Home sick today. I started feeling it last night while watching the state of the union. Maybe watching all of the close ups of the various old farts in the audience brought it on. I thought Obama did a good job though on conveying his message. Only time will tell how effective it is.
Yes this post delves deeply into the crazy world of WoW. Bail if you like or read on if you want a better understanding of it all.
So like I mentioned awhile ago, I hooked back up with some guys I started out playing WoW with. The goal was to get all of us to 80, the new level cap so we could start running “heroic” instances. An instance is a dungeon that a group of players goes into. The group can be anywhere from 5 to 25 players big. Inside of the instance there are various “bosses”. Bosses are bad guys that are typically very hard to kill. To do so requires teamwork from all players involved. If one person screws up you can screw everyone else as well. The rewards for your effort is typically good items that drop from the boss. Well a HEROIC instance is a much harder version of this concept. Every enemy inside a heroic instance is much tougher than in a normal instance. The rewards for completing these instances is better of course.
Through out all the years I have been playing WoW I have pretty much steered clear of raiding and instances. There are several reasons. Players that consistently do instances are many times the type of WoW players that I don’t particularly enjoy hanging with. They are the hard core players, they are the ones that take great pride in their virtual achievements, the players that get a rise in the shorts if they get a piece of gear that adds 3% to their “crit”. I never felt comfortable around these folks.
So anyway, my paladin was my first guy to reach 80 over the weekend. I retrained him to be a healing specialist to go into heroic dungeons. Sunday night I went into my first heroic and failed miserably. My gear wasn’t up to snuff and as a result I was unable to heal well enough to keep the group alive.
There are two KEY people in any raid group, the “tank” which is normally a heavily armored played. The tank’s job is to keep the focus of the bad guys on him and off of the other players. It can be a very demanding job. The healer is the one that keeps everyone alive. Healing can be equally stressful. All I do is watch player’s health bars and throw healing spells on them in a non-stop barrage. I also have the ability to cure them of disease as well. If players die the blame almost always falls on the healer if it is justified or not.
So although I did a rotten job of keeping people alive in my first try, the players in my group were all cool about it. They understood I was green behind the ears in this aspect of the game. After the entire group dying 6 times they even agreed to drop back to regular mode so we could go through the instance without all of the pressure so I could learn the fights.
So last night I was at it again. We went into a different heroic instance. Earlier I was able to upgrade my gear a bit so that I wouldn’t have as many problems. For the most part it worked. We were able to clear the entire instance but the group still died 3 or 4 times along the way. Our group had a very good tank in it, however he also is one of those guys that is way into WoW.
He was getting on my nerves several times. Before one fight he started attacking as I was doing something else. As a result I was late getting heals onto him and he died. After he died he is like “What happened there??!!” followed by him reviewing his combat log. He reads off the multiple hits he took before he received his first heal to make a point of my mistake. I said that I was late getting the first heal off plain and simple. Throughout the experience there were multiple little smart ass remarks that rubbed me the wrong way.
So after spending maybe an hour and a half to two hours we killed the final boss, barely. I was doing a miserable job of managing the chaos in the final fight. Everybody needed healing, everybody needed cleansing including myself. The players all were dead including me. However I had a “soul stone” on me, meaning I was able to magically instantly revive from the dead. I resurrected and luckily the dragon only had a sliver of health left. I hit it once and it dropped.
For my efforts I received one piece of gear that was a slight upgrade to what I have. The tank that was giving me a hard time said I did a good job with all things considered. I didn’t believe him. I logged out of the game somewhat sweaty and stressed out. I didn’t feel good about it at all. I don’t need to get stressed out by WoW, I have plenty of real life things that can do that for me.
Things might get better as time goes on since shortly Charlie will be joining us. Charlie is as easy going as they come.
I got a call from Ali during the day Friday saying there was an “incident” at home. Of course I knew this related to something more than likely Sadie related, I could only imagine what it was. Evidently at some point Sadie decided that digging into the wall under the front window would be a good idea. Ali and I theorized that she saw something outside and in her dog brain she was going to dig through the wall to get it. Ali said she scolded Sadie strongly about it. When I got home and saw the damage I wasn’t all that freaked out. It was maybe the size of half a softball and nothing that couldn’t be patched and painted pretty easily.
Saturday during the day was quite busy. Ali and I knocked out a bunch of our normal stuff. In addition the grass was looking a bit unkempt so we mowed and weed whacked the property. That wasn’t enough work so after lunch we pulled stuff out of the garage and cleaned it. (our scheduled February cleaning project) There were tons of spiders, webs and dead frog and lizard carcasses to be sucked up.
We had to leave early for the race I was running that evening, the Festival of Lights. The FOL is a HUGE parade in Fort Myers that typically has somewhere around 200,000 spectators. Right before the parade they have a HUGE 5k run as well. The race didn’t start until 5:45 but we left the house at 3pm due to issues with finding parking before they start shutting down streets.
