Archives September 2016

I was a bit worried I wasn’t going to be able to do my ride to the gym on the Ninebot One as I drove through some small areas of precipitation on the way home.  When I pulled out of the driveway a little after 6PM the roads were wet but no rain was actively coming down, good enough.  Riding at that time of day was not ideal because of the large volume of traffic from commuters coming home.  I had to use the pedestrian crossing buttons to be able to get a break in the cars to cross.

I am getting a bit better with being able to log long distances on the wheel.  My feet still start to ache and burn but it takes longer to start and I can put up with it longer.  Besides crossing the roads, I only stepped off once during the 8.5 mile ride for a quick foot break.  I was very concerned about again hitting a low battery condition which is what caused me to crash in the past.  I tried to keep my speed at around 11-12 mph to prevent excessive battery depletion.

I pulled into the gym parking lot a minute or two after Cindy texted me saying she was done which was pretty perfect timing.  I threw the Ninebot One in the behind the seat after checking it’s odometer on the app.  I now have logged 122 miles on one wheel.  Of course I had the GoPro along for the ride so if you want the cliff notes version of the ride take a look below.

Speaking of video, I was looking at my YouTube/AdSense dollars for this current month.  It looks like again I have accumulated enough money in the account to get paid for the third consecutive month in a row.  In fact, I still have something like a week before they pay out and I am already ahead of what I made last month.  It’s very cool to see my channel building momentum.

The other day I saw somebody ripped off one of my Tacoma videos and posted it on their channel, a common scam.  Reposting other’s content without their consent is not cool but done very often.  When I looked at my options for reporting the user there wasn’t really an option for “they ripped off my content” so I just let it go.  The account has 4 subscribers so I don’t think he is going to get rich off my stuff for a long time.  I will surely be keeping an eye on him however.

So when I talked about our decision to postpone our planned road trip I didn’t really talk much about the money factor.  In 2016 I have spent a small fortune already.  In this calendar year I have bought the new Tacoma, the new TV, all new kitchen appliances, an engagement ring, three personal transportation devices, two trips to Comic-Super Cons along with tons of smaller things in the $50-$300 range.  There is no doubt that this year has been the largest ever in terms of outgoing dollars so sacrificing the road trip this year really makes more sense the more I examine things.

I had a very weird dream last night where my dad and I drove up to some remote area that seemed to be like a zoo.  We walked through a building to an outside area with a fence.  On the other side of the fence were a ton of animals you would see on a safari like a couple lions, a black panther, elephant, rhino, hippo and even a water buffalo.  There were other people by the fence line.  One dumb person got too close to the fence and was heckling the panther.  The animal hissed and then swiped at his tormentor, smacking him on the side of the head, knocking him down.

The dream moved forward and for some reason some of the lions were fighting.  It was pretty gruesome as it seemed two of the lions were attacking a third.  There was a lot of blood.  It was disturbing enough that I woke up momentarily.

When I fell back asleep the dream continued.  My dad and I had gone back into the building and fallen asleep. We awoke to discover the animals had somehow escaped the fence.  When my dad opened the door to the parking lot the hippo and a small elephant were there.  I yelled at my dad to close the door but the animals already tried to push their way in and they seemed agitated.   There was a big blue plastic drink cooler on the floor.  I picked it up and placed it front of me as a shield as I tried to squeeze by the wild animals, trying to calm them down with “hey guys, good boys, good boys…”

We got by the two animals but saw the other much more dangerous animals outside the door nearby.  They appeared to be sleeping but I was worried the noise would wake them up.  The moment we got one step past the sleeping predators they started to stir.  We sprinted for the car and took off, never looking back.  That’s it.

So Cindy and I have decided we are going to be postponing our planned short road trip that was supposed to happen next week.  There are a few reasons for the cancellation.  The last race I am timing is at the end of the month, a few days after we were scheduled to get back.  I would feel better being around the week leading up to the event to make sure everything gets handled smoothly.  With Cindy’s daughter sort of living with us there are more potential unsettled waters ahead the next few weeks.  I would feel better being around to handle whatever comes up.  Finally, my dad and step mom are supposed to be coming down for a week in early October so that will be a lot of fun by itself.

Sure it’s a bit of a bummer not having a road trip on the docket for 2016 after the monster 6600 mile journey last year followed by the holiday visit to NYC.  Seeing all the blog posts from last year’s road trip popping up on the YEAR AGO sidebar of the blog has made me feel further nostalgia. We have logged a couple weekend ComicCon trips this year but we have not crossed any state borders as of now.  If we don’t hit the road this year it won’t be the end of the world but we definitely will be hitting it next year, hopefully executing the northeast route I was thinking about originally.

I still plan to take those days off, using some of that time and money on a staycation which will include getting some stuff around the homestead knocked out.  We might mix a fun daytrip into the mix as well. It’s all good.

Tonight if it’s not raining I have an interesting/long ride on the Ninebot One planned.  I want to do a one way ride to the gym Cindy works at, somewhere around a 9 mile hike.  She is teaching a class from 6-7 so I figure I will ride there and hitch a ride home afterward.  I am hoping I can avoid the low power tiltback problems that dumped me off the bot a couple weeks ago.  I shouldn’t be riding into a stiff headwind this time so I expect things to go smoother.

