Archives 2006

Damn the Tivo in the bedroom grabbed a bunch of the UFC reality show episodes.  I stayed up till 12:45 am watching 5 episodes back to back.  It’s great stuff, reality TV mixed with hardcore fighting.

Well after 2 days of hard work, I bagged the move because the new host really lacked the flexibility I needed with the sites I host.  It has been quite frustrating.  Unfortunately there was no way for me to try all the site tools out till I bought in.  The new host has a 30 day money back deal so it should be a pain free reversal.

One good thing is I installed Word Press on my host webspace. 🙂

For the past few weeks I have been toying around with relocating duf.net to a new provider. I can get about 15 times the amount of disk space and 15 times the amount of monthly bandwidth for about 40% of what I am paying now. The only thing that is stopping me is the big task of moving all of my “stuff” from one host to another. I have message boards, websites for friends and family, tons of pictures, videos, databases and of course this blog that would have to be moved. However if Ali gives me the go ahead I think I will tackle it. I need a challenge. However such a move could result in several things being unavailable for a period of time, especially this blog.

On Friday night I was out walking Nicki. I looked up into the sky as I often do to check out the stars and I see the moon. However it didn’t look anything like I ever saw. The way the earth was casting a shadow across it, the only thing lit up were two slices towards the bottom, separated by darkness. It looked like an alien was looking down on us. I quickly called Ali out to see it. By the time Nicki was done, the visual was gone and the moon was totally dark. It was really freaky.

Saturday morning I played some tennis with my neighbor. I’ve played tennis exactly one time since I moved to Florida and that was “against” Ali. I think the last time I played competitive tennis against someone was when I used to be a meat cutter at Weis Markets. It was close to 17 or 18 years ago against my buddy Dave. I enjoy tennis even though I am not good at it. Tennis is one of those sports where my dominant hand mixup really hampers me. I play the sport right handed, even though I throw, shoot a basketball and bat left handed. (I do write right handed) I think when I was young, my mom sent me for tennis lessons and I was taught to play right handed. I look awkward as hell playing the game, in fact the only thing I can do with authority is serve hard, albeit 95% of time it goes into the net. So my tennis game relies on stupid backspin shots that far too often sail out of bounds. Well my neighbor is not a spectacular player but he is steady. All he had to do was keep the ball in play and I would soon hit it into the net or out of bounds. I lost the first two sets 6-2 6-2. On a few of the shots where I actually geared up and tried to hit the ball hard, I instead wound up launching the ball a hundred feet out of the court. In the last set we stopped with me up 4-0 but that was because my neighbor hurt his leg so it meant nothing. I hope we get to play more so I can get some rust off my game, it was fun.

I had a big list of stuff I wanted to do and I added a bonus job. I pressure washed the entire storage shed. Over time it gets coated with nasty greenish mildew junk that needs to be blasted off a couple times a year. I was going to see if I could swap the driveshaft on my Tacoma myself but I couldn’t even budge the bolts that attach it. I just had no room to get leverage. As I was putting away the tools, two hispanic guys driving a white Escalade, wearing ties walked up my driveway and asked if we had any hispanic neighbors. I told them the only ones I knew of. They thanked me and handed me a bible pamphlet which I threw in the trash as they pulled away.

Even though I kept busy for the majority of the weekend, I felt grumpy and dissatisfied with myself. One week/weekend just seems to roll into another with little to distinguish one from the next. Call it an early mid-life crisis but damn, things just feel off to me.

I finished DaVinci Code. It was an excellent read. I plan to tackle the author’s other book, Angels and Demons. Ali said that one is even better. The facts that are tied into DaVinci Code are disturbing and enlightening at the same time. I’m looking forward to see how it translates to film. Reading the book has put me behind in my magazine reading routine. I have a big pile of Men’s Health, Muscle & Fitness and Wired magazines to get through. I will burn through that pile on the plane to and from Vegas.

I am on my 4th week of supplementing with creatine. My weight has gone from around the high 180’s up to 196-197. My one time rep bench press max has gone from 245 to 260 (today), it felt like I could have done 265 with a spotter. My other lifting numbers have gone up as well. I ran over 12 miles in the past week. My bad knee has settled down, where as in the beginning it felt real cranky, now it feels only a bit sore. The extra body weight is primarily the muscles holding extra water, making everything look a bit bigger. I am pleased with the results thus far and will continue on to see if I can hit some new personal bests.

