Archives 2005

This morning Ali and I drove separately. Ali left a few minutes before me. As I was out by my truck, loading up my stuff, I saw a black lab looking dog walking loose down the road. Oh crap. The dog was literally walking right down the road. He saw me and came trotting up our driveway. He looked like a black lab – greyhound mix to my untrained eye. He was very friendly and came right up to me and let me pet him. He had a red collar on but no tags at all. He looked hungry so I went in and brought a bowl of water and food. He ate the first bowl of food before I had the truck packed up so I went back in and got him some more. I was a bit torn on what I should do. I could confine him in Nicki’s dog run area and call domestic animal services and have him picked up or let him be, hope he doesn’t become roadkill and finds his way back home. I chose the latter. So I said bye to the pooch as he was chomping down on bowl number two of food. I saw my neighbor walking his dog as I left and I stopped to tell him about it. He said he saw the same dog walking loose further up the road the day before. Ah great. Well if he is still hanging around our place when we get home we will have to take further action. He seemed like a real good dog.

Today was abs day again at the gym. And who else is back in the ab area when I arrive? The same woman whom I inadvertently blasted next to last week. Ah great. I didn’t feel as gaseous as last week but nonetheless I was extremely paranoid about keeping things under control. To have it happen again would be disastrous. To test the waters, I asked her if she was using the 25lb plate that was on the floor next to her and she said no I could have it, with no giggles or odd expressions. Cool, maybe we can act like it never happened, I would prefer it that way.

The other morning the radio station that wakes us up was doing a bit where people wrote in about some of thier quirks. It got me thinking about some of mine.

For the first 32 to 33 years of my life, almost every single meal included a big pile of applesauce on the plate. The applesauce would get mixed in with almost any food. Applesauce and beans, yummy, applesauce and mac n cheese, even better. Steak, vegtables, chicken, it all went with applesauce. However I ended the practice a couple years ago when I was looking for slop in my diet. Applesauce is little more than pure sugar and empty calories so I nixed it, cold turkey.

When I go to bed at night I kick out the sheets at the bottom of the bed if they are tucked in and stick my feet out. For some reason it is more comfortable for me to sleep with my size 13’s in open air.

Into my 20’s I used to sleep on my stomach all the time, now I can hardly stand to lay that way for more than a few minutes. When I did sleep on my stomach, I often would pull the pillow up and instead of laying on it, I would flop it on top of my head and sleep under it.

In my youth I went through a phase when I absolutely would not step on a crack. I didn’t want to break my mom’s back.

I hate trying to fall asleep in a room with dead silence. I tend to hear and concentrate on every single noise then and can’t fall to sleep. In our room we have an air cleaner going that provides constant white noise.

I compulsively rub my index fingers and thumbs together which has maintained callouses on them for my entire life.

I have a bad habit of biting the inside of my cheek, I do it without thinking and it seems to have gotten worse since I got the invisalign braces.

I eat most meals at my computer desk. There is enough space for a plate and a permanent drink coaster resides there.

We drink 3 gallons of milk a week.

On weekday mornings I will have cereal. On weekends, holidays and days off I splurge and have pop tarts, probably the worst food I eat and one of the few major junk foods I eat regularly.

Most weekday nights even though I went to the gym during the day I will normally supplement it with doing extra small bits of exercise at night.

These are only a few that popped into my mind.

Today I am given my 5 year pin at work. It’s rather amazing to me that I have been down here 5 years already. It seems like last week Rich and the crew were helping me load up the 26 foot truck to the ceiling with junk at Wertz Storage in Wernesville. I remember Rich climbing the mountain of crap at my mom’s condo and moving it forward to make more room for more crap. I remember the tedious drive down with my dad driving the truck that only could go 60-65 mph tops. I remember the joy, excitement and fear of my first few days down here. It doesn’t seem all that long ago. But alas, half a decade has passed already. Living here hasn’t been exactly what I thought it might be but it’s still good enough to make me not regret my decision. Check back in another 5 years.

Speaking of my work anniversary, it is one of the many things that has coincided with my magic number, 16. I was born on December 16th. My mom on November 16th, and my sister on October 16th. (grandma was off a day being born on September 17th) When I started my 11 year career at Entre / Ameridata / GE it was on October 16th. When I started my job here in Florida it was August 16th. When we closed on our house in Florida, it was July 16th. 16 seems to pop up in major events in my life. It’s a strange coincidence that I only started paying attention to in my adulthood.

