All posts by Duf

I cringed as I walked back to do my 300 and saw Mr Exercise ball back there again.  I looked at the guys face more this time.  He typically has a look on his face like a toad that ate a sour fly.  Once again as I am busting ass trying to go from one ass breaking exercise to another, this guy is doing his stupid, worthless ball moves, taking extended nap’s in between.  I was so annoyed.  I resorted to banging shit around.  If he won’t leave on his own, maybe I can drive him out from the sound of a 135 pound barbell banging off the floor 50 times.  No such luck, he stayed the entire time.  I WILL drive him out, one way or another.  I can’t take looking at this guy f’ing off.

So one of the big reasons I wanted to upgrade Ali’s Treo 750 to Windows Mobile 6 was because WM6 supports HTML email, you know, the type of email that has embedded graphics and pictures in it.  With WM5, when you get an HTML email you get the text links to these images but not the images themselves.  It’s a bit annoying. So anyway I was confused when I was looking at HTML email on Ali’s phone and still saw it had the annoying text links in it.  I did a little digging around and found out the perturbing facts.  WM6 does support html email as long as you are pulling via POP or something along those lines.  However if you are activesynching with Exchange, ONLY Exchange 2007 will allow you to see html email.  That is bullshit.  To require someone to migrate to Exchange 2007 to do this is an obvious ploy by MSFT to force upgrades that have no real reason to occur. Small Businesses don’t need ENTERPRISE level messaging but yet that is the only option MSFT has left for those wishing to upgrade.

  It wouldn’t be such a big deal if MSFT didn’t make Exchange 2007 such a huge pain in the ass pig to deploy.  It REQUIRES that you install it on a 64 bit version of Windows Server which means new, expensive 64 bit compatible hardware and no easy upgrade path for someone running any of the prior Exchange versions.  You basically have to install Exchange 2007 on it’s own dedicated box and migrate mailboxes across.  Well in my little home network running on rubber bands and paper clips, this isn’t going to work very well.  It pisses me off.  Ali could care less about not having html email on her phone, it bugs me though.  All the MSFT would have to do is change a couple lines of code and Exchange 2003 could deliver HTML email just fine and dandy. 

The weather this weekend was awesome!  We finally had our first real cool front come through.  The past two nights it has dropped into the mid 50’s at night with highs during the day just around 80 with low humidity. It was just about perfect.  When you have just gone through 6 months of  90 degrees with high humidity, the chill in the air feels great.

The perfect weather made the huge list of “to do’s” not seem bad at all.  One of the first things I did was check out the source of leaking water in the garage.  The water was coming out from behind the fridge so I assumed a drain was clogged with spider webs or something.  However when I pulled the fridge out I saw the basing around the hot water heater was filled with water.  Damn it.  The heater is only 6 years old but I guess if it is a budget model, which I’m sure it was, I suppose it could be failing.

So I did some quick looking around online to educate myself about water heaters.  It looked like I could get a decent replacement that is bigger, self cleaning and has a 9 year warranty for about 300 bucks at Lowe’s. Add a trip to Lowe’s to the list.

So I wanted to get some of my other list items knocked out.  I replaced the air filter on the tractor, scrubbed down the pool and fixed the floodlight on the front of the house.  Then I decided to trim the Palmetto.  The Palmetto is a bushy palm bush that sort of has a whole bunch of mini-cabbage palms jammed together.  As long as we have lived at the house we have talked about trimming this thing and never had.  I went at the project myself, Ali’s back was still bothering her from the pruning project from last weekend. 

I put on my shitty old leather gloves that I have had since I worked at Goodwill.  These gloves had been through the wars and as a result were falling apart.  Several of the fingers were ripped open and several seams were pulling apart.  Hand protection is mandatory when working with a Palmetto.  The shaft of the fronds is serrated like a bread knife.  If I took one and drug it across your arm quickly you would be in the hospital getting stitches.  I sat down on my ass, reached into the bush and started trimming away.