I was thinking about my latest interest in devices like the Segway Minipro and the Ninebot One and how they tied in with how my hobbies and interests have come and gone over the years.

Going way, way back I had two big interests as a kid, video games and baseball.  My brother and I played the hell of out of the original console video games like Intellivison, Colecovision, and the NES.  Even into my late teens and early 20’s I was borderline obsessed with console gaming. I also spent thousands of dollars in local arcades.

My obsession with baseball had a much shorter shelf life, starting around age 11 and running until I was 17-18 when an elbow injury dashed my dreams of being a major league pitcher.

In my 20’s in addition to gaming, my focus on cars and volleyball really picked up speed.  My 1969 Firebird convertible was the highlight of my car hobby in my 20’s although I owned a LOT of other vehicles.

Later in my 20’s and into my early 30’s volleyball took center stage in a huge way.  I used to play 3-4 times a week and during the summer playing in weekend tournaments was a very regular occurrence.  The highlight of my volleyball days of course was the epic win of the BB division in the 1999 Pottstown Rumble with my buddy Rich.  We beat out something ridiculous like 125 other teams that were in the division to win it all.  My volleyball heyday was cut short by a meniscus right knee injury that I had operated on twice. When I moved to Florida I had a 2-3 year resurrection of my volleyball career with Randall but old age and just lack of interest eventually shut that down.

Since living in Florida I have had a number of things take on a large portion of my attention.  Early on I had my first run as a RC plane enthusiast, building and flying a number of aircraft.  My hobby was bolstered by my friend Mike who was into RC on a level far exceeding mine.  We flew together quite a few times.  Unfortunately once he moved to Colorado my interest in flying dropped off majorly.  I had a resurrection in air based hobbies with the purchase of my various quadcopters, culminating with the awesome DJI Phantom Cindy bought me for Christmas a few years ago.  I still have the Phantom but have flown it very little recently.  The incident with the Yellowstone park ranger office prosecuting me for a drone flight via You Tube really left a bad taste in my mouth.

I also became involved in the MMORPG World of Warcraft in the beginning of 2005, my first time ever playing that type of game.  There were periods of time that I was so into the game it was scary.  At one point I was playing 30-40 hours PER WEEK.  I still play the game to this day but in a much less addicted manner.  Once I started playing WoW my days of gaming on a console like my Xbox 360 pretty much ended.

About halfway into my marriage with Ali we started doing a lot more running and triathlon training.  I had done some running when I lived in PA in my late 20’s, early 30’s but nothing consistent.  For a period of a few years Ali and I entered a TON of events, mostly 5K’s but also a few triathlons.  I maxed out at the half marathon distance, which I completed three times.  A series of annoying and somewhat chronic lower body injuries derailed that hobby although I am in the process of trying to reboot things right now.

Our running also lead to another huge area of focus for nearly the last decade, my involvement with the local running club.  What started out with an email I sent to the club complaining about race results taking two weeks or more to be posted online eventually lead to me being the race timer for the club for almost 8 years.  I really enjoyed the challenge of it all early on as I introduced all sorts of things to make club races more dynamic and runner friendly.  Over time I took on more and more roles for the club, because I could.  Eventually the weight of all of those responsibilities turned the role from fun to extremely frustrating, leading to me leaving that role early this year.

I also had a couple revivals in my hobby car interest since living in Florida, owning an 88 Corvette, a 71 Buick Skylark convertible, and most recently the 2005 Chevy SSR.  The cycle for each purchase felt extremely similar.  I felt that buying each vehicle was going to fill some sort of void I was feeling at the time for various reasons.  Once I assumed ownership I would go through a pretty intense cycle of fixing/upgrading a number of things on each vehicle.  Once those items were addressed, when it was time to enjoy the fruits of my labor I simply didn’t do it as much as I envisioned I would have.

Now the Skylark actually burned up in a fire, but even so, once it was gone for a short period of time I felt a degree of relief.  Since selling the SSR, a vehicle I almost attached a God-like importance to initially, I have not had a moment’s regret with getting rid of it.  My new 2016 Tacoma will give me much, much more enjoyment long term than the SSR ever could have.  At this point I don’t really see myself relapsing back into the car hobbyist role but never say never.

In my early 40’s I really became interested in calisthenics and the bar based exercise movement, lead by the Bar-barians.  In addition to my focus on bodyweight based workouts which got me in arguably the best shape of my life, I also became involved with the Bar-barians group, first running their message board and later running monthly exercise challenges for message board users.  I even designed, set up and maintained their web site for over a year. I virtually met hundreds of people from around the world through my involvement with the group which was really, really cool as well as a few in real life, which is even cooler.  I still do a lot of calisthenics work in my exercise routine but nowhere near the same level as I did back then.

So that brings me to my most current focus, the Minipros and more so the Ninebot One E+, my first electric unicycle.  The cycle of defeat followed by ultimate victory in learning to ride the single wheel vehicle was a feeling of accomplishment I have not matched in recent memory.  It felt very close to the feeling you have as a kid when you are able to ride a bike without training wheels for the first time.  Riding the wheel brings back many childhood feelings of doing something just because it is flat out fun and nothing else.  When I ride the wheel cares melt away, hard feelings soften, and the noise of the world is drowned out by the pleasant hum of the brushless motor pushing you along mile after mile.