We piled the two dogs into the back of the Camry. For the most part they shared the back seat. However at some point Nicki decided she would have more room laying on the floor in the back. This would be my third time running the race, the first time running by myself since Ali is not in running shape yet. Hell I wasn’t in running shape either. Since Thanksgiving this would be only my third time running since I had some knee flare ups after the Turkey Trot.
We got into Fort Myers a little after 4 and began looking for a suitable parking spot. We knew we had to park far away if we wanted to be able to get out of town after the race. Otherwise we would be pinned in until after the parade ends around 9 pm. So we found a lot that was posted as 7 bucks to park. When I pulled in I told the guys that we needed to be able to get out after the run, we couldn’t be parked in. He said it was no problem, if we parked in the front row we had direct access to a small street in front of the parking area that we could get out on. Ok, sounds good. We paid our seven bucks and started the long walk.
The streets were already lined with chairs and in many cases people were already planted in those chairs even with the parade not scheduled to start for a good three hours. Areas of the sidewalk that did not have chairs were covered in duct tape with people’s names written on them, I guess that equated to a reservation. I find it hard to believe that some assholes didn’t just rip the tape up if they felt like it.
Sadie and Nicki got lots of “how cute” and “look at the doggies” as we carefully maneuvered our way through the people and seating arrangements. Finally we got to the closed off areas of the street so we could walk out in the open. As I went inside a big tent to check in I checked out the registration set up since we time races as well. They had a good system going with plenty of people manning the registration area that knew exactly what they were supposed to do, something we are sometimes lacking. I thought to myself if our club would be able to handle a race of this magnitude ourselves (over 1500 runners) Not in our current state, it would take a lot of retooling of procedures, standards and thought processes.
Once I got my chip, shirt and packet we all just sort of hung out for awhile outside the 
registration tent. Ali found a nice spot in the shade that worked out well for the dogs. We just sort of hung out and took in the bee hive of activity. Quite a few people came up to us and wanted to interact with the dogs. With Sadie it is a totally different situation than Nicki. Nicki is automatically scared of new people and TERRIFIED of children. Sadie loves anyone. Without fail she happily greeted anyone that came up to her including kids. A couple of the youngsters were even greeted with licks to the face.
Race time was finally approaching. Ali said she thought it would be best to just stay put with the dogs and I could easily find them after the race. Controlling both dogs with one set of hands is a tough. The start line was 3 blocks away so I made my way in that direction. Along the way I made a port-a-potty stop. I was hoping to avoid it after my “upper decker” experience at the YMCA run but I had to go. Luckily there was no such intruder in the urinal this time.
I got to the starting line with 5 minutes or so to spare. There was the usual HUGE mass of runners all chomping at the bit to go. Like last year there was a single wheelchair participant whom they left go a few minutes early. There were so many people that I couldn’t even hear the starter on the PA system. All we got was the gun and the mass of humanity slowly starting to move forward.
The first quarter to half mile or so of this run is a major pain in the ass. You have too many people jammed into too small of an area. Being inches from hundreds of moving body parts is tough to navigate. It also can dramatically slow down your official race time if you start in the back half of the pack as I did. You are just trying to not fall down.
So finally we get out onto a wide street and things spread out a bit. The temps were good for running, in the low 70’s. The first mile or so is normally the toughest until I get loose. Well the whole race was tough. I never felt all that comfortable and I was struggling to maintain an 8 minute mile pace. I picked out some visual targets during the race that I HAD to pass like the chubby woman with two knee braces or the lady that looked old enough to be my mother. The race route was lined with thousands of cheering spectators. However I wasn’t really able to enjoy any of their cheers, I was looking straight ahead, focused on just getting through it. It sucks, I would like to be able to catch some looks to the crowd now and then.
So the final turn into a looong straightaway finally arrives. I picked up my pace the best I could and “sprinted” towards the finish. My official race time was 26:09. My GPS time which accounted for the delay at the start was 25:45. It was close to an eight minute mile pace which was ok considering the circumstances. My time stuck just on of the north side of the middle of my age group. I was 34th out of 69 men in the 40-44 bracket, yahoo.
