Some wins and losses

Having taken an extra two days of vacation to my extend my weekend is a blessing and curse.  Sure it is nice to have the extra time off, unfortunately I have plenty of things in my mental wheelbarrow of things to be addressed.

I started off my weekend Saturday morning with a trip to Home Depot for supplies.  I grabbed some river rock to fill in a few areas in the border around the house, a bag of rubber mulch to put around the pygmy palm in the dog area, a white eggplant, a roll of weed block, a new outdoor ceiling fan and two 10 foot sections of 1 1/4″ galvanized pipe.

The fan was to replace the unit on the lanai that had it’s fan motor die.  Mom requested I fix it before she dog sits for a week.  She has this weird thing where she likes having a fan on outdoors.

The pipe was for an impromptu addition to my outdoor exercise equipment that came into my head a couple days prior, a high bar.  Now you say that I already have an 8 foot high pull bar? Yes but I want a HIGH bar that can be used as a mounting point for my gymnast rings.  Trying to do ring work on an 8 foot bar has some limitations.  The bar I had planned would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 1/2 to 11 feet high.

I planned on utilizing the peak of the large shed as one anchor point for the bar.  I would be attaching the pipe in an upside down L configuration which would then be buried 4 feet into the ground and set in concrete.  It seemed like a solid plan.

Once I got home I started on various items.  Among them was my first lanai door rescreen.  The corner of the bottom panel had a tear in it from Sadie shoving her snout in that area in her anticipation of being let outside.  I put in a fresh piece of super screen that should hold up to future nose pressure.

I also did the ceiling fan swap which took longer than I expected.  I bought the exact same model as I had before.  I noticed on the box that the motor had a lifetime warranty, meaning technically the old fan should be covered.  But of course, who the F is going to take down a 3 year old dirty fan, throw it in a box and ship it back to them?

The most annoying part of the fan is getting all the wires connected.  I have a secondary electrical line tapped into the fan that powers the flood lights outside.  Trying to get all the wires twisted together securely was a PIA.  When I got the fan in place I hit the circuit breaker and was underwhelmed.  The fan worked but now the lights did not! WTF?

After some troubleshooting I discovered that I had the fan wire attached to the white instead of the black wire.  After reversing the wires I was happy to see the fan was now operating properly.  I had to leave all of my installation by product and the old fan laying on the ground because we had to get ready to go to our friend’s house for dinner.

We had not seen Rick and Michael for a long time, hell it may be close to a year.  They live relatively close to us in a beautiful courtyard style home.  The only bad part of it is that the house is in the estates where you are always rolling the dice with what sort of neighbors you will have.

When Rick lived next door to us it was fantastic, it was so nice having a friendly, helpful neighbor that took pristine care of their property.  Now I have had to endure watching the property decay into a ratty looking mess under the new owner’s care.

Rick has a similar problem at his new house where he is next door to people that have way too many animals in too small of a space.  Just by looking at the property I would think they could be related to my trashy neighbor.  In addition to barking dogs they have horses in a tiny little area.  Rick told us some wonderful stories of the horses roaming loose and using his yard as a dumping ground for their massive bowel movements.

Michael is the ultimate host.  He is constantly on the move making sure your drink and plate is full.  We brought our dogs with so they could interact with Zoe, Rick and Michael’s Jack Russell.  Zoe was Nicki’s first ever dog friend when she lived next door.  Zoe is getting up there in years so after our initial greeting she spent much of the evening sleeping in her dog bed.

Sadie had no problem making herself right at home, pulling out Zoe’s toys one by one and playing with them.  Before we left I think I picked up about 7 or 8 of them.

Like I said, their home is beautiful.  It literally looks like a home from a magazine.  Rick made it even better with a new cabinet/counter top addition he installed a few weeks ago.  He has always been very handy.  He did some high quality renovations on his old house next door that impressed me as well.

Ali and I had a nice evening there although we both piled into the van feeling like pigs from all of the alcohol and food.  We were both spent since we both were up since 4:45 in the morning.  Ali at least got a nap in although she did put in a hellaciously long 13 mile training run that morning. Who could blame her?

Sunday morning I was anxious to burn off the excessive social calories from the night before.  We planned to head to the water park.  I told Ali I would bike there and she could meet me at the park.  I planned to do a short run once I got there so she could ride her bike around while I did that.

I really pushed the pace on the ride. I also made sure to pause the GPS as I was coasting to a stop at red lights.  The end result was my best overall pace ever for a ride of measurable distance, 19.6 mph.  I was quite pleased maintaining that for over 15.5 miles.

I then did a short 2 mile run although it felt longer.  I had not run in close to a month due to Rumble related knee pain.  I wanted to keep the run short so I could test out the knee without putting undue stress on it.  I ran the two miles at a high 8 minute mile pace which was good enough for me.  The better news was the knee felt ok during it.

I finished off the brick with 1600 meters in the pool.  Ali has really gotten faster with her swimming since starting her training with the T2 group.  I can barely swim faster than her now where as in the past I could lap her pretty easily.  I guess those 5:30 am swims are paying off.

