Archives August 2007

Friday night we put the Tivo to the test playing Divx files, watching Blades of Glory.  Blades of Glory is yet another Will Ferrel flick.  It also has the kid that played Napoleon Dynamite in it.  It was odd seeing Napoleon playing something else, I liked him better as ND.  The movie is like every other Will Ferrel movie meaning it is funny to a degree.  It was filled with silliness from top to bottom.  I’d give it a B.

On Friday I also received my Scooba 380, the floor washing robot.  I took it out of the box and unpacked everything.  Later in the evening I set it loose in the kitchen.  Away it went, sweeping, spraying, scrubbing and squeegeeing.  It ran for about 45 minutes and by the time it was done the floor looked great.  Dumping the dirty water tank confirmed the floor needed a cleaning as murky brown water poured out.

I also put my Dirt Dog to work out on the lanai.  I watched it for awhile at first to make sure it would properly detect the pool edge, which it did.  However there were a couple times when I had to go out and retrieve it when the front wheel managed to slip over the ledge.  Luckily it halted immediately, adverting a wet disaster.  I was impressed with the job it did, especially getting up sand.  Over the weekend I also let the Dirt Dog work on the garage and the shed and again it did a surprisingly good job of cleaning up the floor space of both.  With the Dirt Dog in my cleaning force, things that used to get swept once every 6 months can now get cleaned weekly without me hardly lifting a finger.

My Saturday was mundane, filled with various weekly duties.  I sprayed my cantaloupe garden.  Some of the leaves were already starting to show signs of attack from those little bastard worms.  Hopefully they got a nice taste of thuracide which should keep them at bay.  I am worried that when we are away for two weeks I will come back to a devoured garden.

On Saturday night we watched another Divx movie, Wild Hogs.  It has a strong cast including Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy, Ray Liotta, and Marisa Tomei.  I don’t ever recall seeing ads for it in theaters.  It was quite entertaining and funny.  Ali and I both enjoyed it.  I’d give it an A-, a strong grade for something I never heard of.

Sunday was a busy day, in the morning I weed whacked while Ali was at the gym.  The people that own the house to our right happened to be down and they invited us to go out to lunch.  So we went out for a quick lunch and then got back and went right back to work.  For some reason I got a bug in my ass to do some things I have been putting off forever, in some cases, years. 

The first job was walking around to the various cabbage palms and de-vine them.  It seems wherever cabbage palms are, these annoying little vines follow.  They climb the trunk of the tree and if left untouched can overrun the tree easily.  There are at least 3 different types of vines I observed during my extraction exercise, one of them covered in thorns.  Since I wasn’t wearing gloves, I took several gashes in the hands as I pulled the vines down.  I even walked out to the pit and addressed the palm tree out there which literally hasn’t been touched in 5 years.  As I started I heard  a noise in the tree and then all of a sudden a big hawk flies out of the top and heads over to another group of trees, wild.

Not only was I not wearing gloves, I was in flip flops which was incredibly stupid.  Several times I felt the all too familiar burn of a fire ant attack on my feet.  I probably accumulated a half dozen bites during my adventure.

Then I decided to tackle another job I knew I needed to do but just didn’t for years, cut down the melaleuca tree in the ditch.  The melaleuca is a non-native, invasive tree that spreads like wildfire.  We have had one growing out in the ditch since we lived there.  I knew I should cut it down so others didn’t follow but I never got around to it.  Well Sunday I finally did.  I strung together 250 feet of extension cords to power my electric chainsaw and hacked away.  The tree actually was two trees twisted around each other.  They went down pretty easily.  However once they were down I needed to cut them up further.  The trees were encased in the same choking vines that I pulled off the cabbage palms.  Cutting them apart was tougher than cutting them down.

 I was amazed at the number of seed pods on this thing, literally thousands, the reason why these trees spread so fast.  The problem is even if you cut them down, all those seed pods drop and grow.  They actually suggest that you burn the tree to prevent seeds from propagating.  Well I wasn’t interested in starting a brush fire so instead I headed out there with a big jug of Roundup herbicide and sprayed the entire tree the best I could.  I will have to check on it periodically to make sure seedlings don’t start sprouting. It felt good to finally take that thing down.

Sunday night Ali and I played a little heads up Texas Hold em.  I tried to apply some of what I have learned from watching many hours of tournament play.  Playing heads up isn’t quite as much fun as having a full table.  Ali was ahead until the very end when I scored a big pot to pull slightly ahead.  I think she would be good at the game.

