Archives May 2008

I really am surprised just how much I can get done during a weeknight after work.  For the better part of three years, the majority of my weeknights went in a similar manner, attend to the pets, eat dinner and then either play WoW or watch reality tv.  Well since I started doing some fence installation after work it started me on a pattern of trying to be more productive during the week.  I have found that I enjoy working outside in the evening.  Even on hot days, by that time of day the temperature is much more pleasant.  Last night may have been my most productive week night to date.

After work I stopped at Home Depot and grabbed 6 landscape timbers to help finish up the border around the pool.  I got home, quickly attended to the pets and then headed outside.  I ripped up the other side section of the pool landscape border.  The side sections didn’t look rotted like the back section was.  But when I pried it up it revealed the lower section was indeed rotting out as well.  After disposing of the rotted wood in the trench I took to installing the replacement border.  I busted ass outside until about 8pm and managed to totally finish both sides.  That was much more than I expected to get done.

My productivity didn’t end there.  Earlier in the day I received an email from my buddy Francois, the rep from the french timing chip system.  He sent me an update for the timing system that supposedly addressed some of the issues I was having.  So after working outside all evening I went inside and set up the timing system to apply the update. I was skeptical that it would fix anything.

So after applying the update I pulled out my test chip and ran it over the lines.  It had a horrible detection height, only a few inches.  I was pissed off.  I was so pissed that I pulled out my video camera and documented the problem so I could send it off to Francois.  After doing that, just for the hell of it I grabbed one of the regular chips and chucked it across the lines.  BEEP.  It worked just fine and registered immediately.  Hmm.  I took it a step further.  I wedged another chip into my shoelaces, opened the sliding glass door and ran across the lines fast.  BEEP.  Wow that worked too.  I repeated my test multiple times with multiple chips using multiple foot placements as I crossed the lines. The BEEP BEEP BEEP was music to my ears.  So why did my test chip show such shitty detection?  I decided to program another test chip.  When I ran that across the lines it was like day and night.  I was getting detections close to a foot and a half in the air, awesome! Evidently my original test chip has something wrong with it.  I left everything set up until Ali got home so I could proudly show her the new and improved performance.  She was excited as well.

To hopefully address the issues we have had with people having their chips come off during the run we ordered small 4 inch zip ties to use instead of the fragile ball ties that apparently break too easily.  I am almost bummed out that we don’t have another race to time until July 4th.  My mood was great for the rest of the evening.  Getting that much accomplished on a Wednesday night made me feel great.

You would think that someone immersed in IT as I am that I would have at least installed and used Firefox before, an alternative web browser that doesn’t suffer from all the exploit attempts that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer does.  Well the other day at work I finally got around to installing it.  It’s pretty damn nice.  I love the plug-in capability of it.  You can pimp your Firefox browser in countless ways.  The interface is as easy to use as IE.  There were a few default settings that seemed a bit odd but they were easily changed to better suit my tastes.  I find myself using it more and more.  I did notice that certain websites, my blog included, display a bit differently in Firefox.

On one of the message boards that I run we have had a little thread going on about the presidential campaign.  I offered up this post regarding the subject. The last paragraph surprised me when I went back and read it but it’s true if I am being honest with myself. I’m that bitter about illegal immigration.

I have heard that republicans have been going out and voting for Hilary in primaries just because they think they can beat her. Pretty pathetic.

Don’t get me wrong, pretty much anyone short of Dick Cheyney is an upgrade over Bush. But as I said before how anyone could endorse a candidate that wants to “stay the course” in Iraq  is ridiculous, he simply can not be elected. McCain seems to be a good guy overall but I just can’t support him on his war stance alone, not to mention other issues. Plus the dude is too damn old.

I like Barrack, he is the most personable, the strongest speaker and the least soiled by years and years in the political grinder. He is a total departure from anyone I have seen running for president in my life time and I like that. I don’t care if he’s black. Unfortunately there is still tons of racism just under the surface of much of America that may be exposed in the voting booths.

