Archives July 2004

I have had a bunch of stuff for sale on half.com for over a year. I sold a bunch of stuff off of it, mostly old cd’s from Ali’s collection when she was younger. In total I think I made almost 500 bucks selling stuff on HALF. Ebay is phasing out half.com so it is trying to push half.com sellers to move into an EBAY store. The first month was free so I decided to give it a shot. I already sold one thing out of it so that was cool. Check it out, it’s ultra cheesy but if you are looking for early 90’s cd releases I may have you covered.

I left the alarm set at it’s normal time so I could get up Saturday morning to make the trek up to Tampa to pick up the new mower. I had my old mower loaded up in the back of the truck which would make the truck significantly less aerodynamic going 80 mph up interstate 75. I was considering bringing along a tarp in case it rained but I figured what the hell, it hardly ever rains in the morning down here. Of course, it rained. Other than the rain, the drive went ok as I covered the 180 miles in around 2.5 hours. The guy selling it lived in a development filled with large houses on small plots of land. I was wondering to myself how this guy has all this mower stuff in a house like this. Once I looked in his 3 car garage I saw how. It was basically packed with stuff almost floor to ceiling with little pathways to walk through. The stuff consisted of basically tools, mowers, mower parts and car parts. Evidently the guy has a mower shop as well but the garage just stored the stuff he wanted to keep close by. Wow. One thing I immediately noticed that wasn’t mentioned on the ebay ad was the mower was a 6 speed. My old mower was a hydrostatic automatic which meant you simply had a foot pedal to go forward and backward. The 6 speed requires you to stop the mower everytime you change gears. It wasn’t a huge deal but still I wished I knew about it upfront. When I mentioned it to the guy he said “I didn’t have that in the ad?” Yea, ok. We unloaded my mower and then were ready to pull the new one onto my truck. It didn’t turn over and just hummed. Oh oh. Multiple tries and the same thing happened. It was raining again and before I got there he had hosed off the deck to clean it up a bit. After some troubleshooting he determined that it had to be the the solenoid that controlled the starter. Perhaps it somehow took on some water. So what we wound up doing was pulling the solenoid from my old tractor and threw it into the new one. Not an ideal way to have things go with my NEW tractor but after the swap it fired up just fine. As part of the deal I also snagged a spike aerator to help bust up some of the thatch that plagues our lawn. By the time I left the rain had stopped, cool. Of course, halfway home it started to rain again. 🙁

I unloaded the new tractor and mowed a small patch and then hooked up the aerator just to tool around and watch it poke holes in the ground. Simple fun. It mows well, it’s new and I have an aerator for 400 bucks out of pocket so I can’t complain too much. By the time I parked the mower it was around 2:30. Alison had to work on Saturday and wasn’t going to be home until around 4:30. In the next 2 hours I did a housework blitz in order to alleviate Ali from having to help with these chores later. In the space of 120 minutes I did the following:

Cleaned both bird cages
Cleaned both bathrooms
Dusted around the house
Did 2 loads of laundry
Pulled out our defective VCR from our AV shelf
Hung up some dog thing on the wall
Cleaned all the kitchen counters
Swept the kitchen and utility room floors
Swept the rest of the house

As I was vacuuming Ali came home. She didn’t believe I was cleaning everything after spending 6 hours driving earlier. I couldn’t quite understand it myself. I think part of the reason I do this kind of stuff is I want to make the weekends easier for Ali just because that is my nature. I think another part of it is to demonstrate to Ali what can get done in a short amount of time with concentrated effort. There are many days where I may be out doing something on a weekend and Ali is home all day and she will do one or two things around the house in the span of 8, 10, 12 hours. I have to admit it frustrates me because then even though it isn’t her intention, I immediately take on the responsibility of knocking out the chores asap so I can relax and do what I want the rest of the weekend. Her preference is to relax first and then get to the chores as she feels inspired (which sometimes never comes) , my preference is to bust ass and get the stuff done right away so I have uniterrupted free time the rest of the weekend. Our contrast on this issue causes conflict at times and my approach to resolving it is that I just do things and if she helps that’s great if she doesn’t oh well. I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t get to me sometimes but I mostly just grin and bear it. I also have been trying to cut back on the frequency and rigidity of certain chores so that has helped some.

