Category Rants

Saturday morning we awoke to thoroughly overcast skies which actually was a good thing since we wanted to get a run in.  The last few times we ran it was under a bright sun with warm, humid temps and I was sick of it.  This was the first run I have done in 2-3 weeks because of race/work that took priority.  We again decided to utilize the water park for our run but we changed the route a bit.  Instead of doing two loops around the outside boundary of the park we cut onto the boardwalk on lap two which both gave us some different scenery and cut a 1/2 mile of the distance which looked to be about 3.55 miles.  The lack of direct sun kept the temperatures down which I am sure was the reason it was my most pleasant running experience of the last 3 months.

It’s been nice being able to do stuff like get out and run on a Saturday morning instead of having to dive right into chores.  Cindy has been trying to get most of them done during the week so we have less to do on the weekends.  She even has been doing household repairs/improvements where she can.  For example this week she pressure washed, fixed some cracks and repainted some sections of the deck where the paint had come off.  It’s a huge help to me to have somebody so willing to lend a hand wherever she can.

Last week I made a list of winter projects I want to get done.  I wasted no time getting one of those items crossed off the list, generator maintenance.  I bought my gas generator back in 2005 during the horrible hurricane season and have basically not had to use it since.  Despite it sitting idle I still need to maintain/run it periodically if I want it to be viable when the time comes.  Saturday I changed the oil on it and ran it for an hour or two.  The generator still started easily and ran ok although it didn’t want to stay running in the full RUN position, I had to keep it mid-way between wide open and the CHOKE position of the lever.   Hopefully I should be good to go if we have any extended electrical power disruptions in the near future.

During the afternoon the overcast skies turned into all out rainy skies which continued off and on for most of the day.  We turned our attention inside.  Cindy was busy doing stuff where as I played some WoW, a big theme of the weekend for me.

We planned to go see the final chapter in the Hunger Games movies Saturday night.  Since it was opening weekend we made an effort to try to get there a bit earlier than normal.  When we stepped in the theater we saw our concern wasn’t merited this time around with the seats being only sparsely populated.  We found seats high up right behind the railing for the wheelchair patrons which is ideal since you can use the rail for foot support without worry of someones head being in the same vicinity.  Cindy spotted a woman with children, including an infant in a CAR SEAT a couple rows up and to our left.  She flagged them as potential problems but I waved it off, silly me.

So as soon as the previews start the baby starts carrying on periodically.  Cindy started with the over the shoulder glances.  I assumed if the kid kept carrying on the woman would simply take it out of the theater.  After all, bringing an infant to a movie theater is an acutely selfish act.  Sure, I understand you want to see a movie but if you can’t get a baby sitter do not punish the rest of theater patrons with the noises from your child.  You had the baby, use common sense/courtesy when making your choices as to what public environments you bring the kid to.

During the previews a set of teenage girls snuggled into the seats in the row in front of us along the aisle.  Their big thing was talking, a lot.  They also had this weird trait of laughing during emotional parts of the film.  Then of course there were the various notification sounds peppered around the theater from fcking morons that are too lazy/inconsiderate to simply flip off the speaker on their phone.  Both Cindy and I found the crowd extremely annoying, more so than normal.

When we talked about it later I said perhaps we need to redesign our movie viewing habits.  Since I started seeing Cindy we more often than not go out to see a movie during it’s opening weekend, something I NEVER used to do during my adult life.  I was always fine waiting a week or two to see a flick in exchange for much less populated theaters.  I think the fact that Coconut Point is usually pretty lightly attended, even on opening weekends, changed that behavior.   I think if we go back to avoiding opening weekends and combine it with being more stringent on selecting seats as far away from potential inconsiderate assholes as possible we may be able to cut down on our level of theater side annoyance.

For what it’s worth I really liked the movie, I thought it was well done in most aspects.  Even without reading a single sentence from any of the books I was entertained and into it the entire time enough to give it an A-, despite the crowd around us providing regular distractions.

On Sunday we had loosely planned to back up our Saturday run with a bike ride.  I awoke to a pretty incredible visual for mid-late November, torrential rain.  The water level in the pool looked to have gone up 3-4 inches.  The ponds of standing water that are normally reserved for summer wet season had made a return appearance.  Wow it must have poured pretty much all night long. Obviously a bike ride was crossed off the list.

My day Sunday outside of having to pay my bills, was almost exclusively about leisure.  I played hours of WoW, cycling through my various virtual alter egos getting stuff done.  I was incredibly busy in my mind without moving my body outside of my hands and fingers.  It was just one of those days where I felt like withdrawing from the world and existing in another, despite the rain breaking up and giving way to sunny skies later.

I sandwiched in watching the Eagles/Bucs game which was three hours of my life I would have preferred to get back.  It was the worst game of the year with the Eagles making rookie Jameis Winston look like Dan Marino and allowing the the Tampa Bay running back to gain a disgusting 230 yards.  The Eagles offense was not up to the task of keeping up.  Outside of a couple drives they were ineffective most of the day.   I am not sure how many times I have used the word “embarrassing” to describe the Eagles game play this season but there was never a more appropriate use of the word than this game.  The team is rudderless and Chip Kelly is the captain, a captain that despite his obvious failings prefers to point fingers in every direction but his own.

It has gotten to the point where I literally feel immune to their poor play.  I no longer react to their bad plays in any visible manner.  I don’t yell at the tv.  I just have become indifferent to the team disappointing me.  I have come to expect it which is a pretty damning thing to say about the Chip Kelly regime which I am ready to see come to it’s end.  Oh, the Eagles get to play on Thanksgiving, it should be a great way to ensure the post meal sleepiness kicks in.

My DirecTV Sunday Ticket this year has never been more worthless.  Not only has the team sucked, I think I have only watched 3-4 games on the service this year.  The Birds have had a ton of either night or other national broadcast games that black them out on DirecTV.  Paying over 300 bucks to watch this mess just adds insult to injury.