Ali decided to come up to the finish line to cheer me on. She said she was yelling for me but between my tunnel vision at the moment and the loud crowd noise I couldn’t hear or see her. They had no water right by the finish line. Luckily Ali saved a bottle for me. I needed it. The dogs and her were very happy to see me. After stretching a bit I made my way into the same tent we went in for registration, this time for refreshments. As I went in they handed me 3 tickets. Each ticket was good for either a soda, a beer or a slice of pizza. You entered this huge tent on the left. The line went down the left, around the back and up to the right where the pizza, beer and soda awaited, a pain in the ass. Things really got annoying when after waiting in line for awhile I finally got to the right side. They make an announcement that the pizza was not here yet! WTF??? They had the EXACT same issue last year! Hundreds of people waiting for pizza that was promised post-race!! Jesus Christ. Well I stayed in the line thinking I would at least get a soda after waiting for so long. I was about to bail out of waiting completely as my patience was expiring when guys started coming into the tent with garbage bags full of pizza boxes. Yay, I used two tickets and got two slices, one for Ali and one for me.
After eating we didn’t stick around and started the long trek back to the car. The trip back was tougher because the sidewalks were now packed in some cases 10 deep with people waiting for the parade. Trying to navigate that with two dogs in tow was not fun. Finally we decided to just walk out in the street, the parade had not actually started yet so it was the fastest way to go. I heard dozens of dog admiring comments along the way.
Finally we got up to the cross street we had to head down to get to our parked car. Just then the fireworks signifying the start of the parade started. Regular blog readers will remember what happened at the Pottstown Rumble when Nicki was first exposed to fireworks, she is TERRIFIED by them. I quickly knelt down and grabbed her. As soon as the noise started she was frantically trying to run. I was strong enough to hold her in place but she was freaking out. We were right in front of parade watchers as this spectacle was taking place. We had to get her out of there but she was too scared to be able to go about it without running over people. I scooped her up like a big 65 pound furry baby and carried her. Being held by me seemed to calm her down somewhat. Once we got out of sight of the explosions I put her down. She made a beeline towards the car.
As we approached the car a new problem was staring us in the face. Remember that front row spot that was supposed to allow us to get out when we needed to? Well it would work as long as someone else didn’t park in front of you. After the drama of the fireworks neither Ali or I had any patience for this situation. If we didn’t get that car moved we would be stuck at the parade until the owner decided to come back. I marched right over to the guys that were running the lot. I reminded them I was the guy that needed to get out. I pointed to how we were now parked in. The guy looked and came over. “No one was supposed to park there” he said. “well, I guess nobody told this guy..” I remarked as we walked over. The attendant surveyed the situation. There was no way to squeeze past. As we walked around the car we noticed that the passenger side window was wide open. Ali mentioned that maybe we could throw it in neutral and push it out of the way.
I told her that I didn’t think you could put it in neutral without the key. Furthermore the steering column would lock in place once you started to turn the wheel. The attendant agreed but said maybe we would get lucky. So I reach in the open window, pop the lock and open the door. The alarm starts blaring, lights start flashing and all hell breaks loose. As soon as the alarm starts going the attendant heads towards the parade saying he was going to try to find the owner, I have no idea how he planned to do that.
Well 50 yards down the little street there is a cop that has traffic blocked off. He’s a younger guy, probably not much past 30. “You guys aren’t trying to steal that car are you?” he says. We laugh and say no of course not, we explained we were supposed to be able to get out of the parking lot but got parked in. We hoped we could get the vehicle in neutral to move it out of the way. Well initially the cop seemed to be good natured about it but then he starts in a more serious tone. “You know what you did could technically be a felony. You can get 5-15 years for it.” My pissed off meter immediately jumped off the charts. This guy was going to try to throw his authority around. “So you are saying they would convict us of a felony for trying to move a car that parked us in”, I say in the best controlled tone I could muster. I was REALLY pissed and felt like calling the cop a f’ing asshole for even throwing that bullshit out there. “Well you wouldn’t want someone opening your door would you?” the cop says. “If I parked someone in I would understand, yes….” It was right on the verge of getting real ugly.
I backed up and explained what happened in depth. I said we ran in the race and made sure to get parking arrangements that would allow us to get out after the race. We were just freaking out a bit. After that the cops attitude dissipated a bit. Amazingly the parking lot guy just then was walking back towards us with the car owners in tow. I have no idea how he found him but didn’t care. The car owner was very nice and apologized for parking us in, he wasn’t aware he was blocking us in. He moved the car and we were on our way. What a night.
My Sunday was laid back again. I knocked out what needed to be knocked out in a couple hours. After that the rest of my Sunday was much like the prior Sunday, I caught up on Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, played with the dogs and played WoW. It was nice.
During the weekend I had to break up a big dogfight. Sadie has this thing where she can’t stand if Nicki has a toy or anything else in her mouth, she tries to steal it. Most of the time Nicki will just let her take whatever Sadie wants to take. Well when I was outside with them I threw a part of a palm tree to Nicki and she was chewing on it. Sadie comes over and tried to grab it. Instead of letting Sadie have her way Nicki clenched down tight on the wood and pulled. She outweighs Sadie by 20 pounds so she is definitely stronger.