I bet I removed at least 100 fronds both dead and alive.  As I scooted around to the far end I got an unpleasant surprise.  I evidently disturbed an ant mound but not a fire ant mound, big ants.  The ants flew out and started biting the hell out of my feet, yea I had flip flops on.  I shot up and immediately swatted them away.  As I was trimming there were multiple times where I got cut up via the holes in my gloves.  When Ali came down to check on me I told her I had to get new gloves, this was crazy.

Finally I was done with the primary trimming but that wasn’t good enough.  The center of the Palmetto was filled with dead fronds.  I wanted them out.  So I wedge myself between some fronds, ignoring the pain of the fronds digging into my hands, arms and sides and start reaching and ripping. I grab the base of dead fronds and pull.  The dead wood snaps easily and I throw the remains out in a pile behind me.  I’m sure I looked like a dog digging a hole in the dirt.  Finally I was done.  It looked much better.  The various cuts I had on my body were worth it.  Another 5 year old project finally gets done.

So I get cleaned up and head out to Lowe’s.  I had entertained the idea of possibly buying the water heater, throwing it in my truck and performing the replacement myself.  I’m pretty sure that I would have been able to get it done.  I was basing my decision on what the labor charge would be to install the new heater.  So I found the heater that I saw online and tracked down a guy in the department to talk to about it.  I asked how much the install charge was.  He said a normal install is $229 if no special work needs to be done.  The cut off line I had in my head was 200 bucks so that was close enough for me to continue.  The way Lowe’s handles it was less than ideal for me but I can understand it I suppose.

The install is 229 BUT the way they do it is charge you 35 bucks to have the installer come out first, survey the potential install to identify any possible issues and THEN he comes back another day with the heater.  In my little ideal scenario, i would pay for the heater and the install on the spot, the guy comes out once and does it.  However I can understand that two visits could potentially eliminate a lot of unforeseen problems.  So anyway, I paid just the 35 bucks for now.  The installer is supposed to call me today to set up appointment number one.  I would hope that by the end of this week we will have a nice new Whirlpool water heater sitting in our garage.

After Lowe’s I also had to stop at Sam’s.  During my errands I had both windows in the truck down and had my 90’s alternative channel on Sirius blaring.  It was just very enjoyable to drive that day.  Traffic didn’t bother me in the least.  I felt uncharacteristically upbeat about that moment in time.  It was such a beautiful day.

I bought a new pair of leather gloves at Lowe’s.  I retrieved my old torn up ones and after a momentary pause to recollect and reminisce about the gloves that I have owned since the early 90’s, I unceremoniously threw them in the trash.  I did feel bad about it.

On Saturday night we finally got around to watching Shrek 3 which I have had forever.  The movie was average on the funny scale, Ali and I laughed a few times.  It was definitely the weakest of the three.  I think the Shrek franchise has run it’s course.  No more need to be made. I’d give it a B.

On Sunday morning Nicki, Ali and I piled in the truck.  I dropped Ali off at the gym for spinning class and then Nicki and I headed to my mom’s.  I had my caulk gun in hand to finish up the ceiling out on mom’s lanai. The job didn’t take very long at all.  I had some caulk left over that I used to fill a few gaps around the exterior windows that have been known to let critters in.  Even with the extra caulking I still had 10 or 15 minutes of spare time to just relax and shoot the breeze with mom before I had to go pick Ali back up.

Once we got back we had one more big chore to knock out, mowing and weed whacking.  I went around and weed whacked everything, then I switched attachments and put the hedge trimmer head on along with ear protection.  This new trimmer seems louder than the older one, especially when I use the other attachments that require me to sometimes hold the motor closer to my head to hit certain angles.  I was amazed how well protective headphones worked. After using the trimmer, I slapped the blower head onto the unit to clear the sidewalk and driveway.  All in all I am pleased with the new weed whacker even with the increased noise output.  It also uses more gas than the old unit.

