True colors, MI 3, Pirates, Weekend
Even though I joined Powerhouse gym on Thursday I still went to JFZ on Friday. I was doing back and abs and could still do that reasonably well with what equipment is left there. It’s entertaining seeing all the people coming in with bewildered looks on their faces. The transformation and prejudice against physically fit people was never more apparent than Friday. Instead of playing music off their satellite system they now are playing canned easy listening type music off a cd. The CD includes little ad for the gym that goes something like this – “JFZ gyms, no pressure, no judgement and NO BODYBUILDERS” WTF is their problem? The hypocrisy of a “fitness center” discriminating against people that take fitness seriously is overwhelming. If you have nothing better to do go to www.planetfitness.com and tell them how full of shit they are. Listen to this radio ad off their website, it gives you a clear idea of their mindset. Today will be my first workout session at Powerhouse, wish me luck.
We had a nice weekend. I spent a lot of time still working on getting the pool swimmable. It’s a cycle of cleaning the filters, dumping chemicals, skimming, sweeping, etc… that doesn’t seem to end. The rain we got last week was enough to kick start the grass so we mowed and weed whacked the patches that started to grow. It looks much better now.
Three years ago I bought a Magicolor 2200 color laser printer that has served us well. However a few weeks ago it came up with a “Replace OPC Drum” error that prevented it from working. I looked into the price of a replacement opc drum and after seeing the 100-125 dollar price tab I decided to just replace the printer since it also would start needing toner cartridges as well. I tried listing it in the paper for 75 bucks and indicated it needed an opc drum and got zero calls in a week. So I did some digging and found out that the OPC drum error is simply caused by a fuse popping that is designed to fail after a certain amount of time. It doesn’t mean the opc drum is bad. So I bought the fuse for 5 bucks, installed it this weekend and it’s back in business. I’ll try to sell it again, this time with no disclaimer.
My video card in my home pc went out this weekend. It locked up in a game of WoW and then was causing the pc to lock up, black out and just be generally disagreeable. At first I saw this as a reason to finally replace the pc which I have had for I bet close to 4 years which is an eternity for me. I told Ali I could either spend 300 on a video card or just buy a new pc. Ali was not thrilled with either idea and asked if I could get less expensive card to get by until xmas time when she could get me a pc as a present. I did some digging and checked prices and saw I could get a decent card for less than 150 bucks. So we compromised and I went out and snagged a card at Best Buy, installed it and all is good with the world again. It would have been a huge pain in the ass to reinstall all of my applications/games anyway.
Saturday night Ali and I had a nice time out. First we went to an early showing of Mission Impossible 3. It had some good action although there were some holes in the story that made little sense. During one scene where Tom’s objective is to steal an item that is in a building with supposedly impenetrable security, they show him running in the door on the roof and then the next shot is him breaking out a window and parachuting to safety with no details about how he managed to steal the item. That was lame. Of course the plot went far above the line of remote reality and bordered on ridiculous at times. I walked away from it feeling lukewarm. I’d give it a B-.
After the movie we wnt to Carraba’s for dinner. While we were waiting for a table we were talking to two older ladies whom were friends. One was from Spain the other was from Venezuela. Their thick accents coupled with the background noise made it hard to understand them but we did the best we could. One thing we did understand was how they both viewed America as too worried about work and money. They said in both of their home countries people are much more laid back, much more interested in enjoying life in the here and now and less worried about working like a dog for 30 years so you have adequate retirement funds to “enjoy” when you are too old to have much fun. It was interesting hearing their perspective and made me think how right they were.
Sunday morning Ali and I went to the track. My knee was in no shape to run so I brought my rollerblades to use while Ali ran. The oven has been turned on down here and even at 9:45 in the morning the heat was oppressive. As we went around the track, two mexican soccer teams showed up to get ready for their 10am game. The heat sucked Ali’s energy quickly but her first interval run started very fast. She really has great speed for short bursts. She could stay with me stride for stride if I was going all out. Rollerblading is definitely much easier than running, other than my feet hurting in the blades, I was hardly winded after rolling for a half hour.
I downloaded Pirates of the Caribbean which we watched Sunday night. Both Ali and were very tired. I was dozing off repeatedly during it so it’s hard to give it an accurate review however what I saw was decent. C+ to B- We saw the preview for the next one that is due out soon and the trailer looked awesome.
I’ve been reading a lot of horror stories about people and their WoW addictions. These stories make me seem like a casual player. Some lose it all as a result of their single focus of this game.