This week will be hectic with the largest race of the year going down on Thanksgiving morning.  Most of my attention will be directed to making sure my part of this equation goes down correctly, one last time.

So of  course the world news is the terrorist attacks in France which I have some thoughts on but I wish to skip chronological order and expand on those last.

So this was declared as tree trimming weekend by myself.  The forecast low in the mid-60’s looked like the lowest temps I was going to see for awhile.  When I woke up Saturday morning I was annoyed to see the thermometer reading 71 degrees.  I wasted very little time and was outside gathering my tree trimming tools by 7:30.  I was solo since Cindy was attending a Blue Zones event in the morning.  It didn’t really matter since I was going to be doing nothing but hacking branches several hours which she couldn’t help me with anyway.

It didn’t take long for the heat to start ramping up as the early morning fog burned off.  I was sweating my ass off even though it was only 9AM.  Thank goodness as the day wore on cloud cover rolled in that kept the sun hidden for the majority of the day.

I found myself getting very frustrated due to losing things.  First I lost my machete that I normally use to hack off rotting cross thatch.  I knew I sat it down in the yard somewhere but could not find it after 10 minutes of circling.  It was found later buried under a pile of branches.   Then later I somehow lost the blade to my cordless SawzAll, it flew out in the process of buzzing off more cross thatch.  Thankfully I had a spare blade.  The lost blade was again found later, under another pile of branches.

For a couple years I have said I need to buy a taller extension ladder, the 20 footer I have just is not tall enough to safely reach a couple of the trees anymore.  Each year I don’t buy another ladder and each year I put myself into increasingly more perilous conditions to trim these monster trees.  Well this year set a new standard in danger.

To trim the tallest tree I had to stand a couple rungs from the top of the ladder and could not even use my new loppers which would require two hands.  Instead I had to trim all of the palm fronds with one hand via the SawzAll while using my off hand to hold onto the tree.  The gusting wind added tree sway into the equation. NEXT year, I am getting a new ladder.

I had an unexpected encounter when I was trimming the second tallest tree on the property.  I was knocking off loose cross thatch and all of a sudden saw a small banded snake that looked a lot like a pygmy rattler bury itself into the branches just above where I was working.  I discontinued work in that area and let the snake be.  I was very surprised to see a snake living that high up in the tree, a first for me.

Tree trimming is a physically grueling and dirty job.  Climbing up and down the ladder and working mostly over your head all day has a way of wearing you down. When I was chopping off rotting cross thatch I would periodically get organic matter facials depending on how I was positioned in relation to the gusting wind.  As I labored on I told myself several times, “you have done this many times, it always sucks, and you always get through it anyway”.

By the time Cindy got home I had four trees left to trim.  She thankfully brought me some much needed coffee which I enjoyed while sitting in a chair in front of the many piles of cut branches that littered the property.  The chickens and Sadie mulled about me in support.

After eating lunch I finished up the remaining trees and then joined Cindy in the equally arduous task of picking up hundreds of palm fronds and the big chunks of rotted cross thatch that were everywhere.

We repeatedly loaded down the back of the Tacoma with huge mountains of debris and drove it back to the fill pit for dumping.   I have a technique to expedite the dumping process.  I try to grab a couple palm fronds at the bottom of the pile and pull them out, most of the time I am able to get the majority of the pile on top of them to slide out as well.  Well during one of those trips that plan backfired.

I had my hands on three or four low fronds and was pulling hard, leaning back so my bodyweight was helping.  All of a sudden instead of the pile coming out, just the fronds I had a a hold of came loose.  The force I was applying resulted in major momentum which catapulted one of the branch ends directly into my nose at high speed.  It felt like I was punched in the face.

I expected a stream of blood to start flowing out of my nostril.  I did start to bleed but it was from the outside, not the inside.  The branch left a nice little gash on the left side of my nose.  After using my shirt a few times as a bandage I asked Cindy instead to run inside and grab me a real one to stop the slow but steady stream of blood.

The clean up actually went faster than I expected it to.  In total we ran nine pickup loads of crap to the fill pit.  By the time we got everything cleaned up it was between three and four in the afternoon, a hard day of labor.

As I surveyed the property and saw the roughly 25 trees that I trimmed up I felt a mixture of pride, relief, and anxiety, knowing I yet again accomplished one of the shittiest home chores I have but will be repeating it once again a scarce 365 days from now.

Saturday night there was no way we had the energy to go out to the movies.  Instead we stayed home and enjoyed a delicious fish sticks dinner while renting Train Wreck On Demand.  The movie was the unrated version of the Amy Schumer comedy meaning it had some very adult scenes which I didn’t think really added much to the movie.  All in all I thought the movie was an average comedy with an average amount of laughs. Amy saying very outrageous and dirty things was funny at first but grew old eventually.  It seemed to rely too heavily on it, much like a lot of Melissa McCarthy’s films.   As a result it gets an average B rating from me.  I honestly expected it to be funnier.

Sunday morning I had no interest in endurance training as I had universal body aches and pains from the tree trimming.  We needed to get to Rural King early anyway since we had used up the rest of the chicken feed.  Although I probably earned a casual Sunday I did not feel comfortable taking one.  The weed whacking had not been done for three weeks, things were looking pretty ratty so I grabbed the whacker and got busy.  My work inspired Cindy to get the mowing done as well which she had planned on doing later this week.  Putting off the chore for a few weeks and whacking additional fence line to compliment the tree trimming meant the task took longer than normal.

When I finished up I had a quick test I wanted to do with the timing system.  Setting up the mats with the MyLaps system is by far the biggest negative since I switched from an Ipico timing system.  The 25 pound mat sections have to be connected together and then have an individual wire run from each mat back to the timing box.  With two people the process can take damn close to 15 minutes if you have the maximum amount of mats laid out, which is eight.

I had a theory that because in prior testing that these mats read chips 3-4 feet to either side that I might be able to only connect every other mat and still get chip reads along the entire mat width.  So I tested it.