Once I was done weed whacking, Ali was still mowing.  She saw I finished and came over to me and asked if I could finish up the mowing.  The constant jostling was not doing her painful back any favors.  So I hopped on the mower and after another hour or so, the grass was all done.  It was about 1:30 in the afternoon, the rest of the day was pretty much chore free.  I chose to spend a good chunk of it vegging out playing WoW.

This past week I actually have played very little WoW.  I think I went a stretch of 3 days or so where I didn’t even log into it.  The iron-like grip it once commanded on my free time has definitely relaxed significantly.  It is starting to get tired.

Before the Eagles disaster, I just happened to be watching 60 minutes as a result of watching the Colts/Patriots game.  They had yet another astonishing story of incompetence and deceit tied into the 9/11 / Iraq war scenario.  It was all about an Iraqi informant, code named fittingly enough, Curve Ball.  Curve Ball was THE primary reason that the United States used as a basis for believing that Iraq was actively producing WMD’s.  Curve Ball defected to Germany and sought asylum.  He told German intelligence elaborate, detailed information about a chemical plant that he worked at.  He said that this plant produced chemical weapon agents, he witnessed it first hand.  When Colin Powell went in front of the UN, he used Curve Ball’s depiction of events as one of the backbones of “proof” that Iraq was indeed in the chemical warfare business.

Of course you know where this is leading.  The United States used Curve Balls stories as the nail in the coffin, the indisputable proof that W wanted to legitimize his desire to attack Iraq.  However the US never talked to Curve Ball.  In fact the US only went on what German intelligence told them.  German intelligence told the US that although they thought Curve Ball was credible, they were unable to confirm ANY of what he said.  That was good enough for us, let’s invade! 

As the story goes on it reveals that not only was Curve Ball not credible, pretty much every single bit of information he gave the Germans was a lie.  Yea he was at this chemical plant, which was the only thing true, while it was being built, that was it.  The time line he gave for witnessing the events was totally made up, he wasn’t even in Iraq at that time.   The chemical plant turned out to be a seed purification plant.  No chemical warfare, no hidden trucks going in and out.  In fact this was all verified by UN inspectors 3 weeks before the Iraq war started.  It didn’t matter, W and his war profiteering buddies needed a new source of revenue! 

So basically the number one first hand source used by the USA as proof of Iraq WMD’s was a total scam artist.  We went to war on unconfirmed allegations of someone that we didn’t even talk to ourselves.  Unbelievable.

I went through the trouble of burning Loose Change to dvd to give to my one buddy at work to see.  If for some reason you are unable to watch it online and would like a dvd version of it, let me know.  I’d be happy to send you one.

Ok so let’s talk about that disastrous Eagles game.  It doesn’t get any worse than that.  During prime time in front of a national audience in your home stadium, you get creamed in every aspect of the game by the hated Dallas Cowboys.  To make matters worse, TO had a huge game, happily taunting away the entire time.  I had no expectations of them winning but it still was painful.  Andy Reid looked like he was about to cry several times.  The fiasco with his family combined with a team in disarray is surely enough to break a person.  The 2007 Eagles are done, toast, finished. 

Luckily I forgot my watch today for the 300.  I’m sure I didn’t clock in at a 23:20, I bet it was closer to 25 minutes.  My energy level was low.  I had to struggle just to get get to 300 reps.  The last set of 25 pull ups was broken into 4 sets, I just had no gas in the tank.

It was another one of those days when I had another annoying individual back in my cave.  This time it was an old guy that was incredibly average looking.  Horseshoe pattern baldness, middle aged, average height, average weight.  Well this guy was doing this ridiculous workout that looked to be a click or two above sleeping in terms of calories burned.  He had a padded mat and one of the balance balls.  He would do sets of very simple, slow, easy rolls on the ball and then would relax for 5 minutes in between sets, practically taking a nap on the mat while his feet were propped up on the ball.  I found this incredibly annoying as I was busting my ass.  After he got done with his casual ball routine a couple times he got up and put on padded gloves and hit the heavy bag that is in the cave.  Again this was ridiculous looking.  He hit with no force, instead he just fired rapid fire little love taps while standing flat footed.  It looked like what a 5 year old does when he puts on his first pair of Socker Boppers.