This morning first thing I had a dentist appointment.  Ever since I have been going to this dentist, check ups have been a breeze.  Clean the teeth, check the x-rays, do a quick visual, boom, good to go.  I brush my teeth 4 times a day during the week so I don’t expect to have problems.  Well the dentist has gotten some new hi-tech toys which proved to be my downfall.  The first one is something like tooth sonar that can tell if a groove in a tooth is just discolored or if there is decay.  Second she has basically a digital camera designed for your mouth which takes bright, close up pictures of the teeth which reveals things you wouldn’t see otherwise.  So although my x-rays showed absolutely no problems, these new devices fingered 6 problem teeth!

Now the problems are generally not serious and that is the point of this stuff, to stop decay before it gets really bad.  The dentist used what equated to a tooth sand blaster to remove the bad areas, certainly better than drilling although the one tooth was starting to hurt as she went over it time and again.   She did the three on the left side of my mouth and then cleaned me up and sat me up.  Initially I wasn’t sure if we were just taking a break but it turns out she just was doing those today, I come back in a month or so for the other side.  The right side has at least one that is deeper that she said she will numb me for, yay, can’t wait.  Have I mentioned I hate power tools in my mouth? 

Yea I know there is a lot of words here but nothing all that thrilling.  It looks like Dean will definitely miss us, although the beaners will probably take a nasty smack. I told Ali how I am in one of those time periods where I feel like putting two sentences together is a challenge, she said she hadn’t noticed.  This confirms my suspicion that she just doesn’t listen to me.  🙂

For the first time in the month of August no asterisk was required on my 300 work out. I did all of the exercises and I used the full weight and surprisingly I came up with a number +10 more than the last full 300 I did nearly 3 weeks ago, 279.  I am getting very close to my target.  I have already hit the goal reps for 4 of the exercises, I only need to get pull ups and floor wipers cranked out.  It’s funny how I was able to maintain the higher rep numbers I managed for box jumps and pull ups when I left out some exercises.  I also did my clean and presses for 25 reps straight each instead of taking a mini-break at 20.  Again when I was doing the sets with the lighter weight I went straight through and again I managed to maintain that with higher weight just because my brain knew I did it before, albeit with 5 less pounds. It just shows how much of it is mental.

Two weeks from now we will be on the road on our way to New Mexico.  I’m sure it will be quite the adventure in many ways. 

All week I have been reading the stories about NASA deliberating about whether to fix the gouge in the tiles on the space shuttle or not.  Why is there a debate?  Why would they not rather be safe than sorry?  This morning I read they decided to NOT fix it.  I really don’t understand this at all.

This morning I also read that the RESCUERS got killed trying to rescue the miners that have been sealed in for 10 or 11 days.  Wow.  Is it possible that the trapped miners are actually alive?  Unless they had a water source I would think they would die from dehydration if they didn’t die immediately in the collapse or shortly there after from lack of oxygen.  It sounds like there will be no more sending in rescuers.  Unless they can somehow verify that someone is alive down there, it is crazy to risk other people’s lives.  Remind me never to become a miner.

So the Dirt Dog showed up yesterday.  I immediately threw it on the charger to get it ready for a test run.  First I ran it in the garage for a little bit and then took it out to the lanai.  I was worried about the Dirt Dog falling into the pool so I wanted to do a test of it’s “cliff sensors”  They appeared to work as advertised.  They few times the robot came to edge of the pool it instantly backed away from the water hazard.  I still may use the IR virtual walls out there just as a precaution.

I let the Dirt Dog finish up in the garage after my pool test.  When the battery ran out I dumped the dirt bin and was surprised how much it picked up, especially sand.  Today I expect my Scooba’s to arrive, I can hardly wait to let one of those loose.

The weekend looks to be standard fare, lots of outside work in high temperatures with high humidity.

For the first time in about a year I am actually checking out the hurricane center with Hurricane Dean marching west.  As of now, it doesn’t look to be a threat to our area, but if 2005 taught me anything about hurricanes it is to not trust the forecasters.   