After I got done vacuuming I took Ali out to show her the new mower. She mowed a patch out back. She isn’t thrilled with the 6 speed but otherwise reported it as a success. The built in fender cup holder scored brownie points. After her mowing test I pulled out the aerator and hooked it up. I stood on it as she drove so my weight assisted in making the aerator really work. I’m sure it looked pretty funny to drivers as we tooled around the front poking thousands of holes in the grass but hey it worked great, I don’t care if I looked dumb.

That night we went to one of Alison’s favorite restaurants, Iguana Mia. It is a mexican Chi Chi’s stlye restaurant on a smaller scale, without the big chain feel. They are really quick with service and our waiter must have asked us if there was anything we needed 10 times. Courtesy of an Entertainment book coupon, we got out of there with a 16 dollar bill. Can’t beat that.

Even with my efforts on Saturday we still had a substantially full plate for Sunday. The grass hadn’t been mowed in 2 weeks because of the mower failure 2 weekends ago. Our lawn looked like a wheat field with tall shoots of grass poking up everywhere. Alison rode the tractor while I weed whacked, weeded all the landscaped areas and filled the bird feeders. It was hot as hell, 94 and humid. The reported rain that was due to come in was only a few light showers in our area. By the time we got done with the outside stuff it was around 1. We ate lunch, watched an “I Love the 90’s” episode on Tivo (great show) and then came up with a great idea, let’s get more stuff at Home Depot so we can do more work!

So we cleaned up a bit and headed out. On the way we stopped at Blockbuster and picked up 2 movies. At Home Depot we snagged various things like some bolts, a replacement for the diseased topiary we had in front of the house and out of the blue we grabbed a 15 foot tall Jacaranda tree. Getting the tree home was a chore as it was very thin and wispy so we were concerned about branches breaking. I drove 50 mph on I-75 which is a dangerous manuever, but the reduced speed allowed us to get home with the tree intact with no damage. So we got home and did another work session planting the jacaranda, the topiary, 3 crown of thorn plants and some cauliflower we bought for the garden. The tree looks great where we planted it, at the spot where the broken mosquito magnet once stood. If the tree thrives it will be awesome because they are beautiful trees when mature.

The remaining hours of our weekend were taken up mostly by watching one of the movies we rented, The Big Leibowski. We rented it because of some funny clips we saw in the I love the 90’s show. It looked very funny. It was very funny in a whacked out weird way. A very different kind of movie that I enjoyed. The diverse cast of characters in the movie is really out of the ordinary. Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and the guy that played Jesus the ace bowler were the funniest characters in the flick. I’d recommend it. Another movie we saw in the show was Slingblade, I want to rent that one later as well, looks good.

Yesterday I came into work and immediately noticed that our email server was dragging it’s feet. Emails took forever to come up and in many instances I would get the waiting for server dialog box. I immediately started listing things in my mind that have changed recently. Hmmmm. Well I installed MSFT’s latest critical updates on Wednesday, it shouldn’t cause that sort of issue but you never know. So I began researching everywhere I could. I found several things in our configuration that could be possible issues but they were configured that way for a long time, nothing new. I spent the majority of the day tweaking, changing and rebooting the server with little or no improvement. Damn it. Late in the day I get a notification about the main back up job failing. When I looked at the log it all became clear, the email server was being backed up that entire time which was causing it to drag. Evidently there were some problem messages that were making it go very slow.

In retrospect it wasn’t such a bad thing for me to have to go through all of that as it uncovered several things that needed to be fixed anyway. However my failure to check the simple things first resulted in a whole lot of frustration.

This weekend the big event is my trip up to Tampa to pick up my replacement mower. I’m excited to pick up my new tool of yard mastery. I am also getting several accessories that will allow me to expand my grass maintenance capabilities.

One thing I forgot to mention regarding the MLB All-Star game. I found it ironic and a bit annoying to see George and Barbara Bush in every close up batter shot during the game. They were sitting right behind home plate. It seemed like George was pigging out most of the time he was on camera.

