Category Rants

I really enjoyed my long three day weekend following the fun road trip into frozen western PA.  I tended to most of what needed to get done on Friday, leaving the other two days of the weekend to do what I wanted to do instead of what I had to do.

One of the things I got done Friday was picking up a new box spring for the king size gel infused foam mattress I bought off Woot last week.  The bed is for the guest room, replacing the too small for two people queen bed, that was graciously donated to me by Jeremy after I separated.

The foam bed came shrink wrapped and rolled up like a burrito.  It also appeared to be vacuum sealed with all of the air sucked out of it.  The bed came shipped to me in a huge, heavy duty drawstring bag that may be repurposed for other use in the future.

I lugged the bed on top of the box spring and started cutting away.  Once I punctured the plastic seal it was pretty cool how the bed “inflated”, sounding like one long inhale.  In a couple minutes the mattress had fully regained it’s original shape, looking like a regular mattress.

I had to give the mattress a quick test run.  The foam felt firm but soft at the same time as it conformed to my body shape.  I think future house guests will be quite happy with the bedding upgrade.

I also was very fortunate to have the old queen bed set out of the house before 5PM.  My neighbor that will check in on Tuki and the dogs when I am away, knew someone that was looking for a bed.  They came and grabbed it late afternoon.

The one thing that was not quite so enjoyable about the weekend was the temperature.  It seems pretty strange to be complaining about it being too hot after shivering in 1.5 degrees less than a week earlier.  But hey, it’s too fricking hot for February.  My thermometer read 86 degrees on Saturday afternoon.  The temps included high humidity as well adding to the irritation.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I got up early to go run at the local track once again.  It was VERY foggy.  As we ran circles the moisture on our face/bodies was equal parts fog and sweat.  We put in 3 miles at a slower pace than a couple weeks prior but it just felt good to get out there and move.

Cindy worked on Saturday.  I had a few things to get done around the house but it was all very minor.  I headed out to Home Depot to grab some vegetables for the garden, hoping to replenish it from the cold weather damage.  I loaded up on a big variety of crops, grabbing spinach, tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli, peas, and banana peppers.  When I got home I prepped the raised beds, pulling out the two sections of bolted lettuce and turning over/raking a number of other empty beds.

Of the pre-existing crops, my kale is doing the best, I have 7 or 8 healthy plants.  My swiss chard, which was getting devoured by insects is making a comeback presumably from my treating it with insecticidal soap.

By the time early afternoon rolled around I had everything I wanted done, done.  I decided to take the opportunity to totally relax the rest of the afternoon.  I played a couple hours of WoW and then dug further into Inferno, the Dan Brown book I started reading in PA. It was very nice to just relax.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the new RoboCop movie.  I looked at no reviews of the film ahead of time but figured it had the potential to be a clunker just like so many movie franchise reboots are.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I really liked the movie, I think it actually was neck and neck with the original Robocop in my book.  I give it a solid A-, we both thought it was good stuff.

We started Sunday morning once again with exercise.  I had forgotten that the waterpark reopened this past weekend.  I figured the near summer-like conditions would lend themselves to getting some swim time in.  We decided to pair it up with a bike ride to make a training brick, something I haven’t done since the waterpark closed for the season last September.

The ride was short compared to the 20 and 30 mile routes we have done in recent months but it was tough none the less.  Cindy was really having a hard time with her breathing due to the VERY heavy pollen count in the air right now.  She had a tough time keeping pace which for her is very unusual, normally it is me sucking wind to keep up with her.

Her breathing was too bad to try to swim however she hung out while I put in two very tough 400 yard segments in the pool.  The first 400 actually felt worst than the second.  The first time back in the pool after a long lay off always feels that way so it wasn’t unexpected.  I emerged from the water feeling like my first 2014 training brick had whacked me in the head like a real brick.  I was really pooped.

After the park we had a nice lunch at Panera before heading into Target to get a new comforter.  The comforter that has been on my bed actually is the one that used to be in the guest room and is more of a match for the colors in there.  I was buying a new one for the master bedroom. We wound up finding a decent set on clearance, the $30 price tag made it very appealing.

The rest of my Sunday was pretty laid back and enjoyable, just as the rest of the weekend had been.

The Winter Olympics are over, bummer.  I watched a decent amount of coverage but not a ton.  I didn’t catch one second of curling which is disappointing.  Unfortunately it is normally only televised on NBC’s cable channels.

Since I finished watching Sopranos I hooked into a new HBO show, True Detectives.  It caught my eye when it was being promoted because it had two actors that you normally only see on the big screen nowadays, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.   Cindy and I got through the first three episodes yesterday.

It’s a good show with a very dark tone to it.  Woody and Matt’s characters are both very interesting and well written.  I find McConaughey’s character fascinating.  Some of the lines he uses to describe his overall negative but honest viewpoint of the human race and religion are brilliantly stated.  I wish I had thought of them.  If you have access to HBO you should be watching this show.

Inferno also is based around a very negative premise, how world overpopulation is the TRUE source of so many things tagged as worldwide calamities like ozone depletion, global warming, water/food shortages, pollution, and animal extinction.  All of these problems are actually symptoms stemming from the incredible population growth of human beings in the last 200 years.

