I have had issues with my blog getting hacked.  As much as I like WordPress, I don’t think they do a great job of making it very secure out of the box.  I had my entire hosting site hacked as a result and later discovered some phishing files sitting out in my uploads directory.  There are lots of articles on how to do secure WordPress.  I just wanted to list a few simple changes I made to help minimize security holes.

First I created an .htaccess file and put it in the root of my WP installation.  It simply reads like this: 

# Prevents directory listing
Options -Indexes

I uploaded this file to the root of my WordPress install and then set permissions on it to 644.  This change makes it impossible for malicious hackers to do a directory listing of any of your blog directories which could expose possible vulnerabilities.

Next I made another .htaccess and put it into my UPLOADS folder.  This one looks like this:

Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
<Files ~ “\.(css|jpe?g|png|gif|js|bmp)$” >
Allow from all
</Files>

Again after uploading the file, set it to 644 permissions.  What this does is prevent anybody from accessing any files in the UPLOAD directories that shouldn’t be there.

Of course strong passwords on your WP admin account are a must in order to prevent brute force attacks.  There are also changes you can make to limit the amount of attempts to lock out potential evil doers. 

If you want more comprehensive info check this out, http://www.mytradedomain.com/secure-your-wordpress-blog/  or simply Google “secure wordpress upload directory”

Once again our property had pretty much dried up and once again mother nature dumped buckets of water on us.  2.5″ of rain in a couple hours yesterday flooded out our property once again.  I’m really ready for winter and the drier weather to start kicking in. The frogs last night were deafening.

Again I was tired last night, tired enough that I fell asleep on the couch for a little bit while I was trying to zip through more Battlestar Galactica episodes.

I watch way too much tv, I was trying to think of all the shows that I watch within a typical week right now.  These are all that I can think of although some of them I only catch bits and pieces of like DWTS.

Dancing with the Stars
Heroes
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
ER
Biggest Loser
Kitchen Nightmares
Wife Swap
Ultimate Fighter

Thank god for Tivo which allows us to cut approximately 25-30% off the length of each show by bypassing commercials. 

Wow what a disaster in the stock market yesterday because the bail out wasn’t rubber stamped.  Sovereign Bank, where I was on site for several years as a net admin had their stock fall almost 70% yesterday, incredible.  If I still had my Ameritrade account active I would be snapping up their stock en masse at less than $2.50 per. 

I haven’t really heard exactly why the bail out was held up.  I am curious what was in there that red flagged it.   It’s amazing that Wall Street at this point basically assumes that the government is obligated to bail out all of these firms that buried themselves with bad business practices.  It sets a very bad precedent.

  It’s ironic that the bill was basically defeated by Republicans.  The bill pushed by Bush, pushed by McCain, killed by Republicans in congress looking to CYA. (cover your ass)  The bottom line is this bill is not viewed favorably by American voters, regardless of the party.  The politicans that are up for election this year don’t want a big red X against them by voting for it.

I’ve read that since the latest financial cluster f started that Obama picked up a few points in the polls.  I don’t quite understand how fickle some people’s opinions seem to be when it comes to their presidential candidate.

Remember that post from Friday that was a forward from my mom that stated that if you split the 85 billion buyout for AIG among the 200 million adults in the United States it would work out to $425,000 per adult.  Well it was later pointed out to me that if you plug these numbers into a calculator you would see the number actually works out to $425 per person, a monumental difference.  I guess it was my bad for trusting that the originator of this email would have done the math correctly.

So I watched the entire debate Friday night and it went pretty much as expected.  To me Obama came off as more educated and in better command of the facts than McCain.  Obama did a masterful job of disarming McCain attacks and delivering a back handed smack across the face with out missing a beat.  McCain was constantly referring to his notes and made efforts to wedge in his keywords wherever possible, even in many situations where it wasn’t relevant.  He had to use “maverick” several times as well as several other catch phrases that served no purpose other than to try paint him in a manner that contrasted to the old, tired man that stood there.

It seemed to me like more often than not when asked a question McCain would not make much of an effort to answer it and instead went back to the cue cards to repeat the same beaten to death, often inaccurate statements that his campaign is relying on to try to make the public afraid of Obama. 