Now of course logically I know that this guy is entitled to work out in as silly as a manner as he pleases.  But when I am in the middle of a 300, the stress and strain I am putting my body through short circuits the patience portion of my brain.  I really had the urge to just turn to the guy and yell “Will you just get the F out of here??!!!” 

So I get a call yesterday afternoon from Ali who was home.  She first asked if I could hear her, which I could.  Then she starts on a rant about how much she can’t stand Vonage.  She said today during several calls the other person would not be able to hear her or the call would just disconnect.  Ever since we got Vonage Ali has been pretty vocal about her dislike for it.  Unlike myself whom keeps the majority of my phone calls under a minute, Ali will sometimes spend longer amounts of time on the phone.  I have had a few problems even during my brief calls like reverb, garbled audio and some of the drop outs Ali was bitching about but not a ton of them.  We are not alone with Vonage problems.  A 30 second Google search will turn up many, many pages of people complaining about Vonage service.  The scary part is when you read the drama these people had to go through to get out of Vonage.

So anyway, last night after work I did a number of things that supposedly address some of these issues.  I dialed back the bandwidth Vonage looks for from 90k to 50k, I relocated the VOIP box from the computer room to one of the spare bedroom to get it away from the cordless phone and wireless router that supposedly can cause problems and finally I went into my Linksys router and set up QOS (quality of service) for the Vonage adapter, giving it priority over all other internet traffic.  If after all of those changes we still have regular issues I will be forced to endure what is sure to be a customer service nightmare and try to cancel Vonage and port my number back to the shitty POTS system.  My favorite thing about Vonage is getting my voicemail’s mailed to me.

The weekend has no major shining stars.  I have various things to do already lined up in my head.  I want to swing over to mom’s to caulk around the ceiling on the lanai.  I was going to swap out vehicles with her too.  She told me yesterday that she took her Rav4 to the dealer to have them look at an issue with it wanting to stall until it warms up.  Of course once they get their hands on it they come back with a laundry list of “suggested” maintenance to be done which potentially could cost my mom 1700 bucks or more.  I told mom that I wished she would consult me before making decisions on mechanical repairs on her car.  However her car ownership history is filled with her getting socked with huge repair bills and me finding out after the fact. I guess some things never change.

The Eagles play the Cowboys this weekend.  I wish I had a more optimistic outlook for the game.  It sucks going into a Cowboys game with a feeling that a losing outcome is all but ensured.

It’s time for the voting for the Spartan Halloween contest, go there and vote for me!!!! My evaluation of each finishing Spartan is posted here.

Even Spartans have a day job…..

So last night was Halloween.  The weather was pretty nasty with rain and wind.  Our trick or treater turn out has always been spotty to non-existent since we have lived there.  However I was optimistic and turned on the entryway light to welcome any possible visitors.  Well I turned the light out at 9, not a single soul rung the doorbell. I was mildly disappointed.

I had no desire to play WoW last night, instead I sat down and watched Bladerunner.  Bladerunner is one of those movies I had heard about over the years but never saw, like Godfather, Good Fellas and Scarface.  John just happened to have the DVD at home so he let me borrow it.  The story takes place in 2019, a scant decade or so from now.  It’s funny how the view of 2019 is imagined in 1982, when the film was released.  Flying cars are everywhere and instead of being overrun by Mexicans, it depicts a Los Angeles that is mostly populated by Asians instead.  The film was rather bizarre and creepy.  It was entertaining but it I would have no reason to ever see it again. I guess I would give it a B+.