Any logical individual should be able to see a chart like this and realize something has to give. Despite this, the majority of the world gives no thought to the the meteoric rise of population and the inevitable end results if it continues unabated, the collapse of civilization as we know it. As long as we can get our McDonald’s food and Iphones the world must be ok.  The discussion of the function of human denial in the book is one I find myself shaking my head in agreement with quite often.  The big picture often is just too scary/overwhelming to look at so instead we just look away.

Last night I “made dinner” for Cindy and myself, juice.  When I was flying solo I had a period of time where I was juicing pretty regularly and days I didn’t juice a lot of my meals were wraps with just veggies/nuts in them.  It’s probably not a coincidence that when I was doing that I weighed 10 pounds less.

I got away from juicing primarily because I found it to be above the hassle quotient I was willing to tolerate with food prep.  Between prepping/cleaning the fruits/veggies to juice and the pretty messy clean up afterwards I just tired of it. Not only was cleaning the juicer a PIA, cleaning up the food shrapnel that sprays out during the juicing process was annoying as well.

Well last week I got the inspiration to pick up the juicing ball, at least on a limited basis.  I am thinking maybe I could do it one or two times a week as a dinner replacement.  Cindy, who is always game for pretty much anything healthy lifestyle related was excited to juice.  Well she was less excited after taking the first sip.

The juice was a mixture of celery, carrots, tomatoes, and beets.  By the time I was finished the juice container was filled to the very brim.  I would best describe the juice as tasting very “earthy” as in like you were drinking dirt.

I attributed the taste to perhaps me not cleaning the beets as thoroughly as I should have although I don’t think I did anything differently than I did in the past.   The only thing  I might have done differently in the past was add an orange or apple to it as well.

Cindy tried to amend the dirt juice by mixing in some orange juice from the bottle.  She said it didn’t help much.  I choked mine down as is.  Cindy got hers down as well.  So our dinner last night consisted of a salad and the cup of dirt juice.  Surprisingly I didn’t feel ravenous later.  Despite the bad taste, the juice was a super concentrated shot of everything great fresh vegetables gives you .

I watched some of the Olympics last night, I originally thought the opening ceremonies were last night.  Instead it was just some of the events like snowboarding and skating.  Still I watched a hour or so of it.

I mixed it in with doing so server work at the office from home.  I have been trying to get a few things implemented this week and have only been partially successful in doing so which is frustrating.  I followed up with getting to work an hour early this morning to continue tweaking.

This weekend has a lot of potential things to keep me busy.  I may try to start it off with putting in 3-5 miles at the local track to see how my tricky right knee feels.  After that the chores will begin in earnest.  I would like to get the auxiliary trans cooler I bought for the Tacoma installed and perhaps a partial trans fluid swap while I am at it.  I have the supplies to change the oil on Cindy’s Miata as well so that should get knocked out too.   The front discs on the Tacoma are going to need to be replaced in the near future as well.

So yesterday I was pointed to various stories that were tied into a statement made by Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary.   The full statement was this:

Over the longer run, CBO finds that because of this law, individuals will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time rather than working into their elderly years or choosing to spend more time with their families. At the beginning of this year, we noted that as part of this new day in health care, Americans would no longer be trapped in a job just to provide coverage for their families, and would have the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

However conservatives took a few key words to represent the statement in a manner that is obviously 180 degrees different than how it was intended.  This tactic is used again and again by the media to gain influence with the massive portion of the population that are too ignorant, lazy , or indifferent to actually form their own opinions.

Carney was saying that the availability of the ACA act allows individuals to not be stuck in a job that is inadequate in other ways because it was the only way they could get health insurance for themselves and/or their family. They can instead pursue other work or even start a business without fear of not having a way to get affordable health care insurance.  Conservatives and their media counterparts instead ingested this positive idea and crapped out that instead it means it encourages people to quit their jobs, stay at home and have others pay for their healthcare.

Anyone with the ability to construct a sentence of more than 5 words should be able to see just how ridiculous it is to interpret what Carney really said as meaning “Americans should stop working to “pursue their dreams” (stay at home).  It’s absolutely moronic yet sadly there are millions of Americans that will eat every morsel of this bullshit and come back asking for seconds.

America is so fcked up.  Thank you Koch brothers for your diligent and tireless work to ensure this is more and more the status quo every single day.  Distract the masses by pitting them against each other while those at the top chuckle at all of us from their golden balconies.

So throughout my life, like most people, there are lots of times when I have made poor decisions.  Last night was another shining example of that talent.

After work I met Cindy at Sam’s to pick up a bunch of stuff for the SB party we are hosting Sunday.  The cart was fully loaded down with party supplies including a case of water along with 4 different cases of beer.  Cindy was going out last night so I unloaded the stuff at the homestead myself.

I decided to use the storage ottoman in the corner of the kitchen as a stacking point for the beverages. Since the crate of water was the biggest item that went on the bottom.  The four different types of beer were stacked on top.  I recall thinking when I stacked it up “Hmmm will the water bottles be ok holding this weight? Sure, they have pallets of water bottle cases stacked on top of each other much higher.  Good to go.”

