All posts by Duf

Only an hour and a half till the holiday weekend commences. Hopefully by the end of these 4 days our bathroom will be tiled and I can put away my wet saw for good.

Even though it is our “busy” season at work, my days have been rather slow. I have things more or less running like a clock so major problems are few and far between. So I have been using the down time to evaluate Virtual Server 2005. It is a MSFT product (more accurately, another software company purchase) that allows you to run multiple OS’s on one machine. Not in a multi-boot configuration, but simultaneously. So I took an old workstation with Windows XP on it and set up virtual sessions of Win2k, NT, Win98 and SUSE Linux. It’s primary use for me at least would be to support our clients that are using older OS’s but in corporate environments there are some interesting possibilities. It seems to be a solid product.

I hope everyone has a great holiday and I’ll be thinking of you as I take my second annual Thanksgiving dive in the pool.

From today’s Naples Police Beat…..Must have been a big getaway car

? Seacoast Supply, 6190 Shirley St., North Naples. Stolen between 4 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Sunday: seven pallets of steel, valued together at $29,500.

The manual is not very big so sadly, I am running out of quotes here is one of the last ones..

More from the mainenance section:

4. Please check the bolt and nut ofterly. Please adjust lenghth of chain if the chain need to adjust. Please add some lube of need to lubricate.

Here are a nice collection of video game commercials from the golden years! This is one of my favorites. 🙂

Thanksgiving has always been a mixed bag as far as holidays go for me. When I was younger, it meant going to grandma’s for a fancy feast. For the occasion she would bring out the gold plated silverware. All of my immediate relatives were there like my great grandmother, Aunt Sis, my cousins and aunt and uncles. The most memorable food item for me was the dried corn. It sort of looked like animal feed in water, but it tasted ok. Before every holiday meal my grandfather would say a short prayer that always ended with “…for without you Lord we’re nothin…. Amen…” After dinner the entertainment options were somewhat limited but we entertained ourselves by watching football on their 19 inch TV, shooting a basketball that desperately needed air at the basketball net mounted on the garage roof, walking the railroad tracks in the back, looking for loose railroad spikes to add to our collection or possibly throwing darts at the dartboard down in the basement. At the time, I remember the event feeling like somewhat of a drag. Today, I wish I would have appreciated the time more, because like all things, it went away and can never be relived again.

As I went into my 20’s, my first wife had a huge family and they were all about the holidays. They had huge get togethers that were organized chaos. I came to really enjoy them at first, towards the end of my marriage I came to despise them for reasons that are not bloggable.

In my late 20’s to early 30’s, my grandmother was now living alone since my grandfather died, in her apartment. Typically, my mom would host dinner with only a handful of relatives and we would bring grandma over. Later in the day we would try to stop by my Dad’s for a secondary dinner as well. Thanksgiving during that time period was ok but wasn’t as interesting as before.

Now since we moved to Florida, Thanksgiving is close to a non-event besides the fact that I get off from work for 2 days. This year our Thanksgiving will go like this: Watch some of the Macy’s parade, go pick up my mom and go out to Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant. In probably less than an hour the entire meal will be over, so we will drop mom off. Go back home. Watch football. Do some tile work. Moving down here does have some definitive drawbacks and the lack of traditional family functions is one big one. I suspect the only way Thanksgiving would regain any of it’s luster is if we would have a child.

There are an amazing onslaught of quality gaming titles being released all at around the same time. Doom 3 was released a few months ago, followed by Star Wars Battlefront. United Offensive add on for Call of Duty came out recently and throw in the long awaited Halo 2 for Xbox and now today World of Warcraft, the new MMOG game from Blizzard based on the Warcraft series. All of these games are outstanding and as a gamer I’d like to be able to immerse myself into each one of them. The downside is to do this requires huge time commitments and with a wife, a house, a dog, tivo and full plate of responsibilities, it seems increasingly difficult to find the time to do so. My days of spending 16 hours playing Bionic Commando are not likely to be returning.