My test did sort of prove my theory as I was able to get reads on sections of mat that had no wire attached to them.  It did also show that you are sacrificing field strength when doing so which could be problematic in a high density situation like a start line.  The follow up test to this would be setting up two lines during a real race where the first line wires in every mat and the second line does every other.  You could then easily see if you are losing reads skipping mats by comparing the numbers between the two timing boxes.  However since I will not be using MyLaps after my running club timing stops at the end of January I don’t feel all that motivated to look into it further.  If I would invest in more timing equipment for GMT it would not be with MyLaps.  I prefer something that is reliable AND easy to set up.  MyLaps does not meet that latter criteria.

So the Eagles played the Dolphins Sunday afternoon.  The game started off with the Eagles on fire with them putting in their best first quarter performance of the year, racking up 16 points.  It looked like they were setting the stage for a blowout.  Well the wheel fells off and the team managed a measly field goal for the rest of the game while allowing the Dolphins to stay in the game long enough for a one point, 20-19 win.

Of course there were many directions fingers could be pointed so let’s start naming names.  Caleb Sturgis, why is he still on the roster?  Is there really no better kickers available out there?  This guy is pressed to make extra points, his accuracy is just atrocious.  It’s the second time this year that his miss of a short field goal turned out to be the difference between a win and a loss on the scoreboard.

Sam Bradford, statistically he had an ok day although again he displayed some of that inaccuracy I have been complaining about since early in the season.  He just misses a lot of throws, something commentator Rich Gannon pointed out as well.  He got crushed on that hit that knocked him out of the game and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is out for next week.  I am surprised he lasted this long.

Miles Austin, wtf happened to you?  I remember when you came onto the scene with the Cowboys you were tearing things up for a couple years.  As an Eagle your catch to fck up ratio is all out of whack. Not being able to drag your foot on that TD grab is pretty lame as is your route running, awareness, and ability to make a tough catch.

Byron Maxwell, you are disgustingly overpaid.  The fact that Chip Kelly thought your skillset was worthy of mega dollars in free agency is a further testament to how bad Chip is at assessing talent.  Maxwell sucks.  He gets burned repeatedly each and every game and excels at nothing but pass interference/holding calls and poor tackling.

Matt Sanchez, dude, way to waste no time reinforcing your reputation of choking when it counts, throwing yet another game killing interception in the end zone when the game was on the line.  Plus why in the world did handing off the ball to DeMarco Murray seem to be impossibly complicated for you?  They ran into/tripped one another at least half a dozen times, no joke.  Sanchez is just another non-answer to the QB position long term.

And of course Chip Kelly, your mad scientist like experiments with the Eagle roster in the off season has been a pretty disappointing failure.  I am fine calling the Chip Kelly era as officially played out by the end of year three.  Go back to college where lower talent levels makes your hurry up offense more effective.

It was a bad loss in a season of bad losses.  I expect more to follow.

Ok so let’s talk about the French terrorist attacks which of course were tragic,  As expected there was world wide support for France and social media wasted no time jumping in, making it easy for people to offer one click “support” by changing their profile picture to have an overlay of the French flag.  Also as expected, the terrorist act instantly whipped the Obama haters into a frenzy with them posting non-stop vitriol that accomplished nothing but more division, hate and prejudice.  Repeatedly I saw posts that seemed to indicate that different leadership, gun ownership and more military action in the middle east was the easy answer to these problems.  I just don’t get it.

After nearly a decade and a half of the US being mired in a “war” with terrorists it’s like the American public has learned absolutely nothing as a result.  When I read “we beat the Nazi’s, we can beat ISIS the same way” it just shows an incredible lack of understanding of the situation.  Terrorists are not a conventional army.  They wear no uniforms.  They don’t attack in battalions. They don’t fear death, in many cases they seek it out, seeing it as an opportunity to serve their God in a perverted way.  You can not bomb away this problem.  You are fighting an idea, not an army.

When I see the sweeping, Muslims are the problem generalizations roll in it again shows a lack of thinking, indicating that the radical extremists that perpetrate these atrocities are representative of  Islam as a whole.  It’s like saying the KKK is representative of Christianity.  It’s just silly.

France has reacted very strongly to the attacks, launching near immediate air strikes and locking down the country, trying to get a clear picture of all the connections the terrorists involved had.   These attacks I suppose are the start to the large cup of revenge they plan to indulge themselves in.

Listen, I understand the idea of revenge.  I know how I felt after the 9/11 attacks.  I wanted somebody to pay.  However the lessons of a decade and a half direct involvement/invasion by the US in the middle east quagmire has clearly established that our course of action was massive, incredulously expensive both in dollars and loss of life and mostly ineffective.  If anything our involvement in the region only cultivated more support for the radical Islamist movement.

If France goes in there swinging a bat wildly, killing many ISIS insurgents and innocent civilians that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time it will just pour additional gas on the fire.  The unfortunate result will be giving further credence to how the west deserves any attack upon them, no matter how senseless or brutal in the minds of ISIS and others driven by their similar, contorted religious beliefs.

Do I have the definitive answer to this dilemma? Nope, not even close.  All I know is more bombing, more military action, more of what has been tried for the last 15 years isn’t going to make a difference.  You can’t “defeat” an idea and you are dealing with an enemy that looks at death as a victory.

If you have 5 minutes take a look at this, it explains my point in a much more comprehensive and well written manner.

Also if you want a better understanding of the rat nest of players in thr Syrian conflict, take another 5 minutes and watch this.

One of the negatives about going to the local Retro Fitness gym is the drive back to the office.  The exit out of the parking lot does not have a traffic light.  Instead you have to try to time a left turn crossing three lanes of oncoming traffic. This is further complicated by mostly clueless drivers on Davis Blvd turning left into the lot that are not familiar with right of way rules and/or are too old to have reaction times necessary to deal with the often small gaps in traffic where they could cross but chose not to.

