Archives October 2009

Boy it sure is nice to have at least one Philadelphia sports team that doesn’t choke when the pressure is on.  Once again the Phils delivered victory from the jaws of defeat.  Man I wish I could stay awake for the end of these games, I haven’t been able to stay awake past the 6th inning for any game in the series so far.

Tonight I am going to look at a second storage shed I found on Craigslist.  We are looking for something that can help us empty out the garage so there are more room for “other” things, (COUGH Camaro).  Imagine my surprise when I found out the woman selling the shed literally lives right around the corner from us, less than a half mile away.

My biggest concern is getting the shed moved and set up.  With the fence in place, the front gate opening is only 10 feet wide.  The back gate is 12 feet wide but getting the shed back there would probably be next to impossible because of the rough terrain.  I will be taking my tape measure with when I go look at the shed. I am hoping the guy that did our grading work would be available to help us try to get the shed wedged through the gate and set up.

Did you know that insurance companies have spent over a quarter of a BILLION dollars lobbying against health care reform in 2009?  I would hope this would raise a red flag even for the many lightly informed among us.

Look no further…

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

Wow, Idiocracy is truly here…

Friday I was out working at a branch all day.  After work a bunch of us went out for a surprise birthday party for my boss.  Unlike my days working for Entre/Ameridata/GE where social get togethers with co-workers were commonplace, since working here there have been hardly any social interaction outside of the work environment in my 9 years on the job.  I figured I may as make it count, I did.

The party was held at an upscale sports bar named the Tavern on the Bay.  I wasted no time getting the juices flowing, deciding to make Miller Lite the drink of choice.  I had two glasses down in relatively short order.  Our waitress was nice enough to tell us about a thing they offer called the Tavern Tower.   This device held 80 ounces of draft beer.  It had it’s own tap and a large sealed tube of ice to keep the beer cold.  I figured I would be drinking a decent amount of beer and it would was cheaper than ordering by the glass so why not?

When the first tower was delivered it was visually impressive, it stood close to two feet tall and was filled to the top with Miller Lite.  The waitress asked if I wanted extra glasses for other people.  I did a brief survey and at the time no one else wanted to partake with me so I started off alone on my tower.

Being a sports bar, the place had tv’s all over the place.  Our long table was positioned right in front of a big LCD showing the Phillies / Dodgers game, sweet!  By the time the game was over I was too drunk to care much about the stupidity of pulling Pedro in the 8th inning who was throwing a shutout, only to replace him with relievers that immediately surrendered two runs to give the Dodgers the win.

Well eventually John showed up and he was willing to partake in my towers of Miller Lite.  By the time the evening was over we had kicked three tavern towers.  As you can imagine I was pretty hammered by that point.  I am a very chatty, happy drunk so I was having a great time all evening embracing an aspect of my personality that does not normally come out otherwise.

My boss took my keys way before the third tower was drank which was nice of her.  She wound up following me home in our car while another co-worker drove me home around midnight.  It was a fun time for all.  The next morning I was in a bit of a fog for awhile but I didn’t feel quite as bad as you would imagine after drinking that much, it was light beer after all.

Saturday morning was gray and rainy, it was a PA feeling morning.  The good part about it was the grayness was ushering in our first real cold front of the season.  When I mowed the grass Saturday afternoon I didn’t feel a bit of humidity, it was fantastic.  Saturday night the temp dropped all the way down to the mid 50’s!

Saturday afternoon Ali did a 5 mile run where I followed on my bike for safety.  The lower temps and humidity came in handy for the longest outdoor run Ali has attempted in years.  I was impressed how easily Ali traversed the distance.  She kept a very steady pace the entire time and didn’t even seem that spent by the end.  She has really been doing an impressive job of following the training program to hopefully run her first half marathon in a few months. 

I made an effort to do most of the chores on Saturday so Sunday would be laid back.  However the weather was just so damn nice that I couldn’t resist going outside and working in it.  I decided to trim back a few of the cabbage palms that are again overgrown with low hanging fronds and seed branches.  I trimmed up four of them.  I figure I will do them a few at a time.  Trying to trim them all at one time would be an extremely long and laborious task. 

The dogs had a great time hanging out there with us while we worked outside.  Nicki hopped up in the truck and enjoyed the brief rides out to the fill pit to dump the fronds.  Sadie followed behind excitedly.  They played with each other outside a ton on Sunday.  With temps hanging around 70 with no humidity it was just about PERFECT weather.

The weekend up to that point had been great.  I had a blast Friday night and was enjoying the cooler weather immensely.  Then I made the mistake of watching the 4pm Eagles game.

The Raiders in a word, suck.  They had been blown out their last three games.  The Eagles should have taken them apart in the opinion of any prognosticator you could ask. Of course the opposite occurred.

Somehow the Eagles offensive line made the Raiders look like killers.  Donovan was getting hit the entire game and as a result resorted back to his happy feet that typically results in poor accuracy.  I kept waiting and waiting for Andy to make some adjustments to the blocking scheme to account for the pressure but it never came.  As I have pined about for years, one thing Andy’s Eagles historically suck at are making in game changes if something does not go as planned.  They seem absolutely clueless on how to adjust on the fly.

I kept waiting and waiting for the Eagles to stop screwing around.  They never woke up.  They managed a measly three field goals against one of the league’s worst defenses and lost 13-9.  It was an embarrassing loss, one of the worst losses in recent history. 

The Birds have some real big problems.  Let’s list a few. 