After eating our traditional pizza and fries water park lunch we headed back home.  Now most Sundays we are pretty pooped from our workout and we are able to relax the rest of the day.  Well my Saturday was very busy but not busy doing normal house chores so there was still a lot to do.

For the most part I left most of the chores to Ali while I started on what became a MASSIVE pressure washing project.  You name it, I pressure washed it.  I pressure washed so much that it actually carried over into a second day of pressure washing.  Over the weekend I pressure washed the bird cage, patio stones, landscape timbers, the inside of the pool cage, the outside of the pool cage, both sheds and parts of my body.  It was brutal.

The only positive I could come up with from all this washing was I was soaked as a result which was actually a good thing since it was so hot and humid.  By the time I finished I was just spent beyond spent.  Pressure  washing  is such a miserable house maintenance chore but very necessary due to the mildew and scuzz that grows on objects from the ultra-damp Florida summer conditions.

On Monday morning after spending a couple hours pressure washing the shed I had a bunch of errands to run.  The first thing I did was return the two 10 foot sections of pipe to Home Depot.  After I bought them on Saturday I realized I was going to have an issue.  I basically needed one of the 10 foot sections cut and threaded so I could connect the pipe together with couplers and an elbow.  Home Depot does not cut or thread pipe anymore.

After doing some investigation regarding the viability of threading pipe yourself (not viable at all), I discovered that Lowes will cut and thread pipe if you buy it there.  Great, I’ll just get the 10 foot pipe at Lowes and have them do cutting and threading.

So after returning the pipe to Home Depot I head into Lowes and quickly find their galvanized pipe section.  I see various sizes and lengths but the longest length was just 6 feet.  Surely the 10 footers had to be hiding somewhere?  I checked all of the surrounding aisles, no 10 foot sections. Damn it.

So now I had to reevaluate.  Like I said, Lowes had a number of different lengths available where as all Home Depot had were 10 footers.  I grabbed two 6 foot sections, a 5 foot section and a 3 footer.  My upside down “L” would have 15 feet of  height ( 4 feet buried and cemented in the ground) and 5 feet of width  that will extend out from the shed peak.

Ideally I would have rather had the 10 foot section for the tall part as it would be one less joint to deal with but this was going to have to do.  The ironic thing was the shorter lengths meant I didn’t have to get any of the pipe cut or threaded.  One more bonus, the pipe at Lowes did not have MADE IN CHINA stamped on it.  Possibly it is domestically made? It was more expensive than what I got at HD so there is a good chance it was made somewhere other than shithole China.

I had a number of other stops that were made along the way.  The girls loved the extended ride in the van.  In total we were out for over two hours.

So when we got back it was getting later in the afternoon but I thought I would start construction of the high bar anyway.  The first thing I did was take a small portion of pressure treated 2″x6″ and mount it to the top of the shed.  This wood is what I would attach the flange to that was to be screwed into the pipe.

I predrilled the holes in the wood to make attachment easier.  I still had issues using the conventional 3.5″ phillip head screws I had brought out.  While standing high on the ladder I was unable to get the necessary pressure on the screw to keep it from stripping out the head.  I wound up using my more expensive but shorter (3″) screws that came with a custom star bit that is very resistant to stripping.

Once I got the wood attached I assembled my pipe sections together to create a very large and heavy L.  I used just grip power to tighten the pipes into the couplers at first and then grabbed my slip joint pliers to try to tighten them further.  The one pliers was a bit small for the job though so it didn’t help all that much.

I then drug the width portion of the L to the center point of the shed so I could determine where I needed to dig my approximately 4 foot deep hole.  After standing back and eyeballing I was centered on the wood, (a plum line would have been better) I started digging with the post hole digger.

When I hit about two feet of depth I started pulling out very wet sand.  When I plopped the sand on the ground it almost looked like I was building a haphazard sand castle.  As I continued the sand turned into pure slop and the hole began filling with water. Damn it.

I hadn’t give any consideration to the difficulty in digging a 4 foot dry hole during Florida wet season.  I quickly realized I was pretty much f’d unless we would get a dry spell of at least a week or so which would allow the ground water level to drop.  The likelihood of this happening before October is not good.

I was very discouraged by my sloppy hole.  Later on Tuesday I took the L apart and stored the pipe in the shed for it’s eventual installation whenever that may be.

On Monday, until the high bar installation cancellation I was feeling pretty good about things.  I had gotten a lot of stuff accomplished. On Tuesday I felt the opposite.

I woke up super early when Ali was getting up to go swim.  I thought I would get some quality WoW time in since scheduled Tuesday maintenance didn’t start until  8 AM.  I was annoyed to see that I picked a Tuesday when Blizzard decided to start their server maintenance at 4AM so no WoW.