Quite often there will be a half dozen cars waiting to turn left out of the lot combined with another three or four waiting to turn left INTO the lot from Davis.  Up until recently I felt I had no choice but to enter into that quagmire and get progressively more angry as bad drivers compound the delay.

I recently decided to make another decision when I see a rats nest of vehicles at the exit waiting to turn left.  I now head out a rear exit of the complex and head roughly a half mile east, the opposite direction I need to go, where there is a traffic light, allowing me to make a stress free left turn.  Even though the majority of the time by the time I pass back by the noted trouble spot the parking lot traffic has cleared, I feel better choosing the simpler, less stressful route.

I have realized this is a template I have been applying across other aspects of my day to day existence. I just don’t need the hassle.

Yesterday Cindy had an audition at Orange Theory Fitness.  It was sort of like an actor trying out for a part except instead of memorizing lines she had to memorize a routine that she performed in front of a group of people. Cindy was EXTREMELY nervous going in despite my assurances that she would do well.  I have seen her shoot her videos for her YouTube channel, once she gets rolling she comes off quite well.

I was very happy when she texted me later reporting that things indeed went quite well.  I told her I was proud of her for going through with the audition, despite her anxiety about it.  She did the hard thing which is how you grow.

Yesterday I had my own situation where I made a hard decision to discontinue my services as the timer for the running club, a role I have served for 8-9 years.  As a courtesy to the club I offered to continue my duties until the end of January which will get them through the next 8 races, including three of the largest events they conduct.  Of course if they elect to replace me before that time they are welcome to do so.

The decision is related to the events of the last 18 months that have included incidents of personal tragedy with my mom unexpectedly passing away and the recent passing of Nicki.  I have given a lot of thought about the importance of quality of life and removing yourself from situations that detract from that wherever possible.

I have documented some of my issues I have had with my club responsibilities here but for the most part leave it out of public consumption.  The details really are not all that important at this point. The bottom line is I don’t enjoy what I am doing, I don’t need to do it, and I don’t want to do it anymore so I asked myself, “Why are you doing it?”

The answer until yesterday to that question goes back to my long history as a people pleaser where I put the expectations and desires of others in front of my own under some deluded sense of obligation.  It’s the martyr part of my personality which is something my mom also had, which she exhibited in different ways.

So anyway, I sent out my letter last night and basically heard nothing back except for one friend on the board, which I suppose is not surprising.  Tomorrow I am timing a 5K for the club so I am sure there will be plenty of opportunity for awkwardness there although that is not my desire at all.  All things run their course.  I am looking forward to seeing the finish line of this part of my life and starting again with a fresh perspective, filled more with things I prefer to be doing.

Yesterday was an abnormally dreary day in SW Florida with gray skies and rain that persisted pretty much all day long.  Sure rain in Florida is very common but it normally comes in brief, intense bursts with plenty of sunshine sandwiching it.

Last night I caught a decent portion of the third republican presidential debate.  What I saw was not all that exciting.  There was less interaction between the candidates, it seemed like more of a Q&A session although some of the Q’s were kind of funny.

I found it entertaining watching Marco Rubio dance around two issues, his worst in the Senate attendance record and his personal financial problems that evidently were bad enough that he liquidated a retirement account, taking a huge penalty for doing so.   He obviously had well rehearsed non-answers for these questions where he skipped the question and redirected into circulatory bullshit that went nowhere.

Carly Fiorina continues to annoy the shit out of me.  I suppose since she is a woman somebody has coached her that butting in and forcing yourself into mic time is a good way to show she is assertive and a leader.  I literally cringe as she speaks.  The woman blinks non-stop.  I dare you to try to count how many times she blinks a minute. I think she comes off as terribly unlikable, something some media outlets would dispute.

Trump, who is all about appearance, needs to work on his.  He looked bad with his hair in a condition worse than normal combined with his very pig-like skin color.  I don’t expect him to be hanging around much longer as his vague, sweeping solutions to issues are starting to look more and more like vaporware. If somebody presses him for detail on an opinion Donald has a hard time answering back with much before he falls back on insults and bragging.  I did like that he called out super PACS for the evil that they are. I also think that despite my disagreement with a lot of his tactics/proposals, Trump actually is coming from a good place and wants to make the country better.  I appreciate a non-politician trying to drive a wedge into the stale and mostly impenetrable practices of American politics.

Mike Huckabee doubled down on his hypocritical war against “diabetes and heart disease”, stating that medicine needs to find a way to “cure” these diseases and in turn it would make health care infinitely more affordable.   The ignorance in this statement is atrocious.  Mike, who is easily 250lbs plus with a waist size surely in the mid 40’s, doesn’t realize the problem is people not being responsible for their health, not the lack of some magic vaccine to prevent obesity.  Get a clue, idiot.

Most of the other candidates had positive and negative moments but I would be hard pressed to identify who “won and lost”.  I drifted off during the closing statements, wishing we didn’t have 12 months of partisan hatred ahead of us.

The other day I was listening to one of the podcasts I listen to and heard one of the hosts describe how a good show host adds “texture” to what they are speaking about.  That adjective stuck with me.  Of course verbally, my texture is normally pretty flat. However I think my ability to apply “texture” while describing everyday thoughts and experiences via the written word is what I bring to the table.

I got a call yesterday from Ali.  She said that Nicki couldn’t get herself up. Her rear legs, which have been bothering her for a long time, just didn’t want to work.  She took Nicki to the emergency vet where they basically said it is just the progression of her arthritis.  It must have been especially painful yesterday for her.  I was hoping the vet would recommend upping Nicki’s Deramexx dosage (dog Advil) but instead they prescribed tramadol which is a pain killer.  Their logic was they didn’t want to risk the possible GI side effects of increasing the Deramexx dosage.  My logic is when your choice is the dog being able to walk or having diarhea, walking wins.