I got the Tivo email newsletter yesterday and was reading through it.   In it I saw they finally came out with a version of the Tivo desktop software that was compatible with Vista.  But the bigger news to me was that it also supported DIVX!  What this software does is allow you to pull video from your PC and show it on your Tivo.  The support of DIVX now means I can pull my movies that I have had to play through my Xbox and instead stream them to my Tivo, very, very cool.  The only gotcha is you need to pay for the “plus” version of the desktop software which is $24.95.  I tried it last night and it worked great.  This is very exciting, at least for me it is.

Our neighbors have had a Roomba for almost as long as we have but theirs has been tucked away in the garage for months because it started just circling.  I told them I would take a look at it.  On Tuesday night I took it apart and cleaned it out thoroughly, especially the sensors at the wheels that typically cause this problem.  I put it back together and viola, it worked.  The only problem they have now is their original battery is toast and will only run the Roomba for a few minutes before dying.

Yesterday at the gym I tried once again to do a chest routine.  Once again I was not able to do simple dumbbell chest presses with relatively light weight.  So I mulled around looking for any sort of chest exercise I could do.  I was able to do the fly machine without significant pain and then did some incline push ups real slow.  Then last night at home,  just for the hell of it I dropped down and tried some regular push ups on the floor.  I was surprised I was able to do them!  I felt some slight discomfort in the shoulder but nothing bad.  I don’t quite understand how I can do push ups but not a dumbbell press but hey, at least that means I can insert push ups back into my 300 routine tomorrow, making it a FULL 300 once more.

Last night while playing WoW I did something I don’t do very often, listen to music.  Awhile back I grabbed the new Linkin Park cd but I think I only listened to it once, quietly in the office.  This time I played it loud as it was just me and Nicki in the house.  I can honestly say I didn’t dislike a single song. 

Linkin Park is one of my favorite bands along with Green Day, and Limp Bizkit.  The generally angry tone to most of their songs just suits me.  I am very weird about music, I like it, but I can’t tell you very much about it.  There are songs that I like a lot but I couldn’t tell you the words to it or the meaning of it.  I just like the way it sounds…   Ali amazes me with her knowledge of music, especially late 80’s 90’s bands.  She can identify song and artists like nothing.  She can hear a song on the radio and tell me what band it is.  I hardly ever know.  Rich also has a very strong ability to do this.

On a rare occasion I will actually listen to the words and on even rarer occasion, I will make a connection with them.  However for the most part give me some power chords and angry, pissed off singing and I am into it, no matter what the topic of the song is.  When Rich used to come over to our place in Wernersville to lift in the basement with me we always played the same CD that I made, filled with mostly songs that fit that description.  At least for me, it definitely helped with motivation.

So I stopped at the garage on the way home last night and let the owner feel my wheels.  Before he came out me and another guy waited patiently while Joe was on the phone with a buddy of his bitching about Mariano Rivera blowing another save for the Yankees.  In most situations I would find this sort of disregard for a customer annoying but with Joe it is part of his charm.  When I go there Joe will talk about various subjects, his custom motorcycle, his bad knees, his tax problems and in this instance the state of the Yankees. I like the guy which I suppose is why I put up with repairs that seem suspect.  Anyway, he tells me to pull the van around and he pulled the back wheel that was warmer than the other and inspected the brakes.  He said it looked fine, there was no evidence of abnormal rubbing and the brake shoes were fully seated as they should be.  So back on the wheel went and I was on my way.  More than likely it will be the last time I see good ole Joe, at least with the party van in tow. 

I have been tinkering around with Adobe After Effects.  It is incredibly powerful and equally complicated.  However I cranked out two little demos.

Demo 1 and Demo 2

I got this “IQ” test from my mom.  To call it an IQ test is not accurate, it has some intelligence questions and some trivia type questions.  Anyway, the twist is you only have 5 seconds to answer each one so the added pressure makes it more difficult.  I took it twice and got a 20 and a 22.  Here ya go.

I stopped by the garage on the way to work with the van but the lot was jammed with cars and people waiting so I knew it wasn’t a good time to have the owner feel my wheels.  I am going to call and see if I bring it over late in the afternoon will be better.  Half of me just doesn’t even want to be bothered.  It’s driving fine now.  I have a feeling the trip out to New Mexico will be it’s last hurrah anyway.  I just don’t like the feeling I have of waiting for the other shoe to drop with it, much like the feeling I had with the 88 Vette…..