Several times during the debate Obama was courteous enough to offer compliments to McCain on various issues that he agreed with him about.  McCain offered no such courtesy to Obama.  Many times Obama tried to directly engage McCain but McCain would not look at him, instead alternating from stupid looking grins to looking back down to his cue cards.  To me Obama came off as much more presidential.  As the night went on McCain looked more and more like a sleestack. Maybe he should have drank more water.

I was surprised when the commentators afterward said they thought BOTH candidates did well.  However I’m not sure if I ever saw network news say one candidate sucked balls.  I don’t think they are allowed to show any inclination either way. 

I can hardly wait for the VP debate.  If you heard Sarah Palin in the Katie Couric interview you now realize that she is basically a pretty version of Dan Quayle.  She sounded absolutely moronic at times. Joe Biden should eat her up.

Saturday morning I went outside to start on the first chore of my large mental list.  I attended to the garden which was f’ing mess since the storm blew the newspaper all over the place.  After pulling all the wet paper off the fencing I had to weed the area.  I found myself getting very annoyed that the garden has been empty since I spent all that time and effort to expand it.  So just like that a switch flipped and I decided today was the day I was going to go buy some dirt to get the garden going.  I certainly didn’t need another chore to do but I just wanted the garden to become something other than a source of weeds.

So I tell Ali my plans and head off to Home Depot.  I load up the flat bed with 10 bags of mulch and 20 bags of dirt, 10 of which were these 2 cubic foot bags of Miracle Grow garden soil.  They weigh a freaking ton, at least 60-70 pounds if I were to estimate.  It was not fun at all trying to stack those in place. By the time I had everything in the bed of the truck my Tacoma become a low rider with the ass end sitting very low from all of the weight.

Once I got home we ate lunch and then headed outside to get back to work.  Lugging all the bags once again was not much fun at all.  I didn’t have enough to fill the area as much as I want but it was enough to at least cover up all of low areas that I dug out.  After dumping and spreading all of the mulch and dirt I decided I wanted to attach weed block along the bottom of the composite lumber border to prevent grass and weeds from growing up and under the border from outside.  Doing so meant I had to dig out around the entire border and attach the weed block in sections 3 foot long at a time.  By the time I was done I was a mud covered mess.

Although I was already beat there was more to do.  While Ali mowed the grass I did a quickie weed whacking run and then turned my attention to the garage door.  I bought a replacement seal for it.  I replaced the garage door seal a few years ago but over that time the rubber shrunk, allowing gaps of a couple inches on either side that provided easy access for water and various creatures.  So I ripped out the old seal and started sliding in the new one.  If you have ever done this job you know it is tedious.  You basically slide the ends of the rubber seal into the two slots that run across the bottom of the door and start sliding it across.  The first few feet are easy, after that it sucks.  Trying to do it yourself is brutal because you can’t pull on the end AND thread it at the beginning at the same time.  You have to thread a couple inches and then pull a couple inches time and time again. 

Well finally I had enough and decided to wait until Ali was done mowing to help me.  I got it threaded about half way on my own.  Once she parked the tractor I had her come up to the garage.  Her job was to be the threader and I was the puller.  The further across you get with the seal, the tougher it is to pull so I decided to utilize a pliers to assist in the pulling task.  After some initial problems we had a good system going, I was about a foot from the end.  I pulled hard on the pliers, leaning into it with my body weight, as I did all of a sudden the rubber seal rips and my left hand goes flying into the track of the garage door.  I look at my left thumb and see what looks to be a deep slice. I think the bone in my thumb is the only thing that stopped it..  The blood started to flow freely moments later.  Ali didn’t know how bad I cut myself but once she saw it she gave me something to hold on the wound until we got inside.  I knew the cut was deep, deep enough that stitches would probably be in order.  I also knew that going to an emergency room for stitches was the last thing I wanted to do, hell the garage door seal wasn’t even done yet.