Ali’s living arrangements since we split have not been ideal for a dog with bad legs as they both have had stairs which Nicki has struggled up and down for the last few years.  The big 18″square tile in her main living area also makes it hard for Nicki to get up from the laying position because of the lack of traction.   Ali is taking steps to try to address both of these things.

She was able to get a bunch of left over carpet remnants from a local carpet store which she is using to create carpet runways on the tile which should be easier for Nicki to get up on.  She is also going to have her boyfriend carry Nicki between floors as needed to cut down on the wear and tear on her legs.  Hell I was even researching dog stair lifts yesterday.  I saw a couple DIY versions that were quite impressive.

Of course it makes my heart very heavy to see Nicki struggling like this.  I find it hard to believe this is the same dog that used to leap the sofa in a single bound as I chased her around the house.  All we can do at this point is try to make her quality of life as good as it can be.

I got some other sad pet news yesterday.  Cindy saw the woman that we gave Jaina, the huge cornish chicken, to.  She said that Jaina died from sort of disease that killed 10 or 11 of her other chickens.  I immediately felt guilt as I knew the living situation Jaina was moved into was definitely not close to the level of care or comfort we were providing.

During this week I have had to make two calls to get my costs for two entertainment services reduced, Sirius and Comcast.  I had received the ridiculous $273 bill from Sirius awhile ago and had been sitting on it, waiting until it was closer to it’s expiration date.  I got the cancellation department and gave them the normal song and dance, if I can’t pay what I did last year I am cancelling.  If for some reason they would call my bluff I would probably follow through on the cancellation since the Stern show schedule is so light nowadays it is barely worth paying the 50% discount I have been.  Well they once again agreed to my terms, the $273 bill morphed into $144 after a few minutes.

The call to Comcast did not go as well.  For years I have played the shell game with Comcast, calling up and getting put on whatever current promo packages they have which normally run for a term of anywhere of 6 months to a year.  When that term expires I call back up and repeat the process.

Well I haven’t been watching my bill that closely since I autopay it with my CC now.  My buddy at work was complaining about how high his bill was so I logged on to look at mine and saw all of my promos had run out and I was now paying roughly 150 a month for internet and tv service, time to call.

There have been tons of stories in the news about the big drop in subscriber numbers Comcast has been seeing, many of them going to streaming options instead.  My naive assumption was this would mean Comcast would be very agreeable to work with existing customers to keep their business.  On my first attempt on Wednesday I used their online agent portal, telling them I have received offers from one of their competitors, Century Link, and wanted to see what could be done to reduce the size of my bill.

Well I spent almost a half hour on the chat session during which there was a 14 minute period of no communication at all from the rep.  When they came back they said their computer locked up and had to be restarted.  They offered me no deals at all, all they offered was I reduce my features if I wanted to reduce my bill.  I explained I was not interested in losing features, I wanted to be put on a promotional deal to keep me from investigating what Century Link would do for me.  The virtual rep said I should call into one of their two “customer loyalty numbers” where they are authorized to offer long time customers special promotions.  Ok, fine.

So yesterday I call one of these numbers.  The phone menu did not sound any different than the normal Comcast phone menu and I wound up with someone on the Indian help desk.  I told him I was given this number by the online staff and explained I was looking for a reduction in my costs to prevent me from going to a competitor.  At first the heavily accented phone rep was stand offish, again going down the “if you want to pay less, you get less” road.  I got irritated as I realized this was not any sort of special retention department, just another annoying, outsourced phone bank that American companies have grown so found of.

I told the guy I was annoyed that he was just telling me the same thing the online rep did and that I would just look into cancellation of Comcast instead.  Well once the word cancellation comes out of a customers mouth they apparently are allowed to at least offer some sort of discount.  I wound up getting the $10 Showtime fee waived for the next 6 months and an additional $5 discount, hardly earth shattering but better than nothing.  The difference with this negotiation versus Sirius was I actually like the services I get from Comcast.  My internet is generally fast and reliable and I am a big fan of their X1 platform.  If push came to shove I don’t think I would cancel it.

This weekend I am helping to time a large CC meet Saturday morning followed by a nice birthday dinner for Cindy Saturday night.  Although the temperatures during the day are still high, the humidity dial has been slightly less and the constant precipitation has diminished to the point where standing water is no longer a feature on our property which is great.  I look forward to some winter weather where I can work outdoors without paying such a severe perspiration tax.

Last night Cindy and I watched the Falling Skies finale which actually broadcast sometime during our road trip.  I have watched the show loosely for most of it’s 5 year run.  It seemed like it had rotating writers, sometimes the story was pretty compelling, other times it was ridiculously stupid.  Well unfortunately it seems the bad writers were tasked with creating the finale.

As good as the Ray Donovan season finale was is how bad the Falling Skies series finale was.   It was clunky, simplistic, hokey, and disappointing.  At least it’s termination leaves room on the DVR for better programming.

So yesterday there was another mass shooting at a college, this time in Oregon.  Much like soldier casualties in the middle east, domestic gun violence in public places is happening so frequently at this point that the public is becoming somewhat numb to it.

Of course the shooting incites another round of fighting between the gun zealots and the gun control factions.  The gun crazies like to throw out one liner rebuttals like “car accidents kill people, are we going to outlaw cars?”  Of course the answer is no but if you applied the same requirements needed to drive on owning a gun, people would have a shit fit.

I would never advocate that Americans should not be allowed to own guns, despite me not ever owning one in my lifetime.  Hell I never even shot an actual gun.  However I do think that tougher permitting that includes background checks should be a no brainer.  Of course this will not eradicate random gun violence but anything that filters/slows down the gun ownership process to catch the obvious loonies can not be viewed as a bad thing.  One thing I do not advocate are people that feel it is necessary to own sub machine guns or other assault type weapons.  If you want to fire those type of weapons join the military or go to mercenary school.

I just wonder exactly what size/frequency of mass killings it will take to finally implement any meaningful change in gun laws.  I doubt I will see it in my lifetime.