I recently have gotten some cool game titles like Halo 2 and NFL 2K5 for the XBox however I am embarrassed to admit that neither of these titles have gotten much play yet, I am spending most of my gaming time playing a game that is probably most popular with kids 8-12 years old, Mario vs Donkey Kong. It is a surprisingly great game considering the GBA’s dimunitive size and limited horsepower. The gameplay is smooth and it incorporates many aspects from previous Mario titles resulting in one addicting gaming experience. The game requires a good balance of thinking to figure out how to obtain the objective with coordination to pull off the moves. If you think I am just further reverting into childhood, I dare you to try it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I forgot to mention the best thing of all I got from the neighbors, a tractor sprinkler. I don’t know what the official name for it is but that is what it looks like, a tractor. I remember seeing these around for years but never knew how cool they were. It’s made of heavy iron and uses the spinning motion of the sprinkler arms to drive gears that turn the rear wheels ever so slightly each revolution. The front of the tractor has a pulley-like wheel that rides on the hose, like a train on a track. The result is I can lay out my sprinkler track with the hose, turn on the water and forget it. This certainly beats what I was doing up to this point, manually moving a set of 3 sprinkler heads around the house every half hour or so. I most have told Ali half a dozen times how cool this little piece of irrigation engineering was.

On Friday I was browsing the Stern message board where I saw a member posted that anyone could get in on the giveaway Howard was doing on Friday by simply plugging in the numbers on the certificates that were handed out. It’s a nice deal where if you pre-pay for a year of service ahead of time, you got the hardware and and a car kit for free. So after consulting with Ali I jumped online and snagged a kit. Stern may not be on Sirius for over a year yet but there is a good chance it could be sooner. And even if he isn’t on sooner, Sirius has great programming which makes it worth it regardless. I’ll give my full review once it comes in.

On Saturday morning bright and early the first load of dirt rolled in. The truck driver guy was nice at first but then soured when I told him where I wanted the first loads of dirt dumped. He seemed to think he wouldn’t be able to get in and out. I told him other dump trucks had managed just fine. So with my assistance he managed to get backed in and dumped the first load. Wow a dump truck holds a lot of dirt, the pile was as tall as me. 4 more loads came and after the last one I wrote out a hefty check of over 750 bucks! 750 bucks for dirt, ouch. Plus I have to pay another guy to spread it. The dirt back by the shed is there to raise up the entrance to the shed. During wet season that strip can be totally submerged and hopefully this dirt will be enough to get it up above the waterline. The rest of the dirt went to the side of the house where it is also low. We staked out a rectangle where we want it spread. This area is going to be fenced in and used as a dog run for Nicki. The huge piles of dirt served as a giant playground for the dog all weekend. She had a blast climbing the dirt mountains and digging into them.

The weekend was a series of small chores/jobs that managed to fill up the time rather completely. We pulled off the solar cover on the pool for the first time in a month to clean the accumulated dirt and junk off it. The pool water is still in the upper 70’s but Ali proclaims that is far too cold for her to venture in. Our neighbors have been trying to clear out their huge collection of stuff. They are packrats extrordinaire. They asked if I could use any of the stuff. They had a bunch of cool tools. So I wound up with an air compressor, a post hole digger, and tiller machine, an electric weed whacker, an electric chain saw and a garden claw! Awesome stuff.

The Eagles scored a nice win. It was close for almost 3 quarters but the Birds turned it on in the end and made it look like more of a blowout than it really was.

If you have a cool picture, why not make it into a huge rasterized picture? This is REALLY cool.

That fight at the end of the Pistons/Pacers game was insane. Of course the fans are assholes for throwing stuff on the player but damn, how can a player be so stupid to go into the stands and throw punches? It was one of the most amazing things I ever saw at a sporting event. As bad as it was, I was sort of surprised the NBA suspended Artest for the entire year! I mean I think it is good they did to send a message that you just can’t do that, I just am surprised they did it.

Todays CEBIM quote, under maintenance:

3. Please in charge the scooter as soon as you will holding it for long time. It can extend the life of the battery.

Under the maintenance section:

Don’t put in the sunshine, and don’t thought the old battery in the fire. Don’t upend.