Well when Sadie refused to back down Nicki lost her patience and turned into the Tasmanian devil and went after Sadie with intent to maim. Sadie returned the favor and had her teeth fully exposed. They were trying to hurt each other at that point. I yelled at both of them and pinned them both down. As soon as I did they both fell right into line and calmed down. After all I am THE leader of the pack when push comes to shove. After the incident they acted like it never happened.
It’s very funny watching Nicki chase Sadie around the yard. Sadie is extremely fast and extremely elusive. In a straight line Nicki can accelerate pretty well and almost keep up with Sadie. But Sadie can change directions on a dime and when she does big, burly Nicki goes shooting right by her. I think Nicki enjoys having someone to burn off energy with. We just need to tweak their interactions a bit more.
So far knock on wood both of my knees don’t feel bad at all after running the race. I am cautiously optimistic because I felt pretty much felt the same way initially after running the Gobble Gobble. I am not running this week as a precaution.
I am running in my first race since Thanksgiving Saturday night up at the Fort Myers Festival of Light. This is a fun run because it is along a jam packed parade route. It is a big race with over 1000 participants. The downside to the race is parking sucks with so many people, both parade watchers and runners converging on the same area. Last year Ali ran this race with me. She still hasn’t reestablished her running fitness since her knee problems so instead she is going to be cheering me on with the two dogs in tow. It should be a fun time. I have no idea how I’ll do. A sub 25 minute time would be great but with the huge backlog of runners at the start there is very little probability I will break that number.
I have a list full of things in my head I want to get done this weekend including cleaning out the garage and quickly mowing and weed whacking the property. It’s looking a bit ragged.
I’m sure the dogs will keep us entertained during the lulls in work. They are quite fun to just watch.
Lightbox it for full awesomeness…
So I went to the dermatologist to have a couple spots looked at, one on my upper arm and one up on my shoulder/deltoid area. The doc took all of 2 seconds to identify them as basal cell cancer with a 90% probability. He numbed the areas and then cut portions off to have them sent out to be verified. He said there were two options to remove the problem spots, cutting them out our burning them off. Because of the location of the cancer, areas that typically see a lot of movement, he said if it was him he would opt to burn them off as stitches could leave a bigger scar as well as being more restricitive to your movement. I said that was fine. Once the results come back I will be going back in to have it done. Yay. Basal cell cancer isn’t a huge deal, it doesn’t metastasize like a melanoma does. However it typically will not get better on it’s own and could grow, so it is always best to have it removed. It does however certainly put me at risk for developing the more serious sorts of skin cancer so I need to always be aware of anything funky looking that pops up on my skin.
Yesterday on the way back from the gym I stopped at the ATM in the government complex. As I was standing at the machine I heard loud swearing off in the distance. I turned and saw an angry looking man storming away from the courthouse, alone, with some yellow paper in his hand, surely a court order or citation of some sort. He was stomping and swearing the entire time. “Mother f’rs, f’in a-holes, f’in bullshit!!!!” on and on it went. He continued his rant even after I returned to my truck and drove off. I guess he needed to vent.
Sadie passed her first mini-test yesterday although her and Nicki were only alone for around 4 hours. We’ll slowly increase the duration. She has calmed down a little bit but is still very energetic. She is a lot of fun to have around even if Nicki doesn’t always agree.
The picture that was taken of us for Gulf Shore Life at the Pet Lovers Ball has been 
posted on their website. I’m not sure if it will actually make the print version or not. It’s still kind of a cool thing though. You won’t see me in a suit very often. Click it to shadowbox it, ohhh, neat….
Although Nicki has been generally accommodating since Sadie joined the household there are certain things that she just won’t tolerate. When I make my sandwich in the morning I usually give Nicki a couple torn up pieces of lunch meat. Nicki absolutely does not want Sadie getting in on any of her lunch meat. Now when I am over at her dish tearing it up Nicki is standing guard inches away, making sure Sadie has no openings. The split second I am done Nicki is scarfing down the treat.
Another tradition is when I come home Nicki likes to come up on the sofa with me and lay down on my lap. So yesterday after work I came home and sat on the sofa. Nicki jumped up and laid on me as she always does. Well Sadie tried to get in on the action. Nicki instantly transformed from a timid, shy little angel into a ferocious werewolf. She snarled like she was ready to rip Sadie’s head off. I actually had to grab Nicki to keep her back.
We are glad that Nicki will assert herself when she needs to. We just hope there isn’t any bloodshed in the process. Today is a test of Sadie’s ability to be home for an extended period of time as Ali is going into work. Hopefully she is able to hold it.
We received our taxes back from the accountant and just like the last few years we are again going to be treated to a sizable return. We should have plenty to get the kitchen counters replaced, finally. I’m looking forward to getting it done. I still haven’t pulled the trigger on the refinance of our mortgage. I have been watching the rates, hoping for them to hit 4.5% before locking in.
