Category Home Improvements

So this weekend felt like it flew by.  There were so many things wedged into the two days I am unlikely to be able to recall all of it with much detail.  On my way home from work on Friday I stopped at Costco to pick up a few items .  I was sort of dreading the experience due to the normal mob scene I experience at the store.   I was pleasantly surprised that the  crowd was only moderate at worse.

Saturday morning the cool temperatures and low humidity felt incredible.  Doing yard chores like weeding and weed whacking was almost pleasant because the air felt so refreshing.  I only started to sweat a little bit after being out there a couple hours.  Cindy and I had to head out late morning to get some stuff.

One of those things was a new cable modem.  On Friday I called Comcast to ask why HBO magically disappeared from my channel line up.  They said the promotional period had expired so the channel was removed. They said they would be happy to add it back in for $15 a month which is crazy.  I told the rep as much, $15 for a single channel is just silly.  I asked if they could do me a favor and either reduce the price of adding HBO or dropping something from my line up I don’t really need like Starz and swapping in HBO.

I was doing all of this through an online chat session.  In total I spent over 45 minutes on this interaction and it accomplished absolutely nothing.  The online rep said they were not authorized to give me any promotional pricing and if I wanted to pursue it further I needed to call their “customer retention department” who is able to give better deals.  Of course this annoyed me and I shared my annoyance with the rep, asking if they understood why it is circle jerks like this that are responsible for Comcast having such a low customer satisfaction reputation? They had no answer for me.

So I jumped through the next hoop and called the number.  I briefly reviewed my situation and expressed my displeasure with it.  The end result of another long block of time was me being moved onto a “Triple Play” package which includes all the premium channels and internet phone service that I won’t be using, for roughly the price I am paying now.  That price is locked in for two years.  I still have a feeling when I get my first bill on the new package there will be more landmines waiting for me.

So anyway, one of the attractive things about this package was it included Blast EXTREME internet which is 150 mbps down and 25-35 up, almost double my current service level.  The rep said the new speed should be immediately available.  Well when I did a speed test, my speeds were identical as before, requiring yet another contact with Comcast.  That interaction determined that if I want the new speeds I needed to upgrade my cable modem, the Surfboard modem that I only bought a couple years ago evidently is “end of life”.  Of course when the package was sold to me a thorough representative would have looked at the modem on my account and identified it was an issue up front.  So anyway, these few paragraphs established why I needed to make Best Buy one of my stops on Saturday to get a new modem.  Once I got it installed my speeds were now as advertised.

One of the other things we bought was garden soil to amend the garden.  We bought 11 two cubic foot bags of soil.  These were the heaviest two cubic foot bags of dirt I ever lifted in my life.  I guess the dirt had a ton of moisture in it.  I have no doubt each bag weighed at least 75 pounds.  They required a major effort to lug around.  I had all of them stacked on one cart.  I had to have my body nearly parallel to the ground as I slowly pushed the cart to the truck in order to have enough power to move it.  It was really, really, heavy. One of the other things we bought was a blow up, animated, illuminated spider for Halloween.  It looks awesome at night.

So I had yet another piece of tech “break” Saturday, my Iphone 6.  During the afternoon I pulled it out for something and noticed it was locked up.  Hmm that’s odd, I have had the phone lock up once or twice in the past but it is normally very reliable.  No big deal, I’ll force it off by holding the power and home button and it will reboot, clearing whatever ailed it.  Well for the first time ever, this did not work.  Sure I got it to turn off but when I turned it back on it would be eternally stuck on the Apple logo and go no further, awesome…

So I did some online research and tried a number of solutions to no avail.  I finally had to blow away the phone and do a fresh OS install on it which of course removed EVERYTHING on the phone.  To get the stuff back I needed to restore my most recent back up.  The bad news was my latest full back up lived on my workstation at the office.  Well I didn’t want to go all weekend with a blank phone so I told Cindy I had to drive into the office to get the phone restored.  She was surprised my back up was on my work pc.  I probably should back it up occasionally at home as well to avoid this scenario in the future.

So I was in the office until almost 7PM getting the restore done.  I then hustled home as Cindy, her brother, his kids, and Katie were all going to the “Haunted and Gross Walk” that is held at the fairgrounds right down the street.  Even though this event has been going on every Halloween for six or seven years I never bothered to check it out.

When we approached the fairgrounds we weren’t sure if the event was going on or not.  The driveway was dark with nobody directing vehicles.  We found our way into a parking space and headed into the main area, a place we normally only visit during the annual county fair.  We immediately got a low budget feel for the event which was not unexpected.  Because of my being late to get home we hadn’t eaten dinner, forcing us to rely on the food vendors there.  There was absolutely no vegetarian sandwiches so I dined on french fries with cheese while picking at some of Cindy’s baked beans and cole slaw.  It was fine.

Despite the low budget feel of the event I was sort of surprised at the kind of high budget ticket pricing.  To go through the haunted walk cost 15 bucks a head.  Cindy’s brother and his young son decided to lay back and not do the walk as Owen was scared.  Cindy, Katie, Taylor and myself entered into the rather long line waiting to get in.

Standing in line was not exactly an enjoyable experience.  The air was quite chilly by Florida standards, in the low 60’s.  The structure the walk was housed in is normally occupied by livestock in warm Florida conditions.  It had a number of these monster ceiling fans to promote airflow.  They were running at full speed creating a constant cold wind on the people standing in line which was not a great thing.

There were cast members patrolling the line trying to scare people the best they could.  The one evil clown was nice enough to pose for a picture with the girls.  The line moved rather slowly as they would insert six people at a time into the walk with several minutes in between groups.  When we finally got let inside I sort of expected it to be kind of lame based on the experience up to that point.