My volleyball tournament this weekend was at a new location for me, Delray Beach. It was a different kind of place which in some ways reminded me of Rehoboth Beach back home. It was on the narrower side, had dark sand and wasn’t fronted by huge condo towers. It was killer warm again, by 10 am sweat was just streaming off me. However our play early was better. We won our first 3 matches. We had first place wrapped up for our net and our final match was against a team that we had beaten handily in the past. Well we flopped in the last game, with the other team almost exclusively serving Randall and we being unable to make them pay for doing so. We lost the game by 3 or 4 points. It set a bad tone for entering the playoffs. The start of our playoff game was delayed for 15-20 minutes while we tracked down our opponents who were asleep at the wheel and didn’t realize playoffs were starting. The match was back and forth for most of it but at the end they got a few lucky shots and we had some shoddy play to help them along. We lost again by 3 points. The 2 losses to end it, took a good bit of shine off what what seemed to be a turnaround in our fortune. However overall, we played better which is better than playing worse. I have a new serve I am working on which is a side-arm, super spinny thing that could prove to be quite effective. I had some decent hits, good hustling saves and played ok defense. There are only 2 or 3 possible tournies for me to play in for the rest of the year so hopefully the improvement will continue. The vball page has been updated and a few tips have been added.

On Sunday when I woke up my shoulder was killing me. On the first play of the tournament, I made a diving attempt to my left where I landed with all my weight on my shoulder while my arm was fully extended. It was the kind of thing where you see shoulders pop out. But besides the shoulder I felt ok, good enough to go for a run again. Ali got up earlier which allowed us a 10-12 degree break in temperatures for the run. When we run, I let Ali set the pace and the distance. She set a new personal best doing a mile and a half straight and then adding on another half mile later. In total we covered 4 miles in around an hour. My knee felt surprisingly ok. Our Sunday run although difficult in some ways, is also one of my favorite parts of day. It’s cool seeing Ali improving and it feels good for me to run after abandoning it for the most part for the last 5 years because of my crappy knee. Running clears the mind like few exercises I know.

After we got home I immediately wanted to dive into my list, the first part of it being mowing the grass which was spotted with standing water everywhere. After 30-40 minutes of weed whacking I was sweating more than when we ran, as the temps had crossed back into the 90’s by then. Ali had a PC show in the afternoon so after she left, I ripped into the rest of my list and had it all done by 2:30. After that I was more or less playing WoW until 9:30-9:45 at night. It amazes me that after being submerged in this game for coming up on 8 months, it still holds my interest to the degree that it does. There are just so many things you can do in the game, the challenge never ends. If you level your character to the highest level you would think it could get boring or tail off. But all you have to do is start a new character that is a different class and the fun starts all over again. By the time 9:30 came though, my eyes were exhausted and I felt a bit disgusted when I counted up how long I was at it. The time just flies by. I still am doing my best to keep balance, still workout 4-5 times a week, still doing the house chores, I just am trying to do the stuff as fast as I can to allow me uninterrupted leisure time. It’s better than other addictions that come to mind.

Usually it is someone else doing funny stuff at the gym that makes the blog pages, not today. Today was back/abs day. I did my 4 back exercises, set of 3 for each and moved back to the abs area. It was empty except for a little hispanic woman doing some exercises. I asked her if she was using the decline ab bench which she said she wasn’t with a smile. I had felt a bit gassy but nothing major. Well doing ab work amplifies any gas you may have in your system.

I was doing situps with the bench at the highest incline, straining more with each rep. She was on the bench right next to me doing what seemed to be endless crunches. At around rep 10 I could feel some pressure. I paused for a sec to regain my composure. I quickly evaluated and decided I should be able to make it through the last 5 reps without incident. Well as I contract for rep 11 a quick hitting loud blast comes out, I am mortified. I do a lightning quick analysis. It sort of coincided with a loud section of the music and it could have been possibly mistaken for the squeaking sound of my sweaty ankles against the foot pads. I figured the key to selling it was to just keep going, don’t laugh, don’t look at her. There was no odor so that was a plus. I ground out 5 more reps than I was planning to do just in the hopes that she would be done and I didn’t have to see her reaction. When I was done she was wiping down her bench and left the area. She had to hear it. I avoided making eye contact the rest of my time there. In my 15 years of gym attendance I never had that happen in front of a woman. Sigh…..