Woot off today btw.
So after work on Friday I got home at almost the exact same time as Ali did. She had just picked up Sadie from the Humane Society. She said that Sadie was good in the car and slept most of the way. Sadie was happy to see me but she is happy to see almost any human being for that matter. We decided to take her in the side gate to the back yard and then let Nicki out to see her.
Like I said before, when we were at the Humane Society with both dogs the interaction was rather mundane, neither dog took a huge interest in the other. When I let Nicki out the back door we didn’t know what to expect. Well our concerns were immediately lessened when within a minute or two Sadie and Nicki were playing and chasing each other around the yard. We were a bit concerned about Sadie running only two days after getting fixed. She is a little rocket, much faster than Nicki and able to change directions on a dime. She would give my dad’s dogs a run for their money in the speed department.
Ali and I both were all smiles to see Nicki at least initially be happy to have another dog around. After letting them run around for a few minutes we brought them both inside so Sadie could check out her new home. She was all over the place smelling and investigating. She also was very interested in being wherever Ali and I were at. The rest of the night went ok. Sadie made herself right at home, happy to snuggle up to me on the sofa or Ali on the recliner. You could tell Nicki wasn’t thrilled with sharing the attention but she tolerated it. At bed time Sadie again had no problems jumping right into the action. She hopped up on the bed and planted herself between us and stayed there all night long.
Sadie was very restless during the night, both Ali and I were awakened multiple times. At one point I remember saying to Ali, “THIS has to change” I couldn’t exist on a daily basis having poor, fragmented sleep every night. Ali said she was probably just excited and confused by her new arrangements. I hoped this was the case.
So Saturday morning I drug my still very tired body out of bed and started on my normal routine of cat maintenance that is typically done before letting Nicki out. I was near the end of the process, standing at the sink washing my hands when I saw Sadie in my peripheral vision, she looked to be very still. I turn and see her in full pissing position with a huge wet spot under her. “Sadie NO!” I yelled. She took of for the bedroom. Of course Ali heard the scream and came out. I already had the Spot Bot in hand. I tried to not be furious but I encouraged Ali to take the dogs out. I was not a happy camper.
The Spot Bot ran through 4 cycles. I wanted to try my best to make sure to pull up as much of the urine as possible. I followed up the robotic cleaning with a generous application of Nature’s Miracle. When Sadie came back in she knew she did a NO NO. I was logical enough to know that there is no way a new animal can come into your house and not have some sort of incident. It certainly didn’t do much though to make me feel more secure in the decision we made to adopt another dog.
I had to go into work for a good chunk of the day Saturday. As I was working in the server room I was feeling a lot of anxiety about the adoption. “What have we done?” ran through my head a few times. Nicki and we had a good thing going. I wasn’t sure that we needed to overturn the apple cart by adding another dog into the mix. It was on my mind quite a bit. The weekend work was mostly successful. We installed a new digital KVM switch and cleaned up the wiring behind our second server rack. The third part of the work had to be scuttled, a server migration, because the back up I performed the night before had some errors in it. I headed home after 3 wondering what sort of environment I would come back to.
Ali said things had gone fine. Nicki and Sadie played quite a bit. Nicki appeared to like having a playmate but wasn’t thrilled with sharing her amenities inside. Sadie was definitely higher energy than I realized from our interactions at the shelter. In a way she reminded me of our neighbor’s Jack Russel, Zoe who is very much in your face at all times. It made me think that Sadie is part terrier.
One of the biggest concerns we had was Nicki letting herself be dominated by another dog since it is in her nature to be generally submissive. Sadie demonstrated some dominant behavior at times. When I open the slider or a door to the outside Sadie always has to be the first one out. She will plow through Nicki to get ahead of her. She is not shy to be first in line for food, treats or a spot on the sofa or ottoman either. Ali and I encouraged Nicki to be more assertive. There were times when Sadie would try to be the aggressor but there was a line that Nicki would not tolerate which is good. When Nicki growled and took an aggressive stance Sadie would immediately drop down and be submissive, that is what we want.
Sadie has a number of funny traits. She drinks a ton more water than Nicki does and she does it in a very messy way. When she leaves the water bowl she leaves with a stream of water falling out of her mouth. Thank goodness the water is on the ceramic tile. She is an avid grass eater. We constantly catch her grazing on tall grass in the yard. She is very itchy. She had horrible fleas when she was rescued and as a result has dermatitis in several areas. Her belly is also shaved from the spay so the hair growing back in itches as well. She is constantly scratching, licking or chewing on some area of her body it seems. It appears that Sadie came from a home where she was regularly hit. When you bring a hand up to pet her she winces instinctively like she is ready to get whacked. I think she has had a less than ideal existence up to this point.