Why I decided to go off on this tangent I don’t really know.  In some way while I was running at the gym I was thinking about people that make up their minds on certain things, whether they be hobbies, interests, religious beliefs or political views, and then never, ever take a moment to reconsider those options and do/think new things based on changing circumstances.  I feel badly for these people.  Somebody famous once said something to the effect of “If you are still doing and thinking about things the same way now as you did twenty years ago, you are doing something wrong”  Flip the script, it’s not a bad thing.

Last night Cindy was teaching a class so I used the time to start working on level 2 skills on the Ninebot One.  I am now fairly confident in my ability to handle basic control fundamentals in a more or less safe manner.  I can start, stop, and turn consistently.  However there are more advanced things to learn like riding backwards, jumping small objects, and simply getting on and off the wheel in a more controlled manner.  I practiced all three of these things to varying degrees in the driveway and as expected, going backwards was the least successful of the three.  I did manage to avoid any awful wipeouts, a testament to my ability to maintain balance, awkwardly, even in more demanding situations.  Take a look if you have 19 minutes to kill.

I had another mess of a day at work yesterday, still related to the larger mess from last week.  Before I rebuilt our main domain controller, I transferred all the FMSO roles to another DC that was a VM.  Yesterday the phone started ringing from people saying the time on their pc’s was off like 6 or 7 minutes.  A quick glance confirmed this.  Domain time is normally handled by the DC that holds the PDC Emulator role.

So I did some digging and found out that when you have a DC in a Hyper-V environment you need to disable the default behavior of a virtual machine to set it’s time based on the Hyper-V host.  I went a step further, transferring the PDC Emulator role back to the original domain controller which is a physical server.  I then ran the regedit command on both virtual DC’s to get them back in sync.

Even after this change I was chasing down rogue time problems during the day as a few servers did not want to grab the change until I forced them to do so.  I finally got everything back on the same page at the end.  Having varying system times on a Windows domain can cause all sorts of weird problems. I hope I can now move forward with getting our office fully moved over to Office 365.  I keep running into roadblocks that are making the progress on that goal very slow.

Somehow I managed to spend the vast majority of my weekend working on crap ranging from chores to race timing to remote office things.  I got some fun time in but found myself last night feeling like the two days were too task heavy.  Saturday I weeded the property and then followed up with the gas weed whacker, knocking down the growth accelerated by the unrelenting rain.

Late in the morning I thought I would be proactive and call DirecTV a day early to make sure my Sunday Ticket was working so I could watch the Eagles game the following day.  Because of the non-standard configuration I have where I JUST have the Sunday Ticket and no other programming package I have to call them each year after my account comes off the 6 month service suspension.  I have had this set up for close to 10 years and every year it is a pain in the ass to get it working.  This year set the bar to a new high of frustration.

So I call up and get a woman that sounds like she is from the US.  When I explain what I need she indicates I need to talk to tech support.  She said she would transfer me.  Within the first 3 seconds after being transferred I felt my blood pressure rising as I heard the very thick foreign accent on the other end.  Despite the headaches I have had in the past getting my service working, I always at least dealt with US based support staff.  Evidently part of ATT acquiring DirecTV last year was establishing some cheap foreign call centers, awesome move.

So I literally spent 60 minutes on the phone with a level 1 guy and then his supervisor, with me getting more frustrated by the minute as he kept putting me on hold since he had no idea what to do.  At one point I asked him if he was located in India.  He seemed a bit put off by my question and told me he was not Indian, he was located in the Phillipines.  Sorry, my bad, I still can hardly understand you.  I went through a maddening circus of reboots and being put on hold, despite me telling them that normal corrective actions would not work.

So at the end of the 60 minute circus the supervisor said he was going to transfer me to the Sunday Ticket department.  He had exhausted his ability to correct my problem.  He said please hold and I was promptly disconnected.  Of course I was beyond furious.  I called back ready to destroy whoever was unlucky enough to answer the phone.  The 18 minutes I had to wait for someone to pick up the phone the second time did nothing to help that anger.

So an english speaking woman answered.  I explained the hour plus I had just wasted with the Philippine help desk.  I asked her when Directv implemented foreign tech support centers.  She said it was part of the ATT acquisition.  She apologized for the run around and told me that in the future if I would be connected overseas I can request to be transferred to the US group, supposedly they have to honor that request.  I went through another very lengthy phone call with repeated long hold times.  At the end of it I still was getting 721 errors (not authorized) on the Sunday Ticket channels in the 700 channel range but I was getting channel 212, which she said indicates I was good to go.  She said the other channels should work on Sunday once the game content starts.  I was very skeptical of this and told her as much.  She reiterated it should work fine.  (it actually did work on Sunday)  By the time I hung up I had wasted two hours of my weekend on the phone with DirecTv, thanks!!

So as I was waiting on hold I was flipping through other menus on my satellite receiver, one of which was signal strength.  I noticed the average level was in the mid 70’s (out of 100) which is less than it used to be.  The satellite dish is on the west side of the house and unfortunately is aimed right through one of our oak trees.  Years ago I cut out a bunch of branches in the middle to give me a clearer view of the sky with the dish.  It appeared I needed to do so once again.

