Cut off, boat anchor, 85 bags of mulch on the wall, The Fighter, fizzling 4th

So on Friday afternoon I noticed that I was no longer able to pull mail from my home server.  I figured the power was out, it happens quite a bit during the summer time in our area.  When I got home I took a peek at the cable modem and saw the online light was not on, meaning I was still offline, shit.

I did the normal unplug and replug trick that rarely works on the cable modem to no avail. Well I figured there must be some sort of local outage so I grabbed my cell phone to call the bastards at Comcast.  The woman I got on the phone had me disconnect and reconnect the coax line in addition to a power reset.  I was still out of luck. The woman then started in about how something may have became “loose” or possibly something chewed through a wire.  I told her that it is odd that something would become loose all by itself in the middle of the afternoon and I assured her we didn’t have rats in the attic chewing on wires.

The woman said she would have to schedule a tech to come out.  I was surprised by this as I assumed multiple homes in our area were down.  She said there was no widespread outage.  Ok so as I waited for her to figure out the tech schedule I was already running my Saturday through my head, trying to figure out when would be the best time to have a tech arrive.

When the woman said the soonest someone could come out was MONDAY I was flabbergasted.  “You are joking, right?” I said in disbelief.  The prospect of a long holiday weekend without internet service was not something I was very interested in.  Besides the recreational use, I needed internet access to process online registrations for the race we were timing on the 4th of July, f me.

I expressed my displeasure with the very slow turn around for a tech visit.  Monday seemed outrageous, Comcast techs work Saturdays and Sundays.  The woman assured me that was the earliest it could be addressed.  I hung up quite annoyed.

So now I had to come up with some way to get down the race entries.  Luckily I had one jailbroken Iphone in my pocket to save the day.  I had several ideas about how I could get internet access to the house.  One of which was to set up the Iphone as a local wifi hotspot and pump everything through it.  The problem was I didn’t have a wifi adapter for our desktop pc’s.  Later that night I made a run out to Target to grab a USB wifi stick.

With that stick in my PC I was able to pull down my race entries although the connection was VERY buggy and would drop out quite often.  My original plan of getting the entire network on via wireless was unsuccessful.  It was after midnight until I got to bed.  I was up that late just trying various configurations to minimize the impact of three unplugged days. I went to bed frustrated.

When I got up early Saturday I did some more messing around with my connection through my Iphone.  I found out that mostly just web traffic works in this method.  I was unable to ftp, rdp or do anything fun like play WoW via this connection.  Ali was out early doing a long run.  Since I had no electronic entertainment available I got busy outside.

We had rain almost every day of the past week, enough that we already have standing water on the property.  It also caused the grass to grow at jungle-like rates.  After weeding the property I grabbed the weed whacker and whacked away.  I discovered that my 8 year old waterproof boots aren’t so waterproof anymore as I sloshed through wet spots in the yard.  By the time I was done weed whacking I had a layer of green scuzz coating the lower half of my body from the wet grass.

I also wanted to do some more troubleshooting on my cable modem.  I figured if I hook it out at the pole that feeds our house it would eliminate the inside wiring as a problem.  Even though it was drizzling outside it didn’t stop me.  I ran an extension cord out to the pole and connected the modem directly to the line feed.  It was still dead, damn.  It didn’t do anything to help me get internet service restored any faster but at least when a tech came I could save him some troubleshooting steps.

My internet outage had other side effects, some expected, some unexpected.  Of course things like our Vonage service, streaming tv, my Sony Dash, 360 etc were all pretty useless without internet.  The one thing I did not expect to be affected was my Tivo Premiere.

Years ago Tivo’s gained the ability to pull their program data down via the internet, freeing them from using something as low tech as a phone connection.  When a Tivo pulls down data it typically grabs at least 2 weeks worth, so if you lost internet you wouldn’t be able to pull down an updated programming schedule but the box would continue to function normally otherwise.  Well that was the case for every model up until the latest and greatest, the Tivo Premiere.

Ali and I had planned to sit down and watch some of the shows we had recorded while we ate a meal.  When I turned on the TV I saw a message on the Tivo screen that internet access was not available (no duh) and that some features would not be available until it was restored.  Ok no big deal, I just want to watch stuff that is already recorded and sitting on the box.  But, I can’t.

Whenever I tried to navigate the menu tree I would get stuck in a loop and none of my shows were there.  I figured it must be some weird fluke since it lost internet access while the box was up so I restarted the Tivo.  Imagine my pleasure when after the 10 minute boot up process I was greeted with the same lack of functionality.