So later after attending a number of chores I finally settled down to play some Hearthstone.  As I was in the middle of a match I heard a very loud impact coming from the kitchen that included the sound of broken glass…. NO……

I shoot out of my office chair and into the kitchen.  On the floor is every box of beer and a quickly growing pond of beer.  I grab a towel from the closet and throw it in front of the beer river just before it made it’s way to the carpeted area next to the kitchen.  I see brown and green broken glass on the floor as well.  While leaving the towel in place to block the beer I grab the two cases of beer that had bottles, the Bud Light and Stella.  I carry the leaking boxes out to the recycle bin in the garage and throw them in.  I was thrilled to have destroyed two perfectly good cases of beer.

I return to the kitchen to further assess damages.  The two cases of beer that were in cans, Miller Lite (in a retro can) and Mich Ultra appeared to have survived the impact intact.  In the beer that was still puddled on the floor was a LOT of glass shards.  I used the big towel to sop up as much as possible before shaking the glass shards out of it outside and then throwing the towel in the washer.

The rest of the clean up involved a lot of wiping with wet paper towels to pick up as much glass as possible followed by a pass over the area with the Dyson.  The final step was a full run with the Scooba, first using a vinegar/water solution followed by straight water.  The entire time I was cleaning up I was mentally kicking the ass of the idiot inside that stacked the beer.  Dummy.

So I actually managed to do a full 30 minutes yesterday of the A2G challenge, holding a deep squat position 1 minute at a time until it added up to 30.  I only had two minutes left to do at home last night.  Late in the day the holds had swung back to the more and more difficult variety because the soreness from my squats and dead lifts the day before was settling in.  The last two holds at home were very painful.

Today I woke up with a lower body that is incredibly stiff and sore, the opposite of what you would hope happens after a day of stretching.  Today my ass wont be going anywhere near the grass.  It will probably stay chair bound all day until the pain subsides.

On my way in today I grabbed a coffee at DD.  I handed them my DD loyalty punch card which rewarded you with one free medium coffee after you buy 7 at regular price.  The clerk told me the punch card was being replaced by a new electronic loyalty program, DD Perks,  where you carry around a card, similar to the rechargeable DD card I use to pay for coffee.  Each time you buy stuff they swipe this card and you accumulate points.

Ok that’s fine, I’m all for doing things in a more efficient manner.  Well it wasn’t fine once I saw the point system.  They credit you 5 points for every dollar you spend at DD. To get a free coffee costs 200 points.  Let’s do some quick math.

In the past, 7 medium coffees would qualify you for a free 8th cup.  A medium coffee is roughly $2, meaning that spiff would hit after approximately 14$ of spending with the old system.  With this new system, that $14 only equates to 70 points, a third of what you need to get a free coffee.!!!! What the fck….

So hidden in the ruse of efficiency, they basically chopped the customer loyalty reward by two thirds.  What a crock of shit.  The only people that could possibly break even with this new plan are those that buy a shitload of donuts or food at DD since with the old program those sort of things were not included in the spiff.  But for those of us that use Dunkin Donuts almost exclusively for coffee, we got the long, hard, dry shaft.  I have to find someone at DD to hear my rant. Greedy bastards.

This weekend I will be quite busy doing prep at the house for the party.  I need to clean the inside of the house, manicure the outside and tend to the numerous details associated with hosting such an event.  It looks like we may have as many as 15 people show for the party, it should be fun.

I proactively took Monday off to allow for a full day of recovery from whatever goes down Sunday.  Go Broncos.

I spent the vast majority of last night breaking the two big files I captured on Randall’s GoPro  in the Phantom into four YouTube videos.  Two of them were the aerial slackline footage and the other two were the footage shot while I was several hundred feet in the air.  Check them out on my YouTube channel.

The video demonstrates just how stable the Phantom is.  I am pretty sure I could hover the quad in a good filming position, set down the transmitter and step into the shot without worry of the copter going anywhere.  It’s that easy.

I heard that Florida is officially going to put legalization of medical marijuana on the ballot for the next election thanks to a Supreme Court ruling.  Simply putting this to a vote has been fought against fanatically by those that profit from pot being illegal.  Personally I am quite glad it will be finally put to a vote.

Despite never being a marijuana user and my personal opinion that being a pothead is closely tied to doing precious little with your life, I don’t view the drug as any more dangerous than alcohol.  The amount of money we spend policing, convicting and incarcerating marijuana users is absolutely ridiculous.   When you team the money saved by no longer having to do these things with the revenue from taxing marijuana sales it is a HUGE swing to the WIN side.

If people want to smoke pot, let them.

Friday night after work I headed directly to the running store which was hosting packet pick up for Sunday’s Half Marathon until 7PM.  I brought an extra sweatshirt along since I planned to sit outside on the patio of TGIF’s to do my data entry, it was rather chilly with temps dropping through the 60’s. Packet pickup was steady but not horribly busy.  I was able to enter any paper entry forms on the spot so I wouldn’t have to mess around with them after I got back home.

On Saturday I planned to once again go to packet pick up but not until early afternoon, I had some stuff I wanted to get done around the house in the morning.  After getting the weeding done around the house Cindy helped me take down the outside Xmas decorations.  Originally I had ideas of leaving the lights up and on until the end of January like I did last year, but for whatever reason that idea no longer seemed like a good one.  The lights had been turned off a week ago.

