Ave Maria, the new “Catholic Town” that has been carved out of the middle of nowhere by us is getting hammered by the poor real estate market. At this point they have sold 10% of the homes that they projected, TEN PERCENT!!! Better sell a whole lot more pizzas Tom.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2008/jun/08/ave-maria-lacking-growth-may-affect-projects/
Last night I did not sleep well at all. It felt like most of the night I was barely asleep with lots of dreams. I remember one of the dreams pretty well. I was back at Brecknock where my baseball “career” started. I was my current age. It was a scenario sort of like The Rookie where I was throwing batting practice but then it also expanded into me taking batting practice as well as playing the field. It went on for a long time. It was just a lot of me practicing with the kids and other coaches.
The apple tree in our orchard has been producing a lot of apples this year. They aren’t perfect apples. Many are very small, many get attacked by bugs and birds but we still had collected a nice collection of decent ones. Ali put them to good use by making a homemade apple pie Friday night. She was nervous about how it would turn out. She had no reason to worry, it was awesome. We had our old neighbor and his new partner over that night and they shared in the apple pie goodness. We also all had a lot of fun playing the Wii. Wii Sports is an awesome party game.
I picked up a composter on Friday at Sam’s. Ali was very excited. It will give her a place to put various food scraps and turn them into compost which will be great for the garden. I put it together on Friday. Ali got the bin started with various organic materials on Saturday.
My Bose Lifestyle 20 surround system that I have had since moving to Florida is starting to flake out. It started since I got the new tv and console. Apparently it is a heat related issue. Basically it will work for 20 minutes or so before the sound simply cuts out. The unit does not turn off, the sound just goes out. If you turn it off and let it cool down a bit it will work again for a short while. I called up Bose yesterday. The unit had been off overnight so it was working when we went through the simple trouble shooting steps. The guy is sending me out a cable that goes between the main unit and the sub woofer. I have zero expectations of that fixing anything and expressed that to customer service rep. He said that it is the first trouble shooting step they take. If the cable doesn’t fix it then I am supposed to call back. At that point they would probably have me send the unit in for repair. Well I fully expect to be calling them back. I have been scouring ebay looking for a used unit to snap up cheap but so far have not found any suitable candidates.
When I was looking up the problem on the internet I ran across tons of Bose haters. Many people view Bose as overpriced, proprietary junk. I wouldn’t call the system junk but I don’t think I would buy another system. The RF remote makes it incompatible with my Logitech Harmony set up and I never have really liked the way the main deck looks. It sounds good enough but I think I would be just as happy with something else.
The weekend didn’t have much noteworthy about it. On Saturday I busted ass in the morning mowing. In the afternoon Ali joined me outside and we trimmed back the palmetto bush hard. Sunday it was inside work with sweeping, laundry and steam cleaning the carpet. We did spend some time by the pool which was nice. We still have Zoe with us. Our neighbor is supposed to come home today. Yesterday we noticed how bad she stank so we gave her a bath last night. Even after the bath she didn’t exactly smell like roses. Zoe seemed a bit depressed and low key the last couple days. Maybe she misses being in her own house.
Ali leaves for PA Wednesday. I’ll be solo until Sunday. My schedule is going to be jammed full of wild parties, drug abuse and loose women. Yea right. Getting crazy nowadays may consist of getting drunk while playing some WoW or Wii.
I came up with a physical challenge I want to undertake sometime this summer, a 1500. A 1500 would be doing a 300 every day of the work week. I don’t want to do it before the Rumble but maybe sometime shortly after that. I probably need to do a few two a week 300’s prior to undertaking the challenge.
Yep it’s still on my mind and should be on yours…
Jeremy was watching a video on YouTube of someone surfing this web site and he wanted me to comment about the story. It is basically a doom and gloom piece about how just f’d the American economy is at this point. I think by this time myself and most of the American public is almost numb to bad news as each day seems to be filled to the brim with it. I mean really, just how many f’d up things can we deal with?