A quarter second more could have been the difference between a bad situation and a tragic one I was involved in yesterday. At lunch time I go to the gym everyday. Employees have to park in an adjacent church parking lot. I walked out to my car and pulled around to the exit. I looked left and then right and then left again. There was a ton of traffic coming so I waited for awhile, intently looking for a small hole to pull out into. Finally it came and I took my foot off the brake and onto the gas, turned my head and saw a person on a bike right in front of my car! I instantly stopped but the guy on the bike bumped the bumper and took a tumble. I backed up and got out. I was freaked out, I didn’t know how bad he was hurt and was stunned that I almost ran the guy over. He was a mexican guy that didn’t speak much english. Another guy that was up the sidewalk saw it and came running down with cell phone in hand. I told the mexican guy I was sorry and I didn’t see him. I asked him if he was ok. His ankle was bruised up but he could walk. The guy that came up asked him if he wanted us to call for help or take him to a doctor. The mexican said no, no. We asked him several times and he wanted no part of getting someone involved, I suspect he may have been an illegal. So he limped off down the sidewalk. The other guy said “Well he left I guess there is nothing else we can do” It was awkward. I felt like shit as I watched the guy continue to hobble down the sidewalk pushing his bike.

As I got back into my car and went onto my way to the gym and throughout the entire workout, I dwelled on what happened and wondered if I should have taken him to a doctor and how just a fraction of a second longer and I could have ran the guy over or knocked him into oncoming traffic. It really freaked me out. When I left the gym I looked at the front of the car and there wasn’t a mark on the bumper but he knocked the animal siren thing off. Did this guy demonstrate good bike safety by riding in front of a car that was waiting to pull out into traffic with a driver whose head was obviously turned the opposite direction? No, but the bottomline is I should have glanced back right before pulling out. I was a very lucky person yesterday.

I am normally very mild mannered, to a fault sometimes. I accept some things I shouldn’t but if I flip the switch I can be a pretty damn stubborn SOB. Such was the case regarding my DirecTV upgrade on Friday. The email I fired off to them should explain:

Subject: Lies, terrible experience

Details: I contacted customer support last Thurday July 21st with a simple question. I currently only have the DirecTV Sunday ticket and PPV on my package currently. I asked if I could add my Fort Myers locals ONLY. At first the woman I spoke to said no but then told me to wait a minute and said she would check on something. After a few minutes she came back and said that since I had been a customer since 2000 and I had the expensive Sunday Ticket package, she would be able to add on just the locals for an additional 6 dollars a month. Great! She said in order to receive the locals I would need to upgrade my dish and she transferred me to another department where they told me I needed a new dish AND and new receiver. Normally there would be a 50 dollar charge for this but again, since I was an old customer, they said I would only be charged 15 dollars shipping. That sounded great and I hung up very happy that directv would be willing to accomodate my needs to only receive the locals on my satellite.

Fast forward to today. I took off half the day from work because I was told the installer would not arrive until sometime between 1 and 5. He arrived at 4:58 but that was fine, he was a nice guy and installed the equipment quickly and properly. He calls up DirecTv to activate the new receiver and then hands the phone to me saying they had to talk to me. The rep asked me what package I wanted and I told him I was just adding the locals to my existing service. He said “You can’t do that” I told him that I was told by another directv rep that I indeed could and they were making an exception for me due to my long history with the company and the fact that I had the Sunday ticket. I asked him to check my account notes regarding it and he said he didn’t see anything about letting me have just the locals. I then asked to talk to his supervisor “Shakeesha” I quickly explained again to her what the deal was. I said the entire upgrade/swap out transaction was initiated based on the fact that I was told that I could just add locals to my service, I told her I took off from work for the install and how it was very frustrating to be getting the run around after I was told in no uncertain terms what I should be getting. Shakeesha was very robotic in her responses. “I’m sorry you were told incorrect information, I can not add locals without you buying a basic package” She repeated this over and over, oblivious to how ridiculous the situation was that directv has nobody to blame for but themselves. She offered no compromise, no offers to figure out what was going on. She just kept repeating the same line over and over, obviously not caring at all about how your company screwed up.