In the past I did this work with a pole saw which was a pain in the ass.  I decided to get up close and personal this time, grabbing a ladder and my battery powered reciprocating saw.  I used the ladder to just get me up into the main body of the tree, after that it was me just climbing around, reliving my childhood tree climbing days, something I used to do extensively.  An oak tree body is sort of a gnarled mess with lots of tiny, crisscrossing small branches.  It didn’t take long until one of them ripped open one of the brush burns on my knee, unknowingly sending a stream of blood down my leg.

I first cut away some of the small stuff to give me more room to stand and work without getting scraped/impaled.  I then started working on the large branches that were in the dish line of sight.  I had to be careful with the angles I cut, making sure they made the branches fall in a  way that would not clip the house roof or gutters.  A couple of the branches were sizeable, easily 10-12 feet long.  I diligently hacked away, doing my best to estimate the invisible beam the dish uses to grab signal.  By the time I was done there were over a half dozen large branches on the ground.  When I got down I walked over to the dish to take another look.  The center of the tree had been thinned out considerably.  I verified the success of the work inside, seeing the average signal strength had jumped up to the upper 80’s, good enough.

I then had to dispose of all of the discarded branches.  I pulled the tractor out of the shed and used it to drag the branches to the rear pit one at a time.  I would drive up to a branch, reach down with my hand and grab it, trying to wedge it against the side of the tractor body the best I could.  The branch dragging put my grip strength to the test as some created a lot of ground resistance as I pulled them along.   Eventually I got the mess cleaned up.  Between the nightmare phone calls and tree trimming I have put a lot of effort getting my 2016 Sunday Ticket up and running.  I hope the Eagles are worth it this year.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched Black Mass, a real life story of a Boston based crime group, the head of which is portrayed by Johnny Depp.  The movie gave a very brutal view into the organized crime scene and pulled no punches in depicting the violence involved.  It had a pretty well known cast that helped the level of the film.  Despite it’s very dark background, the movie was  a quality B+ flick in the end.

Sunday morning I once again had the 6AM alarm set so I could get out and run.  This time there was no bald eagle on the light tower to cheer me on but I still covered the four miles at a recent personal best pace of 8:52 per mile.  I again stuck with the shorter stride, faster cadence strategy and it again seemed to work for me.

For the past three weeks I have been the first to show up at the track.  I had been always running in a clockwise direction.  Each week a group of walkers show up later and each time they decided to walk the opposite direction I was running which I found annoying.  I didn’t want to be running at people twice per lap.  So on Sunday I thought if you can’t beat em, join em, I ran counter clockwise.  Once again the group showed up and you guessed it, they decide to now walk around clockwise.  WTF …..

Later in the morning Cindy and I took out the Minipro and the Ninebot One.  We went to a new spot, the Naples Greenway, a beautiful walking/running/trail that was opened up in 2014.   It was the PERFECT spot to ride.  The wide walking paths were great for buzzing along on the Minipros.  We put in over 4 miles on the Minipro.  I then pulled out my EUC and rode another 5 miles while Cindy chilled and read a book.  It was quite the nice way to spend a couple hours in the morning.

We got home shortly before the kickoff for the Eagles game.  Like I said I was pleasantly surprised that the game came through on my receiver without a third call to DirecTv.  I really had no idea what to expect, despite the Eagles 4-0 preseason record.  The surprise trade of Sam Bradford and equally surprising naming of the rookie, Carson Wentz as the day one starter left a whole lot of things up in the air.

Well it didn’t take long for me to start feeling better about things.  Carson Wentz lead the Eagles down the field quickly for the first touchdown pass of his NFL career.  I immediately got a good feeling from the rookie QB.  Despite his lack of playing time in the NFL, I never got a deer in the headlights sense about him.  He seemed calm and in control.  It was also a breath of fresh air to see such a balanced running and passing attack from the Eagles, which resulted in monster time of possession dominance, something that NEVER happened under Chip Kelly courtesy of his hurry up offense.

The defense gave me a really good feeling as well.  Much like Wentz, they just seemed in control.  At no point, even when they were up by 19 points did I get the feeling the Browns had a chance to come back.  The D just seemed to do everything fundamentally well.  During the last decade whenever the Eagles were up by more than two touchdowns it was almost automatic that they would roll into a soft prevent, giving up yards and points by the bushel, not yesterday.

It was one of the best feeling opening day games I can recall in the last 15 years of Eagles football.  Of course this is tempered by the fact that the Browns are not a good football team but even so, the Eagles many. many times have found ways to lose to bad teams.  On Sunday they got ahead and then slammed the door, just like good teams often do.  Of course this doesn’t mean the team is going to excel over the course of the season but I will take it one game at a time.  Based on what I have seen from this one game, I am optimistic.

I usually like to wind down my weekends just relaxing or screwing off.  Instead I followed the Eagles game up with paying my bills followed by mowing the yard, finishing up just as the sun was setting towards the horizon.  When I started mowing I felt grumpy about having to end the weekend with yet another house chore.  By the time I was done my mood was elevated from watching the chickens following me around on the tractor, hoping to devour any bugs the freshly cut grass exposed.  Chickens are funny.

I felt like a zombie by the time I got home last night.  I made the mistake of laying on the couch for a few minutes which made me feel even worse.  I got myself up and moving again.  Cindy made me a cup of coffee to help give me some artificial energy.  We finally got to work on putting the office back in order after it being ripped apart all week from the water leak problem.  Cindy has some smaller stuff to put away yet but the big stuff is back where it belongs.  Having things a mess like they were gives me a general unsettled feeling that I never enjoy.