That being said, if Obama was a Mexican I would not vote for him. Ironic and hypocritical I guess but I’m just being honest. I have so much resentment over the invasion from the south border that I would probably vote for McCain if the democratic candidate’s last name ended in a Z. 

Actually I doubt I could bring myself to vote for McCain.  I would probably just abstain.

Late yesterday I talked to Ali to see if she had any opinion yet on the tv thing.  She gave me the green light to move ahead with it.  So I immediately hop on bestbuy.com and get to work.  I complete the process, go to check out and enter my Best Buy credit card to get the same as cash 36 month financing.  It rejects my card.  I try again, thinking I mistyped, no dice it won’t take it. Ok, well I guess I will be stopping at Best Buy after work.

Before I left work I did a quick scan for any online coupons.  I was excited to find one that could save me an additional 12% if they took it.  I wasn’t sure if they would since the TV was already “outlet priced”.  I wasn’t exactly looking forward to going to the store.  To me, Best Buy is like Sam’s Club in that it is great fun to walk around and look at the endless amounts of “stuff”.  However whenever you are required to interact with one of their employees, the experience instantly sours.   So off to Best Buy I went.

Luckily, Tuesdays around 5:10 pm are not very busy at the store.  They had the model I picked out online.  Seeing it in person was impressive, it is just MASSIVE.  I was a bit distressed when I saw the price on it was about $100 higher than what I saw online.  I tracked down someone in the department to help me.  I told him I knew exactly what I wanted as I pointed it out to him.  I immediately mentioned how I saw this on their web site for 100 less.  He said that was no problem, they match the web site price, sweet.  He had to go check if they had any in stock.

He was gone for awhile.  I spent the time looking around, mostly at Wii stuff.  I saw the component video cable for the Wii, something I will need to pick up for it work at it’s full potential with the tv.  I also checked out a bunch of Wii games.  I saw many that looked pretty sweet, but I am thoroughly still enjoying what I already have so I don’t feel a pressing need for more right now.  The kid was gone for a pretty long time which I knew was not a good thing.  My fears were confirmed when he came out and said they didn’t have any in stock, just the display but they can order it and it would be here Friday, not bad.

So we go back to the register and start the process.  I pull out my online coupon and ask the clerk if I would be able to use this as well.  Yep, I can use it, sweet, another 12% off the top!  We get to the point where I swipe my card and it gets denied.  The kid says the card is dead.  He asked how long it had been since I used it last.  I told him at least a couple years.  He said that they deactivate them if they aren’t used in 6 months or so.  So we had to put the transaction on hold while I walked over to the customer service desk and quickly reapplied for a new card which didn’t take long at all.

I head back to the original register where Daniel was waiting for me.  I told him I was getting the extended warranty on the set, something I typically never do but on big ticket items that can have big ticket repair bills, it’s worth the piece of mind to me.  Although I purchased one for my Sony big screen as well and never had to use it.  So the transaction was completed.  The experience wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as I feared it would be.  I will call the store Friday to confirm if the unit is there and pick it up then.  It’s big but not brutally heavy, only 100 pounds so Ali and I will be able to maneuver it pretty easily.

Buying the tv set the wheels in motion for some other things.  I had been floating the idea to mom about us giving her our Sony if we got the new tv.  Now to me, most people would be doing cartwheels over the concept of getting a 61 inch tv for free with free delivery and set up.  However mom in her typical mom way was apprehensive about it, worried it would be TOO big for the space it would go.  I went back and forth with her a few times about it.  I was confident it would work out just fine in her new place and in fact be a major perk.  I even went as far as to look up the recommended viewing distance for a tv of that size and sent it to mom.  The advice was a distance of 10-12 feet.  Mom said she would be around 11 feet.  So I called her back last night to tell her we definitely were buying the new tv and I wanted to make the offer one more time.  To my surprise she agreed to try out the Sony.  It really is a no lose situation.  I told her if for some reason if after we set it up there and she decides she doesn’t like/want it, I will simply sell it to someone else.  It’s no big deal.  So Sunday before we take mom to a Mother’s Day lunch we will be loading up, delivering and setting up my trusty Sony big screen for mom.  It will be a bit tricky getting it in and out of the bed of the truck but I’ll manage somehow.