The walk was surprisingly well done with cast members that did their best to scare you.  I was also surprised just how long the walk was.  For a good portion of it I lead our group so I could “protect” the girls.   Most of the cast would sort of ignore me and concentrate on the girls, especially Cindy, who scares easily.  Later in the walk I let the girls lead so they could get more of the experience.  When we finally emerged I was surprised that I actually felt I almost got my money’s worth out of the experience.  It was good enough that I will look to go back next year, I’ll just make sure to eat dinner first next time.

Sunday morning I got up early to get out and run in the gloriously cool weather.  By the time I got to the track the Prius showed an air temperature of 55 degrees which is just about perfect for me.  I had a very solid run for my current endurance level, breaking into the high 8 minute mile pace for only the second time this year, covering about four and a quarter miles along the way.

When I got home we were playing with the neighbors new puppy named Shadow.  He is super cute but of course we are concerned with his interaction with the chickens.  Later in the day Cindy had him in the yard with the chickens, he seemed scared of the chickens and the chickens weren’t too thrilled with him either.

I wanted to get the oil changed on Cindy’s Prius before Katie came over to ride Segways.  I headed out to the newly opened AutoZone location that is now only 8 miles from the house.  In addition to the oil/filter I grabbed a number of other things like new windshield wipers, shop towels, disposable gloves, and an oil catch basin that won’t leak. The price of oil seems to have sky rocketed lately.  Adding those items pushed the bill right to the $100 mark which I had to pay with my Costco Visa since Chase has not been very urgent with getting a replacement card in my hand after last weeks fraud.  I headed home and had the oil changed in the car with time to spare before Katie’s arrival.

I suggested that we take the wheels out to Ave Maria.  I had ridden my Ninebot One out there a couple times already but Cindy and Katie never had.  It was absolutely beautiful weather to be out and about.  Katie is a real pro on riding the Minipro at this point.  We had a very enjoyable six mile plus ride around the grounds.  If I didn’t want to get home for the Eagles game at one I would have been happy to cruise around even longer.

Speaking of the Eagles, I did not think they had much of a shot going into the game.  The Vikings were 5-0 and people were acting like Sam Bradford was now Joe Montana, not throwing an interception this season so far.  Well the game that unfolded was quite interesting with BOTH teams committing an incredible amount of turnovers.  The Eagles also still seemed to be mired in penalty purgatory, hurting themselves again and again.

Despite these set backs, the defense laid a whipping on Bradford, not only forcing him into his first interception of the year but also causing him to fumble two times.  They were smacking him around the entire game.  The game certainly pulled back the curtain on how good Bradford actually is.  He is an average NFL QB playing on a team with a stellar defense.

The game left me even more unsure of if the Eagles are actually a good team or not.  The 3-0 start had a team that seemed to have their shit together in all facets of the game.  The Detroit and much more the Washington game made think opposing coaches had figured out whatever the Birds were doing early on to be successful and taken it away.  Now, after beating the 5-0 Vikings I am hopeful the team has some confidence as they enter a BRUTAL portion of their schedule.  Time will tell but it’s all gravy to me at this point.  I’m just glad Wentz looks to be the type of QB we can actually build the team around going forward.

So while I was watching the game Cindy was busy in the back yard doing an unusual art project, spray painting TRUMP SUCKS in the yard behind the chicken coop.  Her hope was the republican candidate might just catch a glympse of it as he flew in to his rally at the county fairgrounds on his personal helicopter.  During the afternoon there were multiple copters circling the area.  I’m not sure if it was media or security copters, possibly both.  I am sure someone saw Cindy’s aerial message.

We decided to head out on the PTV’s around 5:30, a half hour before the 6PM rally.  We hoped to witness what was sure to be a mob scene.  We first went down 10th street that dead ends to the rear of the county fairgrounds.  As we approached we could hear the PA system booming with somebody warming up the crowd.  As we got closer we could see two sheriff deputies on the other side of the fence at the dead end street.  As we stopped I waved to the one officer who was maybe 50 feet away and he waved back.  Cindy I just hung there, trying to listen to what was being said.  We got to do so for less than 30 seconds before the deputy said we couldn’t stay there.

Even though I anticipated we would get this response, we asked why we couldn’t stay there.  We got the catch all “security reasons” response.  Cindy explained that we lived near by and we were standing on a public road.  The deputy didn’t care and reiterated we couldn’t stay there.  Although it was not worth a constitutional argument I said to the deputy “So we aren’t allowed to be on this side of the fence because of security concerns but we are allowed to be on the other side of the fence?” “That’s right” he said.  Cindy and I rode off laughing at the lack of common sense being applied, joking that perhaps we looked threatening in some manner.

We decided to ride down Immokalee Road to see what the crowd looked like trying to get into the event.  As we approached we saw what we assume was Trump’s helicopter swooping in.  Unfortunately it appeared their flight path did not include Cindy’s backyard welcome message.  When we got to the fairgrounds entrance we saw a massive amount of vehicles lined up trying to get into the event, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most controversial, divisive and ill equipped presidential candidate in modern history.

We rode down the length of the traffic jam, it was just under a mile in length.  The people stuck in line seemed to be interested in what the two weirdos were riding down the sidewalk.  When we got back to the entrance we could hear Trump was starting his speech that I am sure he repeated a few hours earlier in another part of the state.

I was trying to understand the logic of why they would hold another Trump rally in SW Florida.  The area is already heavily conservative, it’s not like he is going to win over any new voters in the area with the visit.  However when I thought about it further and combined it with the visual from the speech that included 80% women in the field of view behind Trump, I realized it is just all about mental manipulation, a classic bi-partisan tactic.  Filling the tv with women, the demographic that should be most disgusted with a Trump presidency is a transparent effort to manipulate the weak minded.  The rally itself is another calculated move where the Trump campaign can broadcast clips of their BIG LEAGUE support in Florida, an important swing state in the election.