So I rinsed the cut off inside and then jammed a paper towel on it while Ali got our first aid supplies.  It was really bleeding a lot, the paper towel got very red, very fast.  We had some steri-strips in there that she used to help hold the cut together.  Then she gooped on Neosporin and several layers of gauze and bandages.  I could see that they were getting pretty bloody as well but it was good enough for me.  I was willing to give it some time to see if it  closes up on it’s own.  We immediately went back outside where I donned a pair of leather work gloves to finish the project.  We managed to get the seal pulled all the way through.  No, I didn’t utilize a pliers to finish the job. The rest of the night I was paranoid about the cut, worrying it would open up if I did the wrong thing.  Luckily it seemed to stay intact.

We tried to get to bed early since we had to get up at 4am to time the race.  I hadn’t bothered to look at the forecast for Sunday until Saturday evening.  I was alarmed when I saw a 50% chance of rain.  Rain greatly complicates timing a race.  Naturally electronic equipment and computers do not take kindly to getting wet. 

I drug myself out of bed at 4 and we were out the door by 4:45.  On the way to the site we went through some light rain which did nothing to make me feel better.  The light rain continued until about an hour before race time.  Luckily, since this was a 20K race I had time until I needed to tape the timing lines to the road.  I did so about 15 minutes before the first runner crossed.  The timing went well.  Timing a 20K is easier than a 5k because the runners finish in a much more spread out manner instead of in huge clusters. 

Out of the 300+ runners we had about 6 that didn’t register a time when they crossed which I was able to quickly enter manually.  I had very few people come up to me with any questions or problems with the posted results which again was very nice.  The downside of timing a 20k is they are long.  The last runner crossed over three hours after the start.  It made for a long morning as we didn’t get to leave the race site until close to 11.  We timed it just right, the rain started in earnest just after the race and continued on steady all day long.  That would have sucked if it happened a couple hours earlier.

The new ties that we got to attach the chips with did their job, we didn’t a lose a single chip.  However I still saw tons of people before the race struggling to figure out how to attach the chip.  I really don’t understand why some people found it so hard to comprehend.

After the race even though Ali and I were both beat from getting up so early and busting ass the day prior, we followed up by going to Ali’s gym.  She had suggested to me that she wanted me to show her a 300 workout.  So even though a 300 was the last thing I felt like doing I wasn’t going to dismiss an opportunity to show Ali the routine.  One thing I quickly found out was that my shit hole gym was much better suited for the work out than this place.  There is limited floor space to do any ad-lib exercises and it almost felt like doing anything outside the lines of conventional exercise would be frowned upon.  The place is just very “sterile”.

So I took Ali through the routine, albeit a shorter, easier version of it.  Ali is in the middle of rehab for a bad knee so she was limited on what and how much she could do.  By the time we wrapped it up I was breathing heavy and sweating while Ali looked like she wasn’t worked much at all.  I told her I felt bad because she couldn’t really get the feel for the routine unless she is able to do weights and reps to the point where she is truly tired.  I told her the 300 is all about intensity.  If you aren’t gasping for air during it, you aren’t trying hard enough to push yourself.  Maybe once her knee is better we can give it another try.

By the time we got home it was almost 1 pm.  I was so f’ing tired.  I was tired enough that after lunch I did something so rare that I can probably count the times I did it in the past 5 years on my hands, I took a nap.  I knew the Eagles were on at 8:15 and knew that there was no way I would be able to stay awake to watch them if I didn’t take at least a small snap, I was just exhausted.

  The nap was short, about 90 minutes or so but it felt like it helped my energy level at least a little bit.  Napping meant I had to get right into doing whatever else was left to do around the house like finishing up the processing of the race results, putting the equipment away and sweeping the house.  I realized how much I dislike timing a race on a Sunday, it just feels like it cuts the weekend off at the knees.

So even with the nap I was unable to stay awake for the entire Eagles game.  I fell asleep towards the end of the third quarter.  The game was back and forth tight but I didn’t have a good feeling when I went to sleep.  It seemed like the Birds were just blowing too many opportunities.  Akers missing field goals, getting no points off of turnovers, dropping punts….  It all just seemed doomed for failure and indeed it was with the Eagles losing to a team they should beat, 24-20.  I mean come on, you lose to Kyle Orton?  Well whatever, once again my Eagle expectations are readjusted downward.  Next week they play the Skins, they really need to win that game.