So the beard came off last night.  When the hair on a face gets as long as it was on mine, removal is a two step process.  I lined the sink with paper towels so I wouldn’t be washing tons of hair into the drain.  At first I tried to use the clipper part of my normal electric razor.  That wasn’t up to the task, it would pinch and pull as it tried to chop through the thicker growth on my face.  I went and got the trimmer Ali uses when cutting my hair.  That worked much better.  In a minute I had it knocked down to a nice tidy uniform length.  It actually didn’t look bad all trimmed up like that.  I’ll have to keep that in mind in the future.  After the trimming, shaving it with a razor was easy.  I have to admit after a month of seeing hair on my face, it almost looked naked without it.  The hair added some sort of visual strength to the chin area, clean shaven I looked “weaker”.  I think part of that is my hair is a bit longer than normal.  The beard balanced it out, without it things look out of whack.  Time for a haircut too I guess.

See all of em here. This is a damn fine photo shopping if I do say so myself.

Spartan CAM!!

Yes the big day has finally come.  It’s a relief in many ways.  I get to finally shave off the mess on my face.  I can have less dinners that look like dog food and the self inflicted pressure I have been putting on myself to get to this point can be relaxed a bit.  Last night I took my pictures for the Spartan Halloween contest.  Some of them are pretty decent.  Today I need to do some photoshopping to them so I appear to be in the middle of a Greek battlefield instead of our bedroom.

My vball buddy Jeremy reads my blog pretty regularly and sometimes will comment on it.  Unfortunately he makes his comments through my Facebook page so the comments are only visible via Facebook.

So anyway, Jeremy commented on yesterday’s entries.  He found my run in with the guy at the gym comical but noted that I probably could have taken steps to defuse the situation, presumably being more apologetic or whatever.  He’s probably right, I probably could have done that but there is no way I would have.  I am the type that will very rarely initiate hostility or conflict. However, if someone initiates it with me, a switch flips and I will not back down, to a fault I’m sure.

Jeremy also asked if I had looked into some of the Loose Change debunking information.  The answer is yes.  I read the entire Popular Mechanic article that supposedly addressed the majority of the questions.  After seeing the film I realized that it actually didn’t address nearly all of them.  basically what I read were scientific scenarios to explain certain aspects of the disaster.  What they don’t account for is all of the eyewitness accounts that depict occurrences that would point to the Loose Change conclusion.  I also saw nothing that explained why there was no 757 wreckage found at the Pentagon or the “crash site” of flight 93.

  Speaking of flight 93, did you know that in 2001 it was nearly impossible for a person to make a cell phone call from a plane with the technology that was in place? A study placed the odds of a successful call going out at like one half of one percent, yet supposedly there were all of these cell calls placed from the plane.

In the video of the towers collapsing, Loose Change points out that you can see small explosions blowing out windows below as the buildings start to fall.  Debunkers say this was because of air pressure from the floors above pancaking down.  There are two things that make me not believe that.  First, if it was air pressure why would only small sections of windows break out instead of the pressure popping windows throughout the floors?  Second some of those explosions were 30 or 40 floors BELOW the collapsing area.  Air pressure would not be blowing out the windows that far down. 

Loose Change Final Cut will be released November 11 th.  You can bet I will be downloading that one as well.  It seems that the real evil here isn’t necessarily from W. He is just a puppet figurehead that is dumb enough to be the front man for the powerful people in government that lie at every opportunity to further their agendas.  Watch the documentary, please.

Over the weekend I ran to the convenience store to grab some Diet Coke and to fill up the truck with gas.  When I pulled up all the pumps were taken.  I surveyed the vehicles and saw a Grand Am with people in the two front seats just sitting there so I assumed they just got done pumping gas so I pulled behind them.  They continued to have a nice little chit chat as I grew increasingly more annoyed.  Then after a minute or so, both doors open, a Hispanic woman and guy get out and they saunter into the store.  Most Hispanics don’t have credit cards to pay at the pump.  I was annoyed that they were just taking their good ole time and immediately surveyed for another spot.