I continued laying the groundwork for the arrival of the new tv by ordering a refurbished HD Tivo last night.  I could continue to use the old Tivo but it would not be able to record HD broadcasts which would suck.  Once I get a shipping arrival estimate I can try to coordinate it with Comcast.  They need to come out and slap a special card into the Tivo that will allow me to view and tape two HD or non-HD broadcasts at a time.

Even though I was busy making HDTV arrangements after work I still found the time to go out after work with the post bar and rip up the one side section of old landscape timbers by the pool.  Instead of struggling with pulling out the old sections of rebar I simply drove them deeper into the ground, below the surface of the timbers, f it.  Tonight after work I am going to stop at Home Depot to grab 5 or 6 more timbers and then hopefully at least rip out the other side and if I am lucky, start constructing the new sections.  I am considering redoing some of the other landscaped areas with decorative stone borders like we have around the palm trees in the front.  Yes the up front costs are a lot more but it lasts forever and requires no maintenance.

If for some reason you are interested in the all the tech goodness of the TV we are buying, look here.

I only remember small bits of this one.  I was sporting a high power Daisy air rifle.  I carried it with me everywhere and used it to shoot various things.  I remember carrying it into a movie theater and into coach seating on an airplane.  When I sat down on the plane, the head of the rifle was poking out into the aisle.  The guy behind me didn’t think this was odd at all and nicely told me the gun was hanging out.  I thanked him and tucked it under the seat better.

At one point in the dream I was walking through a parking lot carrying my rifle.  In front of me was a big full size truck, parked.  It looked like it was empty but there was a glare on the windshield so I couldn’t tell for sure.  Well for some reason I decided I needed to shoot a hole through the windshield.  So I pump up the air rifle, take aim and blow a hole through the windshield and out the back window!  I was surprised with the power of the blast.  After I was done admiring the hole I walked by the truck and looked up and saw there was someone in the truck, an indian looking guy! However the guy was just sitting there apparently listening to music.  Somehow he had not noticed that I just blew a hole through his window.  He didn’t even look down at me.  I was very nervous that he would notice the hole so I quickened my pace while trying to look normal.  As normal as some guy holding a Daisy air rifle can look.  When I got maybe 100 feet past him I started to freak out when I turned around and saw the truck moving towards me.  Instead of running I decided to continue to act like a normal and unassuming rifle carrying person.  The truck drove right by me, pulled into a parking spot in the front of the shopping center and stayed there. Whew, a close call. 

I know there was much more to the dream but all the other details are fuzzy. 

My long term list of to-do’s has included upgrading our already huge 61 inch Sony projection tv for awhile.  We bought the Sony when we moved into the house 7 years ago.  It has worked great for those 7 years and still works just fine.  However it is 7 years old.  It has the conventional 4:3 format screen and will not work well with HDTV broadcasts.

I have had my eye on the Mitsubishi 73 inch DLP projection for quite awhile.  For no particular reason I came up with the idea the other day that maybe we could swing into one sooner rather than later by taking advantage of some of Best Buys financing deals.  It would allow us to slide into a new monster set pretty painlessly.  Well when I went on Best Buy’s web site to see what financing they currently had I also browsed to the TV.  My eye’s lit up when I saw they had the model I wanted on clearance.  Evidently they have a new model of it out that is about 4k.  The one I was interested in was some $1700 less than that.

Now my interest was spiked.  This is about as big of a tv as our entertainment nook will accept.  I will have about a half inch clearance on either side.  I threw the idea out to Ali, not as an absolute necessity but as an opportunity.  Ali could care less about getting a new tv but there are some side effects of getting a new tv that would appeal to her.  The Sony TV is very tall.  The Mitsu tv is very wide but is not a much taller than the length of the picture, meaning we would need to get a TV stand.  Ali is excited about the idea of getting a tv stand as it would set up a series of changes she is looking for. 