Removing the lights required use of my extension ladder and extendable pool skimmer pole.  I was the primary remover, especially of anything above 7 or 8 feet high.  Cindy was the designated light wrapper, a role she excelled at.  After maybe an hours work the exterior of the house was officially undecorated.  Usually taking down Xmas lights will bring with it substantial feelings of melancholy for me.  There was some of that this year but not to the degree I have felt it in the past.

When I got back down to the running store I had a bunch of paper entries waiting for me.  It seems odd to me to wait until the day before a half marathon to sign up for it but if people are willing to lay down the extra dollars for their procrastination so be it.  There was a lot of complaining regarding the race shirts given out this year.

The race director decided to go with a different source for race shirts and it turned out to be a poor decision.  Not only were the shirts lesser quality than what runners had experienced in prior years they were sized HORRIBLY.  It almost seemed like the manufacturer mislabeled a truckload of shirts and sent them to us.  A small shirt was the size of a regular medium or even possibly a large shirt.  The medium shirts would pass for XL, it was pretty embarrassing. They also had absolutely no fit to them whatsoever, they seemed patterned after a potato sack.

Because the shirts were so mis-sized, tons of people were exchanging down in size from what they signed up for.  This started a chain reaction of bad things.  The monster shirts resulted in the smaller sizes, Xtra Small and Small being exhausted quickly.   This resulted in anyone that came to pick up their race packet after 2PM of having no choice but to receive at the smallest, a medium shirt (the size of a BIG large shirt).

Some people didn’t care but most of them were not happy and I didn’t blame them.   A 1/2 marathon race shirt is something that a lot of people want to wear with pride, as running 13.1 miles is a major accomplishment.  If you hand them a low quality, oversized, white shirt you are blemishing that opportunity as a crappy shirt is less likely to be worn.  As I said, I felt embarrassed to be handing runners these shirts but I had no choice.

There was a good turnout on Saturday, we started with 11 boxes of packets and were able to condense that down to 4 by days end which was my hope.  The less people that need to pick up stuff on race day, the better.

Once I got home from packet pick up I had to dive headfirst into final race prep which included printing, packing, loading and going over mental checklists repeatedly to make sure I had everything I needed for the race.  The forecast for race morning was quite cold with temps predicted in the low to mid 40’s. I decided to leave anything with a battery in it inside overnight so it wouldn’t have it’s capacity knocked down by the cold temps in the van.  We got to bed as early as possible, lights out around 9:30.

The ridiculously early 2:30 alarm was hated but necessary.  Not only did I have to load the remaining stuff on the van before heading out, Cindy had to to do prep for the race since she was volunteering AND running in it.  As I stepped outside to load the van the air felt quite cold as expected although the 4 layers I had up top and two on the bottom half of my body felt sufficient.

We got on site a little before 4AM.  I immediately dove into the long list of things that needed to get erected, dropped off, set up and configured.  The cold temps almost felt bearable because there was a lack of wind to push them against any exposed skin.

Pre-race set up went smoothly.  We had the registration area all set up and ready to rock well before the official 5:45AM open to race day registration.  Once runners started flowing in things were quite busy but flowing in an orderly manner.  We actually had 6 or 7 people walk up the morning of the race and plunk down $100 to participate, funny.

About 15 minutes before the race start I headed to the start line to set up the timing equipment.  Doing so with a couple thousand people mulling about is always interesting.  I had everything up and ready to go with about 5 minutes to go.  With a race this size it takes a loooong time until the last runner crosses the start mats, this year the last person hit the mats 3:30 after the start of the race.

So as soon as I was done at the start I had to head right to the finish line to get cracking.  Normally you would think roughly the hour I had before the first runner comes across would be plenty to get everything up and running at the finish.  Surprisingly I used almost every minute allocated to me.

You see this race has a TON of extra moving parts.  I set up two timing boxes for redundancy at the finish line and a third box that is used by the race announcer to call runner names as they head to the finish.  There is a lot of additional tweaking that needs to be done to make this happen plus I was running into technical glitches with one of the boxes.  Finally, with about 5 minutes to spare, I THOUGHT I had everything ready to roll.

So the race winner comes blazing down the road, crosses the announcer mats and no name pops up, just a code.  When the runner crosses my finish mats I see his time pop up but no name, wtf?  I hoped this was just a weird  anomaly, it wasn’t.  As subsequent runners came across the announcer was seeing nothing and I was seeing no names on their finish times.  Houston, we have a problem…a BIG problem.

I handed the handheld Time Machine to someone so they could hit the button each time a runner crossed so I would at least have some sort of times to reference if this was some sort of mega-disaster.  Of course my first thought was “oh shit, the biggest race of the year and I am not going to have results” but that quickly was shoved to the background, I needed to figure out what the fck was going on.

After doing some looking at runners in the system I noticed I only had timing chip id’s assigned to the first 2500 numbers.  That makes no sense, I individually scanned all 2750 timing chips to make a chip to bib mapping file.  I was sure after doing so I applied the new chip id’s to the race however what I was seeing showed I hadn’t.  What I realized was the race was loaded with the chips used in last year’s race, oh man…

Ok so now that I identified the problem, I had to figure out how to fix it.  I was scrambling to remember where I dumped the new chip file I created.  I looked on the laptop and even remote controlled to my server at home, looking to see if I put them there.  Finally after some frustrating memory failures, I found the files.  I had indeed forgot to apply them to this years race, great.