I asked to talk to her supervisor and she put me on hold for 4 or 5 minutes. Then she comes back and says the supervisor is busy, they will call you back in 24-48 hours, again in her cold, robotic tone. I told her that wasn’t good enough since the installer had to wait for the receiver to be activated until he could leave. I finally tired of her and told her to just activate it as it was.

The bottomline is directv has wasted my time, caused me to take off from work and lied to me about what they were going to do for me and offered nothing up in compensation besides “Tough….” I think that is terrible and unexcuseable in an environment where there are so many entertainment options. I would appreciate it if someone responded to me ASAP either by email (duf@duf.net) or by phone at 239-xxx-xxxx to explain to me how your company is ok with treating customers, especially long time loyal customers like this.

Sincerely,
Shawn Duffey

The letter doesn’t quite capture my heated exchange with Shakeesha, she was a total moron. When I sent the email I didn’t really expect any results from it and had resigned myself to just keeping my exisiting programming. However later the next day I got this:

Dear Mr. Duffey,

Thank you for writing. We are sorry for the frustration. Because we appreciate you as a customer, we have added the local channels a la carte to your account. Please understand that any other changes to the account would require that you subscribe to a base package such as TOTAL CHOICE. Thanks again for writing and stay tuned to DIRECTV.com for the latest news and information about our services.

Sincerely,

Matthew
DIRECTV Customer Service

Wow it actually worked, I was proud my rant actually worked and hoped Shakeesha was getting reprimanded for being a non-thinking boob. However in the meantime I got a letter from Directv thanking me for upgrading and outlining how I would be charged 68 bucks for the new dish and 5 bucks for a month for a 2nd receiver. WTF? I was told it would be just the shipping charges of 15 bucks and no mention of paying for a second receiver was ever brought up or agreed to by me. Another email is in the pipeline. Directv seems to have an issue correctly processing orders.

I did a lot of work around the house this weekend. On Saturday while Ali was running a Pampered Chef show I was out in the yard sweating buckets loading up the new garden with dirt, tilling it in and reattaching the fence. Damn it was hot. I also cleaned, ran the steam cleaner throughout the majority of the house, weeded and helped mow the grass.

Speaking of weeds, I hate them. Bent over awkwardly in the hot, humid Florida air while the blood rushes to your head and the gnats buzz your face is more than a bit unenjoyable. Since I have been living at the house I have tried various methods to control weeds. First I simply tried to keep mulch over the landscaped areas. This worked for a bit but then the weeds would just start poking through the mulch. Then I tried laying down some of the black plastic weed block and mulching on top. The plastic would start to break down and again wonderful weeds would appear. So then I redid all the areas, I laid down INDUSTRIAL weed block fabric with a fresh layer of mulch. Well once again, the mulch has weeds throughout it. What is happening is the mulch gets compacted and wet from all the summer rain and becomes almost dirt like itself, allowing weeds to grow in the mulch ON TOP of the fabric. It is maddening.

On Saturday night we went out to dinner with our old neighbors. They sold their house and moved a couple hours north. The new neighbors started to move in Monday. It seemed quite odd to see different people going into that house since we have had 4 years of knowing a different reality. Ali waved to them as she was on the tractor but I was in the pool and made no effort to make myself visible for greetings. It’s just too weird right now. I’m sure they are nice and all, I just am not ready to jump in with two feet. I heard they have 2 dogs, Nicki will be crazy.

We saw Fantastic 4 yesterday at a matinee. We figured a weekday matinee, it should be just us in the theater. Wrong, it was probably half full, very surprising. I enjoyed the movie, it was good not great. The biggest problem was the climactic final battle wasn’t very climactic at all and was over before you knew it. Michael Chicklis (spelling) was the best part of the movie as The Thing stole the show for me. Jessica Alba did look outstanding but her powers weren’t all that exciting. I would put this about on par with War of the Worlds from an enjoyment factor.

I still have been playing WoW more than I like to admit. I just obtained two very expensive in game items that I have been working towards for 3 weeks or so. The 2 items cost me over 1500 gold which is a huge amount of cash. It is a bit scary that I plan out my time in Warcraft like I plan out other daily activities. Play it if you dare and you will understand.