Last night after work Ali and I put in almost a 4.75 mile run. On Tuesday we did a little less than 4 and then the race last Saturday was 4 miles, meaning we put in 12 miles+ in the past 5 days. I believe that is the most we have done in that period of time to date. I’m feeling it today.

I finally got a reply back from my critical email regarding the LUNK ALARM.

Shawn,
Thank you for your question. We will certainly keep your points in mind.

Regards,

Candace Talon
Member Relations
Planet Fitness

Haha obviously a canned response. Stupid.

This weekend I am going to see if I am able to swap the driveshaft on my Tacoma. I got the correct one at the junkyard this week. Oh and also the Ford dealership took back the seatbelt part for the van without a problem. I have a bunch of other things on my mental list to take care of. Don’t forget on Saturday night we turn the clocks forward.

A few weeks ago my gym had the brilliant idea of installing a huge sign over the dumbbell racks. In huge letters it said LUNK ALARM with a defintion that read something like this:

LUNK – (lunk) someone who drops weights, grunts or judges others

Mounted on the sign is a big purple chaser light and above it is a siren, yes a siren. The first time I saw it, I figured the light and siren were there for effect, nothing more. The sign was rather overbearing, hypocritical (the sign itself is judging) and stupid but I just wrote it off as someone’s bad interpretation of a clever idea.

Well Tuesday over lunch I was at the gym, doing decline dumbbell presses. As I finished my set I lowered the weights to my side and sat them on end and then let them go as I sat up so they plopped on the floor, they may have “dropped” a total 3 inches and keep in mind these are rubber coated weights on a rubber floor. Just as I sit up I hear the f’in siren fire off for a second. It scared the shit out of me and I look around and spot the middle aged, little woman behind the front desk looking at me with a stupid grin on her face. I was pissed off. I think she just identified me as a LUNK! Me, the guy that wipes down the machines after he uses him, the guy that organizes the weight plates, the guy that has been there since the doors opened, a lunk. However I wasn’t 100% sure she directed it at me so I acted like nothing was going on. The noise scared everyone in the gym. The more time passed, the more my blood boiled at the ridiculousness of this device. However when I left I didn’t comment to the little troll behind the desk because I knew I was going to blow up. I was cursing myself as I walked out on the lot, knowing that I should have called her out on being an idiot, on having nothing better to do than observe members and try to embarrass them if she determined you put down a weight harder than she was comfortable with. But I didn’t, I was already late getting back from lunch and causing a scene would have been a mess. Yet, I know I would have felt better if I did.

So after I got back my anger continued to be amplified because it was compiled with the anger I had with myself for not freakin out right then and there. So instead I resorted to my specialty, an angry email. In the email I identified that the lunk alarm was the stupidest thing I ever saw in 20 years of going to a gym. I questioned the business sense in installing a device designed to embarrass it’s customers. I pointed out that having someone fire off a siren in an environment where people are routinely lifting heavy weights over their heads could easily cause a personal injury which would be squarely their fault. I used my name and real email address and sent it off. I received no response and haven’t seen the little bitch behind the desk since Tuesday. Who knows if they even got it our care about it but if that f’in thing ever goes off again I WILL go ballistic. The only bad thing is I am running out of gym options.

It has been very dry here, we have had next to zero rain the past couple months. I drove out to our Everglades City branch which takes me right through part of the Everglades. Normally the water is right next to the road, however now, the water is gone and instead has been replaced by large sandy spots and low grass. I never have seen it like that. It has to make the airboat tourist business challenging. Because of Hurricane Wilma, our office has been relocated to a FEMA supplied trailer.

This Saturday we had a 4 mile race in Lehigh Acres. Ali hasn’t run a race in a bout a month because of being sick. She still isn’t totally healthy yet and she also had a sore toe from kicking something awhile back. When we got there she was debating if she would be able to run at all because the toe was bothering her that much. She jumped into the registration line with me after deciding to give it a go. It was quite chilly Saturday morning with temperatures in the low 50’s. It is a pain in the ass when it is that chilly because it’s hard to get loose and to keep warm you wear extra clothes. However those extra clothes that feel good in the beginning make you feel very overheated by mid-race.

The race went well, all things considered. Ali struggled but managed to keep a pretty steady pace despite the cold weather, stiff wind in some parts and limited training.. We settled in running around a woman and her young kid, who was probably somewhere in the 10-11 year old range. I felt bad for the kid because his mom kept running ahead of him, trying to make him go faster. The kid was really struggling. But then when the finish line was in sight, the kid turned on the afterburners and sprinted to the finish, it was funny. We crossed the line in 39:24, not a blistering pace by Ali’s standard but it was still almost a full 3 minutes faster than the last 4 mile race we did on Thanksgiving day. I saw the moron that went ballistic on me for hearing something I didn’t say a couple races ago. He ignored me and I did the same. I told Ali I felt like bitch slapping the old geezer but she thought he wasn’t even worth the effort. Even running Ali’s pace I got 4th in my age group (out of 4). You just never know how many bodies are gonna show up.