So after some mad scrambling I was able to apply the correct mapping file to both the announcers laptop and my timing laptop.  Finally, names were being associated with times after a VERY tense 20 minutes.

Our announcer did a good job of improvising while I was scrambling.  Since he had no runner info he simply stood by the finish line and acted like an amplified cheerleader, “Good job! Way to go! (whoever you are)”  The sigh of relief when I got everything back in order was quite large.  Rest assured that will never happen again.

To the runners that finished after the problem, things were status quo, in fact I don’t think many race participants even realized there was a problem at all since live results, although slightly delayed were flowing normally.  After that cluster fck, the rest of the event timing went smoothly.  The shoe timing chips we went back to this year, although slightly less convenient than race bib timing solutions, proved to be rock solid reliable.  I had hardly any racing time misses outside of a few missed start times, something quite impressive with an event this size.

For Cindy this was the first time she ever ran a stand alone 1/2 marathon.  She had covered the distance in her Half Ironman triathlon a year ago but never as a solo event.  She hadn’t been able to train as consistently or as hard as she would have liked to going into the race.  She was doubtful she could break the 2 hour mark, despite my assurances she could.

She proved me right, covering the distance in less than 1:56, only a minute slower than my best 1/2 marathon time.  Her levels of determination and competitiveness really shine through when it comes to race day.   It was a great run by her.

We didn’t get off site until way after 11.  Once I pulled into the driveway it was another 4 hours plus of working on race related items including an unexpectedly miserable job of emptying unused race packets.  We created 2700 packets for the race, we had roughly 2100 finishers.  That meant there were HUNDREDS of packets left.  Each packet had stuff in it that could be recycled or reused in the future, a timing chip, safety pins, twist ties and the 9×12 packet itself.  Cindy and I spent at least a couple hours alone dumping these out and sorting the contents.  I quickly discovered that paper hand outs, paper race bibs and feather light twist ties do not always come out of a packet easily.  It was pure drudgery.

On Sunday night I made the suggestion we watch my latest Netflix rental, Now You See Me, back in the bedroom.  Well considering we both had been up since 2:30 AM that was a pretty dumb idea.  I wound up dozing off for more of the movie than not.  However I think it was a good thing.

You know how speed readers say they only read parts of the page and are still able to get a decent comprehension of the material?  That was how this movie was.  Even with only seeing small chunks of it I could tell it was fcking stupid.  This was one of those movies that depicts the characters as just too clever and slick to be remotely believable, these geniuses would confuse Einstein.  At first I considered if I should re-watch the movie to see if my first impression was unfair.  I decided to go with my gut, it’s stupid. C rating.

I was quite thankful I had Monday off to recover from race weekend.  Cindy and I enjoyed a very laid back day that featured beautiful weather.  I went and picked up the dogs to enjoy the day with us since Ali had to work.  Enjoy it they did.  Both Nicki and Sadie seemed to love hanging outdoors as much as possible.

Cindy and I spent a lot of time on her slackline.  We both are getting better.  I actually made it all the way across without falling, a first.  We then moved it between two slightly further apart trees and I again was able to complete the entire span which surprised the shit out of me. Cindy completed the span as well several times but also did some impressive backwards walking and 180 degree turns on the line that I didn’t even consider attempting.

We both had some falls.  Cindy fell while I was recording, landing forcefully on her butt/lower back.  I fell off twice.  The first time landing on my knees in a less than pleasant way. My second fall was more serious and ended my slacklining for the day.  I slipped off the line and fell in a way that compressed my bad right knee much further than it will go on it’s own.  It was very similar to what I did coming off the 1/4 pipe obstacle at the Tough Mudder. When I first got up I had an awful limp that subsided after a few minutes but today that knee is swollen and stiff, great.

I’d like to say that I have a nice break from the stresses of race timing but this weekend I roll right into Ali’s Run for the Paws race which not only is our 2nd biggest 5K of the year, it’s also one of the most logistically challenging.

The start and finish line for the race are very far apart, making it extremely difficult for me to start the race and get the finish line up and running before the first runner arrives.  To assist me this year I plan to drive my truck to start line and use it to shuttle me back to the finish as quickly as possible.

This morning I got an EXTREMELY annoying email from LogMeIn, the providers of a free remote control solution I have used for nearly a decade.  The email said the free service level, which allowed you to handle up to 10 computers was being terminated IMMEDIATELY.  Yes as in ZERO notice.  In addition to the pay option being your only avenue they are only giving you the ability to control TWO computers for the base level of paid service.  What the fck?

This was total and utter bullshit and I have no idea what the deciders at the company were thinking.  I can understand wanting to move more people towards the pay model.  Perhaps further limit the free options of the product or if you are no longer offering a free version of the product, make the paid version able to at a minimum handle the same number of computers you could for free previously.  And of course, this change should have been announced with a lead time, allowing users of the product to evaluate other solutions if they were not interested in paying for LogMeIn.

Instead they did none of this.  From my perspective (and many others if you look at reaction on the net) this was almost a ransom attempt.  You pull the rug out from your free user base with no notice and then tell them their only option is to fork over cash for a decreased level of service, what a brilliant marketing plan.  Did they not see what happened to Netflix?