I watched the shuttle take off with baited breath, hoping to not see it explode. It was cool to watch the launch and especially this one since they had additional camera views that I’ve never seen before. But then the bad news hit that more crap fell off the main fuel tank and they were once again grounding future missions. I find it next to impossible to believe that the think tank at NASA can’t handle this issue. In my 15 seconds of analyzing the problem, I wondered why they couldn’t equip the tank with some sort of high strength mesh condom-like device that would prevent loose pieces from breaking away. I mean come on, it really can’t be that hard can it? I’d love to see a launch live sometime, I bet that would be amazing to hear, feel and see the power up close and personal.

I ran over to Ali’s work to pick up her and Nicki for a quick trip to the vet. As we were waiting for the vet we saw one of the assistants come walking up to the cat scale carrying a cat hanging upside down by it’s legs. The cat was knocked out and just hanging there limp like a a carcass. As the woman tried to put the drugged cat down, she banged it’s head into the scale before she plopped it on like a pile of hamburger. She gets the weight and then picks up the cat by the legs again and throws it over her shoulder like a fur coat. She displayed a lack of concern for the cat that made Ali and I take pause.

I haven’t had my in office cam on for months for some reason. It’s on now so you don’t miss a minute of all the exciting head scratching, eye squinting, phone talking and yawning that goes on here every single day!!

Saturday was my first volleyball tournament since last month. I knew it was going to be hot when it was in the mid 80’s by 7am. Randall and I have had little success recently, missing the playoffs in the last 2 tournaments we played in. I wrote it off to some bad luck and some sloppy play, well after missing the playoffs again and turning in our worst performance to date I think there is more fire than smoke. It was EXTREMELY hot all day which made for difficult playing conditions, however everyone was playing in the same weather so it was no excuse. In our first game we beat a guy playing with a 12 year old kid and then lost every game afterward, finishing a very disappointing 1-3. The games were close for the most part but we managed to fade consistently at the end. Balls were hit OB all day which just kills you in rally scoring. The serves kept going the other way. I tried to hit on 2 more than I ever have. It’s something I don’t do all that well but I was desperate to get something going. It was just all around bad and left me wondering why I am putting the time and effort into playing if we can’t even get off a BB net. We have another tournament in a couple weeks. If things continue to suck I will have to decide to either just bag it or try to mix things up and play with some other people to see if things improve. In my situation, it just isn’t worth it to me to play if we can’t have a modicum of success.

Our neighbors sold their place and are moving up north. With the hustle and bustle of moving they neglected pool maintenance and wound up with a dark green pool that resembled a pond. I told them I would take care of cleaning it up, dump a few chemicals in, clean the filter a couple times, problem solved. Well that has hardly been the case. For the past week I have been dumping shit into that pool and all I have to show for it is water that is now more bluish green then dark green. I have spent the 50 bucks the neighbors gave me for the chemicals and another 30 on top of that out of my own wallet. The damn water just will not clear. I poured enough crap in there to kill anything yet it still looks more suitable for fish than human beings. The neighbors were back this weekend cleaning things up and made some comments to Ali about the pool still being cloudy. It made me a bit angry since I have been busting my ass trying to clear it up. I have a water sample now that I am taking with me on today’s trip to the pool store. What a pain in the ass.

On Sunday. even though I played volleyball the day before, I hit the track with Ali to do our run. (before the run I was out weed whacking the entire property) I don’t know if it is testament to the improvement in my knee or a result of my lack of action in the tournament. Again, the heat was brutal. However we did manage to turn in our fastest joint lap ever, beating our prior best by a full 6 seconds. In general we are turning laps a good 10-12 seconds faster than when we first started, a nice improvement. We were both drenched when we were done.