I found one and after waiting another couple minutes I was pumping gas.  The Hispanics still had not come back out.  I finished pumping 15 gallons of gas, the Hispanics had still not come back.  I go inside to pick up the Diet Coke, the Hispanics are in the line at the Subway ordering lunch!  F’in idiots!  I can’t stand it when people have no consideration for others.  Ignorant and worthless are the adjectives that came to mind as I shot these morons dirty looks.  

The store had no Diet Coke, only Coke Zero.  I don’t quite understand why you need Diet Coke, Diet Coke with Minerals and Coke Zero.  Evidently Coke Zero uses a different sweetener than Diet Coke.  When I tried it at home I wished they had Diet Coke instead.  Coke Zero is too sweet, yuck.

I expect many things when I go to the gym.  I expect it to be hot, I expect it to be dirty, I expect it to smell, I expect the weights to be strewn about in a haphazard fashion and I expect the owner to be sitting on his ass behind the counter caring less about it.  What I don’t expect is to get into a loud verbal confrontation with a fellow gym member.  Well that is what happened today.

I go into the gym and start stretching on the barbell tree.  The barbell tree in an inverted V shaped rack that holds the preset barbell weights ranging from 20 to 110 pounds.  I immediately notice that someone decided to pull down one of the normal barbells and threw an olympic bar on there with 40 pounds on either side.  There was no one in the vicinity except a woman so of course I figured once again, some lazy ass threw the bar there and was too much of a slug to put it back, so I pull it off and grumpily plop it in the floor against the wall and then go back and put the preset barbell back.  Every single day I find myself picking up after lazy/ignorant people at the gym that are unable to comprehend the concept of putting stuff back where it came from. I figured today was just another day of the same.

So I am down on a flat bench doing dumb bell chest presses and some guy comes over grumbling.  I have seen this guy at the gym for a long time, I never talk to him.  He has some sort of accent that sounds eastern European to me. He is a pretty big guy.  When I walked in he was up at the squat racks towards the front of the gym, at least 50 feet away.  So anyway I hear him bitching about someone moving the bar.  I sit up and say “I moved the bar”  He says “Why you move the bar??!!”  I said because it was on the regular barbell rack, it isn’t supposed to be there”   He said he was using it.  I said I didn’t know he was using it or else I wouldn’t have moved it.  By this time we both were using very angry and an increasingly loud tone of voice.  He says “You should ask someone if they are using something before you move it”  I say “Everyday I pick up shit people leave sitting around here” He says “I’m not other people’s!!!”  I was really angry by now and  fired back “how was I supposed to know you were using it??!!”  “You made a mistake!” he says.  “No I didn’t make a mistake!” I returned.  Then he walks over to the bar which was still on the floor and says “Can you at least help me carry the bar back over to the rack, I don’t want to hurt my back because of your mistake.”  I’m sure fire was in my eyes.  I say “Oh, you want HELP carrying the bar?” in my best “you are a pussy” tone.  As he was on the one end of the bar waiting for me to lift the other end, I stomp over grab the bar with both hands, yank it up myself, stomp back over to the rack and as I threw it down I said “I did not make a MIS (CLANG as I dropped the bar onto the hooks for emphasis) TAKE!”  No further words were spoken. But boy did my work out have a nice angry edge to it.

As I worked out I analyzed the confrontation to see if I was somehow at fault.  Nope, Igor is just a dick.  How was I supposed to know that the guy 50 feet away from me was coming back to use the bar. Before I use anything in the gym, am I supposed to go around and do a personal meet and greet to make sure no one is using the piece of equipment I want to use/move?  Of course not.  The guy is just a big dickhead.   

There is some good follow up info in the comments of the entry two below this one regarding the Loose Change Final Cut documentary.  Here you go for those that are too lazy to scroll down.

Tim Sparke Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 6:22 pm e

Hi Mr Duff

Do get ready for Loose Change Final Cut which proves the official story of 9/11 can’t be true.