I am so tired of all of this mess. The name calling, the accusations, the ignorance, I just want it behind us.  It seems like in the end Hilary will still prevail in the election which is not an ideal outcome in the majority of American’s minds but really the only viable choice to left to us since big money steered the democratic nomination into her lap.  I hope to cast my early voting ballot this week so my participation in the election can come to an end.  I can only hope that someway, somehow, the general populace realizes that American politics is truly all about smoke and mirrors where candidates are tasked with distracting voters and creating divisive, explosive environments that keeps their puppet masters, big money, safely behind the curtains, pulling all the strings.

I recorded some of our Trump rally experience as well.

So Cindy told me during the day that she couldn’t get the tractor started.  It sounded like she cranked it to the point where the battery was too weak to turn the motor.  When I got home I figured I had to drive the Tacoma around back to jump start the tractor which is a pain in the ass.  I then realized I had a much easier option.  I bought a portable power center for race timing.  It is battery powered but has an inverter in it that allows it to provide AC power.  It also can charge USB devices, has a light, AND has integrated jumper cables.  I pulled it out of the closet and carried it to the shed where the tractor was housed.  The motor fired right up and Cindy was off and mowing.  When I sell my race equipment I think I will probably keep the power center, it’s a good insurance policy.

So I took my Ninebot out on the road and again ventured on the far side of Immokalee Road where the streets are very sparsely populated.  I wound up on a long limestone road.  The rough surface added for some additional challenge.  However the biggest challenge was when I drove by a large house that had two VERY large, unrestrained dogs in the front yard.  As soon as they saw me they started charging and barking like mad.  I remained calm and accelerated the wheel without looking back, even though I could hear them in close pursuit.  Luckily they gave up pretty quickly.  They may have been totally fine if I would have stopped but I didn’t really want to find out.  Even if you live in a mostly deserted road, having dogs of that size loose is pretty irresponsible.  You can see them briefly in the video after I put some distance between them and me.

Yesterday we got the Amazon Echo Dot that we ordered close to a month ago.  The Dot is the much smaller cousin of the Amazon Echo.  The amazing thing is it has almost all of the functionality of the Echo at less than third of the price.  The biggest difference is the Dot does not have a high quality integrated speaker like the Echo does.  The small integrated speaker has much more basic sound quality but is fine.  It has a headphone jack that you can use to connect it to a higher quality speaker as well as the ability to pair to a bluetooth speaker.

To be honest the only other difference I noticed was that to change the volume by hand you use two buttons on top of the unit instead of the slick integrated volume ring the Echo has.  Other than those two things, it seems to have all of the abilities of the Echo in a hockey puck sized form factor.  You do not have to have an Echo first to use a Dot, it will stand alone as it’s own smart home hub.

Hooking it up took all of 5 minutes.  The Dot and the Echo actually are aware of each other and will defer to whichever device hears you better so if I issue a command in the bedroom only the Dot will respond and not the Echo, which is in the main living space.  Cindy and I liked having the Dot available to serve our needs in the bedroom without having to scream out to the great room.  We like it enough that I may get one more to put in the office, the other space in the house where we spend most of our time.

This will be my first sort of normal weekend in awhile.  The weather should be AWESOME as our first real cool front is supposed to blow through, knocking our night time lows into the low 60’s.  Sure I have work to get done but  I hope to have relaxing and fun much more heavily mixed into the equation.

So I was pleasantly surprised that my replacement DirecTv receiver was at my door already yesterday.  On the phone I was told it would be 2-5 business days, it got there in one.  Gotta love under promising and over delivering. So last night I hooked up the new receiver which is a much newer model than what I had.  I got everything connected and started going through the set up screens.  When it tried to connect to the satellite service it would repeatedly fail.  I backed up and ran the signal strength test.  It showed straight zeroes across the board , wtf….

So after screwing around some more I finally decided to call DirecTV support.  After verifying that my dish and switch type selections were correct he had me try to connect repeatedly and again had no more success than I did.  He said maybe my dish was out of alignment but I assured it had not been touched.  I did not tell him that I had a likely lightning strike however.  The rep said the only thing he could do was schedule a tech to come out to check stuff out.  Ok, fine. I scheduled a visit for Sunday, yes they work 7 days a week.

So after I hung up I still was not satisfied with the troubleshooting.  Just for the hell of it, I decided to remove the “B-band convertor” that is inline between the satellite coax feed and the receiver.  I reconnected the line to the receiver and tried to connect again.  It worked.  Evidently the convertor which is used to gain access to a number of HD channels was also damaged from the electrical surge.

So I called DirecTv back, hoping I could skip a service call and just have the convertor sent to me.  We went through some more set up screens and verified that even though I was now talking to DirecTV satellites, I did not have access to all of the stuff I should because of the lack of this little grey box.  The rep said the tech will have a replacement convertor if needed.  Well it was obviously needed.  I wound up staying out there until 10 getting the problem sorted out.

It looks like my new 70 inch tv is going to be the last thing to get replaced or fixed.  I got a call from the service that does the repair.  They said they had to order a main board for the TV and that was back ordered.  They probably won’t even have the part for a week, meaning we will be limping along with a TV less than half the size of what is normally sitting there, oh well.

So last night there was some gusty winds and brief periods of rain but overall the effect of Matthew in our area was very minimal.  We slept through the night without hearing any severe weather.  I was glad to see when I woke up that the eye of the storm has stayed comfortably off shore to this point, keeping the worst case scenario off the table.  From what I can tell the biggest problem as of now is large scale power loss but even that is much less severe than it could have been.  Florida is not out of the woods yet as it will be scraping along the northeast coast during the day.  If you look at the long term forecast there is a chance the damn thing could go out to sea, loop around and smack us again.  Let’s hope that scenario doesn’t play out.