The right tv stand would allow us to move the components that are currently on the shelf above the tv to the tv stand below.  We would be able to more than likely remove that shelf totally which would eliminate the cables visible running down the wall that Ali hates.  Ali also was excited about my agreement to move the front surround speakers to inside the entertainment nook, removing what she has seen as a 7 year eyesore.  Ideally the tv stand would have room to store our dvd’s which in turn would allow Ali to move the media cabinet we have to the left of the tv currently and stick it where the open shelf shown in the picture currently is located, across from the kitchen.  Again Ali sees this as a gushing open wound of visual horror (which no one else does).  So anyway, all of these changes facilitated by a tv upgrade are tempting to her.

  There are other complications with the purchase to consider.  I would need to get an HDTV Tivo to accommodate HDTV programming.  I also would need to upgrade my Comcast subscription to include HDTV access which would add to the monthly bill.  As a small consolation I would be able to drop the local channels I get on Directv currently.  Of course the TV stand will be a chunk of additional money as well.  I have not pushed the issue.  I threw it out there as a possibility and pretty much left it up to Ali to green light it. If she is ok with it I will happily move forward on it.  If she isn’t , I’d rather not hear complaints after the fact about the purchase and will be forced to “struggle” along with a 61 incher, poor me.

My after work project for the week is going to be ripping up the remaining old landscape border around the pool.  I replaced the long section along the back but the two shorter side sections are still the old, nasty stuff.  Our pool has been looking progressively more nasty in recent weeks with a lot of algae building up.  Last night after work I cleaned out the pool filter and then dumped a ton of shock/clarifier directly into the pool filter and then let it run all night.  I was pleased this morning when I saw the pool had cleared up dramatically over night. 

It almost is a relief to be back to work.  On work days I get to sleep later and deal with less stress than I did yesterday.

After work on Friday I made two pit stops, one at Home Depot and then Sam’s Club.  When I stop at Sam’s I always swing by the Wii section.  I saw that they had Mario Kart in stock.  Earlier in the week Charlie told me he had bought the game and how much he liked it.  I used Charlie’s advice and described it to Ali as a “stimulus present”, my personal gift to myself out of the stimulus check we received.  I still think the stimulus checks are a stupid idea that does nothing but bury the government in more debt but hey if they are going to send it to me, I’ll spend it.

Late Friday night I got to play with the game a bit.  It’s pretty sweet.  It comes with a small steering wheel that the Wii controller snaps into.  It definitely adds to the realism of the experience.  The game is best described with one word, “fun”, lot of fun.  I played the N64 version of the game a bit, they used to have that at the orthodontist office for people to play while waiting.  Well obviously the Wii version steps things up quite a bit.  The action is fast and furious but the basic control for the game is simple. However to do well at the game there is definitely skill involved.  This is the first Wii title I bought that allows you to compete directly head to head against others, either against your friends, other people in the US or worldwide.  The online experience is quite good, I noticed no performance issues even with 12 people racing at once.  Racing online also let me know I wasn’t very good.  I consistently would finish in the bottom third.  It’s a big advantage if you know the courses inside and out.  Speaking of the courses, there are tons of them.  Fans of the series will appreciate that they migrated courses from the older consoles to this title.  I bought a second wheel so Ali and I could play using the same control method. (you don’t HAVE to use the wheel)  She did relatively well on the simpler courses, some of the tracks are pretty brutal.  It’s a great game that will add on to the already high entertainment value of our Wii.

Saturday morning Ali was out most of the morning at the gym.  I had written myself a list of to-do’s that kept me busy the entire time she was gone and then some.  I mowed and weed whacked the grass, worked on adjusting the sprinklers to cover some dead spots, scrubbed down the pool, cleaned out the pond fountain, planted the tomato and plumeria cuttings from my mom’s place and a few other small things.  We had to clean up to head out by 3:30.  We were stopping at the running store to pick up additional entries for Sunday’s race and then heading over to our friend’s house for a pizza dinner we were picking up.

