I have been a Costco member for a few months, long enough to give an accurate opinion of what I do and don’t like about Costco in comparison to Sam’s Club.
From a moral/ethical standpoint Costco wins hands down. They treat their employees much better than Sam’s does. Costco also seems more concerned with supporting made in America products more so than Sam’s does.
Costco seems to have more ancillary services tied to their membership than Sam’s does. They also have a more diverse online web store.
However here is what I DON’T like about my local Costco.
It is swamped, all the time, especially during snowbird season. I used to think Sam’s got busy at times. It’s nothing compared to Costco. The Sam’s Club floor plan is more wide open than Costco as well. I never get away from the feeling of being crowded in Costco, ever. When I stopped at Sam’s on Friday it wasn’t bad at all, I didn’t feel like I was drowning in humanity once.
Costco has no labels on it’s aisles (Sam’s does) other than some number that means nothing to me. How hard is it to post signage identifying the type of products that are in a particular aisle? It makes it annoying to figure out where stuff is, especially if you are new to the store. I don’t want to have to snake up and down every aisle in the store to figure out where the item I need is located.
There are a couple things that I can’t get at Costco like Zone Bars, which I can understand I guess. What I can’t understand is why they don’t sell something like bulk bags of outdoor bird seed.
The parking lot at my Costco is poorly designed and a royal pain in the ass to get into and out of. The Sam’s parking lot isn’t great but it is way better than the Costco maze.
Finally, Costco doesn’t have self check out lines, something Sam’s implemented in the last year. I always prefer to check myself out when possible. The line is almost always non-existent since so many people are lazy fat asses that view self checkout as being too much like work.
So I currently have both club memberships since my Sam’s card auto renewed last October. I intended to totally remove Sam’s Club from my life but the Costco negatives I listed here has that plan up in the air.
This is a few days old but I have been meaning to comment on it. Am I the only one that thinks it is bat shit crazy that the Ravens made Joe Flacco the highest paid player in the NFL? Sure he had a good run at the end of the season but his NFL career clearly shows he is on the high end of mediocre or low end of good QB’s in the NFL. I don’t get it.
Maybe I am jaded by what the Eagles did in 2010, throwing a mountain of cash at Mike Vick after 8 good games (followed by 24 not so good). I think less of Joe Flacco for proclaiming he deserved Drew Brees type money. Have some humility or at least let your agent say those type of statements. Dumb ass, rich dumb ass that is.
There is this guy that started showing up at the gym the past couple months. He annoys me. He is a short stocky type of guy with some tattoos. He is a notorious half rep squatter, never getting his thighs past 45 degrees no matter if he is squatting 315 or 135. However none of these things are the true annoyance.
He wears sunglasses in the gym. Most of the time he has them propped up on his forehead but there are plenty of times, especially when he is squatting, that he is wearing them conventionally. I have pondered why an individual would choose to wear sunglasses while they work out in the gym. After much serious contemplation the only thing I could come up with was he is a douche bag.
For years I had a little guilty pleasure I would partake in, roughly once a week on my way home from work. I would drive through the McDonalds that is on my way home and order the same thing each time, two hamburgers, a small fry (medium if I was feeling crazy) and a Diet Coke. Yes, it went against the normal nutritional tenants I try to follow but I looked at it as a cheat day, and a pretty minor one at that. One fast food meal a week isn’t going to hurt someone as active as I am.
Well anyway, when I decided to give up beef, pork and poultry last year I also was unintentionally giving up my McD fix. For the most part I haven’t thought about it or missed it. But for some reason today, it got into my head, probably because I heard a Filet O Fish commercial on the radio.
It made me realize that the FoF could be my new go to meal if would go to McD’s again. I looked up the nutritional info on the sandwich and it actually isn’t too bad at all, around 400 calories if you leave the defacto cheese and tartar sauce on it. If you drop both of those, which I would, it drops down to 270 calories.
Now don’t get me wrong, if this sounds like I am advocating McDonald’s patronage or suggesting it becomes a substantial part of anyone’s diet, I’m not. Jeremy was quick to point out to me that regardless of the nutritional sins a Filet o Fish may or may not have, there are other reasons to not ever step foot in McDonalds, such as their existence being one of the primary reasons so much of the beef, pork and poultry that I choose not to eat, is consumed by hungry mouths around the world.
My eating a meal at McD’s would definitely qualify as a hypocritical act. I wouldn’t argue that at all. I just hope you wouldn’t argue with me when I suggest I am only joining the club that we all already belong to in one way or another.
Who knows, my McD urge may fade away but at least I have a plan if I do find myself walking under the golden arches sometime in the future.
So once again yesterday I left work early because Rhinoshield was supposed to show up to paint the deck. I have had a very frustrating experience with the company this time around. I am dealing with someone else this time and he seems unable to to do what he says he is going to do which is something that I find very annoying.
It all started with the original appointment to give me an estimate when he didn’t show up (or call to tell me) because he had a “scheduling error”. Once the work was scheduled it has been one miscommunication after another. The latest was yesterday. When I talked to the job lead on Friday, which was originally supposed to be THE day the work was supposed to be completed, I was told that Monday they would dedicate the whole day to working on my deck although they wouldn’t be there until noon so temps could be a little warmer. Ok, fine.