Yesterday Ali did her first real world test on the e-bike as she took it on a 1.6 mile commute from her work to the gym. Everything went fine although last night I had to do some more repairs/adjustments.

I finished up the second bathroom last night. Ali sealed the grout on Wednesday and last night I cut off the bolts holding down the toilet, grouted around the toilet and put all the stuff back into the bathroom. I’ll post the finished pic sooner or later.

I am sending out more prospecting letters, hoping to hook myself a good deal to buy one more piece of land as an investment. So far, I’ve gotten 2 calls back. One wasn’t interested in selling, the other wanted twice what I was going to offer. I made myself a sweet little online database to track my prospects and the associated information. I’m also trying to find out how you can buy properties that are in the probate process.

Life can be a pain in the ass, my brain hurts.

Here is todays blurb from the e-bike instruction manual under the trouble shooting section:

4. Very low speed and engine less power

A. No more battery, — In charge prompt
B. Less air pressure of trye, –Fill it
C. Too tight brake, –Adjust it
D. Bearing damaged. –Change new
E. Battery damaged. –Change new
F. Bad connection of main lines for electrical. –Reconnect after clear body

As you can see, with these thorough, crystal clear directions it is lightning quick and easy to trouble shoot your e-bike.

Speaking of the e-bike, I spent most of last night fixing more things on it. I found a sturdy way to attach the front basket, tightened up bolts in a half dozen different spots that were loose, fixed the steering column so it didn’t wobble like it was going to fall off and found a way to mount the bike on a conventional bike rack. I think it is just about ready for real world use. Ali was out on it awhile last night trying it out some more and is pretty comfortable on it. At full throttle it zips along at somewhere between 15-20 mph so it is certainly much faster than foot travel. I just hope it holds up.

The new gym is FINALLY open. After a month of no gym visits, my longest streak in 10 years I finally got to go back. It’s big, clean and has more machines than I can figure out what to do with. It’s great. I look forward to hitting it hard. I lost a lot of strength in that 4 week period.

Here is another CEBIM (Cheesey E Bike Instruction Manual) Quote.

Under features of the E-Bike:

3. Battery: Big capability, pallution protect. Long live.

The Eagles romped all over the Cowboys last night which I was very happy about. However, being in a fantasy football league changes the way you look at games. The situation was this, I was 2 points ahead of my opponent. He had Terrell Owens and The Eagles D on his team, I had Jason Witten and Brian Westbrook. The outcome of these players was going to decide my FF game. When Owens jumped out to the quick TD’s I was happy for the Birds but I was assessing the point total against me at the same time. When the Eagles were in close and Levens scored the TD, I cursed the Eagles for not letting Westbrook run it in for the score. But even with the big performance by Owens, I matched it with a good performance by Witten and Westbrook. With less than 5 minutes to go in the game I was ahead by 2! Then the Birds intercept the ball, run it back 100 yards for a TD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The defensive TD gave my opponent the few points he needed to take me down. It was strange having the guy running the ball back and hoping he gets tackled. Of course if the game was close, FF wouldn’t matter as an Eagles win is of utmost importance over anything else. But with the blowout, I was hoping the Birds could do me a favor and just coast for a little longer. It’s ironic, the pass that was intercepted was intended for Witten. If he makes the TD grab I win. FF is a strange beast.

Last night we anxiously awaited the arrival of Ali’s E-bike. The E-bike is half scooter, half bicycle as you can pedal it or ride it like a moped. I got it off ebay for less than 200 dollars shipped to my door so I knew there were going to be some “issues”. The UPS guy got stuck covering 2 runs instead of one and didn’t show up until after 8. I anxiously greeted him and drug the 70 lb box inside to open it up. The box looked like it had a bumpy ride so we were a bit concerned before we even opened it. When we opened it we weren’t very pleased. The bike was thrown in the box with a few pieces of broken styrofoam and tools, parts and instructions were laying around everywhere. The wire basket that is for the front was bent to hell. The bike itself seemed to be intact although it had numerous scratches and nicks on the paint.