The amount of bad things that have come about in the last 8 years is pretty staggering. Most people start the list of bad Bush related issues at 9/11 but we forget that prior to that we had the dot com stock market implosion. Then we have 9/11 that has more question marks than answers, 7 years after it’s tragic occurrence. 9/11 lead to a series of smoke screens and parlor tricks that sunk us into a warmongers wet dream, the cluster f in Iraq. The contrived war has cost thousands of US lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. The billions that we flush down the toilet there have hammered us back home, throwing the government into the largest deficit in history, fueled by the Bush administration borrowing more money than every single president before it, COMBINED.
Thanks to Bush, and the implementation of the gluttonous and all encompassing “Homeland Security Department”, government is now bigger than it ever has been before. We have given up many freedoms and our privacy under the guise of “safety”. We have become a nation steered by lies and controlled by fear.
Still even though the signs of global warming are everywhere we have people that refuse to believe that human beings are capable of destroying their own planet. All time high gas prices has crippled our economy in uncountable ways all the while big oil companies rake in record setting profits. The housing market is in shambles, food prices are sky high, and America’s population is the fattest in the world.
I mean do I really need anything else to be negative about?
I was watching a bit of an Oprah show the other night and was shocked by just how fat Oprah has allowed herself to get once again. Granted the visual was a bit exaggerated because it was taped in standard def but was
stretched to fit the tv. But still, she looked HUGE. It amazes me how Oprah has bounced up and down with her weight over the years. With as much money as she has, she can afford to have the world’s best trainers and chefs by her side, 24/7. But even with all of that, she still can’t manage to control what she shoves in her face. Yea the pic is Kirstie Allie showing off her new cough, cough “slim” figure. I just found it appropriate. As is this.
The irony of it is that Oprah has made a living off telling other people how to act, think and do. Specifically, she has tons of shows on healthy living. How can you take advice on healthy living from someone that has rolled her weight up and down constantly her entire life? I have heard that her latest weight gain has been attributed to a “health problem”. Yea, the problem is you are eating more than you are exercising.
This is the last weekend before Ali heads up to PA. It will be the last “normal” weekend for awhile. After Ali comes back, a few days later we pull out to drive right back to PA for the Rumble.
We still have Zoe at our place. We have not heard one peep from our neighbor about his plans to return yet which is a bit odd.
Well my soap opera with the asshole ebay seller that told me to f off, wished that the drive he sent me was defective and turned out to be a prophet when the drive was actually DEAD has continued. Once I determined the drive was bad I contacted the seller and told him I would send it back. Buried among more smart ass remarks, he indicated he would refund the money once he received the drive back. Well for some reason I thought he may actually just follow through on his word instead of continuing this battle. Well I was wrong.
The seller received the drive back a week ago, May 29th and still has not issued a refund. I waited 4 days after he received it to inquire about the refund. Since that time I have sent three more inquiries to the idiot which have all been ignored, the last one stating my next step would be a Paypal claim. Well he ignored that too so this morning I happily filed a Paypal claim against him. It will be a long drawn out process but I am more than happy to go through it to relish having the funds forcibly extracted from him.
I have kept all of the ridiculous emails he sent me since I guess I always had the feeling it could come to this.
So it seems like even if Hilary doesn’t want to officially raise the white flag yet, Obama is going to be the democratic nominee. I am both excited and nervous about the prospect. I know that the underlying racism in our country will play a big part. There will be a lot of people that won’t vote for Obama because he is black, plain and simple. They would rather vote for an old fart that wants to stay in Iraq forever than vote for a brother. To me, the way Obama could minimize this problem would be to pull Hilary on as VP which would hopefully appease bitter Hilary supporters. I don’t know if he will be willing to take her in after some of the barbs that have been tossed around during the primaries.
Most of the negative comments I see regarding Obama have to do with his lack of experience. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want someone in the white house that has decades of experience being bought by special interests, corrupted by lobbyists and in debt to big business for years of political favors. Plus any lack of experience Obama may have can be countered by the staff he surrounds himself with. I look forward to having a president that is intelligent, well spoken and polished. Plus I think having a black man elected president would say a lot about how far America has come in terms of race. I think it would be a fantastic moment to turn the page on eight years of corruption, lies, fear cultivation and pocket stuffing to a fresh start with an unconventional politician. This is exactly why I am afraid it won’t happen. It seems our recent track record is filled with taking the wrong path when given a choice. Hey if the world ends in 2012 we don’t have much more to put up with anyway, right?