So once again I left work early yesterday. I didn’t get home until about 1:15, figuring I would be driving up to a crew of guys getting busy on the deck. Instead I pulled into an empty driveway. Grrrrr. I texted Giovanni with a simple message ” I am here, you are not” He responded that he was about 15 minutes away, yet another late arrival.
I was thinking how it was going to be tough for them to get it all done before dark. Although I want the work completed, more importantly I want the work done well, which requires time. Giovanni’s constant tardiness was creating road blocks to both of these things happening.
So as I was unloading the dishwasher I see his truck is in the driveway. He walks around the side of the house with a phone to his ear. I went around and saw he was by himself, wtf?? When he got off the phone I said “you are by yourself???” He tells me that today he was just going to be repairing the cracks and sealing the deck. He said it had to dry before they put on the two coats of paint.
I had a hard time disguising my aggravation. I reminded him that on Friday he told me that they were going to dedicate all day Monday to working on the deck. He said he had to wait till it got warmer and that he didn’t want to “rush it”. He said they would be coming back Tuesday to do the actual painting. This was the forth or fifth time during this process where what I was told by this guy was not the reality. The time frame has been consistently sliding backwards.
So after delivering a healthy dose of stinkeye, I walked inside so Giovanni could get to work, by himself. It took him maybe two and a half hours to do the work. When he was done he again assured me they would be back tomorrow to do the actual painting. I wish I could feel assured it will actually happen. I HATE when people over promise and under deliver.
The only good thing was it seemed like the cracks were repaired well based on eyeballing out the window. I certainly hope the final outcome is good to help wash away some of the bad taste in my mouth from the poor communication and execution of stated intentions up until this point.
I watched a LOT of TV yesterday, taking in a two hour Biggest Loser, a two hour Celebrity Apprentice AND this weeks Walking Dead. Watching that much tube did a fine job of making me feel like a lazy piece of shit, despite running 13.1 miles the day before. Damn, Walking Dead was awesome though.
I have not been feeling very upbeat recently. Most of my time walking around the house has been pretty somber. I feel myself getting mired in feelings of loneliness and melancholy much more. Perhaps that is a sign that I am not doing a good enough job of keeping busy or doing things that are fun, something I really concentrated on early.
There have been so many twists and turns in my road the past year or so. I’d really like to find a nice straight path of highway and just accelerate…
So I got a hold of Rhinoshield, the company that did such a fantastic job painting the house in March of 2011. I wanted to get a quote from them to fix/paint the pool deck. The pool deck looks like shit with a number of spider cracks and faded/stained paint as well, despite my psuedo regular pressure washing. My hope was to use the tax refund to fund the project.
So I made arrangements to meet a guy at the house this morning at 8AM before work. I didn’t set the alarm and slept until after 7. I actually was hauling ass to make sure I was all dressed and ready to go before he showed up. There was one problem, he didn’t.
I waited until 8:30 till I made my first call which went right to the guys voicemail. I was pleasant enough, and asked for a call back with an eta. Well 9’oclock hit and I was done waiting. I called again, again got voicemail and again left a message, this time not so pleasant, letting Giovanni know I thought it was very unprofessional to not let me know he was running late or not showing up at all.
So I don’t get a call back until later in the morning. Giovani said he had his schedule wrong and apologized. Whatever. If I didn’t already know that they do such good work I would have told them thanks but no thanks and called someone else.
I told him if he wanted to still go out and measure the deck he could since he could get access through the gate. He said he would and called me back. He actually did what he said he was going to do and called me back shortly after I returned from the gym. He gave me a number that made me wince a little bit since it would eat up practically all of what I had coming to me via the IRS.
I gave him a bit of a sob story and told him it was more than I was willing to spend right now. I said if he could knock 300 bucks off the price I could do it. After calling someone (supposedly) he got back to me and said he could do it at that number. Great. It is scheduled to happen next Wednesday. Based on how the house turned out it should be a dramatic difference.
So, I have been fighting with the Bar-barians website since it launched early this month. Specifically, I have been fighting with how many cpu cycles it is consuming. I have done countless tweaks thus far to minimize the footprint the site has on my shared hosting. Despite my efforts I am still consuming too many resources. It is only a matter of time until they pull the plug on the site.
My web hosts solution is to migrate to very expensive dedicated hosting, something the Bar-barians aren’t really looking to do. I feel responsible for somehow shoving this size 13 website into a shoe half that size in cost since the whole framework of the new site was my idea. One of the ideas I have been working on is using Amazon Web Services instead.
I created a micro instance in their cloud and created a clone of the Bar-barians site there. In my testing the response times seemed great, everything loaded quickly. Today I flipped the switch and started directing the rest of the internet to the new AWS server and things went south quickly. It didn’t take long at all until the CPU of my instance was pegged at 100%, leaving the site staggering along. I was frustrated as hell all day. It continued into the night as evidenced by my sugar hoarding, my emotional eating weapon of choice. I slammed down a pack of pop tarts, a zone bar and a bowl of frosted mini-wheats as I was fcking around with settings, trying to make things better to no avail.
The micro instance is advertised as having a single cpu core but can give you bursts of two core processing power if it’s available. Well what I wasn’t aware of is if the site gets anything over a few seconds of high cpu utilization, a micro instance has it’s cpu power hacked down severely, making it incapable of doing much at all.
