Archives October 2009

Oh well the Phils couldn’t pull out a win last night but in the big picture they are coming out of New York in good shape.  A few hits in key situations last night and they could have pulled the game out.  Pedro pitched well, especially considering the situation.  Yankee fans HATE Pedro from his time on the Red Sox.  Despite a stadium full of haters, he went out there and pitched great minus the two solo homeruns he gave up.

Yesterday at the gym it was shoulder and abs day. Well for some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to try to do the ab exercise that Stallone did in Rocky IV.  Basically you get on an ab bench and then extend your legs outward with nothing but your shoulder blades touching.  In the movie Stallone was actually doing reps, raising his feet up and down.  I just wanted to see if I could hold the position.

Now of course Stallone is built much differently than me.  He is a short, compact guy.  I have a stretch armstrong build.  As a result of my long torso and legs there is a ton of leverage needed to keep myself in that position.  I was able to get into what felt like a similar position but it took all I had to just hold it there.  It felt like the muscles in my chest and upper abs were going to rip apart.  I held it for a few seconds and that was all I could do.  I tried one more time with similar results.  It was a cool thing to try and I may attempt to do it more regularly to see if I get any better.  I think I actually made the move tougher than it needed to be because I had the ab board tilted down instead of flat as when Sly did it.

Tonight I am going out with a buddy of mine from work.  I don’t plan to go off the deep end like I did a couple Fridays ago.  No tavern towers will be consumed. 

Not much else to say really except “They were who we thought they were!”

Man that Phillies game was fantastic.  I actually saw it till the final out.  Cliff Lee’s performance was incredible.  Not only did he pitch fantastic, he seemed remarkably relaxed throughout the entire game.  It was like pitching in game one of the World Series was old hat to him.  As a former pitcher, I have insight on what the pressure of a situation can do to your performance.  Lee seemed totally immune to it.

Chase Utley’s home runs were masterful.  In each situation he worked the at bat until he got a sweet pitch to hit and hit it he did.  Like Lee, Utley seemed unfazed by the accomplishment, just another day at the office.   To put more of a gold star on the performance, most of the game was played in a steady misting rain in raw 50 degree temperatures.  I think the Phils made a definite statement with the win.  They are not there to F around or be the Yankees bitch.  Far too many Yankee fans thought this was going to be a cakewalk. 

So Ali is on her way to Pa for a few days.  My mom is going to drive out to our place tomorrow to hang out over the weekend.  This marks a big moment, in case you read the last line quickly and didn’t notice. Mom is going to DRIVE HERSELF to our house.  I’m not quite sure when the last time she drove that amount of distance but I would guess it’s been between two and three years.

Having mom there will save me from having to drive home to let the dogs out on Friday and Monday.  I warned mom there would be a generous amount of Phillies and Eagles watching going on which she was fine with.  I’m sure we will have a good time.  I know the dogs will be thrilled to see her walk in the door tomorrow.

I have neglected to mention that I have seen some old familiar faces since I have gone back to Planet Fitness.  One of them was BBCPG (big butt cell phone girl)  You may remember her as the pretty one with a large back end that always was talking on her cell phone.  She also would do cardio machines at ridiculously easy resistance levels so it wouldn’t interfere with her conversations.  Surprisingly, it seems like she managed to shave off a few pounds even while doing all of that jabbering, she looked good.

I also have been reintroduced to Mr McFeeley.  He was the guy that did every single exercise in an incredibly stupid manner.  Every thing he does uses next to no range of motion and is performed at a very rapid pace.  He is also the guy that was pissed off at me because I accidentally knocked his glasses off of the Reebok step during a 300 work out.  He still is as dorky as ever and still does every single exercise incorrectly.

I also saw the creepy guy that used to try to initiate conversations with Alison when she would walk Nicki around the nursing home.  The guy ALWAYS wears a plain white undershirt, I’ve never seen him in anything else.  I don’t think the elevator goes all the way to the top floor.

It’s interesting to see these gym characters again but I can’t say I have said one peep to any of them, nor do I have any plans to in the future.

Early  in my IT career I was exclusively a hardware tech.  I fixed pc’s and printers primarily.  One of our biggest accounts at that time was Meridian Bank.  Meridian had a number of offices in downtown Philly, one of which was at Liberty One, one of the the centerpiece buildings of the city.  Since Meridian was our biggest customer they generally tried to service the account with techs that were good.  Generally speaking if you were sent on Meridian calls you more or less knew your stuff. 