I got some pictures up.  First are the pictures from the South Beach vball tourney. Then there are some pictures of a bunch of ibis that were hanging out at our place as well as a few pics of my recent projects added on to the office painting project page. 

This is too funny to not share.  The funniest thing is this isn’t that far of a stretch.

When I bought my refurb Maestro 4040 I had no idea that it was a Windows CE device that is hackable.  I discovered this as I searched around for a way to unlock the voice command feature without forking out an additional $99. 

You are able to turn the Maestro into a PDA rather easily.  All of the information I used was found by reading this thread.  When plugged into your computer with the included USB cable, the files on it become available as one big flash drive, making modification extremely simple.

As you can see in the included pictures I now have the ability to watch movies, play solitaire, listen to MP3’s and various other functions on top of using the included GPS functionality.  The SD card slot comes in handy to load up movies or MP3’s.  The final set up works very well albeit there are a few bugs.  To complete the hack I basically had to rename one file and copy a couple directories and files over to the device.  After doing so, the unit reboots and BAM, it’s hacked.  Of course before tweaking with the unit I backed up everything to my local PC just in case things blew up. If you have a Maestro 4040, or another Maestro model, you can DL the files I used for the hack here.  Of course there is no guarantee of your success.  I don’t know if this will work on other Maestro models or not.

This gives you a wake up call of just how MASSIVE this buy out plan is.  I wish I thought of it.  Forwarded to me from mommy.

I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in
a We Deserve It Dividend.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000
bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman
and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a
We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.
So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
A husband and wife has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage housing crisis solved.
Repay college loans what a great boost to new grads
Put away money for colleg e it’ll be there
Save in a bank create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
Buy a new car create jobs
Invest in the market capital drives growth
Pay for your parent’s medical insurance health care improves
Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks
who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company
that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it…instead of trickling out
a puny $1000.00 ( “vote buy” ) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG liquidate it.
Sell off its parts.
Let American General go back to being American General.
Sell off the real estate. Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.

Sure it’s a crazy idea that can “never work.”

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion
We Deserve It Dividend

And remember, The plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned
instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.
pass this along to your pals as it’s either good for a laugh
or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

I’ve been called lots of derogatory things over the years but surprisingly two of the adjectives that got me the most angry were “nonchalant” (what does it mean if you are chalant?) and lackadaisical.  Both of these adjectives were used to describe me by my baseball coach when I was 15. 

I was one of the main figures on the team as I was one of our good pitchers and hitters.  As a result I may have carried a bit of attitude that accompanied my baseball skills.  When I wasn’t pitching I played either first base or outfield.  Well one day at practice I was taking grounders at first, after fielding the ball we were supposed to throw to third.  Well the coach hit the ball to me and I threw it over to third.  Well the coach didn’t like the way I made the play and he yelled something about being “lackadaisical”.  Well I didn’t like being called out by the coach in front of the entire team.  It embarrassed me.  So the next grounder that is hit to me I snag and FIRE at the third basement as hard as I could.  The ball could have broken the third baseman’s hand if he caught it wrong, it was smoked.  The coach paused for a second after the throw and then yells out ‘Now THAT’s the way to throw the ball!”

Another time I was playing center field in a game.  A fly ball came out to me and I caught it but I guess somehow it looked like I wasn’t hustling to the ball.  When I came back from the field again the coach gives me an earful, bitching about me looking “nonchalant” out there.  I was like, what the f, I caught the ball…  Well again this got my blood boiling.  Later in the game there was a ball hit deep into the gap that I caught after a long sprint, it easily saved what would could have been a triple or home run.  I followed up by hitting a towering home run into the creek later in the game, probably the longest home run I ever hit.  Nonchalant that you motherf’r.

I always had a love/hate relationship with that coach.  He knew I had talent and potential if for no other reason than I was a tall lefty.  I knew he knew what he was talking about since he was in the Dodger’s minor league system.  He made great efforts to help coach and train me.  He pushed me hard and I resented him for it then.  When I went through my debacle after high school of dropping out of college and walking away from a partial baseball scholarship as a result, I knew he thought I was a stupid piece of shit for doing so.  I actually played under him one more time in Legion ball.  However I had a much smaller role on that team due to arm problems and his general disregard for me.