Dad, Teresa, Maggie and Clara should be arriving this afternoon for a weeklong visit.  Of course we need to be very cautious with a yard full of chickens.  Until we get a feel for any potential aggression level from their dogs towards the chickens they will be kept separated.  If the chickens are free ranging in the yard the dogs will not be and if we have the dogs off leash the chickens will be inside the coop/run.  Of course we hope everyone just gets along.  I plan to have Sadie out for the weekend as well to add to the fun.

This will be the first time they will have visited my place without me having a large conversion available to shuttle both humans and dogs around the area.  We will likely just have to do the dual car thing when animals are involved with wherever we wind up going.  My step mom and Cindy are planning to go to Key West for a couple days next week which will be fun for them.  Outside of that we have not made firm plans we will just go with the flow as we normally do.

Oh I forgot, we dropped off the Prius to get the passenger wheel bearing/hub replaced since the part I ordered on Amazon showed up yesterday.  The repair took on a more urgent nature since Cindy and Teresa plan to take the Prius to Key West to maximize mpg.

So I left work early to meet the Comcast repair guy at home.  Once again to their credit, by utilizing the Comcast account app I was able to get an arrival window that was within 15 minutes of being accurate.  The Haitian repair tech didn’t seem to be in a great mood from the start.  When I opened the attic crawl space he wasn’t happy it was so hot.  When he saw the way the original installers handled the wiring he was really unhappy.  He was complaining nearly non-stop about how lazy they were and how they don’t do things as they are supposed to.

Eventually he settled down.  He determined that what I suspected was the case, the powered splitter in the attic was defective.  In addition to replacing the splitter he also changed the wiring around to whatever the proper configuration is supposed to be.  In total he was there for less than an hour.  It was nice to have cable tv up and running although we could have survived with streaming content indefinitely.

So I did some more investigation of my AV equipment after the guy left.  As I feared, EVERYTHING that was connected to the tv via HDMI was f’d up.  That list includes the blu-ray player, the satellite receiver, the Xbox 360, an HDMI hub, the X1 DVR and the tv itself.  I was able to get a free replacement DirecTV satellite receiver without even picking up the phone, able to complete the transaction via online chat session.  The satellite box was actually unplugged from power at the time of the incident but got smoked anyway via the HDMI cable.  The blu-ray will come out of my pocket.  The Phillips unit that I had hooked up was sort of shitty anyway so it doesn’t break my heart to replace it.  The 360 has not been used this year so I just ripped it all out with no plans to replace it.  My days of console gaming are pretty far behind me at this point.

Cindy had to grab some groceries.  She came up with a good idea where I would go with her out to the Ave Maria Publix where I could ride my Ninebot while she shopped.  I had a good time putting more than four and a half miles on the wheel around the town/campus.  I explored areas I had never seen before.  As usual I got a large amount of head turns and confused looks from bystanders that never saw a person riding an electric unicycle before.

On the ride home from the grocery store Cindy commented on the unusual amount of road noise coming from what appeared to be the front passenger side of the car.  I had noticed the noise for the last few days.  I had actually taken a look at that tire to see if it was abnormally worn or if it had something stuck in it that could possibly make the noise.  The tire looked fine.  My next idea was the wheel bearing was going bad, something that would make sense considering the Prius is rapidly closing in on 200,000 miles.

When I got home I looked online and saw front wheel bearings going bad on a Prius are not an unusual thing.  I also watched a video of a home mechanic outlining the replacement procedure.  It is in my wheel house of capability except that the bearing/hub assembly needs to be pressed on/off in some cases which would require a garage anyway.  I would feel better having an actual mechanic doing the work.  I called the garage I have used for some other repairs.  They said I could buy the part and they would do the work for about $200 which isn’t bad.  I did a somewhat risky move, buying the part online this morning, gambling that my diagnosis is correct.

Cindy and I watched some of the VP debate last night.  There was a lot of interrupting of each other, not only by the two candidates but also by the attractive female moderator who was trying very hard to keep the candidates in line and on topic.  Despite her attempts, most of what I saw was the two men stepping all over each other.  Of course I thought Tim Kaine came off better with Mike Pence repeatedly not directly answering most questions presented to him and trying to redirect away from any questions asking him to defend various Trump statements and actions.  I doubt the VP debate ever makes up a voter’s mind on their ultimate decision but I guess it’s a necessary evil.

So the east coast of Florida is now moving into full fledged panic mode with the prospect of Hurricane Matthew swinging right by the coastline.  You would think that staying just off the coast would be a good thing but that allows the eye of the storm to stay over it’s power source, warm water which is not a good thing.  Our area is right outside the edge of the danger zone although we certainly will see considerable effects from the storm.  Even a slight shift to the west could make the impact to Florida much, much worse.  I am not the panicking type so I will be monitoring the storm but not obsessing over it.  I do have some east cost friends that I of course hope come out of the storm with minimal impact.

Yesterday was a first for me as the office held it’s first in service day, closing all of our offices to have a day long employee meeting.  The meeting was held at the same place we hold the tax certificate sale, the school administration building.  Just for the heck of it I threw my Ninebot in the truck in the off chance I got a chance to ride it, surprisingly, I did. I rode during the morning break and at lunch I rode it a couple miles to the nearby Panera since the office had no meat free lunch options available to us. As you can imagine I got some confused looks as I walked in Panera carrying my orange wheel, leaning it on my booth.

So the meeting had a number of speakers, all of which would have been more interesting if they were allocated shorter periods of time.  As it was planned, the sessions just seemed to drag on, way beyond the attention span of most of the employees in attendance, including me.  There were a few things I cherry picked from the sessions that I found interesting.