Driving from Reading to Philly for service calls was not fun because of the dreadful traffic you would run into.  However when I finally would make it there I always felt important as I would pull my cart of tools and equipment into the atrium.  When you are pulling a cart of computer equipment people check it out.

 My cart was always loaded down on trips to Philly.  If you were going to travel that distance you wanted to make SURE you addressed the problem either by bringing an abundance of parts and/or a piece of loaner equipment to get them back in business.   I eventually went there enough that the security guards recognized me and would wave me through without issue.

Those five or so years I spent as a hardware tech were probably the most hectic of any in my IT career.  Each day I would be thrown into another “emergency” in various places dealing with tons of different people and businesses.  My pay rate was low, my stress level was high but I enjoyed the job, a lot.  I got big sense of accomplishment each and every day as I would take care of my list of calls.   

That is the one thing that is dreadfully lacking in my current job situation, variety.  Sure I am still the go to guy and I still have many daily dilemmas to solve and conquer.  However all of these challenges occur in a very small space of the world.  I deal with the same people in the same seats day and in and day out.  It can be in a word, boring.

Don’t get me wrong, the positives of the job outweigh the negatives by far, especially in today’s rocky job market.  Still there are days when I wouldn’t mind being on the road on my way to a new place not knowing exactly what I’ll be facing when I get there.

I missed the gym yesterday because of a ridiculously long tech call.  As a result I did an EA Active workout.  I actually did the 20th and final  workout of the 30 day challenge.  The 30 day challenge is awesome, it’s too bad it took me 3 months to get it all done.  For various reasons I just have not had the time or motivation to workout an additional 20 times on top of  my already 5 day a week gym routine.  The last workout was tough as expected, especially on the lower body. 

I questioned the wisdom of having  jumping squats as the third exercise when my body was not really warmed up yet.  On top of that I was doing regular squats, squats with a hold and calf raise, rear lunges, front lunges, side lunges with a toe touch and the dreaded split lunge jumps.  I went through the challenge on medium difficulty, if you can complete it on hard level you are definitely no fitness slouch.  There is no mercy.  

I wanted to mention something odd about Transformers 2.  In one section Shia LeBouf is being seduced by a hot college co-ed.  Well at one point she has him pinned on a bed and all of a sudden a big metallic tail came out from under her dress and she attacks him with it just as Megan Fox showed up.  This made zero sense.  Never has a transformer had the ability to become a human being made of flesh? They have always been MECHANICAL beings that turn into machines.  It was really out of place as for a moment I thought I was seeing a skin job from Battlestar Galactica.    This was really a disservice to the hardcore Transformer community in my opinion.  Everyone knows Transformers can NOT transform into humans.

Have you ever heard of people that treat symptoms instead of problems?  Doctors and especially pharmaceutical companies LOVE these type of individuals, hell they try to breed them.  The game works like this.  People willingly abuse their bodies via smoking, overeating or lack of exercise (or any combination) and as a result they develop health conditions.  The pharmaceutical companies then will happily swoop in and give you a miracle pill to treat the symptoms of your ailment.  In their ideal world people will simple continue to abuse their bodies so they continue to suffer the symptoms so they can profit as a end result.

To me, it’s pure insanity for someone to rely on a plethora of pills to maintain their day to day existence when they could simply work on the real source of the problem and address it directly.  I mean really, wtf?  If you kept hitting your hand with a hammer every day would you continue the behavior and just keep taking pain pills for the pain or would you stop swinging the hammer? (or at least get some better aim) 

Of course as much is in life, it comes down to convenience/laziness.  It is far easier in many peoples minds to just take some pills than to change a lifestyle that they deem comfortable.

It’s a dreadful cycle that has been exploding over recent years.  Self responsibility becomes trivialized when you can rely on modern medicine to keep you alive despite your best efforts to the contrary.

So the Eagles did what they should, they beat the shitty Redskins, a team that beat them twice last year somehow.  Let’s go over the good points about the game.  The Eagles made some big plays both on offense and defense.  Desean Jackson went nuts scoring twice on a long run and a long pass.  The new linebacker the Eagles picked up immediately made an impact catching a deflected pass and running it back for a touchdown and creating a turnover while chasing down the QB from behind. Nice!

Ok the not so good, besides the couple big plays, the offense did nothing, zippo, nada.  They were unable to put together a single sustained drive the entire game which concerns me.  Once again the running game was more miss than hit, something that surely will continue to haunt them. McNabb had some dreadful missed throws to open receivers.  Sometimes his passes somehow wind up with the nose of the football pointing almost straight down.  I’m not quite sure how he manages to do that.

