulted in a plot that was impossible to follow or care about.

When I heard they were rebooting the show I held out hope that some new people were involved that could somehow capture what made the show good at first.  Well my hopes were not realized.  If anything they somehow managed to make the show more confusing, more stupid, and fill it with even more bad actors than the original.  There are no less than 20 characters that you are supposed to follow through a rat nest of story lines that include constant jumps forward and backward through time.  Despite seeing every episode, if you had a knife to my throat and the only way I could save myself was to clearly explain the Heroes story I would unfortunately wind up dead on the floor.  I am forcing myself to watch the remaining two episodes although I might have to do it solo, Cindy already raised the white flag on the show.

I didn’t watch the Republican debate again last night, it just serves no useful purpose in my life unless you consider feeling really negative about the state of politics in ‘Merica” as a good thing.  I bet Carly Fiorina was FURIOUS she got sent down to the minor leagues, with the likes of Mike “I want a pill to cure diabetes” Huckabee.

So this is half marathon weekend, the last I will be participating in.  The weather forecast for Sunday is not looking promising at all with a forecast of rain and high winds which of course can make timing the event very challenging.  I’ll just keep my nose down and get through it.

Last night we watched the second episode of Biggest Loser.  I found myself more annoyed then I was after the first show where I saw the carnage after they retooled the cast and format.

The subtitle for the show this year is “Temptation Nation”, this episode outlined exactly what that means.  Basically many of the challenges this year involve temptation.  This is not a new concept.  In the past they would do challenges where contestants were thrown in a room full of shitty food and they had to resist the temptation to eat it, which the majority of them did.

Well this year they are basically forcing people to eat shitty food as a punishment if they lose a challenge which I think is absolutely idiotic.  Every single person on the show is a food addict to some degree.  Forcing them to consume the foods that got them into their morbidly obese state serves no positive purpose whatsoever.  Could you imagine if a person in rehab was forced to take drugs or drink alcohol?  I simply could not believe the show producers thought this was a good idea and further reinforces my feeling that there is a new person/people running the production of the show. Whomever it is, sucks.

So Cindy and I joined the Powerball craze.  We didn’t go crazy like buying 74,000+ tickets as some group of people did, we bought two tickets.  Cindy picked the numbers on one ticket and quick picked the other.  When I checked the numbers this morning I was excited to see we hit exactly zero numbers on either ticket.

You may have read how the Powerball people are basically mind fcking the general public.  A little while ago they made a change to the game, increasing the amount of “white numbers” you can choose from 59 to 69.  This addition of 10 numbers made the odds of anyone winning the top prize soar astronomically, to 1 in 292 million.  Of course Powerball officials will feed you a line of shit saying this change allows more winners overall of the smaller amounts of cash.  It does not take someone with a degree in psychology to see the game they are really playing.

Making the top prize so difficult to hit makes for lots of rollovers and lots of huge jackpots.  The big jackpots build big public hysteria as everyone wants to take a shot at the dream, resulting in massive ticket buying.  Whomever is in charge of the mind manipulation department at Powerball Inc. should get a big raise this year.

Tonight after work I drop off the stuff for the two days of race packet pick up.  It marks the start of the grind that will wind up late morning on Sunday.  It can’t come fast enough.