For the past week or so I have seen this car in our parking lot.  It is just covered with some sort of berry or fruit things.  I would love to see the person driving this vehicle.  What levels of ignorance/laziness are required to park your vehicle in a spot where the paint will be literally destroyed by falling organic matter?  I mean, look at this thing! It’s not like it is an old beater either.

Ali was sent a survey by RCI regarding our recent booking.  She was kind enough to forward it to me so I could vent.  I rated most aspects of the survey decently.  What I was waiting for was the “other comments” field.  I filled that box with a rant about how sick I am of being fee’d to death with RCI and that I wouldn’t recommend them to a freind for that very reason, too many fees.  Not that it makes a bit of difference as I’m sure the survey will be looked at by someone who could care less about what I think.

Big news, Sir Randall has joined the Spartan Halloween challenge!  Find him here!

Ali just found out yesterday that she is going to be quite busy leading up to our trip out west.  She will be working nearly full time hours.  This is bad from the viewpoint of being so busy but good from the viewpoint of getting paid bukuu bucks to do the work.  The money definitely could come in handy, if she ever sees some of it.  Her former employer has not been exactly speedy in paying invoices, asking Ali to jump through hoop after hoop to become an official “vendor”.

We have officially booked our Vegas birthday trip.  We are staying a total of 5 nights which cost $99  from RCI for the “booking fee”.  Yea 20 bucks a night is dirt cheap but it should be absolutely free with all the money we have laid out.  The flight out to Vegas is reasonable, the flight back is going to be expensive because it is 4 days before Christmas.  We could drop close to a grand just on the flights.

I talked to my mom for awhile on the phone yesterday.  She was telling me her latest medical woes.  Some of the procedures she has had to endure sound brutal.  It’s just another reason for me to absolutely dread each step further I make into old age. 

It’s funny, over the weekend I was weed whacking while there was a nasty, nasty thunderstorm approaching.  There was lots of lightning and thunder rolling in.  It didn’t stop me from walking around with a big aluminum lighting rod, weed whacking under lots of trees.  I was admittedly nervous about it.  I had visions of a bolt striking at any moment, taking me out in the process.  I even imagined the head line “Golden Gate Estates man killed in thunderstorm while weed whacking”  Even though I was concerned about getting struck, there was a part of me that thought about how it would at least relieve me of the “getting old” problem.

Speaking of storms, maybe my memory is bad but I don’t ever remember since we have been down here being this late into rainy season with no standing water on the property.  It seems like by now we always have our rainy season ponds around the property.  We have been getting rain but not the 2 or 3 inches a day rain that normally hits this time of year.  I’m not complaining personally but in the big picture it is a bad thing for the water tables in our area which depend on the summertime drenching to survive the winter time drought. 

I didn’t see the Eagles first preseason game but by all accounts it was a stinker.  It sounded like they were equally unimpressive on both sides of the ball.  Although when I think about it, I don’t know if I ever remember the Eagles looking impressive in preseason under Andy Reid.  I think .500 is the best they ever have done under him in the games that don’t count.  I realize preseason means nothing but as a fan I would always prefer if my team looked strong than weak.  There was a lot of weakness going on.

  Too bad about Ryan Moats.  It sounded like a make or break year for him and he wound up breaking, his ankle.  When he came up 2 years ago I thought he had real talent,  quick as hell, strong runner.  Unfortunately it seems that he may be somewhat of a mental midget, unable to grasp the other responsibilities a NFL running back requires, like blocking and making adjustments. I have high hopes for the team this year, just like every year.  The realist in me sees them making the playoffs and then exiting early.  McNabb just has become too injury prone to be able to count on him for a full season.

Another 300 workout in the books today.  Instead of push ups, I came up with holding myself in push up position with arms slightly bent for 90 seconds.  I still used slightly less weight for the clean and press, 30 lbs instead of 35.   I was able to do floor wipers once again, yay.  They didn’t magically get any easier but I managed to grind out 40 of them.