I am picking up Sadie on the way home tonight for a weekend visit.  I have no specific weekend plans other than chores, running, and riding my PTVs.  The rest of the blanks will fill themselves in.

I am very lucky that my job normally does not have a lot of after hours work such as I was used to when I worked in IT up north.  Our environment is normally very, very stable and any fires that I have to put out are normally small in nature.  Well yesterday I had an all out inferno break out.

As I have mentioned here, I am working through the process of migrating our office from an on site Exchange server to Office 365.  I have had various road bumps along the way but have been able to work through them.  Well yesterday I was at point where I was trying to convert our user accounts to “mail enabled” accounts, which allows them to connect to both our own site Exchange server and the Office 365 server at the same time during the transition.  I followed the steps on the Office 365 site, exporting some info from Office 365 into a local csv file and then feeding that csv file to a powershell script on my Exchange server.

So I log onto my Exchange server and open an Exchange command prompt to run the script.  I fire it off and see a LOT of red text scrolling up the screen indicating certain commands were getting an error.  I didn’t think a lot about it, sometimes scripts will do that if it is trying to modify something that isn’t needed.  After the script ran I got sidetracked into something else when my phone rang fro the first time.  It was a user saying they couldn’t get into their email, weird.

So I hopped back onto my Exchange server since I already had it open to take a look.  When I refreshed the view, ALL of our user mailboxes were gone except four or five of them.   I swallowed hard, knowing somehow that script just trashed my Exchange environment.  My head raced as I quickly tried to come up with a plan of action.  It seemed to me that the script screwed with the Exchange active directory environment so I thought that if I restore my main domain controller with the prior night’s back up I would be able to erase the problem.

This set off a totally separate disaster.  In order to do an authoritative restore of AD you need to stop DS on other domain controllers.  Once I did that it crippled the network as there was no longer any authentication going on, breaking a number of apps.  I decided to bale on that idea as the restore was going slow.  I cancelled the DC restore and rebooted it.  My heart sank when the server did not come up.

Instead of booting the DC would just come to a screen saying the OS failed to start with a 0xc000007b error.  This set off hours of frustrating and time consuming trouble shooting which involved multiple restore attempts, each of which took at least an hour, only to have it fail.  I was on the phone working with our backup appliance vendor trying to determine why it was not working.  I knew I was in trouble when he basically said he had exhausted all of his ideas. By the end of the normal work day I was still heavily in the weeds.  The network was limping along since I brought the other DC’s online but there was absolutely no email access for anybody for the majority of the day.

So as I was working on the DC problem, in between failed restore attempts I was looking more at the Exchange server and it’s missing mailboxes.  I realized that the mailboxes were in the “disconnected state” which at first was sort of a relief since I could reconnect them manually.  However I did not realize at the time that not all of the missing mailboxes were there, I later realized almost 50 of them were still missing.

So I finally gave up on getting the domain controller back online.  I seized the FMSO roles and forced them to one of the other DC’s I have on the network.   I then blew away the original DC, reinstalled Windows 2012 and readded it to the domain as a new DC.  I then turned my attention fully on the email situation after grabbing a dinner that consisted of a large coffee and bagel from the Dunkin Donuts across the street.

So I figured that if I did a restore of the mailboxes from the prior night that should get me up and running.  I never had to restore Exchange on my Unitrends appliance.  My first couple attempts failed so I got on an online chat with a tech around 9PM.  He remoted into my machine and helped me get the restore going which of course involved a lot of waiting as it completes.  When the restore completed I remounted the mailbox database and refreshed my view, hoping to see all of my mailboxes intact.

You can imagine my feeling when I saw less mailboxes, dramatically less.  Instead of 56 mailboxes in a disconnected state, I had 7 now, meaning almost 100 mailboxes were gone.  The Unitrends tech again had no more answers, the back up restored correctly, the issue had to be something inside Exchange.  My brain was pretty much fried at this point.  The rollercoaster of fix and fail attempts was frustrating to say the least.  However I was in it for the long haul.  I broke it so I had to fix it.

So I did some more Google searching and found another Exchange powershell command that refreshes the database view “Clean-MailboxDatabase -Identity <database name>”  after running the command and refreshing my view in 2010 Exchange console I now had 105 mailboxes in the disconnected state.  I breathed my first sigh of relief in the last 12 hours.  I still had a lot of manual clicking and typing to do to reconnect each mailbox to the correct user account, one by one.  By the time I finished up it had rolled into Thursday morning.  I turned off the lights in my office around 12:15AM.

By the time I got home, showered and into bed it was approaching 1:30.  I had to get out the door as early as possible today in case more unexpected problems arose.  Luckily my phone has been pretty quiet all morning, meaning my crazy collection of fixes more or less worked.  It was one of those true tests of determination.  Being able to continue pushing forward through a forest of failure until you discover the path to success is a trait some people simply don’t possess.  It is one of the few good traits I have, I don’t give up easily.

So I called for repair of my leaking hose bib first thing yesterday.  I wound up calling Best Home Services, a company I used years ago to run an electric line for the pool heater.  They weren’t cheap back then but they did good work.