This is an online event to be the first to watch the new film Loose Change Final Cut on www.joiningthedots.tv, the new online documentary film site.

I am new to this forum and aware that many of you think that ‘Loose Change’ is ‘conspiracy bullshit’. I have to admit that I was one of those who didn’t question the official story of 9/11 up until this weekend. I even supported the invasion of Iraq – arguing against my even more conservative brother, that if I can’t believe my Prime-Minister, Tony Blair, that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction then we should all give up…..sadly he was right, I was wrong….and the rest as they say is history…..

I saw the new film Loose Change Final Cut on Friday in Sweden at a secret test screening. I expected the film to be full of half-truths, insinuations, and attacks on the Bush administration…..instead it was a cogent mature fact filled essay which showed evidence culled from the US networks (Fox, NBC, CNN, ABC etc) that:

1) At least 6 of the 9/11 hi-jackers were trained at US military bases and two of them shared a home with an FBI informant.

2) That US agents had been tailing the hi-jackers prior to 9/11 and made three attempts to inform the FBI – each time the meetings were cancelled.

3) That the man who according to the fbi funded 9/11, the head of the Pakistan Secret Service, was meeting with key government officials on the morning of 9/11.

4) That Dick Cheney was warned that a plane was going to hit the Pentagon, officials requested permission to shoot it down and he refused permission, effectively condemming 120 US patriots to be killed.

5) That the part of the building which was hit at the Pentagon was, according to Donald Rumsfeld investigating a missing 2 trillion dollars….

There is other utterly damming evidence regarding how Bush forced the EPA to change the air quality warnings about the safety of breathing in toxic fumes from the dust that covered Manhatten and more, and more and more…it is quite remarkable….and all of it, straight from the mouths of CNN, Fox, ABC etc.

As I say I was quite prepared to dismiss the film before I watched it, but don’t take my word for it, watch it yourself and make up your own mind.

After seeing this evidence…which is all from mainstream sources my opinion about the Loose Change boys changed….

23:20 for my 300 today.  The clock has become my mortal enemy.

I’m happy the Red Sox won the series.  It’s impressive that they swept a team that had won 21 of their last 22 games.  I didn’t watch one second of any of the games.

A bunch of the guys that are in the Spartan Halloween challenge got together for a party over the weekend.  Evidently a lot of them know/work together out in California.  Some funny pictures are here.

Speaking of funny, how about an extreme beard close up??!!

Saturday morning I headed out relatively early to Home Depot to pick up some stuff.  One of the things I was looking for was a pole saw to assist in our pruning project.  In 39 years I never have used a pole saw.  I am embarrassed to say that when I saw them over the years they looked overly complicated with the ropes and stuff.  I didn’t really know how they worked.  Well I’m glad I overcame my fear of pole saws, they are a godsend when you have hundreds of branches to knock down that are 15 feet off the ground.

So we started on the pruning right after lunch.  Thankfully it was overcast, otherwise I may have melted into the ground.  We pruned and collected branches all afternoon.  We didn’t mess around with the tractor and the yard cart, the truck was used to dump the junk.  I bet we made at least a dozen trips out to the pit in the back.  It is incredible how much junk you can get off these trees.  Like I said before, the pole saw was awesome.  Instead of having to climb up a ladder and awkwardly and dangerously reach for high branches with a hand lopper, I could remain on terra firma and reach as high as any tree top.  The pole saw allows you to take down bigger branches with the saw part of it, for smaller, rounder branches like the seed branches, you can use the lopper.  The rope is used for the lopper. 

Even with my tool for branch removal, the job was extremely tedious.  My neck was cramping from looking up all the time.  I was constantly getting showered in tree debris, ants and other organic matter.  It seemed like no matter how many branches I removed from a tree, there was always one more dead or unsightly one to cut.  By the time we quit I had no gas left in the tank.  There were actually other trees we could have attended to in the back of the property but I called it as “good enough”.  I had no inkling that this pruning project would be so extensive.  We spent at least 8 hours in total pruning and I bet we could spend another 4 yet if we wanted to get EVERYTHING.  I weighed myself before taking a shower to wash the grime off me.  My dehydrated weight was 178 pounds, whoa.