One of the speakers taught a session on ethics.  Part of the discussion was citing two interesting experiments that demonstrated just how much like lemmings human beings can become when skillfully manipulated, something political strategists are masters at.  In the first experiment there were seven subjects.  Six of them were planted, the seventh was the test subject.  All seven people were shown two sets of flash cards with lines of varying length. Each line was labeled A, B, or C.  A second flash card was then shown with a single line that matched one of the lines on the first flash card.  The subjects then simply had to say what line was on the second flash card, A, B, or C.  The difference in line length was substantial so there was no doubt in which line was on the second card.

The subjects were seated in such a way that the six planted subjects were always asked their answer first, the test subject was always last to answer.  They did a total of 24 rounds of testing.  For the first 12 rounds the six planted subjects gave the correct answer and of course the test subject did as well.  However for the last 12 rounds the six planted subjects all gave an incorrect answer.  The test was to see if the number 7 subject would go along with the group, even though they were obviously giving the wrong answer.  Believe it or not, on average, nearly 40% of the test subjects went along with the group, giving the obvious incorrect answer for the last 12 rounds solely because the previous six planted subjects did.

He also showed some funny videos demonstrating the same behavior.  In one of them, an unknowing person was joined in an elevator by three plants.  The three plants faced the back of the elevator.  The test subject in multiple cases would turn around and face backwards as well, even though it made no sense to do so.

In a recent video, it showed a waiting room full of people at a doctors office.  There were about a dozen plants and one unknowing woman, sitting there, waiting.  At random intervals a bell would sound which would trigger the dozen plants to stand up briefly and sit back down.  The first two cycles the woman remained seated, looking around with confusion as to why this behavior was occurring.  However the third time the bell rang she got up and sat down just like the rest of the room. To make things more interesting they slowly removed the dozen people in the room until it was just this woman.  She continued to get up and sit down by the bell, even though she was now alone.

The second experiment was even more disturbing.  In this situation there were three people involved, two plants and one test subject.  There was a man in a lab coat that directed the test.  The other plant was in the next room where he could be heard but not seen.  The test subject, who was paid a small amount of money to be a participant in the experiment was put in front of a device with a number of switches.  The subject was told that this test was to see how negative reinforcement affected memory performance.

The guy in the other room was given a series of word associations and was then asked to repeat back one of them.  If the answer was incorrect, the test subject was instructed to flip one of the levers on the device in front of him which supposedly delivered a shock of increasing severity to the man in the other room.  Each switch increased the shock level by 15 volts, all the way up to 450 volts.  Of course the device was fake but the test subject did not know this.

So as the plant answered questions wrong the test subject was instructed to shock him.  As the imaginary shock levels got higher the plant would react more and more strongly, eventually screaming in agony at the higher levels.  If the test subject objected to administering the shocks the guy in the lab coat would tell them in varying levels of authority to continue, starting at the lowest level with “Please continue” and ending with “The experiment requires that you continue”.  Of course the test subjects were not required to administer the shocks and could have left at any time, they already received their small amount of pay.  After performing this test with 500 individuals an incredible 65% of them continued to shock the planted “victim”, despite his screams of pain, all the way up to the maximum of 450 volts.  Oh by the way, the test subjects were also told that the person they were shocking had some degree of a heart condition ahead of time.

These two experiments give a disturbing look at just how easy it is to manipulate a person’s behavior and thought patterns.  If you don’t think this sort of manipulation is being used on the American populace on a daily basis you may as well just stand up and sit down right now.  I just heard the bell.

Last night I had a very aggravating evening.  Apparently during an extremely bad afternoon storm with severe lightning some of my AV equipment got taken out, most notably my nearly brand new 70 inch 4K TV.  The Xfinity X1 DVR appeared to be the source and was killed as well as it had no signs of life other than the sound of a fan inside.  The TV had it’s red power LED on but would not turn on at all by any means.  My initial theory is the surge came in via the coax cable, taking out the DVR and the TV via the HDMI cable.  I was somewhat surprised that if this was the case, why my internet cable modem, tv, and X1 box in the bedroom would appear to be unscathed.

Well I had to take action quickly.  I first contacted Comcast.  After a lengthy on the phone verification that the box was dead, they said I could simply exchange the X1 box for a new one.  When I looked at my watch I saw it was 6:25.  When I looked online I saw the local Xfinity center was open till 7.  I calculated if I hauled ass I could get there with 5-10 minutes to spare.

I had never been to this Xfinity location.  The last time I went to a Comcast store it was a shitty, small, overcrowded space in a strip mall.  When I parked in the lot last night I did a double take, unsure if I was at a Comcast place.  It almost looked like an Apple store inside, complete with a friendly person signing you in at the front counter.  There were only three customers in the store at the time so it only took a couple minutes till I was helped.  I explained the situation, she said no problem and handed me a new DVR, complete with a voice controlled remote, something I was trying to score for quite awhile.

I couldn’t believe how pleasant of an experience the exchange was.  I have never been shy of criticizing Comcast in the past for their generally shitty customer service and overpriced services.  However I have to give credit where credit is due.  That new facility is awesome and the exchange experience was great.

I had hope of getting home and at least having one of my two issues corrected.  However when I plugged in the new DVR I still could not get the tv service back online, the box threw an error that indicated it still had some sort of line problem.  I even connected the new DVR to the bedroom connection just to see if it made a difference, it didn’t.  I had to call Xfinity back and had a decent interaction with the phone rep although I had to wait over 10 minutes to speak to them.  I now have a tech scheduled to come out today to try to get my tv service up and running again.  My diagnosis has now shifted.  I suspect that the powered splitter in the attic was another casualty of the surge , the fact that the cable modem does not use this splitter reinforces my theory.  I guess I will find out how good of a guess it was this afternoon.