I have a much greater appreciation of him now than I did then.

It’s been a long three days getting our new branch office up and running.  During those three days there were countless little fires I had to address but as of now everything is up and running smoothly.  Yesterday was the first day the office opened it’s doors and of course right on cue, the data circuit between the branch and the office went down and stayed down until 3:30 in the afternoon.  Luckily the office only saw a few customers all day long so it wasn’t a real big deal.  The installer from the state complimented me on how smoothly things went from his perspective.  I had all the hard work done ahead of time, something that evidently doesn’t happen very often when he visits other tax collector offices.

Ali returned the BG dvd’s and immediately grabbed me Season 3.  Now I have another SIX dvd’s to view in less than a week!  So far it seems like season three are episodes I have never seen before, the first 3 sets had some episodes I saw on TV so I could skip over those.  As much as I love watching the episodes, I almost feel pressured to watch them quickly even though I know we could extend the time we have them with the library if need be.

So John McMcain cancelled the Friday debate because NOW the financial problem is important.  NOW the economy which he proclaimed as doing just fine a couple months ago is on the edge of collapse, NOW he is concerned.  Bravo.  It seems to be just more obvious posturing to me and many others. Speaking of the “bailout” it really is disgusting if you look behind the curtain.  Rewarding financial institutions for reckless, ignorant business practices seems to be a very dangerous precedent to set.  I absolutely hope the final package somehow eliminates the fattest cats at the top from receiving any sweetheart severance deals.

I finally had enough with the Littermaid “Elite” automatic litterbox. The thing is simply a piece of shit.  It’s motor was so weak that sometimes it would get stuck just raking through the box with just litter and no excrement in it.  I was able to find the old style LM700 on ebay that we had before, it lasted us 3 years plus and gave us little to no problems even with Buttons pouring gallons of excrement into it daily. I received it yesterday and immediately put it into service.  I had no sorrow as I slammed the old Elite model into the garbage can.

It seems the moment we dry out we get dumped on with more water.  Last night a little mini-hurricane blew through our area that dumped a ton of rain, I can’t tell how much because my weather center is on the fritz again.  It had to be close to two inches of rain.  All of the familiar ponds around the property have once again formed.

One of the things we did outside on Saturday was to put down a bunch of newspaper in the garden in prep for dumping dirt on top.  We held the paper in place by throwing various objects on top of it like scraps of wood, fence posts and pvc pipe.  Well the storm destroyed our work blowing much of the paper up against the side of the fence and inundating the rest under water.  That will be a pleasant mess to clean up.

Over the past few days I had been trying to send out an email to the roughly 1300 participants in last years half marathon to remind them of this years event.  I was very conscious of not getting flagged as a spammer so I broke the email addresses into groups of 200 and sent each one with a several hour gap in between.  Well evidently I still crossed the line and my account got flagged as a spammer.  All of a sudden my Exchange server was unable to send out email. 

So I get on the phone with Comcast and explain to them what I was trying to do.  They tell me that if you send to more than 99 email addresses at once or send more than 1000 emails a day or send out more than 250 meg of email traffic you get flagged as a spammer.  They turned off outgoing port 25 on my cable modem which is what blocked all of my email.  I promised to be a good boy and they turned it back on.  They also told me that Comcast email customers now are supposed to connect to their mail server via port 587 instead of 25 due to spamming.  As in many times before, Homey helped me out in both diagnosing the problem and offering a solution.  I’m now dumping my SMTP mail to his servers instead of through Comcast.

I have a new ache to report, my left hip.  I have no idea what I did to aggravate it but it is rather annoying.  Any sort of leg bending movement sends a shot of pain through it.  It almost feels like a tendon or something is pinched or caught in an odd spot.  It also would make running quite uncomfortable I’m sure.  I’m hoping it clears up on it’s own.  With me being at the new branch office quite a few days recently it means I have been missing my normal gym routine which adds to the mystery of how I hurt it and at the same time frustrates me.