So anyway, I will be among the thousands jumping ship from LogMeIn probably heading over to TeamViewer, another remote control product that is free for personal use.

I would be highly surprised if within a short time LogMeIn doesn’t reverse direction (Woops we’re sorry for being assholes) and step back from their initial stupid plans to something more moderate.  Unfortunately a huge chunk of their user base will have already sailed off, never to return again, including myself.

It looks like today is a Friday Rant day.

So after work I needed to pick up a large package of chicken to use in the meals for the dogs.  I figured I may as well do so at Costco.  Well as soon as I entered the parking lot I knew I was going to be in for an annoying Costco experience, something which is the case more often or not.

I joined Costco last year, looking to a support a warehouse chain with a better business model than Sam’s Club.  Costco pays their employees better, treats them better and are generally viewed as the anti-Wal-mart, the godfathers of Sam’s Club.

I want to enjoy shopping at Costco.  I want to support the good things they stand for.  But regardless of my intent, time and again my shopping experience at our local store is anything but enjoyable.  The place is always packed and yesterday was even worse than normal.

There is nowhere you can look  that does not include human beings scurrying about.  Once you enter the store you merge into a current of shopping carts.  If you pause without making sure you exit the current you risk being rear ended.  If you forgot something and need to turn around against the river of humanity you are taking your life into your own hands.

Maybe they are just too successful, all I know is I can not STAND shopping at a place where I am bumping elbows with people repeatedly.  I literally feel like an ant in a colony, it sucks.

To make matters worse, for some reason they had absolutely NO CHICKEN.  I dipped myself into this humanity soup unnecessarily, great.  I grabbed a few other items but not the main reason I went there.

As I made my way to Sam’s to score the chicken, I tried to ascertain why Costco was SO horrible on a Thursday evening. I came up with a common cause of misery during this time of year, snowbirds.  A ton of them have probably just flocked back into town now that the holidays are over, necessitating stocking up their seasonal cupboards at Costco.

Ironically Sam’s was a calm and pleasant scene, 180 degrees from the Costco chaos I had just left.  The wide aisles left my personal space intact, I didn’t feel my blood pressure rising as I made my way to the poultry section where they had boneless breasts on sale for a very cheap $1.70 a pound.  I walked up to the self checkout line (Costco doesn’t have them) and exited the store without a fuss.

I wish I could get the shopping environment of Sam’s within the walls of Costco.

When I got home I had something else waiting to annoy me.  It was a bill from the state of Florida for their TOLL-BY-PLATE system.  It was from when Cindy borrowed the party van to go to Key West and I knew the bill was coming.  However I still found myself being very annoyed by the premise behind the system.

So basically in certain areas of the state they decided that paying toll takers was an unnecessary expense so they removed them.  Their removal meant you are no longer able to simply pay for a toll with actual cash.  You have to have one of the prepaid Sunpass transponders.  If you don’t have one, they have a system in place that takes a picture of your license plate and then uses the plate registration info to mail you a paper bill.  This aggravates the shit out of me on several levels.

I can understand wanting to save costs but I think having at least one booth available to take cash for tolls is not a lot to ask.  Maybe I would like to just throw a buck for the toll instead of having to get a bill in the mail that I have to write a check for 3 weeks later. To add injury to insult, the state charges you an additional $2.50 “administrative fee” for the privilege of not being able to simply pay for a toll on the spot.

I am sure the thinking behind this process was hoping the admin fee plus the inconvenience of having to deal with a physical bill will push more people into buying a pre-paid Sunpass, where the state gets to hold our money in advance before it is actually spent.

Perhaps I am just being old fashioned but when push comes to shove I still think physical currency should be accepted in these situations.

This weekend I have things to do of course.  I think I will be removing my interior Xmas decorations but once again will leave my outside lights up for an extended period of time.  I just like having them out there.  I’d like to once again rip apart the SSR dash to turn down the gain on the stereo to silence the maddening electronic whine.

I’d also like to to string the slack line I bought for Cindy for Xmas.  It will be interesting to see how well we can balance on a 2-3 inch wide strip of fabric.  I also am looking to do another quadracopter aerial video session.  I bought some stuff called Moon Gel that is supposed to do a good job of reducing the amount of camera shake.

Saturday night will be consumed cheering on the Eagles to hopefully a first round playoff win.

I forgot to mention that I finally got around to getting nightstands for the master bedroom again.  Ever since the split some 20 months ago I have had a flimsy, small shelf on my side of the bed that was loaded down with remote controls, magazines and books.

At first I looked into getting the matching set from Rooms To Go since that is where the bedroom furniture came from.  They no longer had that style of furniture and any nightstands they were selling were between $200-$300 each, more than I was looking to spend.

Well as has often been the case, Amazon once again came to the rescue.  I found $70 stands that appeared to be a close match to the wood color of the existing stuff.  All I had to do was grab two metal knobs at Home Depot to mimic what is on the RtG furniture.

Assembly of the nightstands was straightforward and despite the low price, they seemed to be pretty high quality.  The finished stands felt solid and looked good.  The color match with the old stuff was very good as well.  To the casual observer, they may even think the nightstands were part of the bedroom set.  Their addition to the room added a completeness that was missing.  The only in house item that I need to reinstate is a king size bed in the guest bedroom.  Hopefully that will be a 2014 item.