I was told their arrival window would be between 2-6pm.  I was pleasantly surprised when I got a call at 1:15 saying the tech was en route.  Someone arriving BEFORE their arrival window is as rare as a solar eclipse in SW Florida.  I got home a few minutes after the tech, named Shaine arrived.

I walked him over to the leaking fixture and explained to him the series of events.  When he looked at the leak he was pretty sure all he would need to do was put a new hose bib on.  He explained to me that bibs are normally sweated on (soldered) which I never knew.  I assumed it was threaded on.  It explained why I was unsuccessful when I tried to turn off the hose bib on the other side of the house a few weeks ago.  In retrospect I was lucky I didn’t crack that one.

I told him the amount of water inside seemed excessive for what looked to be a just steady drip.  When I showed him the sopping wet towels he was a bit surprised but still thought the bib was the culprit and not a crack in the pipe inside the wall.  He then gave me the estimate for the work which gave me an interesting choice.  He said to replace the hose bib would be $230 bucks but for $299 I could purchase a one year service contract which covers routine maintenance on your AC, electrical, and plumbing systems.  In addition it gets you 10% off repair work and waives the normal after hour and holiday premiums if I have a problem.  I did not call on Labor Day for that exact reason, I didn’t want to pay a premium for holiday work.  When he said he would replace the hose bib for free if I opted for the service contract it made the decision a no brainer.  The house is now 15 years old.  Throwing another $75 onto the bill for a year of free PM and savings on potential repairs was a good deal.

So Shaine got to work.  I did not watch the process of replacing the hose bib although I probably should have.  It would be good to add pipe sweating  to my bag of home repair tricks.  It didn’t take him very long.  When I went out to look at the repair I first thought he replaced the pipe and the bib as it was bright copper.  He said he just sanded down the pipe before soldering on the new bib.  The fitting and pipe looked bone dry which was encouraging.

Shaine said that he was very confident the problem was fixed but if there was any more water showing up after letting my mega fan run all night I should let them now.  I thanked him for his great service.  It was so nice to actually have a pleasant repair experience.  I could tell almost immediately that the leak had stopped.  The fan dried up the remaining water quickly and none flowed in to replace it which was a good feeling.  I let the fan run overnight just to be safe but tonight I should be able to put the room back together.  I was very glad I made the decision to not cut a hole in the drywall in the office.  It would have been just another unnecessary repair to make.

Last night I was under Katie’s truck, a 2005 Dodge Ram, after dark.  She had said it was driving weird and making some abnormal noises.  She had sent us a picture of the undercarriage.  It had what almost looked to be wet grass in a concentrated area.  I wanted to get a first hand look.  When I got under there with the flashlight I was even more confused.  The green substance was not grass, it was grease.  The fact that it was green is what confused me.  I later looked online I found that there is indeed green grease.  It is actually supposed to be a higher grade of grease compared to the black variety I was accustomed to.

The way it was on the undercarriage was weird, it almost looked like someone put the grease in a cake icing tube and squeezed, hard.  Through observation of the area that was coated and more research online it appears that the CV boot on that side has either a pinhole or small tear and centrifugal force while driving has expelled the grease.  The fact that it is making noise while driving means this has probably been the case for a little while.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the CV joint will need to be replaced.

We made a plan to have her drop off the truck at a garage she has used before, hoping they have a chance to look at it today.  We followed her in the Prius to make sure she made it to a Publix where she met up with her (ex) bf where he followed her to the garage.  She is using his car for now since he has a company truck to drive.

I am hoping one of the things we can talk Katie into is getting rid of the truck.  It is about as impractical of a vehicle as she could own right now.  It gets terrible gas mileage.  She said spent something insane like $600 in gas for it in the last month. For reference sake, we spent less than $400 to drive 6600 miles in the Prius last year on the road trip.

Her commute to work is even longer than mine and they used the Ram for a couple longer trips as well.  The thing is over 10 years old with about 115k on the odometer so repairs are going to be a more and more regular occurrence.  Plus the clear coat on the truck is starting to oxidize.  If she doesn’t dump it soon the exterior is going to really look like shit, making it harder to sell.  Katie said a few people had expressed interest in buying her truck.  Both Cindy and I told her she should take advantage of that interest.

I have felt very weak since I started the prednisone which I finished up last Friday.  At the gym my bench press numbers were the most anemic as I can recall in the last year.  After work I did some pull ups followed by another 20 minutes of rowing.  My pull up totals were 25% off my norm and after rowing I just felt wiped out in a pretty serious way.  When I weighed myself last night I was surprised to see I had lost 3-4 pounds, the opposite of what is supposed to happen on prednisone.  Weight gain is a common side effect.  Whatever is the ultimate cause, I hope the fog clears soon.

So I took off Thursday and Friday not only to give me a nice five day holiday weekend, it was also so I could drive Cindy up to the VA clinic on Thursday morning.  She was meeting a doctor to go over her MRI results from over a month ago.  Yes things move slowly at the VA.  Cindy had gotten a heads up that the woman she was meeting with was “not good” from a friend.