We hadn’t seen our friends Michelle and Taylor for quite a long time, more than 6 months.  They just had their second kid, Spencer a few weeks ago so we wanted to stop by to see the new addition.  We had a good time just hanging out and shooting the breeze.  Ali and I had fun playing with their older boy, Parker.  He was all smiles after warming up to us.  What a cute kid. I hope it isn’t another 6 months until we see them again, we always have a good time when we get together. We watched the Kentucky Derby while there.  It was so sad to see that horse break it’s ankles AFTER the race.  They had to kill it on the spot.  It was very depressing, we felt terrible about it.

We made sure to get out of there early since we had to crawl out of bed at 4:30 Sunday morning to get to another race we were timing.  This was the biggest race to date that I was timing with the DAG system.  The last race we did was rather small but we had pretty good success with the results, only missing a couple runners.  I was a bit nervous about how we would do with 300 + runners. Things went from bad to worse.

When we got there I almost immediately felt like I had to do a number two even though I had went before leaving.  With port-o-potties being the only bathroom facilities there was no way that was going to happen.  My colon would have to be on the verge of exploding before I would use a port-o-pot for that.  So instead I just got to feel uncomfortable the entire race which added to the misery.

It didn’t take long to run into my first technical snafu.  We take two laptops to a race.  One is used by Ali to enter the day of registrations and the other is used by me to hook up to the timing system.  I network the two together with a Linksys wireless router because I need to be able to copy files between them.  This set up has worked just fine for the previous races.  So I tried to connect to Ali’s laptop from the one I had and was unsuccessful.  I didn’t see her system but I was connected to the wireless router just fine.  I walked over to her system and saw it indicated it was not connected to the wireless router and in fact it didn’t see ANY wireless networks.  Strange, my system saw 5 or 6 wireless networks in range.  I didn’t know what the deal was.  So when in doubt, reboot. 

I restarted her system, hoping a restart would magically fix whatever the issue is.  As a windows user/admin I certainly have seen restarts fix all sorts of computer ills over the years.  Well I wasn’t so lucky this time, it still didn’t connect to the network.  Well I didn’t have time to f with it.  I told her to bring the laptop over to my table when she was done and if need be I would hard wire it to the router. I had to get the timing system up and running.

So I head over to my table, make all the connections and fire the timing box up.  I bring up the software that controls it but I don’t get a connection to the box. WTF?  I have no idea what the problem is but I have little time to figure it out.  It’s after 7am at this point and the race is at 7:30.   The timing box would not shut down as it is supposed to via the power button so I had to unplug it to kill it.  I tried to connect 2 more times and again I could not.  I was starting to panic a bit.  Finally after a 4th power down and restart of the timing box I was able to connect.  I had no time to worry about why I couldn’t connect . 

So with about 10 minutes before race time I have Ali bring the other laptop over so I could hook up to it.  even with it sitting right next to the wireless router it would not connect.  I had a CAT5 cable in the bag so I hard wired it to the router.  I try to connect and STILL can not do it! Ok I had only a few minutes before the race started.  I had no time to f around any further so I made a quick decision to flip the timing equipment over on to Ali’s laptop and quickly configure it.  As the race started I was still frantically changing things around.  I was only able to do some limited testing of the finish line and it’s ability to read my test chip.  It read the chip but the detection height was not great.  I checked the monitor screen that displays the status of the finish mats and the numbers looked good.

The first place runners came screaming into the finish in less than 17 minutes.  When the first two runners registered I breathed a sigh of relief, I guess it is working ok.  Well I should have held my breath longer.  The third place runner came through and no confirmation beep was heard, shit.  I quickly check to see if he has a chip on his sneaker, he does, shit….  I was pissed.  Earlier in the week Ali and I spent a lot of time running 500 chips over the lines to verify they read.  Of course it doesn’t simulate someone running across the lines and the various position/angles/height the chip can be in as it crosses.  Well that first miss opened the flood gates.  The system started missing a bunch of runners.