After a dip in the pool to cool off, lunch and a brief nap while a thunderstorm rolled through, I was ready to go back out into the hot humid muck to tackle reassembling the garden border that I ripped apart weeks ago because of the flooded mess it was mired in. There were more storms surrounding us but I didn’t give a shit, I put this off long enough. As I moved the landscape timbers out of the way, I discovered the one had become the centerpiece of a massive fire ant mound. As soon as I moved it, the ground came alive with thousands of the vicious little bastards. They quickly got onto my boots and pants. I flicked off the ones I saw, killed others as they managed to bite me. I took the tiller out and started turning over the dirt where the garden was going to be. When I got to the part where the fire ant colony was, I paused for a second, thinking about how the tiller will throw the dirt and ants back at me and how it could be rather unpleasant. I decided I didn’t care, the job was going to get done. I plowed into the still active mound, scattering the ants everywhere. I didn’t bother to look down at my legs, I knew there were ants on me. If I felt a sting from a bite I smashed the little bastard but kept plowing ahead. They were inside my pants, inside my boots, biting on a regular basis, I just didn’t care. I assembled the border. When I got to the last piece that had the ants all over it I used caution as I tried to drag it into place quickly to avoid more bites. Of course I was unsuccessful and got another half dozen more bites on my hands. With ants surrounding me, I hurriedly sunk screws into the corner brackets. I stopped there for now as I threw down a bunch of Amdro to kill off the ants and had to give it some time to work. I went right from doing this to helping Ali finish up fluffing mulch. With all the rain, the mulch gets very compacted. It gets so compacted that it becomes dirt-like which allows weeds to grow within the mulch, even though I have expensive weed block underneath. I hate weeding. So Ali went around with a garden claw breaking it up and followed her with the rake and picked out remaining weeds. I once again was a sweaty mess. Whew, what a ball busting day.

The rest of the day I did some various indoors things I needed to do like wipe out the old hacked Tivo for resale on ebay, try for the 10 th time to unsuccessfully activate the new phone I got from Cingular and try to pick up a bit around the house. I’m getting frustrated with all the pet hair that is everywhere. The Roomba is getting less effective in keeping the floors clean. All the hair clogs the brushes, blocks the sensors and gets into spots in the Roomba where it doesn’t belong, causing problems. I would still recommend a Roomba to my friends but not to ones that have pets that drop a lot of hair. It just takes too much maintenance to keep the Roomba running in those situations.

The satellite installer cancelled for Saturday and instead is coming this Friday to do the install. No big deal and actually it is better since I will be around for the install to handle any technical questions. Since I ran the cable and installed the unit myself, I could answer questions that Ali would have no clue about.

I have that “things are out of control” feeling lately where it seems there are many things that should be getting done that aren’t. This causes me stress.

I got a new Tivo 2 unit. No I didn’t pay for it. A few months ago I got a Tivo credit card and collected points that I used to get the new Tivo. This is the 2nd generation Tivo with even more features. It has built in support for broadband connections, it lets you view pictures and play music from a PC on your home network and allows you to schedule recordings from the world wide web. It’s a sweet box. I spent last night getting it all setup. For some reason getting my hands around some new geek gear inspired me to contact directv to see about the possibility of picking up local channels through the satellite. Right now I just use it for the NFL Sunday Ticket and occasional PPV movies. However the picture qulaity coming off the satellite is soooooooo much better than the cable feed. It’s like night and day. So I called Directv and asked if I could just pick up local channels (major networks). At first they said no, my only option was to take their low end 41.99 per month package. I disappointedly said “That’s my only option?” The woman said she would check on something. She came back in a bit and said since I was a customer since 2000, they would add on the local channels for only 6 bucks a month. Ah cool, that will work. However she said I would need a different dish to receive the locals. I asked her if it cost anything to get the new dish and she said, no, and transferred me over to that department.

I got a guy this time and I explained to him what the deal was. He said ok, that will be 50 bucks for the dish plus 15 shipping. “Hmmm I was just told that it shouldn’t cost me anything” He said he didn’t see any notes on my account saying anything about that but he put me on hold again. He came back and again said “Since you have been a customer for so long….” they were going to give me the dish and I would just pay shipping. Then he found out I would also need a new receiver as well which also would be free. Sweet. I wanted to install it myself since I did the original install but he said with a new receiver, an installer has to do it. They could send a guy out Saturday morning to do it, um ok, fine. So hopefully by Monday I will be watching crystal clear network TV pumped through my 140 hour Tivo 2 box.

On Saturday I am playing in my first volleyball tournament since the Pottstown Rumble. My last two tournaments with Randall didn’t go that well with us missing playoffs both times. I don’t have any expectations so that normally makes the day more enjoyable. I almost feel like skipping it cause there are so many little things around the house that I would like to get cleaned up and done. Oh well. Over the next month I am burning up my leftover vacation so I will have some long weekends to get stuff done.