This weekend has some outdoor work on the docket including repairing the numerous chicken dug holes, so they can dig some new ones elsewhere.  Cindy was nice enough to do most of the Halloween decorating in the house yesterday.  There might be a few final additions we can put out as well.

Last night when I got home the skies were very menacing but I already had it stuck in my head that I wanted to get the Prius oil change completed.  When I get in that mindset it is tough to get me to change directions.  I quickly changed clothes and drug out the stuff I needed to do the work.  Doing an oil change immediately after driving home from your commute is never a great idea as the engine oil can be hot enough to burn you.  I used extra care when removing the drain plug and filter to minimize my contact with the hot used oil.  I had the oil swapped out in the span of 15 minutes as the thunder rumbled overhead.

Yesterday I found myself spending a good portion of the day dealing with running club related issues regarding various events.  I have been doing chip timing for the club for something like eight years at this point.  The core group of people that handle most responsibilities for our races have been pretty much the same for that amount of time or even longer in some cases.  With this being the case you would assume when it comes to putting on races it would go like clockwork more often than not since it is something we have done literally 100 times or more.  Well unfortunately that isn’t the case.

Even after all of that experience it seems every event has some basic breakdowns in execution or preparation that you just would not expect.  Of course a race is a living, breathing, dynamic beast that will always have unforeseen issues.  It’s the foreseen issues that should not be popping up on the radar at this point.  The frustration that results from these issues has to be tempered however since almost everyone involved is on a purely volunteer basis, graciously donating their time and effort.  It’s a tight line to balance upon.

Every year after a road trip it feels strange to be home.  The idea that a few days ago you were on the other side of the country and now find yourself back in familiar surroundings with familiar routines just screws with my head a little bit.  When we got home on Friday about 5 of course one of the first things we did was head out back to say hi to the chickens.  I guess they were as excited as chickens get which means not very.

We immediately worked on unloading the Prius whose interior looked like a homeless person was living it after 13 days on the road.  I went back to front, systematically removing items, many of which first went into the middle of the garage for Cindy to sort and sanitize as needed.  Cindy also was out in the coop tending to it since we told the chicken sitters we would handle cleaning it since we would be home.  In total we were plugging away a solid couple hours until we actually settled down to enjoy our traditional Friday night pizza and start catching up on our huge backlog of dvr’d content.

Saturday I headed outside to start on what I knew would be a pretty miserable session of yard chores.  Two weeks of it not being touched combined with heavy rainfall had left the grounds in a pretty jungle-like state.  As the heat and humidity poured down on me I instantly yearned for the crisp, cool air we just experienced in Wyoming and Yellowstone.  Florida wet season is really getting old.

After weeding the yard I hopped on the tractor and mowed the soppy grass wherever I could.  A lot of areas were still too submerged to touch.  Some of the areas I did mow were still very mucky resulting in the tractor looking like a swamp buggy when I was done with mud splattered everywhere, including on me.  Cindy was busting ass during most of this time giving the coop a very thorough scrub down.

After taking a shower to get all the scuzz off me most of the rest of the day was spent inside tending to pulling and editing the various videos which is a lengthy process.  You can catch what I published so far either on my YouTube channel or on Cindy’s channel.  There is still more content for me to dig through.

On Sunday morning doing any endurance training was not even mentioned.  Both Cindy and I were not feeling up to it plus it felt that there was still a ton of things that needed to get done.  Among those things was the monumental task of auditing the trip where I had to reconcile a HUGE pile of credit card receipts and enter them into Quicken.  As I did so I categorized the expenses into a few categories, gas, lodging, food, souvenirs, rides, and other.  Seeing the final numbers were interesting.

Despite driving an additional 1600 miles this year we basically paid the same for gas as last year thanks to lower gas prices.  Driving 6600 miles on $380 of gas is pretty amazing.    Our average cost for lodging per night was $91.  That number was inflated by two nights at Cody, Wyoming during our Yellowstone visit which cost more than $150 a night.  Ironically during the entire trip we did not stay at a single La Quinta.  On most prior road trips La Quintas were the destination of choice most nights.  This time around they always seemed to be priced slightly higher than comparable chains.  Since dog accommodations were not a concern  it wasn’t a big deal.

Originally I had set a loose mental goal of us spending basically the same amount of money as we did last year.  The final tally came in about $500 higher than last year but with one night and two extra days of travel which included Vegas I think we did ok.  That final total is inclusive of cash I pulled out and money for two weeks of chicken sitting.  I bet I spent well over 90 minutes getting everything accounted for.

After a quick trip in the SSR to blow out the cobwebs and grab some coffee I got back onto the tractor to mow most of the areas that were impassable on Saturday.  A couple days of hot, bright sun had done a nice job of getting rid of a lot of the water.  The tractor still required a thorough bath after mowing again.

So on both Saturday and Sunday I spent over 35 minutes on the phone with a Directv representative.  This is something I go through every year and every year it annoys the shit out of me.  I have Directv just for the Sunday Ticket, something they allowed me to do years ago when I dropped my main package.  It is a non-standard configuration that they won’t allow a new customer to do.  When the season concludes I suspend my service for 6 months and then have it reactivate when the season begins.

Well each year I have to call to get the Sunday ticket working again.  They can’t simple turn it on since I have no normal package, it always requires the intervention of a supervisor.  So on Saturday I call and explain to a guy the background of my situation.  I told him that last year I specifically requested that the rep notes in my account what was done to get the service working so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel again.  He said there were no notes about that on my account which pissed me off.

Despite my advice to get a supervisor involved he insists on going through vanilla troubleshooting steps like restarting the receiver (I already did that) and resending the authorization several times, which did nothing.  He then tells me that we can’t really tell if the Sunday Ticket will work until Sunday, closer till game time.  I told him that wasn’t true, even before the games there will be a placeholder image on the Sunday Ticket channels if you are authorized for them.  The guy just seemed out of ideas and was trying to get me off the phone with “just wait to see what happens on Sunday” advice. I wasn’t accepting it.  I kept pressing him to dig deeper as I knew there was more that was required.  Well after 35-40 minutes I was abruptly disconnected which of course infuriated me but I had no time to sit on the phone another half hour again.