Once the cpu pegged on my server it stayed there for 10 minutes until I killed the server. It was ridiculous. So I reversed the migration and for now have everything back to the way it was, on the same shared hosting.
Creating the new site and getting it all working was a lot of time and work, but it was also fun and rewarding. Dealing with this shit is not fun, and not rewarding.
It seems that not only is the popularity of the site with humans a problem, fcking bots and search engine spiders can hammer the site as well as the try to load every single page that is available on the site to index for their engine.
The path of least resistance for me would be to find the magic bullet that allows me to keep the site where it is now, on shared hosting. Any other option is going to require another round of head scratching and sugar hoarding.
I had an odd dream Wednesday night, I basically witnessed the end of the world or at least my part of it. It seemed that it was common knowledge that a meteor was coming, there was nothing we could do about it except wait for it’s arrival.
It was sometime in the morning and I was outside with several people, the only one I remember though is my mom. We were sitting under some sort of awning just talking, almost like Armageddon wasn’t on the doorstep.
Then all of a sudden I could feel the ground start to shake, lightly at first. However within a few moments it felt like I was standing in the middle of the field of that vibrating football game we used to play as kids. The vibrations rattled my teeth. Then, I saw it.
Up in the sky was a streaking light, moving much faster than the video we saw of the recent Russian meteor. The sky lit up as the meteor smashed off in the distance, seemingly far, far away. However an awful sound then started. I could see the wave of earth and fire expanding outward towards us quickly.
It wasn’t until I saw this approaching that I decided to run, not that it was going to do me much good. I yelled for mom to run as well, directing her towards a building that I thought we could get behind to protect us somehow. The wave took mere seconds until it was upon us. As I was running I looked back and saw mom behind me just before she was enveloped in the cloud of destruction.
As it approached me I had one last idea, that if I jumped up in the air just as the impact hit, it would somehow allow me to mitigate the blast and get carried along somehow to safety.
I jumped, the lights went out….. guess it didn’t work. End of dream.
Last night I watched the premiere of Blood and Chrome. I had to resort to watching the cut up version that was released on YouTube in bits and pieces during the end of 2012.
The 2 hour movie got me very excited for the new series. It has all the look, feel and action of BSG which is one of my favorite shows of the last 20 years.
So the catholic world was SHOCKED by the announcement that Pope Benedict was going to step down, something a pope has not done since the 1400’s. All popes are supposed to drop dead, they don’t retire, duh.
I have ranted about the hypocrisy of organized religion many times and specifically this clown whom looks like a spawn of Satan. Pope Benedict has excused and covered up countless acts of sexual abuse against children by figures in the Catholic church.
His time spent as a “Hitler Youth” doesn’t help his image much either.
I personally think the man is an icon, representing what exactly is wrong with religion, “Do what I say, not what I do”. He sucks.
The best news out of all of this, if you believe ancient prophecies,is some guy named Malachy said in 1140 that the 111th pope, the one after Benedict, will reign during the downfall of the church. Hallelujah.
I did not see the state of the union address last night but I did see some clips of Marco Rubio presenting the Republican rebuttal after seeing FB light up with comments regarding how awful it was.
To say the speech was pandering to hispanic voters would be stating the obvious. He may as well have been wearing a sombrero as he reached for his agua.
I think what is more disturbing for conservatives was just how poorly he came off overall since he is supposed to be one of the new hot commodities in the Republican party.
The reality, despite whatever speeches either party delivers professionally (Obama) or clumsily (Rubio), is the hope of any significant progress being made in the major issues that plague our country is very dim as long as an obstructionist attitude is present in Congress.
On Saturday morning dad went for coffee out at Ave Maria again while I went for a run. Dad really enjoys Ave Maria which strikes me as funny since the mentality behind it’s creation is 180 degrees opposite from where dad exists. Despite the town’s strict Catholic principals, lack of condom sales and a litany of rules that govern the community, he found that he really enjoyed sipping coffee and reading the paper in the shadow of the large Ave Maria cathedral.
While dad was there he saw that there was a rugby game taking place Saturday afternoon between Ave Maria and another local college. Since dad spent years playing rugby he was very interested to check the game out. It worked out for me as well since it allowed me to head down to the running store for the last day of early packet pick up for the half marathon.
There was a big crowd of people at the store. Ali had been there most of the day already. Eventually she left early to go get the dogs and I closed out the afternoon there. I passed the time while drinking beer purchased from TGIFridays next door. By the time packet pick up was over I was feeling beer happy.
I spent Saturday night getting all of the stuff ready for the race. Dad was surprised just how much stuff I had strewn through out the house as part of this process. I loaded up the van and then went to bed as early as possible since my alarm was set for 2:45 am.
When the alarm went off I wasted no time shooting out of bed despite the early hour. I got onto the race site a few minutes after 4am. George whom is the race director had already been there for at least an hour along with a couple other people. They already had the tents and tables set up for registration, they just needed all of the timing bibs and signs that I had in the van.
After getting registration set up I dropped off the remaining equipment at the finish line and set up what could be at that point and time. For a small period of time we actually had a lull in the action, we had everything ready to go and just needed the people to start filing in. It didn’t take long until the humanity arrived en masse.