As far as the tv goes, I placed an online warranty service request.  I have no idea how that will all shake out or how long it will take.  In the meantime I have the much smaller tv from the guest bedroom in there.  It looks disgustingly underwhelming in the huge AV nook.

So even though the race I was timing was quite small with less than 100 runners, it still brought me near normal amounts of anxiety.  On Friday I left early from work to drop off packet pick up items and then Cindy and I went back before 7 to grab stuff.  While we were there we helped the race director, a friend of ours from the running club, do some additional prep for the race that included hanging up a number of inspirational religious banners along the course.  The race was being held at a Roman Catholic church.

This was the first and last time the new Tacoma was pressed into duty as a race transport vehicle.  It’s larger dimensions made getting all of the gear inside less challenging than it had been in the past.  Although the 4AM alarm was unwelcome, I shot out of bed almost immediately, ready to get my last timing gig in the rear view mirror.

The church was relatively close to us which was convenient.  As soon as we arrived on site we worked on getting the finish line arch up and running.  I felt badly that the erection of the arch knocked down an amazing spider web that was built overnight.  One of it’s attachment lines to a far away tree literally was over 30 feet long.

The race was scheduled to start early at 7:05 AM.  Even so, by 6AM all of our stuff was set up and ready to roll.  Once again I had extra time to help the race director with other stuff like placing signage on the course.  Cindy manned the registration computer but there were only a handful of people that signed up on Saturday.

The start of the race was very simple for me since it was not a chip start, meaning all I had to bring with me was a stopwatch and a clipboard.  After a brief prayer the runners and walkers were off.  The course was a little confusing as it snaked around the church grounds.  It included multiple loops and a separate course for walkers that used some of the runners path as well.  Luckily there were plenty of marshals out there telling people where to go.

As the first runner crossed a little after the 22 minute mark I held my breath for a second just as I normally do until I confirmed his name and time flashed on the screen as it is supposed to.  Even though I do plenty of checks ahead of time, until a runner crosses, I never fully feel at ease.  The first and last runner came through just fine.  I had absolutely zero issues for the event.  I can’t imagine a race going much more smoothly.

Katie showed up towards the end of the race with coffee in hand which was nice.  She also helped us tear down the finish line.  As we packed away the equipment for what should be the final time I felt some small sense of both sadness but a much larger feeling of relief.  Although my race timing accomplishments have been a source of pride for me over the years, at this point in my life the price I pay in anxiety and stress just is not worth it. I’m sure  It will eventually fade into the background as just one of those other things I used to do.

Cindy had to go to work so I went home and unloaded the truck myself.  After I was done I headed outside for a grueling yard work session that started with weeding the property in the morning followed by extensive weed whacking in the afternoon during the heat of the day.  To follow up with all the backyard mowing I did, I whacked the entire fence line, both sides of it, in addition to the normal stuff around the house.  It was a two hour sweatfest that had me refilling the trimmer head spool three times.

By the time I was done I felt obliterated.  The combo of getting up early and timing the race with hard, hard labor left me again walking in my now familiar zombie like gait.  Despite feeling wiped out I took Cindy out to dinner at PF Changs to celebrate the end of our race timing career.  Although it is one of Cindy’s favorite places we had not been there in a very long time.  We enjoyed our food although we brought a lot of it home with us, including a massive slab of chocolate cake that was big enough to feed a family of four.

Despite feeling so shitty Saturday night I still set the alarm for Sunday morning to get my ass out to run.  For the second week in a row Cindy joined me.  We logged the most mileage in recent history, doing just under four and a half miles.  I can’t tell you how forward I am looking towards running in something less than 95% humidity.

After getting back and showering  we headed back out to ride the PTVs, get coffee and do a run to Home Depot for a few items.  Once again I rode my electric unicycle while Cindy rode her Segway Minipro.  At this point there is nowhere she can go on the Minipro that I can’t handle on my unicycle.  I had an annoying moment when an SUV looked like he was going to stop for us and then didn’t, causing me to lay down the Ninebot unexpectedly.  Of course the asshole had a Trump sticker on the back of the vehicle.

We did our Halloween decorating later in the day and I finally got some time to play some WoW, the first of the weekend.  Sunday night we watched All the Way, the movie about LBJ, played by Bryan Cranston.  I thought Cranston did an excellent job portraying LBJ.  I found the film interesting and educational.  I honestly had very minimal knowledge of exactly what LBJ accomplished while in office.  I was surprised to see it was quite significant.  It was a solid B+ film for sure.

So in anticipation of my dad’s visit in a week or so I wanted to get the back of the yard mowed.  I wasted no time when I got home, changing into mowing clothes, gassing up the tractor and getting busy.  When it comes to the backyard, the longer you go in between mowings the larger time penalty you pay.  The grass was dense and over knee high in spots meaning I had to go at a snail’s pace over a large section of the property.  The slow pace combined with the diminishing amount of daylight meant I finished up pretty much in complete darkness.

The low/no light conditions were tough to deal with since the tractor headlights have a loose connection, meaning they come on and off randomly.  I was leaning forward and smacking the hood like the Fonze, trying to get them to come back on at times.  I am sure it looked ridiculous.  Of course you couldn’t see me anyway, it was too dark.

I have other grounds prep I want to get done before my dad, step mom and their dogs show up.  I will have to try to work most of it in this weekend since they are scheduled to show up next Friday.  We are going to have to come up with a game plan as far as the chickens go as well.  I love Dad’s two dogs, Maggie and Clara.  Maggie is very docile and I don’t think she would threaten the chickens.  Clara is a hunter that loves to chase/kill animals smaller than her. Because of this we are going to have to either keep the dogs on leash if they are in the backyard or keep the chickens in the coop when the dogs are out there.  I would like to see how they react to one another but I certainly won’t risk any danger to our chicks in the process.