I was beyond annoyed.  Surely there has to be some sort of thing I am missing. So I call up Tivo support so they can tell me how to view the shows that are on the box.  I get a woman and describe the problem.  She almost sheepishly admits that that is how the Premeire currently works.  If you have no internet connection, NOTHING WORKS.  WTF? That is idiotic?  I questioned the woman about why in the world would it be designed to lock you out of your recorded content without an internet connection.  She had no good explanation and could only offer up that there is a new system update in the works that may change that behavior.

I knew bitching at this woman would accomplish nothing.  I hung up dumbfounded at the stupidity of this set up.  I later discovered that using my Tivo HD, which is not castrated by the lack of a net connection, I could transfer content from the Premiere back to the bedroom to watch it there.

Tivo is already on somewhat thin ice with me as far as the viability of their service.  The one advantage they have is the content lives locally on my box so I can do with it as I please.  To kill that feature if no internet connection exists is just another stone in the cart against the service.

Since I didn’t initially think of the bedroom Tivo option we watched a Netflix dvd I had sitting around for a week or two, The Fighter.  I recalled the film getting good reviews and it has a strong cast including Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale.  I was instantly impressed with Christian’s transformation.  Gone was his beefy Batman body.  He emaciated himself to play the role of  a strung out brother on crack.  On top of that he was able to throw out an incredibly good Boston area accent, especially when you consider he is from Australia or New Zealand, some place like that.  He did a FANTASTIC job portraying the role.

The movie had a Rocky-esque plot which is always a plus.  Even Ali, who was initially negative on viewing the film said it was good.  It really was well done.  It gets a solid A from me.

On Saturday Ali accompanied me to Home Depot to pick up some mulch.  The landscaped areas on our property needed it badly.  When mulch reaches a certain age it breaks down to a level where weeds treat it just like dirt and grow abundantly in it.  So at least once a year we dump down a thick new layer of mulch to retard the weed process.

Having Ali with expedites the mulch loading process.  She gets in the bed of the truck and I hand the bags up for her to stack and arrange.  I know from past experience that I can get roughly 30 bags of mulch in the truck before I risk bag spillage.  We bought the mulch but didn’t plan to actually spread it until later in the day Sunday.

We started out our Sunday with a brick at the water park.  I didn’t want to do any running yet as my right knee was still somewhat swollen from my Rumble appearance.  So we just did a bike/swim brick.  Ali said her legs were tired from the long run Saturday so she wanted to just ride her bike around the park while I hit the road with mine.

This was the first time I did a decent ride with my new slick red striped tires.  The ride went well, I averaged my best average pace ever for the Livingston Road course, a solid 19mph.  I also covered the roughly 12.25 miles in 38 minutes and change, again another best.  Doing all of this on my $300 Dawes is more satisfying for some reason.  Just imagine when I get my next bike how fast I will feel considering the all aluminum Dawes checks in at 27 or 28 pounds.

I put in 1200 meters in the pool at a decent sub 9 minute per 400 clip.  Ali swam almost double that distance.

Ali was lucky to avoid my wrath when she pulled a boner.  I gave her the key fob for the Camry before I went on my ride.  She had no pockets on her so she thought she would just stuff it in her bathing suit, surely she will remember to take it out before she starts swimming.  Well of course she didn’t.

After several laps in the pool she realized she still had the key on her and jumped out.  When she told me I shook my head and kept swimming since I was mid-400.  The water helped to hide my annoyance.  Why would you put a key in your bathing suit???

So after I finished my 400 I hopped out to survey the damage.  I knew how to take the FOB apart since I have changed the batteries in it before.  When I popped it open I was very happy to see that Toyota engineered the fobs against people that decided to swim with them by protecting the electronics behind a rubber seal.  It looked like that despite several hundred yards under water the electronics were unscathed.

We both were relieved when it still worked when we went back out to the car. That relief turned into annoyance once again when we were greeted with a parking spot monger.  Despite the fact that we had to load and secure both bikes on the bike rack before leaving this dipshit decided it was worth their time to sit there and wait.

Keep in mind 50 yards away were open parking spots which they could have parked and been inside the water park by the time they were done waiting for us.  F’in idiots.  I made absolutely zero effort to make haste in my departure.  I hate lazy people.  Get out and walk.

So Sunday afternoon we needed to spread the mulch we bought the day before.  Again this job is best done by two people.  I would be the bag lugger, ripper and dumper.  Ali was the spreader.  30 bags of mulch only made a dent in what had to be done.  We got the pond and a little over half of the orchard done.