Even with roughly 2000 people arriving the registration area remained relatively calm. Utilizing the bib based timing devices greatly simplified things, the difference was pretty dramatic. This was the first year that we allowed runners to sign up the day of the race albeit at a very expensive $100 price point. We actually got 7 or 8 people that signed up on the spot.
I arrived at the start line with plenty of time to spare and had the start line timing equipment up and running with 5 minutes to go. For the second year in a row, the PA system abruptly cut off at 7AM in the middle of the national anthem, just like it did last year. I guess someone didn’t learn from past mistakes. The race started about 90 seconds past it’s designated 7:00 AM start time but no one cared. The start line of a big race is bubbling with enough energy to eclipse a slightly late start.
So the huge mass of runners slowly pulled out, I probably waited close to two minutes until the last straggler crossed the starting mats. I grabbed the laptop and scurried over to the finish line while I had some other people carry the timing equipment to the finish line since it was going to be reused there.
I had a LOT of things to get done before the first runner came streaking across the finish line a little more than 60 minutes from the start. I set up three timing systems, one to be used for the race announcer to display runners names as they approach the finish line and two more to collect the runners actual finish time.
This is the only race where I also make sure to have a camera filming the finish line as a safety net in case there is some sort of timing disaster.
I wouldn’t call what happened next a timing disaster, it was more like a timing hemorrhoid.
I was getting reports from John whom I had running the halfway split timing system that he appeared to be getting consistent reads as the runners crossed the mats. You see this was the first time we ever used Ipico bib timing devices. I was worried about how they would perform in such a big and long event. The reports from halfway made me hope that my fears were unnecessary.
As the first 20-25 runners crossed the finish line everything seemed to be going fine. I was getting finish times popped up as they should be. Then I had my first finisher cross the finish line without hearing the confirmation chirp from the timing box. Argh. Well as larger amounts of runners started to finish we saw a number of them coming through without tripping the timing box.
At first we had people trying to flag runners that we didn’t get a time for but it was happening so regularly I soon realized it was fruitless. I was just going to have to print the results and when a runner sees they weren’t on the results they would have to come see me so I could manually fix their time. I was quite frustrated.
I had two timing systems at the finish line to make SURE I would catch all the times. To have that extra effort prove fruitless was very, very disappointing. However angry and frustrated I was, I had to make sure I didn’t portray that to runners asking me to fix their time. I realized that having your time missing on the results is a big deal and wanted to make sure I portrayed my concern with getting it right for every person that stood in front of me. I think for the most part my efforts were well received.
I spent the last two hours of the race with my nose buried in the laptop making change after change. In between I had to juggle in the needs of George who was trying to get the awards straightened out, a very important part of this race since there is money involved. I felt bad that the award ceremony took much longer to get started than normal because of all the fixing I had to do.
I have no idea how many times I had to correct, I lost count.
I also felt bad that my dad had come down to the race and I didn’t get a chance to interact with him at all besides asking him to grab me a cup of coffee. He saw I was up to my armpits in problems so he just hung back.
I finally got off the race site a little before 11:30 feeling like my brain had been turned to mush. My reward for surviving the race was going home and digging into the large amounts of post event data work that is part of this race.
I spent pretty much the entire rest of the day trying to fix data, answer emails from runners that noticed their times were also missing and putting away all of the equipment. Again I did my best to keep all my interaction with runners as positive as possible despite the black mood I found myself in.
Finally I got on top of the immediate requests for assistance and went to Zookies with my dad for dinner. We sat at the bar and watched part of the Ravens/Patriots game. We had a nice time and wound up dealing with the wife of the owner of the bar after the young girl that was originally assigned to us was less than attentive. I had a very unhealthy but tasty fish trio platter. Originally I was thinking I wanted to get drunk at the bar to soothe my stress from the day, but by the time I got there I was so tired I just stuck to Diet Coke. I was in my bed by 8:30, exhausted.
On Monday morning I had another round of correction requests that I worked on till dad woke up. I had felt bad that even though dad had been in Florida for five days and we had done a few things together, he had to spend a lot of time entertaining himself which he did by doing things like reading, hanging at Ave Maria and chilling out. He told me repeatedly he was quite content to do so since he can’t do it very often back home with 18 acres of responsibilities.
So anyway, since Monday was his last full day here I wanted to do some stuff. I suggested that we hop in the SSR and drive down to First Watch by Lowdermilk Park for breakfast. On the way I dealt with another unconventional race related issue. I was given the credit card of someone who lost it at the race site. I sent out an email to all race participants asking if either they or someone they knew lost an American Express card. Surprisingly enough I tracked down the cards owner and dropped the card off at his workplace on the way to breakfast.
Dad and I enjoyed a real nice breakfast there. I insisted I paid for the meal since dad had paid for so many things during the trip up until that point. We then headed across the street to the park. Dad hadn’t actually been to the beach during his visit so I felt it was important he at least got to lay his eyes on the water and sand before leaving. He appreciated the stop although he wasn’t motivated enough to actually walk on the beach and get sand in his shoes.
We headed back home for a short break before we headed out once again, this time to the movies. Dad had mentioned he wanted to see Promised Land, a movie about shale fracking in Western PA. (where my dad lives) I remember seeing the previews for it and wanted to see it as well. The movie had been out for a little while and only two local theaters were showing it, I picked the 1:35 showing at a theater in Bonita Springs which I went to with Ali once before, years ago.