Even though I hardly follow baseball at all anymore besides following the Phillies scores, I decided to tune into the All-Star game. I only made it to the 3rd inning or so. A few brief observations. Fantasia’s rendition of the National Anthem wasn’t great and it was made worse by the fact that she messed up a few words. Come on, if you are going to sing the national anthem in front of a nationwide audience, LEARN THE WORDS.

They pushed out Muhammad Ali to be involved in the first pitch ceremony. It literally made me cringe. Why do they do this to the guy? He has non-stop severe tremors that just are so disturbing to watch. To see a man that was such a master quick wit be relinquished to being a silent, shaking figurehead really bothers me. I love Ali, that is why it hurts so bad to see what has happened to him.

When they announced the rosters I knew maybe a third of the all stars. Years ago I would known every single player on every team. It just doesn’t hold my interest anymore. I got to see the first inning slaughter of Clemens. It was unfortunate that what may be his last All-Star game went down like that. He looked real bad. It was very ironic to see him throwing to Piazza as the catcher, since Piazza basically hates Clemens and vice versa.

The most exciting moment of what I saw was during pregame when the middle aged fat guy was able to throw 5 balls through a hole in 30 seconds to win a million bucks. Number 5 bounced through the hole just as time expired.

Ali comes back from her conference tonight. It will be good to have her back. The dog has been moping around the house ever since she left.

Sunday and Monday were rather lowkey with me basically getting stuff done around the house and keeping the dog busy. On Monday I wanted to mow the ENTIRE property. I noticed immediately that the mower deck was vibrating abnormally and that it was cutting low on that side. The last time I replaced the blades I noticed a stress crack on that side so I figured it was worsening. However that didn’t stop me as I mowed down the back of the property, loud noise and all. Just as I finished the back and was ready to do the area around the house it let loose with a loud bang! The metal in the mower housing simply snapped. I wasn’t happy but wasn’t surprised it happened as I knew it would sooner or later. I did some research on the net about replacement costs for the mower deck. 300 bucks plus is what I came back with, ouch. So I did some more searching. I found a guy in Tampa, via ebay, selling a brand new model for around 700 bucks. Then through a series of contacts with the seller I negotiated a deal where I would give him my old tractor in trade and get the new mower and a pull behind aerator and a hitch sleeve for $425. It really works out well, since I will be spending only 100 more than what a new mower deck would have cost and I don’t have to go through the bother of trying to sell the old tractor myself. Plus I get an aerator which normally will cost another 100 bucks itself. The only downside is the 3 hour drive up and back to Tampa to get my new tractor.

Since my grass cutting project was abrubtly cut short, I volunteered to go over to Mom’s to help her plant a couple things. While I was there I fixed a few other things that were amiss so Mom was happy.

I watched Rocky II again on Monday. It still gets me going, it’s such a great movie. No Jack sightings or incidents this weekend.

The headlines down here are all about a former school board chairman who was being indicted for molesting a 12 year old boy. He blew his brains out today. As sterile and pleasant as the elderly residents around here try to keep the community, it’s impossible to keep the ugliness of the real world totally out of view.

We got 2nd in our volleyball tournament yesterday. It was a long, grueling hot day. When we finished up around 7:30 the temperature was still at 92 degrees. We had some great games throughout the day and got some revenge for the last loss we suffered at Deerfield Beach. That team was in our pool and we took them out in the last game of pool play. We finished 4-0 on our net, had a bye for the first round of playoffs, won a long hard semi-final match against an A and AA indoor player who had won the last 2 BB tournaments they had entered. But then we lost in the finals against a guy/girl team. Both of them normally play A level but dropped down to BB to play together. We made a tactical error and decided to serve the guy almost exclusively and wound up losing the final 15-9. Even with the loss it was a great day overall and was the best finish I have had with Randall to this point so we are definitely improving as a team.

Some funny moments from the day:

Guy on another team is frustrated because he and his partner let a serve drop between them. In a split second he reaches down and scoops up 2 big handfuls of sand and rubs it into his hair like he is shampooing with it.