So last night I finished up my three and a half journey in WoW to level all classes in the game to 70. If you play the game you would be impressed, if you don’t you would have no idea the amount of time that must be invested to perform this feat. I posted this on my WoW message board about the event.
My shaman just hit 70 last night, rounding out my three and a half year mission to level every class to maximum level. I announced my achievement in guild chat last night and got exactly zero acknowledgements. I am obviously on the outside of this guild looking in, no one could give a shit.
There was no jubilation on my part, not even a smile across my face. I accomplished a virtual goal that meant nothing in real life besides the consumption of countless hours of time.
It’s been a long journey. It’s a journey that has seen me outlast pretty much everyone I started the game with besides Reaper. After leveling that many characters I have several observations.
The easiest and favorite classes to level have been the hunter and lock. I seem to prefer classes that have pets the most. Maybe because it minimizes what I have to do.
I thought that levelling the pally would be brutal and boring. I actually didn’t mind it at all and found it enjoyable to play a class that tanked and healed equally well.
The most difficult class to level was my warrior hands down. It was my first character so it took forever since I didn’t know anything about the game. Plus leveling a warrior is very frustrating. I died A LOT.
I played the druid as pure feral. I loved the flexibility of the class.
Likewise, I played my priest as pure shadow. I never healed anything much more than 5 mans.
The mage was fun to play due to his high damage and multiple methods to frustrate the enemy. (poly, ice block, blink, etc…) I hated all the stopping for mana though.
I was never great as a rogue although I enjoyed using his stealth to annoy many horde as well as take a look at Ogrimar.
The shaman is a whirling DPS powerhouse. I’ve done very little pvp with him but in pve he tore through most enemies with ease. He has been specced enhancement from the get go.
Levelling so many characters has meant I am a jack of all trades but a master of none. I’m not an expert at any one class. Concentrating on levelling so much also means that I have not concentrated on gear. None of my characters are equipped all that well. I’d say my hunter and priest have the best gear and none of it compares to what is the top of the food chain nowadays.
So now the levelling is done, except for the 60 horde hunter I am farting around with, what will I do?
I’m not sure. I may pvp some to grab more gear. I could try to crack into the raiding faction of my guilds although the time commitments there make it unlikely. (8pm – 11pm on raid nights) I still have professions that are not maxxed out like blacksmithing, enchanting, alchemy, leatherworking, engineering, cooking, fishing and jewel crafting.
Who knows what I’ll do. I don’t come home at night and HAVE to play. I’m fine doing other things and actually for the most part prefer to do something other than WoW most nights.
I have come to realize that the people you play with have as much to do with your enjoyment of the game as the actual game itself. Since the crew split up and went their separate ways the game has been devoid of very much fun. Never was that more apparent than when I hit 70 last night and had my announcement met by crickets.
No one cared and to be honest, I don’t know that I did either.
After hitting 70 and no one caring, I decided to hop into our guild’s vent (voice chat) and listen in on the guild meeting that was occurring. Evidently there have been some recent problems in guild raids that they wanted to address. I don’t participate in these raids because they typically run from 8pm-11pm but I wanted to listen in.
It was very funny to listen to. The guild leaders that talked sounded intelligent and well spoken. They logically presented the various issues on the table and then offered up their ideas on how to address them as well as opening up to the floor for comments/ideas. I thought to myself how impressive this sounded but then I reminded myself that all of this attention and concern was directed at virtual accomplishments, virtual progression in the game, and virtual gear for your characters. If you listened in for a few moments you would think that you were listening on an intense discussion on how to solve world hunger or global warming. I said nothing during the event, if I had I wouldn’t have been acknowledged since nobody knows me because I don’t “raid”. I found listening very compelling though. It is bizarre listening in on some people that obviously have good communication skills and good leadership abilities choose to put them to work in a virtual manner with imaginary rewards for doing so.
WTF does Hilary think she is doing by not conceding? She has zero shot of winning the nomination, zero. At this point all she is doing is coming off as an extremely sore loser as well as doing nothing to help strengthen the party to ensure the publicans don’t snake a third term in office.
It’s amazing how much my (and many other people apparently) view of her has changed in the past year or so. She went from being almost the de facto candidate to the spoiled woman who isn’t getting her way so she is going to drag things out to spite everyone else involved. It’s over, give it up.