Westbrook went out early after getting a knee to the head and sustaining a concussion.  His status is questionable.

Mike Vick only played a couple snaps and again did nothing at all.  He completed a 4 yard pass and he was getting ass slaps on the sideline like he made a big play.  They must have zero confidence in him. 

Hey, it’s a win and at this point it’s all that matters.  However if they hope to live off a few big plays next week against the Giants I think the outcome is going to be dramatically different.

My fantasy team scored 109 points and I still lost by 71, amazing.  On top of that Chris Cooley, my starting TE broke his ankle.  I now sit at a lackluster 3-4.  My running backs have been my biggest liability all season long.  So far in 7 weeks only once have any of my running backs scored double digit points.

Ali was out Friday night at the ‘So You Think You Can Dance” show in Tampa so I was left solo.  I had no big plans for the evening.  For those of you with a good memory you will recall that Friday was the scheduled date for  my HUGE Windows 7 House Party! Well my party was a bust.  In fact I think that of the nearly 20 invitations I sent out, only one was actually received.  It seems that houseparty.com has some technical difficulties.  I sent an email invite twice to certain people and they never saw it. Oh well, instead I “partied” by playing WoW and then sitting down with the dogs to watch Transformers 2.

I saw the first Transformer movie and was not all that impressed.  I found it rather confusing trying to follow the action, the robots all started to look the same to me.  Sadly I found this movie felt pretty similar.  The CGI used to make the movie is absolutely incredible, the detail of the Transformers is flawless.  The thing is, flawless, incredible CGI is commonplace in today’s film industry, it isn’t enough to carry a film. 

One of the biggest talking points of Transformers 1 was Megan Fox.  She instantly became one of THE hottest chicks on the planet.  To me, other than the much publicized clip of her bent over the motorcycle in this film, she didn’t really live up to the hype for me.  If you look closely she actually has a big girl build from the waist down.  I think she has to work really hard to keep things under control.  Plus she wears pounds of make up in every scene and of course everyone has heard of her semi-clubbed hand thing she has going on.  Needless to say no Megan Fox posters will be adorning my walls anytime soon.

There were some things I enjoyed in Transformers 2.  Of course the biggest is one of the main Transformers is a new Camaro.  I enjoyed the scenes where Bumblebee was involved the most.  All of the Transformers were GM based vehicles as far as I could tell.  I can only imagine how much money was spent to secure that deal.

There was lots of action, lots of explosions and surprisingly a lot of off the cuff humor in the film.  It wasn’t bad but I am certainly glad that I didn’t drop $20 per head to see it in 3D in the theaters like I originally planned. Overall I’d give the film a B.

We caught a break this weekend and didn’t need to mow.  Rain has been sparse recently and the recent cold front seems to have somewhat stunted the growth of the lawn which is fine with me.  We of course still found ways to keep busy with other things.  One of the unplanned things involved a trip down to the running store to pick up last minute race entries.

We have a real problem with people that participate in our races waiting until the last minute to sign up.  For this past race we had 70% of the runners wait until the last three days to sign up.  The main reason this happens is because the club does not charge people more for the race fee as the race approaches.  Tiered race fees is a normal practice in the race business yet the powers that be in the club have resisted the change.

When the club used to time races manually by handing runners finishers cards that they wrote their name on it did not matter if people registered early or late for a race.  It didn’t negatively affect anyone.  However since we have been using the chip system for over a year and a half it has become apparent how much of a pain this is for the people that time the race, namely Ali and I.

When people wait until the last minute that means they will be submitting paper entries.  Paper entries SUCK.  Ali and I are continually amazed at how clueless people are sometimes.  We constantly get entries that are incomplete, incorrect or illegible.  Why is it a difficult thing for someone to fill out a registration form correctly?  So getting bombarded with all of this paper means Ali and I have to punch it all into the system ahead of time.  If a runner enters the race online I simply download their information and boom, I’m done.

Well things really got messy on the day of the race.  Ali planned to run this race since it was a 5 miler and she was scheduled to do 5 miles on her training schedule. For awhile things were ok, we had a few runners signing up on the spot but it was slow.  Then all of a sudden the gates exploded and we were inundated by people signing up late.  It was a mess.   Since Ali was going to run she had to get loose about 15 minutes before the race started, meaning I had to hop in there and try to get the entries in.  Ali is a much faster typist than I am so it was not a good combination.