I instead turned my attention to the great Iphone game I found last week Tower Defense: Lost Earth.  I am now deep into the maps with only 4 or 5 yet to clear.  I had been stuck on a level called “Vulcan”.  Well after at least 20 attempts I am still stuck on this level.  It is just impossibly hard, even on the default “EASY” level.  There are 66 waves of bad guys.  I think the farthest I made it was wave 62.  The screen is literally just jammed with enemy units.  It seems no matter how many or how powerful my towers are I am unable to survive the onslaught.

Being stuck on this level for so long has revealed one flaw in the game, no intermediate saves.  With levels as big as Vulcan it would be a good thing to be able to save your progress mid-wave so if you die, you don’t have to start back at the very beginning.  Unfortunately no such mechanic exists so each time I failed I had to start back at damn wave 1.  I STILL have not gotten past this level and to be honest I am not quite sure what strategy to use to do so at this point.

Once the sun came up I thought I would do some work on the super screw pool cage replacement project.  I have had my bag of screws sitting around for a couple months unused.  This project immediately lead to frustration.  The bag of screws I bought were 1 inch #10 screws.  Well a pool cage is held together by a number of different size screws.  The screws I bought only fit in a few spots.

So I walked around the cage looking for rusty screw heads that were the same size as what I had.  One of the spots that appeared to have similar screws were the junction points in the pool cage gutter.  These intersections had a number of screws in them, 10-12 per intersection.

Some of the screws were rusty so I decided I would super screw all of them.  As I removed the old screws the hole would immediately start draining water from the gutters.  As I inserted the super screw replacement I noticed that I still was getting some dripping.  I figured it was temporary until I had all the screws replaced.  Well it never stopped.  Now both of these joints have a steady drip of gutter water coming down.  I was annoyed.  I now have plans to reinstall the old rusty screws that don’t leak.

In total I might have replaced 30-35 screws.  Only 500 or so to go. Ugh.

The next item was to finish up the mowing.  Ali had mowed the front of the property and a good portion of the back half of the fenced area.  The rest of the grass was littered with items from the pool deck so she couldn’t do it.  I spent probably close to 90 minutes finishing up the work.  It was good to get the back mowed since once we develop full time standing water the job becomes nearly impossible.

I also installed a new pest guard over the dryer vent.  The piece of plastic grid that was jammed into the vent previously was constantly getting clogged.  The new guard mounts on top of the vent and is much larger.  Hopefully it offers adequate protection while having to be cleaned much less often.

Besides a quick Dunkin Donuts coffee run with the dogs I spent the rest of my last day off at home and spent a good portion of it just screwing around either playing WoW or Tower Defense.

Late in the day I decided to make an attempt at this month’s Bar-barian challenge, a 75 second routine on the parallel bars.  I had put off doing this because I knew I would struggle with it.  Despite building my own parallel bars a few months ago, I am far from adept to doing much of anything on them besides dips and pull ups.  My attempts were comically bad, no one will ever confuse me with Bart Connor.

So I ended my 4 days off feeling like I accomplished some things but that so many other things yet needed to be done, argh.

I received a very annoying email from Netflix last night announcing yet another price increase.  Netflix just increased their prices 8 months ago.  Well this isn’t a price increase, this is bending you over.  In a nutshell they are breaking their DVD and streaming parts of the business apart.  If you want one or the other you pay $8.  If you want both streaming and the option for DVD’s like most Netflix people do, they are going to essentially DOUBLE your rate to $16 a month.  That my friends is f’ing ridiculous.

No, an additional $8 a month isn’t going to break my back but the concept of a company doubling their rate in one fell swoop really pisses me off.  It was classic bait and switch.  Pull in hordes of people by offering a good value and then pull the rug out from under them once they are hooked in.

Now I am not naive, I know what is driving this, streaming rights cost.  A number of Netflix streaming agreements are due to expire in the not so distant future.  Supposedly renewing these deals is going to cost a TON more as there is much more demand for streaming content from multiple providers (Hulu, Amazon, Red Box, etc…)  Evidently Netflix is trying to soften that blow by jacking the rates on their subscribers astronomically.

My preference would be to just do everything streaming.  The issue is Netlfix has limited streaming content, in fact they have been LOSING streaming content from the site, things like Dexter can no longer be streamed.  The only way you can get to see a lot of titles is via old shitty DVD’s.  Netflix knows this of course and is counting on it.

It will be interesting to see if this strategy blows up in their face in the form of a mass exodus of angry customers that don’t enjoy getting f’d.  I know the initial customer reaction to the news has been VERY negative.

I picked up myself a tube of Lotrimin AF today.  I have self diagnosed myself with a case of recurring jock itch that has been coming and going for awhile.  For whatever reason I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Once in a while I would get itchy down there and then it would go away the next day.

Well last night I saw a defined rash on the top of my inner thigh which motivated the purchase.  It was a bit embarrassing as I pushed the box over the counter at Walgreen’s to the attractive female clerk.  The artwork on the box shows a glowing crotch image on the front to illustrate the area it is used for.  I quickly paid for it without making eye contact.