So I have my last timing gig coming up on Saturday.  Even though the race is very small with more walkers than runners, I can feel the same anxiety and stress creeping in that I became accustomed to over the last decade of my life.  I have the mental checklists running through my head, trying to make sure that whatever I need to do gets done.  From a technical standpoint, the actual timing of the race should be very simple with the small numbers and only running a single timing box at the finish line and none at the start.  However we do also have to set up the other associated equipment, including the big inflatable arch.

When the last runner crosses the finish line on Saturday I will exhale one last sigh of relief, glad to have the race timer portion of my life in the rear view mirror.  I’d love to be able to immediately sell my race equipment but I actually am loaning some of it out over the next couple months to some friends so I need to hold onto it until then.  If I am lucky by the time Christmas rolls around it will all be gone and we will have reclaimed a large chunk of space from our third bedroom, garage and storage sheds.

So my last day off had the most relaxation time in it of any of the last seven days which I guess is a good thing.  After I dropped off Sadie at Ali’s place in the morning I parked the car in the Target parking lot for another Ninebot One ride.  I took a route that I used to run once in a while, taking Oakes Blvd, to Vanderbilt, to Livingston, traveling to the water park before turning around and reversing the trip.

In total the ride was damn close to 10 miles and I stayed on the wheel the entire time, only stopping a couple times to briefly shift my feet while holding onto a pole.  The overcast skies made the ride much more enjoyable than it would have been if the sun was beating down on me during those long, unshaded sections of the route.  I managed to avoid a single low battery tiltback warning, keeping my speed in the 10-12 mph range for most of the ride.

During the afternoon I decided to perform the last appearance upgrade I had in store for the EUC, covering the bottom of the foot pedals with carbon fiber looking wrap that is designed to cover things like automobiles.  Installing the covering was not very difficult at all and I liked the way it covered the scratched and mauled surface, the end result of many, many crashes.   The few changes I have made on the bot recently have really improved the appearance in my opinion.

I spent a good portion of the afternoon deeply involved in some WoW Legion.  It was a fun way to disconnect from the here and now for a few hours.

Of course last night Cindy and I tuned in to the debate that had more hype leading up to it than a Super Bowl.  It was in a word, amazing.  For the first few minutes of the debate you could tell Trump was trying really hard to do what his advisors coached him to do, act calm, speak slowly and carefully, using the talking points they thought would be most effective.  However it took precious little time until he came unglued and flipped back to what comes natural to him, talking loudly, interrupting, being aggravated, and expressing himself using a vocabulary that never gets out of the middle school level.

Even if you have identified yourself as a Trump supporter, you would be hard pressed to say he did anything but hurt himself with his performance last night.  Using one of his favorite words, it was a disaster.  I’m not going to waste my time breaking down the countless amazingly poor choice of words he made like how not paying any taxes is “smart”, alienating the nation’s large supply of 400 pound citizens, or that immigrants have guns and shoot people.  That is only a very small portion of what was a dump truck full of missteps he made.  The thing is, he did the same thing during the primary debates and his hard core supporters seemed to not care so I doubt they will care about yet another embarrassing outing.

The split screen was certainly not Donald’s friend.  Seeing him get all bent out of shape while Hilary was speaking did nothing but drive home the point that he is a tantruming man-child at heart.  Sure Hilary seemed almost over prepared at times with well rehearsed responses to some of the questions but there is no doubt she carried herself far better that Donald did.  It’s not even close.

The debate was entertaining for sure.  Unfortunately, entertainment is not high on the list of my qualifications for a presidential candidate.

I have still been spending most of my staycation time as get stuff done time.  Yesterday I headed out early in the Tacoma to hunt for sod, hitting Lowe’s and two different Home Depot’s.  I struck out twice and the sod I did finally score looks like shit.  I didn’t really care as it’s primary role is to fill some new areas the chickens have destroyed.  This is a hamster wheel I don’t expect to be able to get off of. The septic tank pumping company showed up yesterday.  I called them when the toilet nearest the tank started to gurgle, a sure sign that the tank  is getting full.  It had been over two years since the last pumping so it was about due.

I also found myself on top of the chicken coop roof.  You may recall last year I came up with the idea of painting the roof white in order to help reflect back some of the heat that was turning the coop into an oven.  Well over the course of a year the brutal Florida climate had broken down the paint somewhat with a lot of original brown roof peeking through.  I armed myself with four cans of the plastic specific gloss white spray paint and went over the entire surface.  The side of the roof that faces the house, which also faces the sun was is much worse shape than the other side.  A yearly reapplication of the paint is going to be tacked onto the must do list apparently.

Installing the sod is a messy, sweaty, dirty job.  It has another facet since I got the new Tacoma.  With the old truck I didn’t give a shit if the left over dirt from the sod sat in the bed for awhile.  If I did clean it, it was normally with a broom.  With the new truck that is no longer the case, dirt is not allowed to reside in the bed any longer than it needs to.  The addition of the bed mat gives me a second thing to clean.  I pull the mat out, hose it down and then hang it over the fence.  I then do a water pik like cleaning job of the composite bed, doing my best to make sure not a single grain of sand or dirt remains.

Later when Cindy got home we took the PTVs out for a short ride at North Collier Park.  Cindy was on her Segway and I was on my Ninebot One.  Cindy was surprised just how adept I have gotten at navigating terrain and curves.  There were a few places where she thought I would have an issue that I rolled through cleanly.  To add more difficulty I was drinking coffee the entire ride, the first time I did that on a single wheel.

Speaking of the wheel, yesterday I also completed another mod of it, removing and painting the outer rings with left over Hugger Orange Plasti-dip.  I like the end result and the difficulty level was very low.  I may do one more thing to the bot, resurface the bottom of the pedals which are so beat up from my bumpy  and crash filled learning experience.