We arrived a few minutes late and sat down just as the movie was beginning, much in the same manner as when we saw Lincoln up north. Including ourselves there were 6 people in the movie theater.
I thought the movie was really well done. It included a great twist in the end that really drove the point home. Don’t expect to come away from this movie with anything but large piles of disdain for energy companies. It gets a real solid A from me but it will be just as good as a Netflix rental.
I had taken the party van to the movies since I made arrangements to pick up the dogs from daycare in the way home. I figured dad would like to see them one more time before leaving. The girls were very excited to get picked up for early dismissal.
Nicki has been doing much better physically since she has been on this new bland diet. However the downside is that is all she can eat. The dogs have been raised being rewarded with treats for everything. That stream of goodies has been abruptly cut off. I feel bad for Sadie since she is getting the collateral damage because of Nicki’s dietary problems. We aren’t giving treats to Sadie since Nicki would think she is being punished.
It leads to very uncomfortable moments when I bring the girls inside from doing their business and they sit and stare at me, hoping that the treat boycott is now at an end. I need to at least get some of the dry food that Nicki is allowed to have to hand out. It’s better than nothing.
When Ali came to pick up the dogs later in the evening she joined us for food we ordered from Hungry Howies. Dad had some sort of mutant looking sub and an antipasta salad that he didn’t particularly like. I stuck with simple pizza.
This morning dad packed up the one small carry on bag he brought for the trip and we headed out to the airport to drop him off for his return flight to Pittsburgh. Dad is going to be trading temps in the mid to upper 70’s for highs in the low 20’s when he lands. Why did he want to move back to PA again?
This week I get to jump right back into more race work as Ali’s Humane Society race is this weekend. I am very much looking forward to getting out from under what has felt like a long stretch of abnormal.
I am anxious to getting back to healthy eating, regular exercise and staying on top of things.
When I look back at the title of last year’s end of year blog entry, “2011 the best year yet?” it seems quite ironic considering what has transpired since that time in my life.
Ok let’s handle the easy stuff first, scoring the goals I set for 2012.
Get the master bedroom and bathroom painted – CHECK, splitting up for some reason gave me the kick in the ass I needed to finally get those two rooms painted after a couple years of procrastinating. It was a huge pain in the ass doing this solo.
Replace carpet – nope, that won’t be happening anytime soon.
Resurface the pool deck – no but it really needs to be done. I hope to contact Rhinoshield sometime in 2013 to do it.
Run a sub two hour half marathon – BINGO, I killed the Hooter’s Half, running it in 1:55 (knocking 16 minutes off previous best) and change in pretty horrible conditions with minimal training leading up to it. That was a testament to pure mental will power more than anything else.
Complete the BBR’s (Bar-barian Requirements) – Nope, not close. I tried to really train hard for this early in 2012 and kept hurting myself from overuse injuries. I just don’t know that a 45 year old body of my size and proportion can recover fast enough to get it done. Regardless I am going to still try, hard.
Another Tough Mudder – yep but surprisingly not with Randall. Instead Charlie and I took down the course which featured a colder ice bath and much more “shocking” finish line.
Volleyball – Um I think I played a tournament. Oh yea, I played with Tabby and then did a King of the Beach thing with Tabby, Randall and Jeremy. Vball is just an afterthought in my life anymore.
Travel more – umm well the separation derailed pretty much all travel plans for me, I think the most traveling I did was by tire to Miami a couple times and Titusville
SSR upgrades – yea I did a number of upgrades including the expensive in dollars and time radio upgrade. I also had a Corvette clutch installed in the truck as well as two new cat convertors, muffler, exhaust tips and panhard bar. I have put about 6,000 miles on the SSR in my first full year of ownership.
Cranking up my overall happiness – hmmm well the separation from Alison was an effort to do just that on both of our part. It’s too early to make a final call on how successful the move will be. To say there have been a few ups and downs would be a large understatement.
Ok so let me recap the high and lowlights of 2012.
In 2012 I gave up most meat (beef,pork poultry, etc..) the only meat I consume at this point is seafood and not much of that. Alison has been a vegetarian for years but I had continued on my carnivore ways. Well for me the moment I decided to stop for good was at the county fair. As we were walking around the farm animal displays which included pigs and cattle I looked at these animals and took pause. Instead of the normal, “aren’t they cute” and move on response, I looked long and hard at the faces of these animals. I asked myself why it is that I would want to have these innocent animals killed to become a frozen patty on a plate. I decided at that moment I didn’t want that and have not looked back.
I haven’t noticed any fall off in my physical well being since making the change. If anything, 2012 had the most personal physical bests I ever jammed into a 12 month period.
I did a lot of auto maintenance work in 2012, most of which was taped and published on YouTube. I did brake jobs, replaced starters, alternators, IAC valves and more. There is something very satisfying about fixing your own vehicle.
Speaking of YouTube, in 2012 I developed a an advertising juggernaut utilizing primarily YouTube and the ads that can be run with your videos. I had a meteoric rise in monthly ad dollars and before my AdSense account got cancelled I had made almost $100 in one month. The cancellation of my AdSense account was the source of much frustration and anger.
At first the anger was directed towards Google and their no warning cancellation policy when it comes to AdSense terms. But in the end the anger should have been at myself for not thinking through recommending people to click on my blog ads. I did not realize I was inviting others to violate the Adsense TOS.