Here is a quick recap.

Saturday was a bust ass day.  My neighbor gave me some scrap metal and some bonding putty to use to try to fix the hole in the mower deck.  I cut the scrap metal to size, pounded it into the hole to roughly shape and contour it and then mixed up some of the putty and rolled it out between my hands until it was a long snake.  Then I laid the bead around the hole and pressed the scrap metal on to it.  It appeared to be adhering pretty well until I got the bright idea to push on it from underneath the mower deck, just to be sure.  My doing so popped the scrap metal loose and at that point the putty had set enough that I wasn’t able to get the metal to adhere again.  I cursed myself out loud for my stupidity.

So I got a putty knife out to scrape off the half hardened putty from the mower deck and the scrap metal.  I didn’t have enough of the putty my neighbor gave me to try again so I headed out to the hardware store to see if they had something equivalent.  They had the stuff that comes in two tubes.  You basically squirt the contents of the two tubes out, mix it up and then goop it on.  It wasn’t as easy to work with as the putty but I had no choice.  I pushed out the contents on to an old piece of shelving and mixed it up quickly again with a putty knife.  Then I scooped the results up and slapped it all around the hole in the mower deck as generously as I could.  I slam the scrap metal on top and lean on it with a hammer to hold it in place.  The goop sets up quick and within 5 minutes it was hard to the touch.  There were a few small gaps that I went back and filled with silicone caulk just for fun. 

While I was letting my repair harden up I took the blades off and sharpened them with the small grinding bit I have for my drill.  It is far less than an ideal way to sharpen the blades.  A table grinder would do a much better job. ( Christmas idea!)  So after I was done grinding away I put the blades back on and reattached the deck to the tractor.  At first I had ideas of letting the epoxy harden overnight just to be safe.  I couldn’t wait. I did a short test run as I was driving back to the shed and everything seemed fine.  Later in the afternoon Ali went crazy and mowed everything, including the back yard.  The repair held up.  Here’s hoping I bought us another year or so of tractor life.  Cost of the repair, less than $5.

Saturday night we did something different and went out to eat at a fancy place where my one gym buddy bar tends.  I had a gift card to the place and he had asked me to come down a few times.  It was in downtown Naples on third street.  We ate outside on the patio, right by the sidewalk.  It was really nice and relaxing.  Thanks to the gift card and my buddy hooking Ali up with a complimentary wine or two our bill was more Carrabas like.  After dinner we walked around a bit and then headed home.  It was well deserved after busting ass all day.

Sunday is a very simple to recap cause I didn’t do much.  Besides sweeping the house and setting the Scooba loose in the kitchen, the rest of my day was just lazy.  I alternated between playing WoW, watching Battlestar Galactica Season 2 and 2.5 episodes and watching the Eagles.

Speaking of the Eagles, it was another great game that was a direct contrast to the offensive explosion the week before.  Instead this was a defensive struggle.  The Eagles beat the hell out of the Steelers, sacking their QB nine times, causing fumbles, getting interceptions and just causing general chaos.  The Eagles offense started strong but after Brian Westbrook went out with an injury things slowed way down.  It was a great win but the injury to McNabb and Westbrook does not bode well for the team next week. 

Ya know I find myself being REALLY annoyed by DeShaun Jackson.  Yea he is a very talented receiver but he also is a dumb ass.  His f up last week, dropping the ball before crossing the goal line was a legendary act of stupidity.  This week towards the end of the game when the Eagles were in clock chewing mode he catches a pass and runs it out of bounds, a cardinal sin and inexcusable if you have your head in the game.  I heard the announcers excuse it by saying “rookie mistake”.  Eh that’s bullshit.  If your IQ is high double digits you should be able to figure that one out.  Plus it seems like EVERY time the guy gets his hands on the ball his first move is always BACKWARDS.  For some reason he loves to run backwards to try to elude defenders.  It’s only a matter of time until at a crucial juncture of a game he is going to have the first down and then lose it by running backwards.  I just don’t have a good feeling about the kid.

Almost all of the standing water at our house has dried up, yay.