After Cindy and I finished we did some grocery shopping which included going to Sam’s.  I was disgusted/amazed when they had a full aisle of Christmas decorations set up.  I looked at my phone to confirm it was only September 22nd.  Every year they seem to just making the Christmas shopping season longer and longer.

After getting a several day break from significant precipitation, the storms returned last night with a vengeance. We endured tremendous rain, wind, and lightning.  We lost power repeatedly and had a couple strikes that sounded like they were in the back yard. The thunder from those strikes rattled the house to the point where we thought some glass broke.

I plan to spend my Friday working on more minor to do’s as well as picking up Sadie for the weekend.  Hopefully at some point I can feel ahead enough of the curve to just chill and not feel guilty about it.

So for my first day of vacation I figured I would tackle the most annoying and difficult job on the to do list, stripping the paint off the garage floor.  Months ago Cindy painted the garage floor but did not etch the concrete first.  The end result was the paint not adhering well, it started to lift off in various spots.  My plan was to use muriatic acid to both etch the concrete and dissolve the paint.  I bought the acid, a respirator, and a floor brush to agitate it.

The first step of course was to pull EVERYTHING off the floor of the garage which is a large task in itself.  I started very early, removing items and placing them on either side for the driveway.  After the space was cleared I used the blower to get most debris off the floor followed by the shopvac to get whatever was left.  Finally I pulled the hose in to rinse down the entire floor, the surface you apply acid to is supposed to be wet.

So I put on my acid spraying gear which included jeans, rubber boots, long sleeve shirt, respirator, and safety glasses.  Even though it was still early in the morning the outfit accelerated the sweating process.  I mixed up my acid solution in 3-1 formula, three parts water to one part acid.  I pumped up the pressure handle and started spraying.

It didn’t take me long to question the effectiveness of my plan.  When the acid hit any bare concrete it started to bubble and smoke as it should but when I sprayed the painted surface I saw no reaction whatsoever.  I continued spraying anyway, covering the entire floor, hoping if I let the acid sit a few minutes I would see something happen.  It didn’t.  I pulled the hose in and washed the acid off the surface.  Apparently my assumption that muriatic acid would surely eat paint if it eats concrete was a bad one.

So now I had to quickly come up with plan two.  Cindy had talked to the tool rental department at Home Depot awhile back about ways to remove the paint.  They suggested a machine that has a grinding disc.  Supposedly it would easily remove the paint and rough up the surface of the concrete at the same time.  I wasted little time changing and heading to the store to rent the machine.

When I got there I explained what I needed to do.  The clerk showed me the machine and grabbed one of the grinding discs.  I assumed operating the machine would not be a big deal.  The guy warned me that it is going to be hard work, the depths of that hardness would be revealed to me shortly.

The machine has two wheels so when I pulled it out to the truck I didn’t have a good sense of it’s true weight.  When I lifted it up onto the bed of the truck it became very clear that it easily weighed over 100 pounds, maybe even 150.  When I got home I lugged the unit up into the garage and again wet down the floor.  The guy said the surface needed to have like a mist on it, if you let it run dry it will wreck the grinding fins.

So I pretty much soaked the floor and turned on the machine in the center.  I was advised to do some “practice” to “get a feel for it”.  Well I sure got a feel, the feel of massive torque wanting to pull the machine to the left as the grinding wheel turned counter clockwise.  I could not stop it, the grinder was basically pulling me around the garage.  After more frustrating attempts I determined the only way to control the movement was to brace my body in such a way that I was applying torque in the opposite direction, meaning I had the handle sort of wedged against my left leg as I used my core to fight the twisting motion.  It was very, very difficult.

Once I got the machine more under control I tried putting it to work.  I was not impressed.  I had visions in my head of this beast ripping the old paint off with ease.  Instead it took excruciatingly long until it would get down to bare concrete.  I also discovered that having the floor soaked made the problem even worse as you need friction to get the job done.  I started working on the two car sized floor inch by inch.

Within the first half hour of running the machine I was beat up, my entire body was being pushed to the limit to keep the machine going the direction I wanted.  I could only do small sections at a time before I had to take a break to recover.  During that break I was using the pressure washer to blast off the heavy gray residue from the parts I worked on.  The stuff was part floor paint and concrete dust.  It looked like wet cement.

By the time Cindy got back from work mid-afternoon I was pretty much losing my mind.  I was exhausted and frustrated I still had half the floor to do.  When she changed and came out to help I put her on pressure washer duty.  Not only was she washing away the sludge I left behind, she also was using the gas pressure washer to blast away small sections of paint as well.  So we continued on for hours, removing the paint ever so slowly.  It was one of the most physically grueling things I have had to endure in quite a long time.

So finally in the early evening the floor was pretty much done.  However now all the shit had to be brought back inside but before that could be done all the gray sludge that was washed out of the garage now had to be blasted off the driveway.  I probably spent another 30 minutes just doing that.  Finally we started to repopulate the garage, doing some minor organizing and discarding as we did.  Despite only being involved in the job for a few hours Cindy was feeling beat up as well.  Once the final item was put back in the garage and the truck pulled back in it was something like 6:30 PM, an incredibly long and exhausting “vacation” day.

I told Cindy I would take her and Katie out for dinner.  The last thing Cindy needed to be doing is preparing a meal.  I was walking around like an arthritic, very, very old man.  Every single thing on my body was sore and/or aching.  We had a nice meal at Pelican Larry’s.  When we returned home it took me very little time before I was collapsed into bed.  I slept like a rock but awoke today sore but still mobile.

I truly hope that this is the last time I submit myself to this degree of a grueling home project.  I’m just getting too old to hang.