I was really bummed out about the cancellation but I eventually got the ad dollar wheels turning again, making my mom into a new AdSense user and totally recreating my YouTube channel which took endless HOURS of work. The main reason you see as many YouTube videos out of me as you do is not actually just because I am a video whore, it’s also because I have all the ad dollars I make funneled right to my mom as a small financial shot in the arm.
In 2012 I fought FEMA and won, jumping through a ton of hoops (and a case of beer) to get a bogus flood insurance requirement dropped. It was one of several cost disputing/cutting efforts of the year, many of which were necessitated to cut costs associated with the separation. I no longer have a number of services that I once did. I have been able to shave my electric costs down remarkably, last month I had a bill of $106, insanely low when this same house used to generate bills as much as triple that number at times.
I haven’t had many visitors in the house this year, my dad, step mom, Patrick and his girlfriend visited back in February. Randall and his girlfriend Tracy stayed for a long weekend and finally Charlie stayed for a very fun few days earlier this month. Other than that it has been basically me, myself and I (and Tuki) most nights.
The news of course had many big things going down including several tragic shootings, the presidential election and the fact that the world did not end a few days ago. But you already knew that.
So I guess I should talk more about the obviously biggest event of 2012 or the last decade and a half for that matter, the decision Ali and I made to separate. We made the decision to do so in March and she moved to her own place in early April. The decision was a mutual one that involved no shenanigans on either of our sides but instead a genuine effort for both of us to move ahead in our lives in a happier place than we both found ourselves. This decision shocked a lot of people as most viewed us as a solid couple that got along. For the most part they were right.
The change for both of us has been filled with ruts and potholes as would be expected since both of us have basically been married for our entire adult lives. (two marriages for me) The change that we both have had to deal with has been large and at times very, very uncomfortable.
I basically have been using it as an opportunity to force myself into new situations. Whenever I found myself questioning if I should do something or not, I would ask myself “have I ever done this before?” if the answer was no, then that pretty much meant I needed to do it. For example, jumping out of a plane from 18,000 feet in the air.
Of course part of this change involved setting my foot into the adult dating world. It has not been easy or natural in the least. I have had enough awkward pauses to fill a sit com. I may as well stepped foot into the middle of Siberia at times with how foreign the dating world feels. Dating, for me, is hard.
Probably the hardest time of all has been this holiday season since it involved such painful items as separating Christmas ornaments and having our first Christmas morning where we woke up in different zip codes.
Many people are also very surprised with what Ali and my interaction has been like since the split. In most cases when couples split there is a very clear division (like my first marriage), ours is not one of those cases. Ali and I still are friends and support each other in different ways. We still interact and see each other on a regular basis. It definitely has not followed the typical divorce 101 handbook.
I have had a lot of physical bests this year, despite turning 45 a couple weeks ago. I did my first 110 pound weighted dip, first 90 pound weighted pull up, first one handed push up, first set of 10 dragon flags and many more. One of my proudest accomplishments was pulling off a set of 30 pull ups a few weeks back, something that even surprised myself. The sub 2 hour marathon and my second successful completion of the Tough Mudder were nice little feathers in the hat as well.
Of course at this age injuries are hard to avoid and I had my fair share of them, most recently the knee that was practically locked after the Mudder. Who could forget the stupid injury to my bicep when I crashed trying to do weighted dips? I also had a chronic problem with left wrist that lasted for damn close to 4 months.
The Eagles really sucked in 2012. It was definitely the biggest waste of the NFL Sunday Ticket to date.
2012 has been a rough year for Nicki. Her well being has taken a dramatic downturn since Ali and I split. In what seems a blink of the eye she has gone from a healthy/active 9 year old dog, to an old girl that is showing every second of being 10. The thyroid medicine she is on has made her hair long, dry and shaggy to the point where she looks dramatically different from just a year ago. She is gimpy and slow, no longer able to run other than the occasional few step trot. She can’t be trusted to not dump in the house if left alone for more than a couple hours. I can’t help but feel that is partly because of her reaction to the split and change in her living conditions. It makes me feel guilty and sad.
You know I could really dig into the monthly entries and come up with more to blab about but if you are that interested about it use the BLOG ARCHIVES drop down menu and take a peek yourself. There are some gems in there.
Ok so let’s talk about 2013 goals.
More than ever before, I go into this new year really, REALLY unsure about where my winding path will take me. All that was familiar to me for so long is in the rear view mirror which can be both exciting and terrifying at the same time.
Home improvement goals are not major. Getting the pool deck resurfaced/painted would be welcome. Getting the hobby room and garage painted would be nice but far from important. I have some outdoor projects to complete but none major enough to require mention here.
My physical goals are always about do it again, faster, better, more. I’d like to run a half marathon quicker than I did last year. I want to get a 35 pull up set. I want to be able to complete the old BB requirements. A front lever, back lever, planche, controlled handstand and human flag are all objects on my radar as well.
Wow I can’t believe I finally got jumping out of a plane off my goal list. It resided there for at least 5 or 6 years if not longer.
I hope to be able to do some traveling this year. I have a couple visions in my head, one is top down in the SSR driving north and west until I run into the Pacific Ocean. The other is traveling overseas to meet some of my international bar enthusiast friends. There are quite a few whose hands I would like to shake (or cheeks to kiss).