I walk under one of the canopies around center court and seconds later am doing the ant dance as my right foot is covered in fire ants. I escaped with only a half a dozen bites.

We are playing one team where one guy is clearly the weaker player. On game point, we serve the weaker player and win. The stronger player says, “Serve the weaker player on game point, smart….” but his tone made it sound like he thought just the opposite.

The same guy that gave himself a sand shampoo cramped up bad in the playoffs. By the time he was done rolling in the powdery white sand, he pretty much looked like was just dug up from an egyptian pyramid.

Some numbers for yesterday:

4.5 – The amount of pounds less I weighed by bedtime than the day before even after drinking a more than couple gallons of gatorade during the day.

111 – the amount of miles I drove to get to Siesta Keys each way

12 – the amount of hours I was out on the beach

I added a few more tips to the volleyball tips page and one new nickname that will mean nothing to anyone else but myself. One guy we played against looked almost exactly like a kid I played baseball with back in high school, except the guy yesterday was a real italian along with heavy accent and all.

I have a long weekend coming up Last night we got the pot rack we ordered. Pots and pans take up huge chunks of cabinet space so a pot rack can be a huge help in freeing that up. At first I just took it of the box and looked it over. Then I took the plastic off and looked at the directions. Then I started inspecting various hanging locations around the kitchen. Then before you know it I am standing on the the kitchen counter with the stud finder, a ruler and the drill. Then of course since I had the hooks in the ceiling I had to go to Home Depot to get longer chain to accomodate the high ceilings. By 9:15 the pot rack was up, complete with pots hanging on it. I honestly had no intention of doing that last night. Just happens sometimes, weird.

I am playing volleyball in Siesta Keys tomorrow. On Sunday, Alison leaves for 3 days for some conference on the east coast so I will be solo (well me and the dog) for Sunday and Monday. On Sunday I may meet up with a guy I met at the gym and his wife to play some golf and/or hang at a sports bar. The rest of the weekend will be filled with doing stuff around the house I’m sure. Nothing terribly exciting going on.

Oh I forgot to mention I bought one of those Sony All-In-One super remotes after seeing both Charlie and my bro-in-law had one. I bought it off ebay of course (saved 50 bucks) It was listed as basically new, the box was opened but everything was included. I got it Wednesday night and excitedly ripped into it. It said it was configured out of the box to support Sony TV’s, sweet! I fired it up, select TV and hit the power button, nothing. Hit it again, and again, nothing. I get within a foot of the TV, nothing. Damn it, guess I have to get out the book. So as I am reading through the book I verify that it should work with it’s default settings. After messing with it for close to an hour I decide to call the toll free support line. Of course I get some Korean sounding guy that I have a hard time understanding. He verifies my product number, he asks for the serial number. Ok I give it to him. He asks where I bought it, I told him. Then he asks what TV I have. I told him a Sony big screen. He wants the model number and serial of that too. I explain that I need to pull the TV out to even see that. He says he needs it to help with troubleshooting. Argh, ok. I pull it out and peer around the back and read him the numbers. Then he asks me where I bought the TV and when I bought it? What the hell, what does this have to do with anything?

So he begins his troubleshooting process which was nothing more than reading out of the same manual I had. He was worthless. His best advice was to pull the batteries and leave them out, after 24 hours it should reset to the default settings. “thanks (for nothing)”. So I pulled the batteries, waited 22 hours and tried again, same crap! Grrr. Determined now, I again poured through the directions and finally found the problem. I was able to reset the tv settings and low and behold it worked! Now that I got past the initial problem, I love it. It will replace 5 remotes.

Hopefully no more Jack sightings this weekend. I get the feeling we both know we spoke our piece and we will leave it at that. Gnome feels differently.