I pulled it out, unfolded it and opened up the instructions. I immediately start laughing as I read the directions to Ali. This is obviously made in Hong Kong or Taiwan. They didn’t make any effort in trying to make the English version of the instructions make any sense to someone who spoke English. This manual will be the source of many blog laughs to come. The first funny line I come to is:

1. Front handle: Install the plum screw of the flexible handles firstly, (lsoen) and make tight the screw of the plum lock, then turn tight the screw

There are no typos above, that is exactly how it is written

Let’s skip to step 3:

3. Whole body check; Turn on the switch of the power and switch key, check it if light. The rear brake if ok. The air pressure of trey is noaml. The screws of every parts is losen. After check everywhere is ok. Then can for road test.

As soon as I saw this manual I knew it was going to be an “interesting” assembly procedure.

I got the bike unfolded ok, and the handlebar installed. Next I went to the seat. The seat adjustment clamp was designed to be tightened with no tools, however it would not get tight enough to actually stop the seat from sliding down the tube. If you tried to apply too much torque, it would simply spin and get no tighter. After f’ing with it for awhile I decided to temporarily take the clamp off one of our bikes to lock it in place. That worked.

My next issue was trying to figure out how the kick stand worked. I pulled it down and managed to unseat a metal clip that kept in place. I had to use a screw driver to pry it back up into it’s original position. Then I figured out how it was supposed to work. Then we tried to figure out if the electric part of the bike was functional. The manual was next to worthless for anything except for repeated laughs at the attempts at English. There were keys but when we turned them we got no lights, no action from the motor, nada. So we plugged in the cheesy looking charger that draws an ominous big blue spark everytime you plug it into the wall. Again we tried some of the switches and got no signs of life. Hmmmm.

Ok well let’s at least see how it functions as a bicycle. We wheel it outside in the dark and Ali hops on. She rides it to the bottom of the driveway and back. It is clumsy and slow but at least she is moving. She went to go back down to the road for another lap to show me how some of the indicator lights sorta glowed while she pedaled and all of a sudden the back tire locks. Hmmm, I tell her to back up and try again and to not squeeze the brakes. “I’m not touching the brakes” She tries to go forward again and again it locks. Ah shit, I do a closer inspection. The chain that runs from the electric motor to it’s sprocket has hopped off and is wedged between the sprockets and the spokes of the rear wheel. After some aggravated, cursing minutes trying to unwedge it with a screw driver, I got the chain back to where it belonged. I then tried to adjust the rear wheel back a bit to take out some of the slop on the chain. Ali did another bicycle mode test run and we took it back inside to throw it back on the cheesy charger.

When Ali went back to take her shower during halftime of the Eagles game I decide to start playing with it again. I discover that the key turns in another direction, and that direction turned on some lights!! I nervously twist the throttle and the rear wheel spins! Yahoo. I immediately notice that the sprocket on the rear wheel has a bit of a wobble to it, but it doesn’t seem to affect it’s functionality. I excitedly tell Ali to come out and look. She sees my triumph and I convince her to come outside with me again so we can do a powered road test. She is scared to try it first so I jump right on it and take off. I go down the driveway, into the road and down to the neighbor’s driveway, do a loop and come back. It is a bit clumsy but has decent power and was easy to operate. Seeing my test run gave Ali the courage to try it. She did the same run at a slightly lower speed with little trouble and returned safely. Well it works.

Tonight we will do more practice runs. I am very skeptical about the long term reliability of this obviously cheap product but if it holds up for a little while it will be a bargain. We intend to throw it on the back of the car for Ali to use to take to and from the gym during the day so we don’t have to spend an extra hour at the end of the day for her to work out. It should be an interesting experiment. Pictures of the cheesy e-bike will be forthcoming.