A big congrats to Jeremy and his wife Mandy whom delivered their first child this weekend.  Way to go!

Since my girlfriend analogy went over like a lead balloon let’s try this one. Say 8 years ago you bought a Dodge.  Over your 8 years of ownership your Dodge has gotten horrible gas mileage, been in the shop for expensive repairs on a regular basis, left you sitting on the highway multiple times and has various parts falling off of it.  Whenever you went to the dealership to have them work on your Dodge the staff there has lied to you, overcharged you at every opportunity, stolen the change out of your ashtray and chastised you when you spoke up about the bad treatment by saying you are not a “true Dodge owner”.  So finally at the end of these miserable 8 years of Dodge ownership you are ready to get a new car.  You buy another Dodge… 

I heard my mom thought I was a jerk for giving Randall a hard time at the volleyball tourney.  Now I know Randall well enough to normally walk the fine line between busting balls and just being an asshole.  This is after all the same guy that excels at trash talking.  His “are you ready to surrender?” line to the french opponent last season before our match was legendary as well as calling “good game” before serving for match point a few years back. 

 But even so, in retrospect my antics may have been a bit much.  I may have piled on too much.  Even though I sometimes still get wrapped up in the moment, that typically is all it is, a moment of anger or frustration that leaves as quickly as it comes. This tournament had no lingering negative effects for me.  I didn’t care all that much that we lost in the finals.  I remember being much more bummed out about not making the playoffs at the Rumble.

I finished off another 3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica last night putting me a little over halfway through Season 2.    

I am keeping the weekend free of major projects although I  certainly could crank open the paint can or bags of mulch and keep us rolling in work.  I kind of would like to put off most of the outside projects until we get a bit of a break in the heat here which typically doesn’t occur until mid-October.

My repair to the mower deck using four or five layers of HVAC tape has failed and we once again have a big gaping hole.  This hole allows tons of grass to fly up on top of the deck which in turn really creates a lot of wear and tear on the belts and pulleys.  It also leaves the belts open to damage from flying debris that gets chopped up which could sever a belt again.  I looked on the Cub Cadet site and I can get a new deck shipped for less than $250.  $250 is far better than biting the bullet on a $2000-$2500 new mower right now so I will probably wind up ordering it soon. 

I am not looking forward to the process of trying to transfer all of the deck hardware from the old unit to the new one.  Many of the bolts are rusted solid and the wheels on the deck are in real sad shape.  Again this is a job that would be best tackled under cooler conditions.  When I am in the middle of a frustrating, knuckle busting job, having gallons of sweat pouring off me at the same time only magnifies the negative emotions.

Man these PHISHING schemes are unreal.  Check out this email I received yesterday.  Of course I know better and the first thing I did was mouse over the link to see where it lead which was a site in Russia.  It looks totally legitimate though and I can understand why even people with average computer IQ’s could get suckered in. I dropped a bunch of spaces in to push it south so you can read it without clutter from my right sidebar. I changed the “Verification Link” just in case someone had the urge to click it.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

	Remember: Always look for your SiteKey before you enter your passcode during Sign In »		International Access Code (I.A.C)   You last logged into Online Banking on: 8/28/2008   You are receiving this message, due to you protection, Our Online Technical Security Service Foreign IP Spy recently detected that your online account was recently logged on from am 52.214.76.60 without am International Access Code (I.A.C) and from an unregistered computer, which was not verified by the Our Online Service Department.   This email sent to: [email protected]   If you last logged in you online account on September, Thursday 18th 2008, by the time 04:18 am from an Foreign Ip their is no need for you to panic, but if you did log in your account on the above Date and Time, kindly take 2-3 minute of your online banking experince to verify and register your computer now to avoid identity theft, your protection is our future medal. Verification Link       Want to get more alerts? Sign in to your online banking account at Bank of America and within the Accounts Overview page select the “Alerts” tab.         Because email is not a secure form of communication, please do not reply to this email. Notice: You can acess your account from a foreign IP or country by getting am (I.A.C) International Access Code, by contacting our local brances close to you.     Bank of America, Member FDIC. © 2007 Bank of America Corporation. All Rights Reserved. body>