Fast forward to Sunday morning.  I once again call and this time get an older sounding woman on the phone.  I once again explain the background of the issue.  The woman says that she doesn’t see my account as even having the Sunday Ticket included on my account, nor does she see record of my call from Saturday.  Well that is just lovely.  Since I do not have a basic programming package the woman was not able to add the Sunday Ticket to my service.  However, after a long wait and some intervention by a supervisor, finally the channels started working.  I once again asked the woman to please document exactly what was done so we don’t have to go through this again next year. Ironically, since the Eagles/Cowboys game was a national broadcast I couldn’t even use the Sunday ticket this weekend which blacks out locally broadcast games.

After bearing witness to the game, I almost wish it was blacked out entirely, it was that bad.  In the offseason Chip Kelly came under a great deal of scrutiny based on his dismantling of the core of the team, especially on offense getting rid of our starting QB, RB, WR, and two offensive lineman.  After the strong preseason performance by the Eagles a lot of those critics adopted a wait and see attitude, maybe Chip is not only a strategic but also a personnel genius?  Well after two games of the regular season this outlook on Chip’s player decisions are looking much bleaker.  The Cowboys game was an utter disaster.

The defense, surprisingly, were the far better of the two units, despite being out on the field for 40+ minutes thanks to the Eagles absolute failure to sustain any sort of offensive momentum.  DeMarco Murray, the LeSean McCoy replacement ran for negative yardage overall for the entire game.  The fault for this was largely the offensive line that seemed to routinely let D-lineman into the backfield every time Murray was handed the ball, it was miserable.

The receivers did little to help move the ball dropping a number of balls that a pro should normally pull in.  Sam Bradford, who I assume was supposed to be a Nick Foles upgrade, looked flustered and confused in a manner that befit a rookie, not a guy that has been a starter in the league for a number of years.  I really don’t like the passing game that has been in place for the first two games.  I don’t think I have seen a single pass that has traveled in the air more than 20 yards down the field.  I don’t know if it is because the Eagles have no receivers fast enough to beat anybody deep or Chip just wants to exclusively do dump and run pass plays.

There is nothing that will get Eagles fans to turn on you faster than coming up small against the Cowboys.  If Chip hangs a couple more consecutive losses around his neck (he has lost 5 of last 6 games dating back to last year), there will be a roar of dissent calling for his head.  It seems like the league has now figured out how to deal with his hurry up style of play.  It scares no one.  Chip’s style of viewing players as trading cards you can just plug into and out of a team without consideration of overall team chemistry is looking to be his fatal flaw.  The team looked absolutely awful on Sunday.

As if the Eagles awful performance was not bad enough, my fantasy team is now in shambles as well.  Two crucial parts of my team were Dez Bryant and Tony Romo,  whom I spent high draft picks on, both are now going to be sidelined for months.  I may as well raise the white flag now as my bench players are marginal at best.

Later yesterday and overnight there was another round of torrential rain and storms that made me very glad to have had the opportunity to knock down the grass over the weekend.  It’s going to be an interesting week as I try to adapt back to the daily grind after two weeks of taking each day as it comes.

Our drive into Dallas was long but mostly uneventful.  We got to our hotel about 7PM, now on central time.  While I was in the passenger seat I was trying to remotely restart our chicken coop dvr which became unreachable remotely.  I was in the middle of trying to find a way to do it when we got a call from our chicken sitter who was at the house.  I just had him unplug the dvr for a few seconds and plug it back in which got us back online.

After a day of nothing but driving neither Cindy or I felt like going out to dinner, we had food delivered to the room.  Speaking of the room, it was actually a suite with a full second room and pretty nice accommodations.  It was sort of a bummer when Cindy saw what she said were baby roaches around one of the sinks this morning.  Once she saw that she couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Last night while we ate dinner we caught a good portion of the republican primary debate which was a big tv event.  Mostly thanks to Donald Trump, there is more interest in the 2016 republican primaries than any other time in my life.  People just love seeing Trump throw his weight around, plain and simple.

I found the debate both entertaining and aggravating.  Let me go candidate by candidate and give you my feedback (if I can remember them all)

I felt bad for Rand Paul as Trump repeatedly mocked his current 1% polling rate as not being worthy of being on the stage.  I do agree with a lot of Rand’s ideas and he probably has a better command of the US Constitution than anyone else on the stage.  I also liked that he is not afraid to still characterize the US decision to throw military contractors a bone with the Iraq war as a major mistake and poor judgement.  Rand’s hair is very odd, it almost looks like a hair piece.

Mike Huckabee is a dipshit with his bullshit religious right agenda.  I thought it was laughable when he made a comment about how we should focus on finding the cures for ailments instead of treating the symptoms.  In the list of ailments he wanted “cures” for was diabetes and heart disease.  I laughed out loud that this man who looked to be very obese wanted a cure for these two diseases that are mostly lifestyle related.  Eat a salad you idiot.

Ah Ted Cruz, I can’t stand that guy even a little bit.  He is as smarmy as it gets even with his neck spilling out over his collar.  Every single word he says annoys me as he is the epitome of a tea party zealot.  He seems like he needed to be spanked more as a child.  He has zero shot of winning.

Marco Rubio, who is famous for dry mouth, came off as a mega-hardliner who wants to nuke the world and do nothing about climate change because China won’t.  His thoughts on immigration were interesting because of his background obviously.

Ben Carson who before the debate was polling at number two behind Trump has no shot either.  He seems like a calm, intelligent, logical man, which is why he has no shot.  He doesn’t have the presence or persona most people are going to want in a political candidate.  The fact that he is black dooms him in the republican party no matter what anyone says in public.