The doctor was probably in her 50’s and took good care of herself, looking fit and healthy for her age.  She started asking Cindy a number of questions about some of her symptoms.  When asked, Cindy would try to expand and give more detail about what has been going on.  Almost immediately the doctor took on a very impatient mindset, cutting Cindy off, just asking for numbers and dates.  Once again, similar to my recent experience, the doctor was being thrust into the role of a data entry clerk as she typed all of the info into the computer.

At times she took on an almost combative attitude, acting like everything was black and white when it comes to Cindy’s issues.  For example when Cindy said she had mercury poisoning, the doctor immediately insisted she didn’t.  When Cindy had her blood test for heavy metals it was at the very top end of normal range.  It was high enough that she got a call from our local health department to ensure her high levels weren’t from something environmental like a contaminated water supply.  So yes, technically Cindy’s number was not in the poisoned range but it was one tick away so obviously it wasn’t good.  Since Cindy stopped eating fish she got retested and the number had dropped significantly.

The doctor continued making proclamations about various things like her word was equivalent to Jesus.  “There is no such thing as medical marijuana” and “lifting weights is bad” were two that really stuck out to me.  Cindy was getting visibly upset from the attitude this doctor was taking towards her situation.  I was literally a few seconds away from making a scene and telling her it is inappropriate, unprofessional, and just plain wrong to not listen to her patient and instead cut her off repeatedly when trying to expand on symptoms.

It was almost as though the doctor sensed she had gone too far and that both Cindy and I had enough.  She started to soften her tone the rest of the exam.  She did a physical exam on Cindy testing a few baselines and went over the results of her MRI.  The exam and MRI didn’t confirm any dire diagnosis which was a good thing.  The doctor had some blood drawn to rule out more things, one of which could be B12 deficiency related, a common thing for people that do not regularly consume meat.  There were some other possibilities brought up that again have much less dire consequences which is good as well.  We left the VA feeling better about things but both feeling a bit amazed at the attitude this woman brought to the table.

We got a TON of rain from the storm that later turned out to be Hurricane Hermoine.  The property had standing water everywhere.  The instant swamp conditions brought in tons of birds by the dozen, all hoping to feast on whatever was in the water.  At one point I bet we had 100 ibis in our yard.  The two hawks that seem to have taken up residence around our place were around nearly constantly.  They too enjoy hunting in the water.  The chickens joined the party, caring less about the rain, roaming the yard all day looking for fresh bugs.

My Tacoma was at the dealership on Thursday, getting it’s 5000 mile service.  While it was there I asked they perform a TSB that addresses shifting issues with the truck which would cause it clunk into gear when shifting from reverse to drive randomly.  By the time we got back from Cape Coral the truck was done so the timing worked out well.  On the drive home the shifting of the Tacoma definitely felt better than it did previously.

On Friday Cindy was gone a good portion of the day.  I got work done around the house and got miles logged on my Ninebot One.  I had set a loose goal to crack the 100 mile mark over the weekend.  Below you will see the footage from my rides on Thursday and Friday.

On Friday I also changed the oil and filter on my Tacoma.  Wait, didn’t I just have it at the dealer?  Why yes I did but the dealer does not change the oil until 10,000 miles believe it or not.  With the new synthetic lubricants and engine design, the old 3000 mile oil change interval is just not needed.  Even so, I did not want to wait to 10K to have it done.  You may recall I actually swapped the oil in the truck after the first 1000 miles.

This time I was doing the oil and filter which made the job a little more involved.  The new Tacomas use a cartridge type filter now for some reason.  Instead of just replacing the entire filter, you remove an outer canister and then just replace the filter element that is housed inside.  You also have two O-rings to swap out.  In addition, to reach the oil filter, the skid plate on the bottom of the truck has to be removed.  So although in almost every way, the 2016 Tacoma has been better than the 99 Tacoma, ease of oil changes is not one of those things.  Since it was my first time replacing one of these types of filters I ran into a few snags but all in all it wasn’t bad.

Saturday morning was once again chore heavy.  One of the things that wound up on the list was trying to “fix” the outside hose connection.  It had one of those quick fit connectors on it that I used years ago when I used to water the property by hand.  Over time it started to leak which made noise and wasted water.  The hose that was attached to it was not in good shape either so I figured I would replace it as well.

So I headed over there with my large slip joint pliers to break loose the fitting that was very rusty and had not been touched in many years.  At first it did not want to budge so I pulled harder.  It then budged but I also immediately saw a drip develop on the feed pipe that was exposed from the side of the wall.  I had some small concern but I figured it would either stop or was just from the threaded hose connector being a little loose.  Later in the day when I noticed it still had not stopped I went to the hardware store and bought some heavy duty PVC cement as well as self sealing silicon tape.  After turning off the water to the house I used the combination of the two around the exposed portion of the feed pipe.  At first I thought I got it fixed but later saw it still was dripping, just closer to the wall. Oh well, I guess I just will have to live with the drip for now. (more later)

I also did a quick evening grass mowing session, wanting to take advantage of the brief break in the rain that allowed most areas to dry to the point where the ground was soggy but not submerged.  During the day I also built a landing in front of the steps of the chicken coop out of patio blocks.  That area had become a muddy mess from the all of the rain combined with the foot traffic of Cindy and I in and out of the coop.  The blocks gave us a stable and dry surface to step onto before ascending the steps which was good.