The grass still needed to be mowed so I told Ali she could hop on the tractor and I would go get another load of mulch myself.  Loading up myself was a pain in the ass but it isn’t like I haven’t done it before many times. One nice thing was the red mulch was actually on sale this weekend.  It was only $10 for 6 bags, a steal.

When I got back Ali was still mowing away so I did phase 2 myself again.  It was very humid and warm.  I was a sweaty, mulchy mess by the time I was done.  Unfortunately with 60 bags of mulch on the ground I still needed an estimated 20-25  bags to finish but that wasn’t going to get done on Sunday.

Ali and I were both beyond pooped Sunday night.  Knowing we had to get up at 3:45am to time the race dictated an early bedtime was in order.  I think it was lights out at 9pm.

This race is probably my least favorite to time because it is a zoo.  The race starts at 7am so there is always a lot of people that jam in late.  We had everything set up and ready to go before 6am.  Ali made a comment that it was dumb that we had to be there at 5 since no runners had shown up.  Well that was the calm before the storm.

In short order the area was deluged with runners.  Ali and in total had 160 or so entries that we put in between us.  Ali had plans to run the race with Michelle.  Unfortunately one of the local school cross country teams showed up very late and dumped 20 poorly legible entries on my lap to go along with the already sizeable pile I was working through.

At first Ali said she would just not run the race and help me.  I knew she wanted to run with Michelle so I told her I would handle it.  I had to scurry to the start line to start the race as they were calling my name.  After the start I had to run to the finish line to start the timing equipment and continue putting in entries.  I actually was still doing data entry while the first few runners crossed the finish line. Yea it was pretty hectic.

There was a photographer there from the local paper.  She snapped a pic of Ali and I during the entry process.

Anyway, the race timing went well.  There were the few unavoidable screw ups that we have to sort out every race due either to runner or volunteer error.  We used to rant and rave about the screw ups a lot more than we do now.  There is just no way to avoid them as far as I can determine.

We got out of there about 8:30.  We were invited to a post race pancake breakfast but I had to get home for my Comcast appointment.  They set a window of between 10-1.

Instead of her customary post race nap, Ali had to take a shower and go into work.  I kept myself busy doing post race processing, at least the part I could do without a broadband connection.  I held out hope that the Comcast guy would surprise me and show up bright and early right at 10am.  Of course that didn’t happen.

The tech rolled up during the last portion of the window, around 12:30.  I gave him a quick rundown of what happened and what I tried.  He verified I had no signal inside the house.  He then went out to the pole and said no signal was present there either.  I told him that there was a filter on my line to block the cable tv signal and perhaps that filter was bad.  He pulled out his ladder and went up to take a look.

When he came back down he showed me old filter and coax connector.  You could see there was an electrical burn on the center conductor, evidently the line got hit by a surge.  After replacing the filter and the connector at the pole I checked inside and saw the modem was still offline.  Evidently the surge also zapped something in the modem as after putting another modem in place the circuit came up.

The modem I had in place was one Jeremy gave me awhile back.  I was using it to avoid the stupid never ending rental fees Comcast charges you if you use one of their modems.  The tech said I could just get my own modem again and swap it out with the Comcast owned modem.  Of course I will do that.  I can’t stand the idea of giving Comcast a penny more than necessary.

Originally I had plans to bitch at the tech about the ridiculously long 3 day repair time for the service.  Once he arrived I reconsidered.  I realized he is just doing his job, the lack of staffing and our repair priority involves people far above him in the food chain. Hey at least I was back online.

I finished up the race processing items I was unable to update via Iphone.  I then was debating if I wanted to go get the final load of mulch to finsih up the project.  Part of me was sick of doing work, it felt like I was working most of the weekend already.  But of course the goal completion maniac in me won out, I loaded the dogs up in the truck and we got the last load.

When I got back I had to scramble to get it all dumped and spread before a storm blasted in.  I made it inside a few minutes before the skies opened up once again, refreshing our various water holes in the yard. The one good thing about the standing water is when we have ducks visit.  Twice over the weekend I saw them swimming around in the front drainage ditches.

As I was working over the weekend I saw a funny site buzz down our road.  First there was an ATV that flew by.  They had to be going at least 50-60mph on the 30 mph speed limit road.  The ATV was followed by 3 police vehicles going even faster.  I assume they were chasing the ATV guy.   When I stuck my head out to look where they went all of the vehicles were already out of sight.  Hope they caught him.

Ali and I had made no special plans to watch fireworks.  We both were too consumed with other things to even discuss it.  In a small effort to celebrate the holiday I made burgers on the grill for myself and the dogs which we complemented with baked beans.  I did hear and see the glow of some fireworks off in the distance later that night. That was good enough for this year.