After we got back I wanted to rip into my to do list so my Sunday would be laid back. The first two projects were failures. After two trips to the Ford dealer in an attempt to find the correct seat belt buckle I discovered it was still wrong. I paid almost 100 bucks for this damn part. The old one is riveted in place and evidently is a custom part that comes with the conversion package. Project two was to take a look at the driveshaft of the Tacoma to see if I would be able to swap it with the one I got from the junkyard myself. I roll underneath and look at the driveshaft. I look at the one I picked up. I compare again. Son of a bitch, it’s the wrong part again. The one I picked up is too short and if I were to guess, I would say it was for a non-extended cab model. So I have 350 dollars worth of wrong parts. So now I have to go through the bullshit process of trying to return them and get the mess straightened out. I can hardly wait.

Another project was replacing the filters on the reverse osmosis system. I pulled out the carbon filters and they didn’t look too bad. But then I decided to replace the main filter, which I think may have been replaced once in the 5 years we were there. It hasn’t been replaced because it was a royal pain in the ass to get out. After f’ing with it for a good half hour I got it out. It was nasty and had to be replaced. So we jumped in the party van with the dog and went to Home Depot. I found a filter but also spotted a deal they had on trees. They had 15 and 7 gallon plum, red plum and taiwan cherry trees. The 7 gallon trees were only 10 bucks and the 15 gallon only 25 bucks! It was a sweet deal and we needed some trees to replace the ones that got wiped out in the frost. So we drove home and picked up the truck and drove right back. We got two 7 gallon plums, one cherry and one red plum. We got them home and spent a couple hours getting it all in the ground. If they take hold, they will make a very nice addition to the landscape as they mature. By the time dinner time came around we were both tired, it was a busy day.

Sunday was very laid back, the day went something like this. Nicki gets me up at 6:30. I get up, take her out, eat breakfast reading email and checking the headlines. Then I settle in and play WoW for 3 hours while Ali sleeps. I take a break and water the landscape, wash the car and truck and then eat lunch. I played Wow for another few hours in the afternoon. We paid the bills. I finally got to watch the Transporter DvD my buddy from work loaned me. That movie started out decent but the just got ridiculous with the lunacy of the fight/chase scenes. Then we watched an episode of the new season of Surreal Life (outstanding) and finally settled down and read more of the Davinci code for a couple hours.

The Davinci code is really fascinating to me. It talks about a theory regarding Christianity/Jesus that I never heard before, yet supposedly has been something that has been spoken about for centuries. The theory undermines everything about the Christian religion and further cements my own personal views on the subject. It seems ironic that something as high and mighty as the christian faith would be based on lies, coverups and death, yet evidently there is ample history of this throughout time. So much hypocrisy it is sickening.

Business is great!
People are Terrific!
Life is Wonderful!

Noone will ever accuse me of being a good conversationalist, probably not even a marginally average one. Many times when someone says something I have no opinion about, wasn’t listening to, or don’t care about I used to always respond simply with the word “Cool” whether I thought it was cool or not. I have noticed that for some reason I have been replacing “Cool” in those situations with either “Crazy” or “That’s crazy…” Pathetic. Person – “Yea I was drving down the road and saw a bird in the sky” Me – “Crazy, mumble, mumble…”

Has anyone else noticed that the price of gas has gone up about 30 cents in the span of a week? Has anyone noticed that there has been no mention of it in the news at all? No reason, no explanation, no justification, just 30 cents more. Last week I paid 2.37 a gallon and this week the same gas station is selling gas for 2.69 I suppose the oil companies felt the need to put another quick billion or so into their already fat wallets. It makes me sick.

For awhile now I have received complimentary subscriptions to Eweek and Network World. The way it works is once a year you fill out a lengthy survey and they give you the subscription. In an effort to simplify my life, I realized that I get next to nothing out of these magazines so when my renewal notices came around this time, I ignored, deleted and threw them all away. They have been relentless. I keep getting the magazines month after month, each one wrapped in a special covering saying this is my absolute last issue if I don’t renew. Yet, the next month another one comes. I continually receive emails from them and junk mail, all pleading for me to renew. It has been going on for at least 4 months. Now today I come to work and they have sent me a fax asking me to renew. WTF? I refuse to renew, I am curious how long it will continue.