Of course the number one personal goal is always happiness, continued (most of the time) health and an ability to both offer and absorb kindness/laughter/knowledge both to and from the world around me.
So I saw more women pop up in the general sex scandals. I also saw pictures of all females involved, including the wives of General Petraeus and Allen.
When you compare the pictures of the wives versus the alleged mistresses there is obviously a stark contrast. Do you think any news outlet would be bold enough to post a headline like “Survey says, generals prefer sexy 40 year olds to dumpy wives” The inverse can be true as well, Jill Kelly’s husband looks like he is built like a weeble wobble.
Today a friend of mine sent me a link that talked about information cited by this woman regarding climate change. She stated that overall global temperatures have plateaued for the last 15-16 years. This is based on average temps collected from various worldwide monitoring locations.
My buddy loves to do this sort of thing, drop an internet link without offering a true opinion of his own. Then when I react to it he raises his hands innocently and claims he didn’t say things were one way or the other, although obviously the intent is there.
In this case, the intent is to say that concerns about global warming are overblown and exaggerated. Now unless you own a functional crystal ball, nobody really knows exactly how quickly global warming will negatively impact the planet. (ask New Yorkers their opinion) I compare it to fiscal forecasters that extrapolate numbers two decades in advance and then throw them out there as being reliable. It’s a guess, an educated guess, but a guess at best.
However to me, when it comes to global warming there is one thing that can not be disputed. Having 7 billion humans on the planet (and growing rapidly) adversely affects the climate. Our consumption, pollution and manipulation of natural resources has tipped the balance of CO2 in our atmosphere. Even this woman agrees on that simple premise, she just questions how quickly things are deteriorating.
The biggest problem with this sort of article is it encourages a “not now, we can worry about it later” attitude about the way we interact with the planet. I can imagine no scenario where you could logically argue that shifting the world to an ever “greener” way of existing is a bad thing.
If I told you I know you are going to have cancer but if you made certain lifestyle changes, instead of contracting it at 35 years old, you will be able to retard it’s onset until you were 75, would you want to make those changes? That sounds like a no brainer huh? Well now apply that simple logic to this blue globe we all share.
Yesterday my uncle, whom has taken on the role of family historian, sent me scans of a newspaper article from 1938.
It was an article about my grandfather and a friend of his. Evidently when they were younger they decided to stop conventional life for 8 months and canoe down to Florida. The article outlined what sounded like a pretty amazing journey which included them riding bike back from Florida as far as the Carolinas.
I had absolutely no idea that my grandfather ever did this.
When I was growing up I knew my grandfather as a guy that always had a smile on his face. I also remember as I was older how he would always greet me with a very enthusiastic handshake which almost always was accompanied by a reassuring smack on the arm with his other hand.
I actually find myself greeting people I like in a similar way from time to time. I have no doubt this comes from my years with him.
I knew that grandpa had a pretty interesting history including serving in the Air Force during World War II. In general though we never talked much in depth about what he had done as a younger man, something I regret now.
Reading about this adventure reopened my interest in what grandpa’s life was really like. Too bad he is long, long gone. This story did give me a little insight into perhaps why I find myself attracted to just picking up and going somewhere, seeing the country and appreciating all of the experiences along the way.
Well any hope of the Eagles picking themselves up by their bootstraps and showing they aren’t the awful team that showed up against Atlanta were dashed last night. They were once again awful.
The offense is back to being incredibly inept in the red zone, despite massing around 450 yards of total offense. I believe the stat I heard last night was 5 trips inside the opponents 20 yard line resulted in 6 total points. That is terrible.
Vick threw an interception that was run back 99 yards for a TD but it wasn’t really his fault as it bounced off Celek’s hands. However he also threw a couple would be int’s that the Saints fortunately dropped.
The Eagles offensive line, which has been destroyed by injury is horrible and is surely largely responsible for the incredible amount of hits and sacks that Vick takes. However Mike doesn’t help himself either. Vick seems very, very poor at reacting to pressure in an efficient way.
Teams keep using the same formula to beat the Eagles, blitz. A sharp QB makes a defense pay for this with quick decisions, passing to whomever is left open by the blitz. Effectively doing this stops the blitz. Vick isn’t effective in this manner, so the blitzing never stops.
Although it’s hard to believe, the defense actually was playing better under Juan Castillo. The two games under Todd Bowles have been an unmitigated disaster. The Saints were rated DEAD LAST in the league in rushing. They ran for over 160 yards, running through weak Eagle tackling all night long. It was embarrassing.
There is no consistent pressure on the QB and our “showcase” corners, Cromartie and Asomugha have in a word, sucked. Asomugha is the biggest disappointment of all because he was paid a fortune to bring his supposed upper tier skills to Philly. He is kind of a joke.
It’s pretty safe to say the team looks to be in free fall, losing 4 games in a row with the last two losses being absolute ass beatings. There have been seasons before where this was the case and somehow Andy pulled the nose up. I don’t think this is one of those years. I saw true desperation in Andy’s eyes last night, he had no answers. I think he is done.
Thankfully by this time tomorrow the elections will be over. It is too bad that electing a leader has evolved into such a bitter, moronic, corrupt and divisive process. In 2012, elections are catered to the minds that are easily swayed by snappy one-liners, fuzzy math, robo-calls and junk mail. Just like politicians are routinely bought, the voting public is as well. The amount of money spent on psychological welfare to influence the uninformed masses is simply obscene.