  There are two timing mats set up, a primary and a secondary.  The first mat is supposed to catch the vast majority of runners and the second mat is there as a fail safe just in case the first mat misses one.  Well the first mat was missing almost every single runner, the second mat was pretty much doing all the work and not a great job of it.  At one point I slammed down the pen I was using to write down missed runners in disgust.  By the time it was over, out of the 300 runners, there were at least 50 that the system missed timing.  Now there were some other issues that caused some problems.  Again we had some runners that could not follow directions and attached the chip incorrectly or loosely.  We had two or three that had the chip fly off just before the finish as they sprinted in because the chip was loose. Even so I felt like shit.  I felt like I felt when I collapsed at the end of that volleyball game in the tournament.  Getting this system to work is my responsibility and I felt 100% responsible and embarrassed that it was a cluster f at this race.

All of the missed runners made figuring out the awards a mess.  Thank goodness the club was still manually timing as a safety net.  Without it the race would have been a total disaster.  Even so the mix of automated and manual timing results made figuring out the awards and producing the final results later that night a pain in the ass.  I was really bummed out as I put the equipment away after the race.  To their credit, nobody from the club was critical or negative about the problems, they all offered positives and were confident that the bugs would be worked out.  I wasn’t so sure.

We took two vehicles to the race because Ali had to go in to work a few hours to get caught up.  One of the club members had offered to let Ali borrow her racing bike for Ali to try out.  The woman has three of them and was going to be out of town all summer.  The bike is hardcore.  It has the low profile tires, no kick stand, toe clips and is very light weight.  I put it into the back of the truck in between the boxes of equipment.  Ali has ideas of maybe doing a dualathalon.

So one of the first things I did after getting home was to sit down at the computer and fire off emails to the distributor that sold us the system.  The email was basically saying, “wtf is the deal.  This shit isn’t working…”  I hopped on the distributors message board and found it ironic to see a post from another customer whom recently switch to the V6B DAG chips and timed a 3000 person race with them.  She said she STARTED out only capturing 80% of the runners, by the end of the race only 40% were getting counted.  That is horrible.  I also emailed a contact at DAG looking for answers.  The company that makes the DAG system is french, I am not looking forward to trying to work out this frustrating problem with the additional burden of language translation.

I then took to more household chores.  I pulled out the Dyson and gave it a run through the house.  I plan to do this weekly to supplement my Roomba runs.  I also tried running my Scooba.  I have had some issues with my robotic maids as of late.  My 535 Roomba has had various problems since I bought it last September.  I have received a new beater brush, cleaning module, side brush and now am awaiting a new side brush module.  Needless to say the lustre has worn off with he 500 series of robots.  I prefer my older, louder Discovery models.  They do a better job of cleaning in my environment and seem to hold up better.

  I also am having an issue with my floor washing Scooba.  Last week I noticed that it seemed to be only putting down a trickle of cleaning fluid, much less than normal.  I also have had issues for awhile with opening the unit up to remove the fluid container.  Look at the email I got from Irobot regarding how to address these issues.

To handle a stuck fluid container:

Place one hand on the Tank Receiver where “iRobot” or “iRobot Scooba” is written, and apply pressure to pull back on the tank. Using the other hand’s index finger, tap lightly and quickly on the Tank Handle towards the edge. This should allow the Tank to release.

WTF? I need to be the Fonz to operate the unit??  The advice for the fluid problem is even funnier:

You will want to hold the Scooba so it is standing on it’s side and the clear end of the Cleaning Head is touching the ground. Hold the unit about 6-8 inches above the ground, and let the Scooba drop through your hands about 5 times.

Ok let me get this straight.  You want me to “fix” my $500 robot by holding it on it’s side and dropping it on the floor?  I could not believe this was the advice I was getting back from tech support.  I emailed back for a clarification to which they responded.

Do not actually drop it on the floor, but just tap it on the cleaning head side; either on the counter or on the floor five times.