I had a long 4 day weekend and used about half of it tiling the small bathroom. I have been avoiding it because it was such a pain in the ass doing the foyer, kitchen and utility room. The bathrooms are a bit less daunting because we decided it would be ok to go over the exisiting vinyl instead of going through the hassle of stripping it. I came to this decision after talking to the contractor we got a quote from to do the work. He said it would be fine to do so as long as the existing vinyl is well adhered, which it is. So the only prep I had to do was sand the floor down a bit and sweep it. The task was a bit more involved because I was doing it solo, however the prior experience of tiling helped greatly. I was able to get the tile laid down, cut and set in thinset in about 7 or 8 hours. Then on Friday I grouted it in a couple hours during the afternoon.

One of the aspects of doing a bathroom that worried me was the toilet. I originally was considering leaving the toilet in place and tiling around it, versus pulling it up and tiling under it. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that if I pulled the toilet and installed it on top of tile, which was higher than the vinyl, it wouldn’t fit right and I would have a leaking, stinky mess. Well after removing and replacing the bowl, I saw that those ideas were dumb and it sealed just fine on reinstallation. I did the entire job without many issues and I think the final product looks good. I just have to wet cure the grout yet tonight and then seal it anytime after that. The worst part of tiling is the knee trauma it inflicts on me. Crawling around for that long just makes my knees scream, even with knee pads. I hope to tackle the other bathroom during the extended Thanksgiving weekend.

So even though I was busting ass doing the tile project, I also spent a lot of time being a lazy ass at the same time. For example, on Friday, from about 8am till lunchtime, I did nothing but screw around on the Xbox. I took a couple hours to grout and then screwed around some more until Ali came home. It was weird, even though I did the tile work, I felt like a bit of a bum.

On Saturday morning we had to get up bright and early to take the Nissan up to Fort Myers to get my 30,000 mile service. When we bought the car, we had a problem because the dealership sold us a car that had 1500 miles on it and didn’t tell us. As compensation, I negotiated that they give me a free 30,000 mile maintenance. I’m glad we had it, otherwise the dealership would have charged me a RIDICULOUS 500 bucks to perform this work which seemed rather routine. I presented the service guy with my letter from thier sales manager, “US Marine” and he accepted it without question. I got a call during the morning asking if I wanted them to perform some additional ridiculously priced service while they were at it, which I respectfully declined.

During the afternoon we went to a lawn & garden show which was being held right down the road from us at the county fairgrounds. We picked up a fruit bearing banana tree as well as detailed instructions from the grower on how to be a successful banana farmer. I threw together a quick planting box for the banana tree and planted it. We also got a beautiful bougenvilia plant. Supposedly, within 16 months we should be harvesting bananas on a regular basis.

On Saturday night we had a date night. We went to dinner at Olive Garden and then went to see The Incredibles. It was an entertaining flick but it wasn’t a must see for me. The WOW factor for these computer animated films has worn off a bit for me. It’s still amazing what they can do but it takes more than that to entertain me at this point. The movie was good but it didn’t make me want to run out and tell everyone to see it. These type of films seem to be coming out monthly at this point. The Incredibles is doing huge box office numbers so my opinion must definitely be in the minority.

On Sunday morning I went into lazy ass mode again. I got a device for my gameboy that allows you to write game backups to flash memory. It’s awesome because it allows you to store 5 or 6 games on one cartridge and pick and play any of them at will. SO I spent a couple hours testing out various games. Eventually I started on what seemed to be my large task list. I cracked the whip and got most everything done by 1. Then I went back into lazy ass mode. The Eagles don’t play until tonight so I didn’t watch any NFL games and instead screwed off some more. I don’t know why I get stir crazy if I am not doing a sufficient amount of “productive” activities but by dinner time I was bouncing off the walls. I medicated myself by doing the bills and then doing a workout from Men’s Health. Ali can not understand my issue with having nothing to do, I can’t say I blame her.

The new gym is finally, finally supposed to open this week. It has been a frustrating month getting date after supposed date when they were going to open. It sounds like the county is being ridiculous with some permitting issues but still, the gym shouldn’t have kept throwing out dates to open without knowing for sure they were good. You always should under-promise and over deliver. To accomodate Ali getting to and from the gym on her own during the day, we have an E-bike coming today. More details to follow but it is basically a bike/scooter hybrid.