No matter who wins tomorrow, I am sure there will be inappropriate chest beating from the victor. To be clear, nobody should be proud of the state of our country at this time in history. To me it’s just a matter of which way we are going to keep the wheels pointed. I’m not a supporter of U-turns.
Regardless of your political beliefs, this is damn funny, you have to admit.
So originally I was going to go run with the club at 6am Saturday morning. Sometime Friday night I thought to myself that it would be nice if I didn’t force myself out of bed at 4:30 am. Sure it’s nice to have moral support doing a long 10 mile run but I don’t require it.
I knew I needed to get the mileage in though, it would probably be my last “long” run before the 12 mile Mudder race. I came up with a different way to do it, 400 meters at a time. I thought it would be an interesting experiment running the 10 miles around the track at the local middle school.
The weather Saturday morning was beautiful but on the chilly side. The thermometer was in the mid-50’s when I started. I actually ran the first three and a half miles in my hoody.
As I expected, it was mentally grueling going around the track so many times. Towards the end, after lap 34 I actually missed a lap so technically I only ran 39 laps. Still it added up to 10.20 miles. How do I know I missed a lap you ask? Because I had the Flip Cam running of course…
Even though I had nobody to push me I managed to cover the distance in an average pace right around 8:45 per mile, about the same clip I ran my PR half marathon at. It was an interesting way to cover 10 miles. Now I know how Nascar drivers feel.
When I got home I dove hard into my house chore duties. I was supposed to drop Ali off at the airport late in the afternoon so my goal was to have my chore slate basically clean by then. With the glorious cool temps and low humidity it was almost fun to work with the doors and windows wide open.
I asked Ali if she minded that we take the Volt to drop her off at the airport for two reasons. First, if I take the van I will spend somewhere around $15 in gas just to get there and back. Second, I wanted to drive the Volt, duh.
Driving the car is really sweet. It scratches every imaginable geek itch I have. The electric motor is smooth and powerful.
This was the first time the Volt has been on I-75. We discovered that maintaining 70+ mph will burn through your battery much quicker than around town driving. It looks like the Volt can maintain optimum battery usage at speeds of up to 55.
Ali wasn’t happy when I told her that by the time I got back to her place with the car I had used a whopping .2 gallons of gasoline. Right now her overall gas mileage with the car is 102 mpg and still rising.
When I was paying my bills this week I ran a report on my gas costs for the last 7 months. It averaged out to $458 a month. Depending on where I am financially and geographically in several months I would totally consider a Volt as my daily commuter.
When I took the dogs out to the house Nicki was acting a little weird. It seemed like she was looking for Ali. Eventually she chilled out a bit. It didn’t take long for her abnormal shedding left it’s mark on the carpet. Her hair is literally falling out in clumps. I am 99% convinced it is all because of the thyroid meds she has been on for the past few months.
My Sunday was very enjoyable. I took the dogs over to the swamp early in the morning. On the drive there we had an amazing sight. I saw a large bear by the side of the road. As I got closer it ran into the brush but I was happy to see he was just standing there watching us.
I stopped the van and took a couple pictures. The bear looked pretty much full grown. He seemed intrigued at Sadie perched out the window barking. He hung out for a good minute or so before jogging deeper into the woods. It was very cool.
The last time I was at the swamp the water levels were still low and the grass on the path was very, very high. Neither of those situations were the case on Sunday. Thanks to the frequent rain the last couple months the water levels were very high, as high as when we first discovered the swamp. I was happy to see that someone knocked down the grass as well.
The higher water meant I had to be more diligent with watching the dogs. They wanted to meander close to the water where a potential gator could be in wait. Eventually they understood I didn’t want them by the edge.
I thought more water would also equal more wildlife. Unfortunately it didn’t, I only saw one small gator during the 3-4 mile walk. We did see a potentially dangerous small snake on the path back to the parking lot.
The rest of my Sunday was very enjoyable. I spent some time out in my bar park, played with the dogs, did some minor to do’s and even took a brief nap. Not having the Eagles on the schedule cleared out a big block of time.
This morning I dropped off the girls at the dog daycare place. It is nice to not have to worry about Nicki’s bathroom issues at least and they both seem to actually like going there. When I handed them over to the girls inside neither of them made a fuss.
Tomorrow the madness ends, finally. The republicans are definitely in the lead as far as annoying the shit out of me goes. I would estimate the republican to democrat robocall ratio is somewhere around 5-1 and the junk mail has been overwhelmingly republican biased.
I read about SEVEN HOUR wait times to vote early in the Miami area. Part of this has to do with the totally ridiculous move by our slimy governor to reduce the amount of early voting days from 14 to 8. I mean what in the world could be the logical justification for such a move? Why would you want to make voting MORE difficult and less convenient unless it serves your personal political agenda? It’s sad just how manipulated our society has become.
Last night I watched the premiere of Blood and Chrome. I had to resort to watching the cut up version that was released on YouTube in bits and pieces during the end of 2012.
I have ranted about the hypocrisy of organized religion many times and specifically this clown whom looks like a spawn of Satan. Pope Benedict has excused and covered up countless acts of sexual abuse against children by figures in the Catholic church.