Oh ok that makes me feel so much better, just bang it on the counter.  So anyway I took out my Scooba and performed blunt trauma on it as instructed.  I set it up and let it loose on a cleaning run.  The violence didn’t work.  It still was not putting down fluid.  So I ad-libbed and just poured some warm water on the floor and let the Scooba suck it up so it at least was of some use.  I emailed back to Irobot to see what their next piece of advice is.  Maybe throw it like a frisbee or roll it into a wall??

After Ali got home I set the timing system back up and f’d around with it some more.  I just set up one line.  Even with maxxing out the power, the detection height sucked.  I was very frustrated with it.  I did manage to figure out the reason I could not connect the laptops together.  The Lenovo laptops have a little slider switch on the front of them that turns off the wireless card.  Somehow this slider managed to get put in the “off” position, disabling any wireless network access.  The thing is when I looked at the wireless card under Windows it looked active and enabled.  Well at least I know that problem won’t happen again.

 The f’ing drain covers I got for the pool drains are officially a waste of money.  They just don’t work.  Instead of getting stuck on the drains the damn Hayward gets stuck on these things.  I sent an email to the guy on ebay I bought them from telling him they are a basically piece of shit as well as Polaris, the manufacturer.  I am hoping by complaining I may get my money back or something but I doubt it.

I was thinking to myself over the weekend for some reason if people would use the adjectives “happy” or “friendly” when describing me.  I don’t think they would.  I have been told in the past, years ago by someone that I later became friendly with that initially they thought I was a snob.  I know why people would think that.  I avoid making much eye contact or smiling at people I don’t know.  The reason for it is that I am so dreadfully bad at making the small talk that leads to more meaningful conversation.  Many of the people that I wind up being friendly with are outgoing and friendly themselves, possessing the qualities I lack.  Once that initial barrier is broken I am normally  much more at ease talking with someone.  I don’t know why I bring this up besides the fact that it is something I am not happy about, ironically.   

Our area is unfortunately filled with right wing conservative sheep who’s favorite hobby is writing letters to the editor.  Today I saw this one.

Editor, Daily News:

Once again our favorite “boo bird” is back at it.

In his latest sortie into the land of make-believe, John Riccio takes a question asked by John McCain — “Are Americans better off now that they were eight years ago?” McCain’s answer was pretty much a yes.

Riccio then goes on to quote a bunch of statistics which he claims makes his point that Americans are not better off. Problem is, a lot of his statistics come from one or two years ago, not eight years ago.

His other problem is that he never offers solutions; he simply skews the issues of the country to suit his warped opinion of what is wrong and then harangues us with his venom.

Well, Mr. Riccio, you have your Democrat-controlled House and Senate. How are they doing? Is their national popularity doing well? How about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? How is she doing?

There can be little doubt that we are mired in a national recession. We are particularly hard hit in Florida. We know this and each of us lives with it.

There is an old Greek saying that great men talk about issues, ideas and solutions. Small men talk about other people and each other.

Brian P. Kenedy, Bonita Springs

For whatever reason it angered me enough to post this in the comments section.

Dear Brian and Dick,

I have to laugh when people say that the DEMOCRATIC congress has been able to make little headway into making things better over the last 16 months like that is is some sort of shocking revelation. I mean come on, engage the brain, W is still sitting in the White House and has worn out his VETO stamp since the shift in power in congress occurred. The democrats in congress are nearly powerless as long as the brainless puppet is still mumbling and bumbling in the oval office. Real change will not occur until both the legislative and executive branches of government are on the same page. 262 days to go….

Idiots.

Not only did my captured wolf spider make the air waves in PA, Scott also posted the picture on the Y102 website.  I was surprised that my brother was the only one to mention hearing it.

So last night after work I did something I hadn’t done in a long time, go for a run with Ali over at Sugden Park.  Sugden is right across the street from Ali’s workplace.  It is a nice little park with a big lake in the middle and a nice running/walking trail that surrounds it.  Ali and I ran close to 2 miles.  It was a very enjoyable run.  The only unenjoyable part was running on the mostly concrete path felt rather hard on my knees.  Almost all of my running recently has been indoors on a treadmill which has a lot of “give” to it.