Saturday night we watched Zoolander 2 at home.  Cindy wasn’t thrilled about the rental when she saw the envelope but she had to admit it was funny after taking it in.  If you saw the original Zoolander you already know it’s all about stupid/silly, over the top humor.  It had me laughing out loud repeatedly so it deserves a B+ in my book.

On Sunday morning I again drug myself out of bed with the alarm, despite being stiff and sore from my pretty laborious Saturday.  I was again running solo and I again started at the track with nobody else around until somebody flew in.  That somebody was a bald eagle that landed on one of the light towers as I was completing my second lap around the track.  He seemed to be watching me as I went round and round.  In my head I used the majestic bird as a reason I needed to keep going.  He stayed there for the rest of the four mile run, refusing to vacate even when a a couple of noisy quaker parrots were diving at him.  It was very cool to have an eagle on site.

For the second week in a row I surprised myself with the numbers on the GPS.  Last week my injuries had me somewhat limping, causing me to use a shorter stride.  I was amazed that my overall pace last week was better than when I was running normally.  This week I was less injured but again tried sticking with a shorter stride but faster foot cadence.  Again my numbers were surprising, averaging 9:00 miles for the run, a pace I have not maintained for a very long time.  Using a shorter stride actually is a good thing for someone with bad wheels like me.  It keeps my feet more under me when they hit the pavement, which causes less trauma to my knees than when I try to use a long, loping stride.  I guess I will stick with it and see how things progress.  Today I felt very minimal physical repercussions from the run.

Shortly after I got home Cindy and I headed out for a ride on the Minipros.  We covered 6 miles, the farthest Cindy has ever logged on her bot.  We also stopped in at the gym she has been working at where I got to meet the owner who seemed like a nice guy.  The gym is good looking and filled with brand new equipment.  Now all they need is to get the word out.

I brought the wheel with as well.  I had Cindy follow me on the Minipro as I rode the EUC to get some 3rd person perspective video, something I have very little of.  It was interesting to see my form from a distance.   For the most part I look like I know what I am doing.

I actually went out on the wheel a second time later in the afternoon.  I was getting close to my 100 mile goal.  By the time I finished the odometer on my Ninebot One read 98.5 miles.

This morning I woke up a bit frustrated.  It felt hard to believe that I was already on the last day of my mini-vacation.  It felt like I hadn’t gotten to relax as much as I had hoped, despite logging a lot of wheel time.  I started off with a 20 minute session on the Concept 2 rower.  It was the first time I got on the rower since we bought it from Bill.  I purchased a data logger card so Cindy and I will have running totals of just how many meters we pulled.  I tacked 4300 meters plus onto my total during the 20 minutes, a decent start.

Mid-morning I decided I wanted to head to Ave Maria with the wheel to cross the 100 mile mark.  The town is a perfect spot for PTV riding with wide sidewalks that lead all around the huge town area.  I put in about five and as half miles during the ride which put me well past the century mark overall.  It was a nice little accomplishment for me and something that a month or so ago was an impossibility.

Later today Cindy was in the office and I heard her say “Uh, Shawn…” in a tone that never means anything good.  She said the floor by her desk, which sits along the same outside wall as the hose connection, was soaked.  I instantly knew the cause and went outside to rip off the silicon tape.  My first theory was the tape job funneled the dripping water backwards toward the hole in the wall which in turn pooled inside, soaking the rug.  However once we ran the carpet cleaner over the rug the amount of water it sucked out seemed like way too much to be caused by a small drip over two days of time.

We pulled Cindy’s desk away from the wall and I pulled the still soaked carpet up.  At first I had the small fan in our bedroom on the floor to help dry things up.  I then realized the monster fan that is used to inflate the GMT arch moved a ton more air so I brought it in and hooked it up.

I was struggling with a plan of action.  At first I was thinking about cutting a hole in the drywall more or less in the area where the hose is on the outside but didn’t.  Even if I did see the pipe, I was going to let a real plumber fix it so I would rather he make the cut, if necessary, instead of me.  I then climbed in the oven hot attic, hoping there may be some sort of shut off on the line so I could cut water to the hose without killing it for the rest of the house.  I was unsuccessful with finding one.

So my plan for now is to let this fan blow dry the shit out of that corner and only turn on the water to the house on an as needed basis to minimize the leak.  At first I thought the leak was just from the exposed portion of the hose pipe but with as much water as we saw I am worried that there is also a crack inside the wall.  Fixing it may involve knocking a hole in the outside wall, the drywall, or both.  Of course I feel frustrated that if I just left that hose fitting alone I would not have to be dealing with this shit.

The Eagles made a surprise move and traded Sam Bradford to the Vikings who lost their starter to a horrible knee injury.  The trade got the Eagles back some draft picks they gave away securing Carson Wentz.  I’m not sad to see Sam go.  He was mediocre at best last year and the hissy fit he threw when Wentz was drafted was a big turn off.  The move means we will see Wentz as the day one starter which is exciting in one way but disappointing in another as it likely means the fan base will be in for a rebuilding year more than likely.

Cindy’s daughter was over quite a bit this weekend.  There is the possibility she may be moving in for an interim basis as she tries to exit a relationship with her longtime boyfriend that has not been great for quite awhile.  Although it obviously changes our living arrangements considerably, if it gets Katie on a path that leads to more happiness down the road it will be worth it in the long run.  She is too young to have her options limited.