Adding to the stress was the fact that I had to get to the start of the race to synchronize the race time.  This race is a logistical nightmare.  The start line was literally almost a half mile from the finish/registration area. So with stop watch in hand I start running to the start line.  I made it with about 30 seconds to spare.  After the start I had to run back to the finish to complete entering the 20 or so registrations that I had not gotten done yet.  The only thing that was working in my favor was the race was a 5 miler which gave me some extra time.  At the time when the race started I hadn’t even had the time to hook up the timing mats.

In the end it all worked out ok, the chip system itself worked just fine although I was still angry about the situation. (late runners)  I plan on really pushing for all of our races to start adopting new race fees in 2010 where people pay a low price if they register up until a few days before the race.  After that the price jumps $5 and then another $5 if you walk up the day of the race.  Sure people will gripe but soon they will realize that if they want to pay the lowest fee they will sign up EARLY.  Getting that agreed upon by the majority of the club may be difficult.  

Lost in the pre-race drama was the fact that Ali had a great run, finishing the distance a full minute faster than the prior weekend.  I was proud of her as she crossed.  However later in the day the happiness from a good run was replaced by pain.  I think Ali was dehydrated.  She only had part of a small bottle of water after the race.  Ali thinks it was something else.  But whatever the reason, she had horrible abdominal cramping that kept her in bed a good portion of the day.

As a result of Ali being laid up I spent a good portion of my day being a man maid.  I swept floors, cleaned counters, washed sheets and more.  Surprisingly despite my 4am wake up time I didn’t feel an overwhelming need to take a nap, although when 10 pm came I was out like a light. 

Ali is feeling better this morning thankfully. 

The Eagles play tonight.  Hopefully they can beat up on the hapless Redskins.  My fantasy team has hit a huge string of bad luck lately.  After a 3-1 start I am currently at 3-3 and about to go to 3-4 since I am down over 100 points with only a few players to play. My team has scored a good amount of points in every game I lost but it seems that each time I just happen to go up against another team that has it’s best score of the season.  It frustrates the shit out of me.

Phils and Yankees in the World Series starting Wednesday.  Wow how sweet would that be if the Phils could take out the vaunted Yankees??  Yea we won it all last year but it was against the Devil Rays, not exactly a feather in the cap.

[podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/Cat-Jeremy.mp3[/podcast]

Some more thoughts recorded on the way home last night.

I am flying solo tonight as Ali is going up to Tampa to watch the “So You Think You Can Dance” tour with a friend of hers.  I’m sure she will enjoy it as much as I will enjoy not going. 🙂

Feeling sort of mellow.

I was working out today and I as I scanned the gym I could not believe how many people, mostly men, wear the cheap, ugly shirts that are included with your membership.  When I received my shirt it immediately got relegated to the dirty work t-shirt collection, shirts that are used for jobs like changing the oil.

Today I saw at least a dozen individuals proudly displaying their Planet Fitness attire.   It just struck me as weird.  I have two Gold’s Gym shirts at home but hey, at least they are cool looking and represent a real gym. I guess it is the same mentality as wearing your smiley underwear to Wal-Mart.

[podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/Phillies2.mp3[/podcast]

[podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/Phillies1.mp3[/podcast]

Since I didn’t make it to the end, maybe you didn’t either.

I threw together an unrehearsed, impromptu podcast on the way to work, enjoy.

The Phillies took care of the Dodgers easily last night.  It is just an awesome thing to have your team step on the other teams throat and never let up.  I was telling Ali how I remember the Phillies / Dodger playoff games from my youth where more often than not the Dodgers got the upper hand.  It still doesn’t feel quite right to have Davey Lopes coaching for the Phils and Larry Bowa wearing Dodger blue. Bring on the Yankees.

Ali almost got in an accident last night.  I just happened to be following her home when it happened.  There is a point in the commute where we make a left hand turn on to Wilson Blvd.  There is a convenience store that is right on that corner, on your right hand side if you are turning on to Wilson.

I was behind Ali making the turn.  All of a sudden I see the brake lights on the Camry flash on simultaneously with the car veering suddenly to the left.  I see a greasy looking schlub dart out in front of her.  Ali said this guy whom had been zig zagging between traffic prior to the left turn had pulled an incredible stupid stunt.  He was in front of Ali, making a left turn.  He then made an immediate right turn into the entrance to the convenience store.  Then without pausing or looking he immediately swung a U-turn back out in front of Ali to get back out onto Wilson going the opposite direction.