Saturday night Ali and I sat down and watched Loose Change, 2nd Edition.  Some of the video clips I linked last week were from the Loose Change movie, there are two of them currently and there is another due to be released soon, Loose Change Final Cut.  I told Ali what it was about, she really didn’t know what to expect.  Like me, she never had looked into the 911 Conspiracy theories.  Wow that was some flick.  Some of the stuff they brought out was flabbergasting.  I misquoted last week when I said the guy took out a 3 million dollar insurance policy on building 7 and the rest of the WTC 6 weeks before the incident, it was 3.2 BILLION.  He was paid over 2 BILLION in his insurance settlement, although originally he tried to get over 7 BILLION..  Did you know that Marvin Bush was the head of security at the WTC up until 9/11?  Did you know there was an estimated 193 billion in gold housed in the WTC and only 200 million of it was recovered?  Did you know there were no documented 757 plane parts found at the Pentagon or the crash site in Pennsylvania? The video the government has told us contains Osama Bin Laden confessing to being behind 9/11 is an OBVIOUS fake.  It’s all documented for all to see, if you only take the time to look.

Here is the quote regarding the mission statement for the ultra-right wing neo-con group that included the likes of Dick Cheyney, Donald Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush among others.

September, 2000. The Project for a New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank whose members include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, releases their report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”

In it, they declare that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

There is just example after example of suspicious to down right criminal things that are exposed in this documentary.  I challenge ANYONE to watch this and not come away with serious doubt about the story that has been told to the American public. At the link listed above you can watch the documentary in it’s entirety for free.  Not that we need another reason to despise the Bush administration but this is truly unbelievable, even if only a fraction of it is true. Take the time and WATCH it.  Please post your comments after you see it.

After the movie Ali didn’t really know what to say.  Her dislike of the Bush administration was already so deep that piling on top of it is nearly impossible.  It’s almost like we are living in the Matrix, the government manipulates us to see what they want us to see, feel what they want us to feel, all to serve a truly sick master.

Hey the Eagles won.  They were setting things up to almost follow the Bears game plot exactly however they managed to come up with a defensive stop and then actually were effective with clock management and left the Vikings no time to come back.  They were doing a good job of letting the Vikes 3rd string QB look like Joe Montana for awhile. Hey it’s a win.

When I got Ali the Treo 750 phone, I was very proud of myself.  It addressed some of the complaints she had about her Treo 650, namely it’s poor reliability with synchronizing her outlook email, calendar and contacts.  The 750 does a fantastic job of this and actually does it in real time instead of just once an hour.  The IE browser in Windows Mobile is far better than what the Palm OS offers as well.  Windows Mobile just has more bells and whistles.  Well last night I was working on her phone trying to address a couple issues and Ali asks me if it would be possible for us to simply swap numbers between our phones.  (I still have a Treo 650)  I told her it couldn’t be done, although if we were willing to eat a ton of fees, I think it actually could be.  All the bells and whistles that I find so cool just seem to frustrate Ali.  She said she actually liked the 650 better…. what?????  Hearing that hurt since I thought I did a good job of addressing the problems Ali presented to me with her old phone.

Well one of the things I have been waiting for is the Windows Mobile 6 free upgrade to be released by ATT/Cingular for the 750.  It has even more cool features and would address a couple of the quirks Ali was complaining about.  There have been many rumors that it has been ready to release for months but ATT is sitting on it for some reason.  I have been patiently waiting for the official release although there has been an unofficial version of it floating around for a month or so.  Well last night after hearing Ali’s complaints, I lost my patience.

I downloaded and installed the unofficial version.  It went well.  I had the unit back up and working in about 20 minutes.  I am hoping the OS upgrade will make Ali feel better about the phone.  I still have some more tweaking to do.