My anxiety about her adoption somewhat lessened as the weekend went on. I think as more time passes all parties involved will settle in to daily routines that will work. My biggest concern at this point is Sadie’s unquenchable thirst and the urine that comes as a result. I am praying that she is able to hold it on days the dogs are home alone when Ali works. If not she will be taking up residence in the kitchen until she learns the carpet is not a toilet. Tomorrow will be the first test.
Sunday morning we had to get up at 4:30 to time a race. After a very unrestful sleep the night before, getting up that early was exactly what I didn’t need. I took a melatonin before bed to try to get at least some solid uninterrupted sleep. It appeared to work, I slept straight through thank goodness. Sadie appeared to be less restless. I learned my lesson and switched my task order. Task 1, dogs outside, there was no way I had the time or patience for a repeat pee performance.
We loaded both dogs up in the truck and headed to the race. It was a tight squeeze. Nicki laid down in the back while Sadie used Ali’s lap as a dog seat the entire way there. This race is a new race, the first year for it. We had various issues leading up to it that clued us in that the day was probably not going to go very well. Unfortunately we were dead on.
The layout of the race was not logistically efficient. The start, finish and registration areas were all very spread out. When I arrived at the registration area and started to unload the chips, runners were already starting to show up. The lady at the desk was yelling that she needed a registration list which I had in the truck. I snagged the list and continued bringing stuff over. It didn’t take long until I realized that the people manning the registration desk had little to no idea of what they needed to be doing. I had to bark out some hurried instructions as I rushed to get the chips and laptop set up. It was a mess. When people started coming over for their timing chips I realized that the zip ties we use to attach them were back at the finish line in a container. Thankfully the race organizer hopped in a golf cart and grabbed them for me.
The hectic scene was made worse by the weather conditions. There was a thick fog enveloping the area that was making everything wet including the computer equipment. It was not good working conditions. Luckily since the race was 10 miles I had time to set up the finish line after the start. The race started and Ali, the two dogs and I piled to head to the finish line. Luckily the dogs seemed content enough to just hang out in the truck while we worked.
The first guy crossing the line came through at in blistering 55 minutes and change. The second place runner came through about 5 minutes later. As he did I noticed that the guy looked vary familiar. I was pretty sure I knew him but I had no idea where from. I looked at his name in the database, it sounded familiar but when I saw the New York, NY address it threw me off. How would I know someone from New York? I sat there and wracked my brains trying to figure out who the guy was. Then it clicked. It was Kyle, a co-worker of mine from my Weis Markets days! Kyle worked in the produce department right next to the meat department I worked in. He was a very athletic kid that went to Wilson High, he was a couple years younger than me. I remember we got along well. Eventually I tracked him down and asked him if he worked at Weis 20 years ago. Kyle was all smiles and said he saw me earlier and thought he knew me as well. He said that his fiance’s parents have a place in the area and they were just down visiting. They heard by word of mouth that there was a race that day and just came down spur of the moment. I met his fiance and chatted for a brief while. I had to get back to timing the race. I congratulated him on his time, obviously he has maintained his fitness level over the years. What a small world, I could not believe I ran into him.
So anyway, the timing of the runners was going relatively well. As usual we had several runners cross whose chips did not register. This is very annoying as it requires us to constantly babysit the system the entire race so we can manually punch in any missed finishers. I went in and generated my first early result page and posted it. Shortly thereafter I had someone come up to me and tell me that one of the runners was incorrectly listed as a female instead of a male. WTF? I went in and took a look at the result report. I was in disbelief. As I looked down the page I saw tons of misgendered runners, men as women and vice versa. I choked when I realized what happened.
The race organizer was providing me with entries in an excel file. I basically import the file into the race database and it populates the race with runners. I had received several spreadsheets from her during the week that had various issues so I decided to just wait to put in the master list on Saturday from a final spreadsheet she sent me. Well evidently she must have done a sort on the file at some point but did not expand the sort to cover all columns. The result, runner names with mismatched genders AND birth dates. This was pretty much a worse case scenario. With incorrect genders and birth dates there was no way for me to calculate accurate finish results and awards. WTF are we going to do?
Well our only option was to try to fix it on the spot. The race organizer was horrified when I told her the error came from her file. There was added pressure to have accurate results in this race because they were giving out cash prizes, big cash prizes. We were scrambling. What we wound up having to do was have EVERY runner (well runners that listened) come up to the timing table and give us their correct DOB. Thankfully Ali is very good with data entry. Still with over 150 runners it was a huge undertaking. I’m sure it looked ridiculous and pissed many runners off to have to stand in line after a race to give their information a second time. I know I would have been pissed if I was a participant. We had no choice, it was the only way we could try to fix the mess.