I am out walking Nicki when Alison comes out on the phone and hollers, “Jack’s on the phone, did you call him?” Puzzled, I said “Jack down the street? No.” She relays the message. Evidently Jack called and said his daughter said that I had called and left a message?? What the hell? I could speculate on it I guess but it would be nothing but a huge waste of my time. After Alison told Jack I didn’t call he said “Seriously?”, she said “yep” Then he said “I apologize…” and hung up. I think I hear twilight zone music……

Even with the blowout with the neighbor it was a great weekend. We got a bunch of stuff done around the house, saw 3 different movies, relaxed and had a great 3 days. On Friday evening we started things out by watching Farenheit 911. I snagged it off the net. My PC has a video out connection so with the assistance of a 50 foot rca cable I am able to watch stuff on the PC on the big screen TV. I think the version we saw was a bit different than what is playing in theaters because several key scenes that I saw in the previews did not show up in the version we saw. The video quality wasn’t great but good enough to view. It’s a good flick and further reenforced my ideas about the Bush administration. Their ties to the Saudi’s and the bin Laden family are DISTURBING. I thought the film dwelled a bit too much on the actual war in Iraq. Moore spends lots of time documenting how horrible war is which is already a universal truth and didn’t need to be rehashed as much as he did IMHO. It was a good flick but not quite as good as I thought it would be. Of course if I saw the theater version I may have enjoyed it more.

On Saturday we knocked out a bunch of housework during the day. I was a bit in the obsessive mode as I mopped the tile floors and also ran the steam cleaner throughout the house. Yea it is a lot of work but it looked good when I was done and seeing how dirty the water was that came out of the steam cleaner reenforced that it was time to use it. On Saturday night I had a surprise lined up for Alison. I took her to the Fort Myers dinner theater to see Grease. It was great food and I enjoyed the show much more than Pirates of Penzance. It was a really nice evening out.

On Sunday we ran a few errands and then afterward finally saw The Day After Tomorrow. (spoiler) I was disappointed in this flick. Like 10.5 the special effects were awesome but the storyline was just ludicrous. In a nutshell there is a killer storm descending on NY city. In the eye of the storm temperatures were dropping to -150 degrees. Dennis Quaid was in DC, his son is trapped in NYC. He is going to save him. He can’t drive any further than Philly and has to WALK to NYC in the greatest storm in history. It was just ridiculous. It wasn’t like he was walking there with a kerosene heater, how was his presence there supposed to save his kid? Dumb flick.

When we got home from the movies is when the crazy Jack the neighbor war unfolded. I don’t need to rehash that mess other to say that if the guy thinks I am an a-hole because I didn’t want to see his dog wind up as roadkill, so be it. I have his message archived for safe keeping. I wish I had the 2nd phonecall on tape, it may have set a record for the amount of F’s you can work into a 2 minute conversation. At least he knows I have no intentions of taking his shit. It still amazes me the guy waited almost a month until actually contacting me about it. F’in crazy bastard. My message which was by no means friendly, wasn’t rude, threatening or ridiculous.

Yesterday we mowed all the grass. It was hot and humid as hell. Although it was only 10am I literally had streams of sweat coming off my head as I weed whacked. Times like that make having the pool a godsend. We cleaned up and went out to grab lunch and then see Spiderman 2. Believe the hype, the movie is GREAT. It is better than the first one. The special effects are amazing. The plot is compelling. I loved it. I am so glad we saw this one last. Definitely 2 huge thumbs up from me.

Oh yea I mentioned apples. Our one apple tree actually produced an apple. (several actually) We tried the first one yesterday and it was great. A bit on the small side but it tasted like an apple from the supermarket. So far we have grown and consumed broccoli, pineapples, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant from our garden. Cool stuff.

For the first time in 2 months I got to spend some extended time working on the Vette. I did several small fixes and then tackled a job I was putting off. My power antenna never worked on the Vette. I could hear the motor run but the antenna didn’t move. I bought a replacement mast. In order to replace the mast I had to drop the antenna assembly down. To do so I had to rip out some of the trim in the trunk, pull the driver’s side rear wheel, pull back the wheel well and access the motor through there. As I was on my back trying to get some bolts loose I had an old wasp nest and a spider drop on my face. That is one of the negatives of having a car that sits in the garage 90% of the time. After some trial and error I was able to get the old broken mast out and a new one in. I was pysched to see the antenna go up and down as it should. It seems like a simple thing but I really got a kick out of it. The only other car I ever had with a power antenna was the Probe. I just enjoy watching the antenna disappear into the fender as I step out of the car, something from childhood I imagine that still appeals to me. 🙂