On Saturday I had various things I wanted to get done.  I mowed the big section of the backyard and then ripped apart the dash of my SSR for seemingly the 100th time to adjust the gain on a potentiometer in my stereo system.  When I last ripped it apart to redo the ground I turned down the gain.  Well I turned it down too far, so far that with the stereo set at max volume it was hard to hear during topless highway driving.

I also needed to check the clutch fluid on the truck, shifting was feeling different.  Well the reservoir was very low.  The question was where did the fluid go?  I opened the remote drain line while refilling the clutch fluid tank to fill/bleed it.  I am hoping that possibly I just didn’t have the drain plug on tight enough, causing the slow leak.  I will need to keep an eye on things.

So back to the stereo.  I ripped the front dash cover off, something I am quite adept at by now.  I turned the dial up on the potentiometer and turned the key enough to flip on the radio.  It was loud with volume to spare, sweet.  I put everything back together, happy to have completed the project.

Well I wasn’t happy when I took the truck to the movies with Cindy Saturday night.  When I started the truck I immediately heard the annoying as shit electronic whine that follows engine RPM.  Evidently I cranked the knob too far, enough to once again pull that noise into the system.  When I tested it during the day I stupidly didn’t turn the truck all the way on.  So sometime soon I will be ripping the dash apart yet again, fantastic.

The movie we went to see was 47 Ronin, an action movie set in ancient samurai times starring Keanu Reaves.  I was SHOCKED when we walked up to the box office and saw a line of 30 plus people at Coconut Point.  This theater is never, ever this busy.  Evidently I must have never gone there to see a movie between Xmas and New Years.  Luckily the long line moved quickly.  The line at the food stand was equally long and unfortunately much, much slower.  By the time we got into our seats we were well into the previews.

I thought the movie was good, not great.  It was nice seeing Keanu back in an action film.  I’d give the flick a strong B+, bordering on an A- depending on my mood.

Perhaps my rating is negatively biased from the fat, zit faced kid that was sitting two seats to my left during the film.  Every few minutes he felt the need to light up his phone, just to make sure he didn’t miss some social media, text message or other brainless activity.  When I see individuals that are so connected with their electronic devices that they can’t even sit through a movie without interacting with them it sickens me.  It makes me feel badly for even owning a smartphone myself.  As I was waiting in the hall after the movie, 75% of the human beings in the hall with me had their heads down, making virtual love to their phones.  It just bothers me.

When we got home we had to light up a vanilla birthday cupcake for Nicki, celebrating her 11th birthday.  Both Sadie and her LOVED their sweet treat.  Sadie was pushing the dish across the floor, trying to lick up every last speck of icing.  Tonight I get to repeat the process since it is Sadie’s bday.

Sunday was a very slow/lazy day for me.  It was off and on raining for most of the morning, scuttling our tentative plans to do a bike ride.  Late morning we headed back up to Coconut Point to the ATT store.  We had stopped there before the movie to look into replacing Cindy’s aging Iphone 4S.  I had made the suggestion that she looks into breaking away from her Iphone heritage and look into a Samsung Galaxy S4.  Since playing with my Galaxy Tab 3 Cindy bought me for Xmas I am more and more impressed with the Android environment.

The S4 hardware is superior to what Apple offers as well with a better camera, dramatically larger screen and release from the typical Apple shackles, allowing you to do things like add a memory card and swap out the battery yourself, GASP.  Cindy wanted to go back to that particular store because she had a soft spot for the kid that helped us. He had a pretty noticeable stutter, something difficult to deal with in the sales field.

Well her loyalty came with a price.  The cost was at least 60 minutes of standing around, waiting for Nathan to get free.  We had the misfortune of showing up while he was in the middle of replacing phones for an ENTIRE family, four phones in total.  By the end of the 60 minute wait I was right on the verge of consuming my last grain of patience.

Finally he finished up and took care of the swap which was pretty easy.  Cindy converted over to the ATT Next plan which allows you to swap out your phone more often for less up front money.  I was skeptical of the plan since when you break costs into monthly increments you always wind up paying more than if you just bite the bullet and pay it up front.  However in her case the numbers made sense.  Instead of paying 199 up front for a new phone, her upgrade fee was 40 bucks and will remain 40 bucks in 18 months when she upgrades again.  With a 10 GIG shared data plan (her daughter is on her account), her monthly bill only went up roughly 10 bucks.

Cindy was scared to leave the comfort of her Iphone but I convinced her after the transition phase which is sure to be frustrating at times, she will be glad she made the switch.  I know multiple Galaxy former iOwners that LOVE their Droids once they switched.  A good portion of the rest of Sunday was spent fussing with the S4, migrating data from her Iphone to it and exploring/learning/configuring things on the new phone.

I sort of felt like a lazy bum during the afternoon, surely due to the lack of any organized exercise during the weekend.  It wasn’t like I was laying around watching tv and drinking beer but still, my mental health requires physical effort.

I had the Phantom in the air a number of times over the weekend.  Each time I was amazed at just how ez the thing is to fly.  I had so much confidence in it’s stability that I even let Cindy fly it around the yard quite a bit.  As long as you make sure you are away from/above any potential obstacles you are good to go.  Crashing it would require an act of extreme negligence.  I’m not quite sure what the range is of the radio but I have had the sucker quite high, to the point where it was a small red/green blip in the sky.