We were quite fortunate that the race was lightly attended. If this was a 500 person run I don’t know what we would have done. Eventually we got the results and awards out albeit much later than promised. Ali and I were very angry initially. Typically the race club handles the registrations directly instead of letting outside parties do it just for this very reason. I can pretty much guarantee it will never happen again. I felt bad for the woman that was organizing the race. The excel error was an honest mistake, it just happened to be a monumental one. To be fair, the woman was put in charge of organizing a race and had no experience in doing so. There was just a lack of communication, someone should have been leading her through the process. Initially one of the big wigs at the YMCA was going around pointing fingers at us, saying we screwed up somehow. Before we had a chance to rip into her, one of our board members, a former president of the club, stepped in and diffused the situation. He explained the error was a result of the file we received from the YMCA. Needless to say if the event is held next year there will be a whole lot of changes going on.
Finally we got the hell out of there around 11. Before we left I decided I would use the port-o-pot. It was almost appropriate that when I went into the unit there was a 4 or 5 inch long turd sitting in the urinal. Yea someone decided it would be fun to do a porto-potty version of an upper decker. I had to take a leak bad so I just turned my head and made sure I aimed above it, f’ing gross.
After we got home and ate lunch I relented and laid down for a nap, something I hate to do. I was just exhausted. After a couple hours I got up and immediately started in on the various things that needed to be attended to. With Ali’s help we got most everything wrapped up in the span of two or three hours.
Sunday night we watched Burn after Reading, a movie with a good cast including Brad Pitt, George Clooney and John Malkovich. The best word to describe this movie is bizarre. It somehow manages to tie together a bunch of people that you would never think would be associated with each other. There are a lot of funny moments in it. There are also some unexpected deaths of characters at moments were you expected something funny to happen. Overall I think we enjoyed the movie, I think. B+
Monday Ali decided to go into work so I could stay home with the dogs all day. I was in my pajamas playing WoW when the doorbell rang. I stuck my head out and saw an older couple. WTF? I thought to myself. I opened the door and asked them how they were doing. Good they said and they just sort of looked at me. “What can I do for you?” I politely asked. “I am Alison’s uncle Dave and this is Betty” Oh shit… Once he said that I knew he looked familiar but I could have never told you his name. I only have seen him/them a few times in my life and I don’t believe any of those encounters involved me saying more than a sentence or two to them. I felt like a f’ing idiot.
I told them that they just missed Alison. They explained that they had been in Florida for a couple weeks and just happened to swing into the Naples area the day before. They had our address so they punched it into the GPS and just showed up on a whim. I was sort of at a loss. Dave started throwing out names of family mamebers that I recognized but I was far from sure on details. I was mixing up names and situations when I tried to tie them together. I really felt bad when they explained that they weren’t married and that Dave was married to Ali’s aunt who died of cancer a few years back.
Well I did my best to hide my embarrassment of the lack of awareness of who these people were. I invited them inside where we talked for a little while both inside and out on the lanai. I did the best I could to keep the conversation flowing but it was awkward at best. After 20 or 25 minutes they said they were heading out to head to Sarasota and after that begin the long trip back to PA. I thanked them for stopping by and wished them a safe trip. I really felt bad that I didn’t know who they were at first.
The rest of my day off was quite nice. I only had two things I wanted to get done, wash the truck and wash the bedding. After that I spent the day catching up on Hero’s and Battlestar Galactica, playing WoW and spending time in the back yard with Nicki and Sadie. I also watched the most recent Resident Evil movie. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great. The animation realism was pretty good except for the big bad monster at the end with a huge eyeball in it’s shoulder. That thing just looked stupid and very fake. I’d give the flick a C+.
So I survived the first 3 days of a new dog. My anxiety I was feeling so strongly on Saturday has subsided somewhat. There have been no further accidents inside. I see certain situations where Nicki obviously feels slighted and that makes me a bit sad. I think seeing her run wild in the backyard playing with Sadie helps to make up for that. Sadie is a good dog that just wants love, not so different than most living creatures. I think it will all work out.
Behold Jeremy at our mini Wii Olympics the night before Ali’s race. He sent me the other shots he had from that night as well. You can see them here. It includes some very exciting shots of Randall sleeping.
So I downloaded the new 1.2 version of Fieldrunners for the Iphone. This version added an additional map as well as 2 new towers, a flame thrower and bomb tower. Unfortunately it also introduced a ton of bugs as well. The app would constantly dump and I couldn’t get the new towers or map unlocked. Thankfully they just released 1.21 which fixes most of the problems.