Ali said she had no idea how she missed the guy.  His stupid u-turn was blocked from my view so I didn’t realize just how idiotic of a move it was.  If he would have hit Ali I would have lost it on the guy.  There are just so many assholes on the road.  I can only hope he is among that 55% I spoke of yesterday, f’in asshole.

I knocked out another 300 yesterday.  It went well until I was waiting to get on the pull up bar I prefer for my last set of 25 pull ups.  I soon tired of the two hispanics that kept rotating in to do poor form bicep curls so I went over to another location.  I grabbed the handles, quickly pulled up into my first rep and promptly cracked the top of my head on one of the various obstacles overhead.  I dropped off and tried to control the surge of anger that comes with such incidents. The anger did come in handy to fuel the last few reps of the session.

You gotta love switching a major server to different hardware, going from 32 bit Win Server 03 to 64 bit Win Server 08 and not get a single call from an end user the next morning.  Besides running several in-house Cobol apps the server runs our time clock system which is used by everybody. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.

[podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/NearMiss.mp3[/podcast]

So last night after work I called the woman that was selling the shed.  When she described where her house was I realized that I could see her house (and the shed) out my back yard!  So I hopped in the truck for a 30 second ride to her place with my tape measure in hand.

The shed is 10 x 12 and is only a couple years old.  It needs to be pressure washed but other than that it is in good shape.  I looked underneath and saw it was secured in the same manner as our shed, up on cinder blocks  and then attached to the ground with hurricane straps.   The shed is actually wired with power, it has an overhead fluorescent light and electrical outlet.  The shed is a few inches too wide to fit through our front gate so we would have to somehow get to the 12 foot rear entrance.

As I was looking at the shed I was talking to the woman.  She had already mentioned to me a bit about her situation in email when I asked her why she was selling the shed.  She is recently divorced AND lost her job in the spring.  She has two young boys, is not collecting child support and is basically trying to sell what she can to make ends meet.  I felt bad for her.  It sounded like her ex-husband was basically a loser. 

Her two young boys came out while I was looking the shed over.  Before I knew it the 5 year old had climbed onto the back of my truck and was running across my tonneau cover like it was a bounce house.  I did my best to hide my concern as I walked over to encourage him to get off my new $500 bed cover.  Luckily the cover was strong enough to stand up to the abuse.

I told the woman that I was interested in the shed but I had to make sure I would be able to get it on my property.  I told her I would scout out the land between her property and ours to see if it would be traversable with a trailer.   She was fine with that.

So I drove back home and thought I would take my Tacoma in the back to scout things out.  It didn’t take long to run into my first obstacle, a deep irrigation ditch left over from the days when our area was farm land.  I got out of the truck and surveyed the ditch, certain parts looked deeper and steeper than others.  I spotted a section that I thought I would be able to drive through.  I lined the Tacoma up entered the ditch and promptly got myself stuck.

I tried in vain a couple times to rock the truck back and forth but all that did was bury the back wheels in the soft sugar sand.  Ali was not home yet and it was getting dark, I did not want to have to try to extract my truck in the dark when she got home.  Luckily my neighbor who lives across the street was home.  I asked him if he could help me pull out my truck that I stupidly got stuck.  He was happy to help and promptly brought his full size, 4WD Dodge over with a tow strap.  He was able to pull me out easily.  I thanked him for the tow, he saved me a lot of hassle.

I called the guy that graded our backyard to see if he would be interested in a shed relocation project.  He has a trailer that the shed would fit on as well as a tractor that could smooth out the path to rear gate.  He said he would be happy for the work, great.

The only obstacle left is getting permission from our neighbors to go through their back yard, creating a small flat path along the way that would lead to our gate.  Their back yard is not maintained so I am hoping they could care less but of course I need to make sure.  Once I have their blessing we can move forward with the project.

 I was reading my Wired magazine last night before bed.  Did you know that in 1900 5% of all deaths between the ages of 18-64were a result of self inflicted causes? (drinking, drugs, obesity, smoking, etc..) In 2000 that number checked in at 55%.  Over half of the deaths in that age range are the direct result of ignorant self abuse. 

In the big picture, this is a GOOD thing.  Even with stupid people killing themselves left and right we still procreate at a much faster rate than we can kill them off.

I was reviewing my YEAR AGO post and noticed that this site is still live http://www.palinaspresident.us/  Man it is still funny as hell.  He has added a few more interactive elements to the stage.  Turn your sound up and click around.  Even if you are a Palin groupie you have to chuckle at some of this.