Much to blog about but it all can wait till next week, except this. Remember the neighbors 2 doors down that I called and left a message to regarding them letting their dog run down the middle of the road? Well I still have not seen this dog since but it came to a head of all days, today the 4th of July. I never heard a peep back from them. We got back from the movies and I get back inside from walking Nicki where Ali tells me there is a message from Jack and that I wasn’t going to like it. Well she was right, I didn’t. I was infuriated. I immediately called back, they weren’t home, I was shaking with anger but still managed to leave a non-obscenity filled message asking what the point of the message was and asked for a call back. I of course immediately made an electronic copy of it so it could be used later. I was basically stomping around the house for awhile, when the stomping stopped I was still thinking about nothing else besides how ridiculous, ignorant and pointless the message was. If you listened to the message, let me just clear up what he is talking about. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 to 24 MONTHS ago I had my very first RC plane crash into their roof as a storm was approaching. It caused no damage to the roof of course but it destroyed the plane. I went down to retrieve it, his wife came out, I told her my plane crashed into the roof, I apologized and went home. He spoke of that incident like it happened yesterday. I believe since that time I was on their property exactly one time over a year ago when I asked for help unloading the fridge. (which he very nicely offered to help with) So since that time, there has been basically no contact with them at all. The flag rant is unexplainable to me.

About 2 hours later the phone rings and I see it is him on the caller id. I prepare for battle. Within seconds I am barraged with f this f that, you f’in this don’t ever f’in that. As I tried to respond to his rant he simply would continue yelling. I repeatedly tried to get him to stop so we could at least loudly discuss what the issue was. Finally I got out of him that it was all about the call I made regarding the dog being in the street. A call that I made almost exactly one month ago. He again was showering me with F’s and wound down the conversation by inviting me to take “my skinny ass” down there and talk to him face to face if I dare. I said “Fine, I’ll be right down” Click.

I was fuming, really really angry that this moron is attacking me because I had the gall to care about the safety of his dog. I threw on my socks and shoes and marched down to the front of his driveway. Of course all of this was against the will of Alison but there was no way I could let this dope call me out. So I went to the front of his driveway just standing there for a minute or two, knowing damn well he would be out. I wasn’t disappointed. He came out and it was basically more of the same. Immediate F you, keep your nose out of my F’in business, blah blah blah. As mad as I was I made an effort to remain calm enough to try to make my point. I asked him if he wanted to hear the truth. “I already know the truth!” he screams. I said how can that be if you weren’t there? He said “I played your message over and over” So I tried to again explain that I called because I was concerned about the dog’s safety. “F the dog!” He barks out, “It’s none of your f’in business” I wish I had this on tape to record the exchange back and forth. I shortly lost it when I realized there was no way this guy was going to listen to anything. I started firing back the F bomb hot and heavy, using it to accentuate the fact that all I was doing was looking out for the dog, I didn’t give an F about what they do otherwise. It continued for maybe 5 minutes or so. Sometime during the argument I asked him if he wanted to hit me, he said he couldn’t because I was on county property (first 3 feet of the driveway) So I took another step closer and said “How about now?” He mumbled more F’s and started back up the driveway. He said something about “If it happens again I’m calling the cops you pyscho!” *I* am the pyscho? I really had it at this point and wasn’t ready to quit. I yelled “My skinny ass is still standing here!” But even that wasn’t enough to get him to return. So I followed with “You set a fine example for your children!” His witty reply was “At least I have children!” Hehe. A few more F’s followed by “Have a nice day” as he closed the door. Jerk.

I walked back up to my property and see that Ali had called our across the street neighbor to come out just in case things got real bad. I relayed the story to him. His wife is a deputy. Her advice was to call the police to document it but I figure that would be just throwing gas on the fire. I have his original message and if any further incidents happen I will be happy to escalate this further. I am still stupified that this happened. During the exchange I asked Jack if this bothered him so much, why didn’t he call me immediately? He has no answer except that he just kept listening to the message and it was burning him up. Yea, whatever. It’s too bad that I now I have an arch enemy 2 doors down but things could be worse, he could be next door.