I recently beat the new map on the “classic” setting which means I survived 100 rounds of assaults. I thought I would offer my tips for the thousands of Fieldrunners players.. The new map is challenging because it has 3 points where enemies enter the playing field. It also has many more attacks by air which presents more problems since airplanes,dirigibles and helicopters fly right over any maze configuration you have created. There are a few new types of enemies in this new map as well. There are entrances at the left top and left bottom the of map as well as an entrance at 12 o’clock. The 12 o’clock entrance is rarely used and if it is, only air vehicles will come out of it. You need to start out building in the top and bottom center of the map.
As money accumulates you are going to want to build two long gun turret walls to divert ground troops from the top to the bottom and troops from the bottom to the top. The reason for this is there are many rounds when ground and air come at you simultaneously. If you don’t split off the ground forces you will never have enough concentrated firepower to knock both types out at once in the later rounds. Once these walls are built concentrate on making big blocks of destructive firepower. I prefer lots of fully upgraded rocket towers with a few lightning towers mixed in for awesome single target destruction. Don’t forget slowing towers spread evenly along the maze to keep the targets slowed down as much as possible.
When you unlock the 2 additional tower types strategy can change pretty dramatically. With the tremendous destructive power of both the flamethrower and bomb towers you can worry less about running ground troops up and down and instead concentrate on making huge squares of chaos creating flame and bomb weapons. Try to route the bad guys around the squares. This can tricky however at harder skill levels. Wisely spending your money can be problematic. The new towers, while very powerful are also very expensive. At higher levels enemies take a major beating before they go down. Plan accordingly.
Ran 2.5 miles on the treadmill. At this point I think I am a good to go to run the Festival of Lights next weekend.
I have a three day weekend. Saturday, Ali’s Valentine’s day treat is to have me be at the office for a good chunk of the day doing upgrades. Sunday morning we have to time a race in Marco Island that could be a fiasco.
I gave my final blessing to Ali picking up Sadie this afternoon. The rest of the weekend will be one big dog socialization experiment. I have to read up on how to teach a dog it’s name.
Last night after work I met Ali and Nicki at the Humane Society. There is another dog there that we have hold on. Diva, the other dog we looked at is still at the shelter as well. The dog we have a hold on is named Sadie although that is not what her original name is. We could tell because she makes no acknowledgement at all if you call her this. Sadie is a lab mix. Whatever she is mixed with is on the small side, she is a little over a year old and is considerably smaller than Nicki. She was just spayed on Wednesday. It was obvious she already had a litter of puppies based on her protruded nipples.
Like Diva, Sadie has a bare spot on her back towards her tail. We were told she was basically flea infested when they got her and as a result has dermatitis in that area. Supposedly that should clear up. So we took both dogs out into a fenced area and let them interact. Sadie seemed more interested in checking Nicki out than Nicki was in her. Once again the millions of smells from other dogs had Nicki’s attention, she basically roamed the area just sniffing away.
Sadie seemed like she was mild mannered and happy. Ali and I both took turns walking her around to see if Nicki would get jealous. Again it hardly got a rise out of her, she was all about smelling. Ali and I took turns polling each other’s feeling about Sadie. I think what we really want is for Nicki to meet a dog and they immediately start running around and play. Unfortunately, I think there is zero chance of that happening with any dog on Humane Society property. Nicki is much too distracted from being on foreign turf.
I would say her interaction with Sadie was very similar to her interaction with Diva. Diva
definitely came off as slightly more assertive. I think having a dog slightly smaller than Nicki would be a good thing as far as Nicki not being dominated. Her nature is to be rather submissive. Hell when we went into the shelter there were 2 cats roaming loose, Nicki immediately ran between my legs for protection.
We told the shelter volunteer that we would let them know either way today. When we got home we talked off and on about the prospects of a second dog through out the night. It’s a bigger decision than some might think, at least in our situation. Nicki is six years old now. She is very established in both her daily routines as well as ours. We have meshed our lives in a way that is working relatively well for all parties involved. Unfortunately Nicki can’t talk and let us know if she would welcome giving up her role as the sole queen of the house in order to gain the companionship of another dog.
Adopting an adult dog is a different ballgame than adopting a puppy. When you adopt a puppy a bond is formed right from the get go. Your interactions during that first year helps shape the dogs personality. With an adult dog that personality is more or less formed already. You don’t have the same closeness, at least initially. On the plus side, with adult dogs you hopefully don’t have to go through the headaches of house training and teething/chewing.
I think our biggest concern is we somehow wind up messing with the chemistry we have with Nicki. After that the added expense, work and logistics of caring for a second dog follows in the concerns list. On the plus side we would hope that a second dog would give Nicki a full time companion and playmate to add some excitement to her life. So often I see Nicki giving me a mopey, “I’m bored” look. Another dog would hopefully remedy that.
I don’t know, I can go back and forth with pros and cons, paralysis by analysis. My track record in life has always sided primarily on the “don’t rock the boat” area. It has not always served me well. Maybe this can be a step away from that mindset.