Wow, the Eagles did it.  They beat the Cowboys to win the NFC East, delivering a huge interception at the very end of the game to secure the win.  The game was great, just what you would want for a contest deciding the division champion.  The Eagles never trailed but were only holding a very narrow lead for most of the game.

For Dallas it had to be a heartbreaking loss, akin to what the Eagles experienced losing three or four NFC championship games in a row.  You see for the past three years Dallas had a chance to win their division on the last game of the season against a division opponent.  For three years in a row they have gone down in flames, losing to the Giants, the Redskins and now the Eagles.

The Eagles winning the division is part of a dramatic turnaround that I never would have predicted a couple months ago when the team seemed destined to be in the midst of a rebuilding year, sitting at 3-5.  I am very happy to pronounce myself mistaken in my analysis of the team back them.  Nick Foles meteoric rise at QB and the defense playing better resulted in 7-1 finish, putting the Birds at 10-6 for the year.

Even with the great finish I am still not taking anything for granted.  I have no idea if they can make any headway in the playoffs or if the Saints will come in to one and done them.  It doesn’t really matter though to me, it’s all gravy at this point.

Last night I had another running club meeting to attend, this time it was regarding the half marathon that goes down in mid-January.  I had a few beers and pizza as various race details were discussed.  I actually got out of there earlier than expected, pulling out around 7:15.

Finally, close to a month after submitting to the Apple Store, my app for the running club has finally cleared the arduous Apple approval process.  You can now search “gulf coast runners” and hit on the app.  It’s certainly not a ground breaking app but it does aggregate the most important club information in one spot in a way that is easy to access and navigate.

So this morning I went through my annual Sirirus/XM song and dance.  It’s the same dance I have done for the last half decade or so.  It goes like this.

I get something in the mail that shows what my renewal rate for the upcoming year will be.  This renewal rate is typically ridiculously high and stuffed with surcharges for things that used to be included in your subscription for free (music royalty fees, internet listening).  This year’s proposed renewal charge for the year was $229.50.  I call them up and tell them I would rather cancel than pay these ridiculous rates.  They drop the price dramatically to keep me subscribed.

This year’s song and dance was no different although it took longer than normal to get the discount processed.  I wound up renewing the service for $100 less than the billed amount.  I would be interested in knowing how many suckers actually pay full rate for their service.

The first time they don’t offer me a similar discount I am out.  I only listen to the Stern channels for the most part (except for long road trips).  With as light as Howard’s schedule is anymore it just isn’t worth it to me to pay any more.

This morning I dropped the dogs back off at Ali’s place.  They had a lot of fun with me and enjoyed unrestricted access to the outdoors with the mild weather.  The good news is I will grabbing them in a couple days for another weekend stay.  They will be very excited to see Uncle Randall.

I forgot to mention how utterly annoyed I was on Friday. It seemed like my day was filled with wall to wall annoyances both at work and elsewhere. I seemed like I was dealing with non-stop incompetence/stupidity from the gun.

Once I was out on the road to go home I had two stops, Sam’s Club and Publix.  At Sam’s I got to deal with a maddening horde of people at the gas pump followed by more aggravation inside.

At Publix it was a pure madhouse with people getting their Thanksgiving supplies.  I tried to keep my calm as I patiently waited for clueless person after clueless person blocking aisles by putting their cart on one side while standing on the other, looking for something.  I almost lost my calm when I was emerging from an aisle and suddenly out of the corner of my eye saw an unrestrained child sprinting across the store from my left.

I stopped abruptly and pulled the cart back. The father was a good 10 feet behind the child, doing nothing to prevent his kid from side swiping someone else. As he came up to me he said “Oh, sorry…” I said “yea…” in a tone with a facial expression that clearly meant “you are a dipshit”.

Despite the aggravation I was feeling, I threw a dollar in the Salvation Army bucket on the way out. Of course once I was in the truck I had a 25 car quagmire waiting to get out of the f’ing shopping center.  Just one of those days I suppose.

I can’t believe I forgot to relay the most interesting part of my day yesterday.  I was on my way to the running club meeting.  I was on a 6 lane road (three lanes per side) and passed a guy riding an ordinary looking mountain bike.  I didn’t notice the bike as much as how this moron was riding it.

He was wearing headphones, and was riding with no hands on the handlebars, relying on forward momentum to steer for him.  Ok I have seen this before. In fact, I have even ridden with no hands for brief periods of time just to see if I could do it.  Of course I would never entertain doing so with 6 lanes of rush hour of traffic in the vicinity.

These items already made the guy a certifiable dumb ass in my book.  However apparently he was interested in raising the bar.  The reason he had no hands on the handlebars was because he had both hands on his smartphone.  He was feverishly texting away, looking at the phone, with no hands on the handlebars and headphones on, with 6 lanes of traffic next to him.

I turned my head and just gazed in disbelief at just how incredibly moronic this visual was.  I continued to monitor the stupidity in the rear view mirror and then it happened, he dumped the bike.  I laughed out loud when I saw it.  He managed to land on his feet but the bike crashed into the curb.

Perhaps this young man will use his crash as a learning tool and no longer bicycle while listening to music and texting with no hands on the handlebars.  Who am I kidding….