Trump was next and he seemed to be quite hot and bothered, literally.  His face looked flush for most of the debate.  I wasn’t sure if it was from the heat of the lights or if he was embarrassed a few times when other candidates called him to the carpet for a few things that he didn’t have real solid answers for.  I am sure he felt he won the debate.  I think it sort of exposed some of the holes in his plan.

Jeb Bush was next to Trump.  I heard the general consensus was he did better because he fought with Trump more, including asking Trump to apologize to Jeb’s wife for making a remark that Jeb was more sympathetic to illegal immigrants because his wife is Mexican.  Personally Jeb didn’t impress me at all and in fact said one of the dumbest things of the night when the moderator asked all of the candidates which woman they would want to see on the new 10 dollar bill.  His answer was Margaret Thatcher.  What the fck Jeb? It was a true George W moment where you could tell for sure they were related.

Jeb also defended W’s time as president, summing up his countless missteps with “at least he kept us safe”.  Huh? What does that mean exactly?  If the definition of keeping us safe is no more buildings falling down I guess that means Obama has kept safe as well? Who knows, to me it was like when you give somebody a very involved and thought out criticism and their response would be “I know you are but what am I”.  Adios Jeb.

I had never seen Carly Forina speak before and after last night I hope I never do again.  I found it amazing that the press was characterizing her performance as great.  I thought she came off terribly.  I don’t know if it is the gallons of botox she has injected into her face but everything she said came out as robotic and sterile.  You have to be somewhat likable to be the president.  She came off as an ice witch to me who repeatedly tried to log jam in her well rehearsed statements when it wasn’t her turn to talk.  She has as much shot as Michelle Bachman.

Ah I forgot about Scott Walker who was in the middle somewhere.  He is another guy with an image problem.  He has a permanent expression on his face like he is wasted.  As another tea party champion I of course spend most of the time he is talking being annoyed.  He of course has no shot either but maybe him and Ted Cruz can hang out and compare checks the Koch brothers wrote them.

The Ohio governor (Kasik?) seemed like a solid guy with a good track record.  He had some weird appearance issues as well.  He talks with constant duck lips, something I found myself concentrating on.  He is in a similar boat with Rand Paul, on the stage but far in the rear of the pack.

Finally there was big Chris Christie that was trying to throw his weight around, coming off as the big burly guy that doesn’t take any shit.  Despite his record of being more of a moderate republican candidate he seemed to be making a clear effort to come off as much more conservative than his past actions would indicate.  His crowing about enforcing the federal marijuana laws if he takes office is an instant turn off and a very stupid thing to hang your hat on.

I thought a lot of things about the debate were dumb as the moderator threw out many questions designed to solely incite conflict and nothing else.  The question about what woman each candidate would want on the 10 dollar bill was pointless and the following question about what secret service call sign they would want for themselves if they become president was even dumber.

Like I said earlier, I couldn’t believe the debate was 3 hours.  I also was surprised there were commercials.  I never recalled a debate having commercial breaks.  Thanks to Trump these debates have become HUGE money making opportunities for the networks, of course they are cashing in.

I was surprised you heard multiple candidates talking about changing the tax code to either the flat or fair tax model. One model imposes a simple flat income tax that is the same for everyone, no infinitely complex tax code and loop hole system.  The other model replaces the current income tax system with a nationwide tax on consumption.  I think either system is better than what is currently in place.  Every election cycle candidates say they like this plan and it never, ever gains any traction once they enter office.  It is one of those things that will simply never change because big business doesn’t want it to.

So this morning after breakfast we were walking up to the room.  Out of my peripheral vision I saw a person walk in the front doors and the clerk  say something like “hi, how can I help you”.  Then within 10 seconds we heard what was an obvious altercation.  Cindy got a better look than I did, she said the clerk was pushing and kicking the guy out the door.  I heard the clerk say “get the FUCK out of my hotel and don’t come back!”  I didn’t get a good look at the other guy but Cindy said he looked like he may have been a vagrant/hitchhiker type as he had a large backpack strapped on.  I wondered what happened in those couple seconds that made the clerk go from 0-60.  How exciting.

I was first to drive today, getting us into Louisiana.  As I mentioned yesterday, on this trip I have been approached by a number of people looking for help and I have repeatedly done so.  Well to my amazement, it happened AGAIN today.

Cindy was inside using the restroom and grabbing water while I was pumping gas.  An average looking guy in a baseball hat and sunglasses came walking over my way.  He asks me if there was anyway I could give him a gallon of gas.  I was caught a little off guard.  I asked him if he had a container or something to put the gas in.  He said his car was parked over there and it was running on fumes but he had enough to drive it over to the pump.  After seeing Cindy was still inside I told him to bring it over.

After I finished dumping 5 gallons into the Prius I dumped another 5 or 6 gallons into his non-descript brown Chevy Malibu.  As I pumped I talked to the guy a bit, asking him if he was trying to get home or to work.  He said “no man, I don’t know where I am going next”  He said he can’t believe he is an position where he has to ask someone for gas.  He said I looked familiar, I told him I am sure he never met me before as I am from Florida. I told the guy I was on a roadtrip and I have seen a lot of people in need during my travels.    I finished up pumping the gas and wished the guy good luck with whatever came next for him.  He thanked me, shook my hand and then asked me if I happened to have any cigarettes.  I told him I didn’t smoke.

He drove away before Cindy was done inside.  When Cindy came out I told her I had another charity situation pop up.  She at first assumed I gave someone else money.  When I told her I instead pumped 5 or 6 gallons of gas into his car she thought that was a better use of compassion.  It is an odd thing how I must throw off an invisible nice guy aura.

We are going to try extending our drive today as far as possible so we have a relatively short shot into Naples tomorrow.  Both Cindy and I are going a little car crazy at this point, after spending 100+ hours in the car, getting on each others nerves from time to time.  Yesterday I found myself randomly poking Cindy for no good reason, just to be irritating.  We both are just looking forward to getting our asses home and back to normalcy.