After we got home I set up the timing system.  I wanted to run every single programmed chip over the timing lines to verify they were all functional.  At the last race I had two chips that mysteriously didn’t register for some reason.  However all 500 chips we tested read ok in our test.  Sunday morning we are timing another race in downtown Naples.  It should be a pretty big race, close to 300 runners.

So after a couple weeks of the Littermaid Elite litterbox working ok after I ripped it apart and blew out some switch, it started to f up again, not sensing when cats had used it and clogging up in the process.  I had enough and called back their support.  I told the guy this is the third time I called for the same problem.  Without hesitation he said they will replace the unit.  Thankfully I don’t have to return the entire unit.  They have you return a small plastic cover that has a number on it as well as a small circuit board that they instruct you to remove from the unit.  You literally take a scissors and cut a cable to remove it.  Doing so effectively kills the unit.  So now I send those two parts back to them and they supposedly send me a replacement in 7-10 days.  I don’t have much hope of the replacement being much better.  It seems like they made an engineering blunder by putting this mechanical microswitch in a location that easily can become contaminated with litter.

On DWTS this week they had Def Leopard on, yes Def Leopard.  What a f’ing joke.  What a bunch of sell outs. If just appearing on the show wasn’t bad enough, they added insult to injury by lip syncing both performances, poorly.  One of the tip offs that a performer is lip syncing is they cup the mic with both hands in front of their mouth in an attempt to hide their little ruse. It was truly pathetic.

 

I sent a link to my spider picture to my buddy Scott up north.  Scott just happens to be a morning host of the Y-102 radio show.  Like everyone else I showed the picture to, he was freaked out by the size of this thing.  Evidently he went so far as to mention the spider on the show as well as the brief story of it’s capture, including both my and Ali’s name.  My brother just happened to have Y-102 on and heard the mention.  I never would have thought my spider capture story would have been broadcast over most of southeastern PA, funny stuff.

So last night I got back to doing productive things around the house after work.  I drug out the pressure cleaner and blasted off the cement pad by the front door and windows.  After that I pulled the mums that my mom had in pots and planted them into our one landscaped area that is full of mums.  Then I transplanted another plant my mom had that sort of looks like a lily into one of the pots a mum was in and then put it on the lanai at the spot vacated by the small tree we planted where the areca used to be. Confused?  Well anyway it was a good little after work project.

I was tired and had showered and was already laying in bed by the time I heard the garage door open  when Ali got back from ballet.  I was waiting for the little chirp from the alarm system when she walked through the door.  It never chirped.  Instead the phone starts to ring.  As I answer it I see it is Ali’s cell phone and I start walking towards the door and start to turn the knob.  Ali screams, “DON’T OPEN IT!!!!”  WTF??  Ali says there is a HUGE spider on the door.  She told me (on her cell phone)to open the front door so she could come in that way instead.  I obliged and opened the front door for her and immediately walked into the garage to see what freaked her out so badly.  It was a wolf spider, a BIG wolf spider, almost as big as my hand.

Now the majority of people would probably look for the closest blunt object to use to smash the thing which would be no easy task, wolf spiders are very fast and like to jump. I, on the other hand was out there with my little bug catching device although I quickly realized it was far too small to capture this sucker.  So I looked around the garage for another containment device.  I wound up dumping a clear plastic container for tapcon screws.  So now it was time to try to snag this beast.

As I mentioned, wolf spiders are very fast.  Each time I would try to pin him down he would shoot out of the way.  I had to pull everything away from the walls to minimize his places to hide.  After a good 5 minutes of hide and seek I finally got him down onto the floor and was able to flip the lid on the container and snag him.  I proudly brought my prize inside to show Ali.  Just call me Duf the Spider Hunter.  We took a few pics of it to validate my achievement.  Even with it being trapped inside the container it freaked Ali out.  They are scary looking spiders.  After the photo session was done I walked my little unwelcome guest down to one of the clumps of palm trees and let him loose. 

You can see the other pics we took of the spider as well as two pics of fat Buttons lounging on the carpet here.