After the gym I stopped at Office Max to pick up some labels that you print on laser printers.  As I walked in the front door I am greeted by a woman standing guard like a police officer.  Corporate people are dumb.  Customers don’t like being accosted the second they go in the door.  If I want help, I’ll ask.    Anyway, the woman spits out her line “Welcome to Office Max.  What can I help you find today?”  I was still breathing heavy from the 300 plus I was rushing to get back to the office.  I’m not sure if it was those factors, being unexpectedly greeted by the Office Max gestapo or just my normal brain misfiring, but I was drawing a blank on how to explain what I was looking for.  After a pause I spit out something like “I need laser labels” after a look of confusion on the woman’s face I continue sputtering “um you know the type of labels you peel off and stick on envelopes that you print on a laser” I think I mushed a few of the words along the way.  The woman points me off in a direction.  It was not a good interaction.  As I walked over to the aisle, which I could have easily found myself without her direction, I cursed myself for once again sounding like an idiot, not being able to put a simple sentence from mind to mouth.  It’s so aggravating.

This was an odd weekend.  Because of work related stuff Ali had to do, I spent the majority of the weekend at home by myself.  That means all the house/yardwork that we normally tag team instead fell on my back which kept me busy.  The tractor did a noticeably better job cutting the grass now that the blades are no longer on backwards, imagine that.  I was aided in my chores by my dual Roomba cleaning crew.  I set them loose around the house sweeping merrily away without complaint.

Speaking of my Roomba’s they are going to be joined by some new siblings this week.  A Dirt Dog and possibly a Scooba.  My old Vaio sold on ebay for considerably more than I planned so it opened the door to expand my robotic staff sooner than originally thought.  The Dirt Dog will be put to work sweeping up the garage, the lanai and the shed.  The Scooba will be used to clean the hard surfaces in the kitchen, utility room and bathrooms.  The tile hardly ever gets mopped so this will be nice to have the Scooba do it for us.  Expect a full review shortly.

I spent some time cleaning up the van in prep for the trip.  I concentrated mainly on the interior although I did address the rust streak that was running down the passenger side rear corner.  I used this stuff named Lime Away.  Even though on the bottle it said to not use on painted surfaces, I had at it, the paint job on the van is way past the point of worrying about blemishing it.  The stuff worked pretty well.  It cleaned up the stain to the point where you wouldn’t notice it from 10 feet away, good enough.

So this week I plan to stop by the garage first thing so they can get a first hand feel of my toasty brakes.  I am so sick of dealing with mechanical issues with the van.  My years of new car ownership with minimal repair issues has spoiled me somewhat.

On Sunday afternoon I actually took some time to enjoy our pool.  I had a World Series of Poker event playing on the tv on the lanai while I floated in the pool.  I was out there for almost an hour and a half.  I even dozed off for a little bit. 

This morning I got to adorn the paper gown once again.  At least this time I got to leave my underwear on.  I had to go to the dermatologist to get my annual screening.  I told him about a little spot on my nose that looks like blackhead but actually was bleeding a little bit a few weeks back.  He checked it out and said it was probably nothing but he shaved it off it sent it for testing just to be safe.  Other than that it was a non-event.

My shoulder is definitely better than it was but I still don’t think I can tackle push ups yet.  I am able to extend the arm without shooting pain which is good.  I need to make sure this heals.  I don’t need yet another body part to add to the continuous cycle of problems.

I have been playing a decent amount of Hold Em on Pokerstars.net, trying to get a better grasp of the game.  Sometimes I think I am doing ok and then in a flash, a couple misjudged ALL INS, f me over.  It is fun though.  I need to try the real thing sometime.  The money in the tournaments is insane.    

We officially booked the room reservation for Vegas for our birthdays.  The flight out is cheap, the flight back is $$$$.  We are waiting a bit to book the flight to see if we can hit a better fare but it is looking like we will drop 900 bucks on airfare alone.  It’s a bad time of year to fly.

Well even though Nicki did a number two for me at 7am and another small one for Ali before she left for a couple hours, Ali came back to yet another stinky pile.  So we are back to square one.  After the gym I picked up more of the same medicine.  It doesn’t quite make sense to me, after two or three days on the pills we had no more problems and she was on them for a solid 10 days, finishing up only a couple of days ago.  They should have killed whatever was going on.

Then I think crazy thoughts like “maybe Nicki thinks she has the green light to shit in the house since I didn’t scream at her yesterday for doing it…”  Regardless it is very frustrating.  My suggestion is from now on, if she is left home alone, she is restricted to the kitchen.  Excrement cleans up flawlessly on ceramic tile, plus dogs are less likely to shit in an area they are confined in.  Ali hates to confine her but it is the same thing she preaches is missing with most kids nowadays, repercussions for actions.  You shit on the floor you are confined until you regain my trust, pretty simple.