The DaVinci code is a fictional story based on a bunch of wild real world facts. One thing I just read about was the number PHI which is 1.618 (pronounced fee) Evidently this number is used repeatedly through out nature. 1.618 is the pattern that is used over and over in terms of proportion. For example if you take your total measurement from head to toe and then measure from toe to belly button and compare the numbers, your total height will be approximately 1.618 of the distance to your belly button. If you measure from shoulder to fingertip, and then compare that to the distance from your elbow to your fingertips, the number will reappear. Hips to feet compared to knees to feet, same deal. This number permeates nature everywhere in the way that living things are laid out. It really is amazing. This book is really, really good.

2 weeks ago I started a creatine supplementation program again. I took creatine 6 or 7 years ago and got some impressive results. My bench press that was stuck at 225-235 for the longest time, shot up to 275. I was able to jump higher in volleyball. Dunking a volleyball on a basketball rim became much easier. I got bigger, my weight creeped into the low 200’s. However my knee injury also occurred while I was on creatine. I equated creatine with the injury. However when my strength started to fade after being off of it for awhile I jumped back on the wagon for a bit. However shortly after starting again I got what I believe was a small kidney stone and I stopped.

Since my creatine days I went through several years of really struggling with my right knee after 2 surgeries. Anything impact related caused me pain. However eventually with the help of flaxseed oil and leg strengthening routines my knee has come around and over the last 2 years has been about as good as I could hope for. If you would have asked me 5years ago if I thought I would able to ever start up a consistent running program again I would have laughed.

Well for some reason I got the bug to try it again. My logic was nowadays I work out harder/smarter and eat better than I did 6 years ago. I was curious what sort of results I could get under these conditions. Of course I also had anxiety because of the negative things that happened last time I was on the stuff. Well 2 weeks into it I have had a mix of results. I already put on 5 lbs of mostly water weight. With creatine it makes your muscles hold more water. It is very important to drink tons of water when you are using it. My inadequate water consumption was probably what contributed to the kidney stone last time. Last Friday at the gym I put up 255, the first time I did that amount of weight in a year or more. However my bad knee has also been crankier than normal. I ran 3 miles yesterday with Ali without incident but during down time I have been having more pains than normal. Needless to say I am monitoring things closely. I am cutting back my dosage of creatine to see if it helps matters. I don’t want to sacrifice running or volleyball for getting some extra pounds on my lifts. I am striving to find the happy medium that allows me to get the best of both worlds. Right now as I am sitting here my knee feels ok. Of course Ali thinks the creatine is a bad idea but hey I want to give it a whirl. If this goes bad maybe I will try Endothil CR.

The weekend came and went. They go very quickly and they seem to run into each other. Even though we are constantly doing things for the most part, things still seem very routine, very mundane, very blah. As an effort to mix up the routine, I actually started reading a book, the DaVinci Code. So far I am enjoying it. On Sunday we actually took the time to watch 3 movies. We say Supersize Me, The Big One and the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie.

Supersize me was very entertaining. I admit that as healthy as I try to be, I still will drive through McDonald’s once or twice a month. Typically even after just having McD’s once, you have the side effects of feeling like shit shortly after eating it. This guy ate nothing but McD’s for a solid month. His transformation was staggering. He gained 25 pounds and his blood test numbers went from super healthy to dangerously bad in that same timeframe. The repeated images of all the fat asses walking this planet drove home the point of just what a mess our society is. It really is sad to see the majority of America be classified as clinically obese.

The Big One is a Michael Moore flick about corporate America and how they have no problems shafting American workers by closing down domestic plants and outsourcing operations to overseas locations with dirt cheap labor in order to pad already astronomical profits. Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Moore has balls. It is funny as hell when he is presenting corporate stuffed shirts with Downsizer of the Year awards and then he shakes their hand and leaves. However Moore also could have been one of the extras in Supersize Me, he is a big fat f.

Charlie and the chocolate factory, the original always was a strange movie for me. I remember seeing it as a kid and being disturbed by it. Gene Wilder came off as evil to me and the things that happened to those kids was scary to me. The new version follows the same general style. Johhny Depp is equally disturbing and I felt like I was almost watching a white Michael Jackson with pale skin and a dutch boy haircut. The movie of course had modern special effects. It was watchable, but again, if I had a kid I wouldn’t feel good about him watching it. It’s just weird.