The defense was much worse than the 13 points they allowed yesterday.  For the second consecutive game they allowed a tight end to destroy them up and down the field.  Trotter is TERRIBLE in coverage and seems to be targeted for exploitation whenever he is on the field. They made Justin Fargas look like Walter Payton.

The Eagles converted TWO of 16 third down conversions.  If you know anything about football you know that is beyond bad.  That this occurred against an up to this point lousy Raider defense makes it all the more astounding.

David Akers missed two very makeable field goals that would have been enough to save the Eagles from their humiliating defeat.  He is no longer automatic and hasn’t been for the last few years.

WTF was all the hoopla about Mike Vick adding this huge explosive element to the Eagles offense?  The guy looks absolutely lost with no confidence when he is out there.  I have yet to see him make a single big play.  He played the least amount Sunday of any game yet since his return.  This is the reverse of what you would expect.  Over time you would hope he would work better into the offense, not worse.  It feels like the Eagles don’t trust him to do more than hand off the ball or act like a decoy. So far the Vick experiment can only be classified as a failure, at least in a football sense. It’s odd to me that McNabb supposedly lobbied to get Vick on the team yet Donovan looks annoyed whenever number 7 is brought out there.

McNabb SUCKS in situations where time is tight and points need to be scored.  He just does not perform well when the clock needs to be managed and the throws need to be on the money, ever. I heard a stat one time that laid this out in black and white, McNabb is one of the worst in the league at coming back from a deficit.

In a way this feels like a replay of last season when the Eagles absolutely were horrid for a good portion of it and then miraculously got it together for the stretch run.  Once again I can pronounce that the Eagles are not a good team.  Good teams don’t lose that game.  Good teams don’t let the Raiders even get closer than two touchdowns. This loss was on par with tying the stinking Bengals last year.

This is the soft portion of the Eagle schedule.  I can only imagine how the upcoming games against the Cowboys and Giants will go.

So I have Windows 7 up and running at home and so far I really like it.  Even now that I have a framework of apps installed as well as antivirus/spyware software loaded the OS still feels responsive and snappy.  It all just seems to work well together, better than Vista out of the box for sure.  I haven’t dug into it in depth to play with all of the new stuff but everything I have seen, I like.  Of course doing a fresh install of the OS definitely gives you a head start in the performance department.  I’m sure if I did an upgrade things would not have been quite as seamless.

I am in the process of screwing around with Windows 7 Ultimate.  My plan is to have the machine dual boot between my existing Vista install and the new Win 7 install on the terabyte HDD.  I am trying to best accommodate the future phasing out of Vista without impacting my Win 7 install if I decide to go that route. 

 I have gone through a complete install once so far. The process didn’t take as long as I expected. I went from a blank hard drive to Win 7 in less than 45 minutes.  I’m sure there will be much more commentary to come.

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my lifetime.  For some reason I was thinking about one particular example last night.

During my first marriage I picked up another 69 Firebird convertible. Unlike my original Hugger Orange beauty , this car needed work, a lot of it.  The biggest problem was rust on the body which was so severe it would not pass state inspection.  I had ideas of fixing the problems myself but I had neither the expertise or money to do it so the car more or less sat in the driveway of our Wernersville townhouse for months on end.

One day I came up with what I thought was a bright idea.  I would simply make my own inspection “sticker”!  I grabbed some tracing paper and placed it on the windshield on top of the sticker of one of our legal vehicles. I carefully traced the outline of the sticker and then took it inside to color it in with crayon.  I cut it out and then affixed it to the inside of the windshield with scotch tape. 

I took a few steps back and admired my forgery.  My thinking was my homemade sticker would look real enough at 40mph if I drove by a cop on the road, I should be good to go!  I actually took the car out on the road a few times without incident.  I thought I really had found a way to beat the system. How stupid.

Ironically I wasn’t the one that took the fall for the fake sticker, at least not directly.  One weekend when I was away doing an install for Meridian Bank my ex-wife decided she would take the Firebird out for a joyride with one of her “friends”.  Well she got pulled over.  She was read the riot act and we were slapped with a huge $300 and change fine.  The cop said he could have arrested her since it was a blatant forgery. 

At the time, I felt bad that my ex-wife took the fall for my stupidity.  In retrospect it was only a small part of the payback she deserved for the bullshit she pulled throughout our marriage.

Anyway, after the incident I discarded any ideas of ever getting the car restored under my ownership.  I sold it shortly thereafter for what I paid for it.  The new owner drove the Firebird away, sans sticker.

So last night after work we did something different, we went bowling with some friends of ours.  I haven’t done any actual bowling since 2002 when Ali and I joined a league in Naples in an attempt to expand our social network.  My last memories of bowling were both positive and negative.

  It was fun to eat shitty food, drink beer and hang out with people.  It wasn’t that much fun dropping 30 or 40 bucks every week in the process and the thick haze of choking cigarette smoke that filled the building was miserable.

I dug out our fancy double bowling ball carrier that we bought during our league days.  It has a handle and wheels, making it a piece of cake to transport two balls with ease.  I was surprised when I opened up the bag to find the final stat sheet from the league we bowled in.  Evidently I stuffed the papers in there after we finished bowling and the bag has not been opened up since for the past 7 years or more.  I saw that I averaged 176 for that league, about normal for me.  I think the most I ever averaged in a league was  the mid 180’s.

My bowling shoes had not held up well in storage over the years.  The white leather had developed a very sticky residue somehow.  The leather sole that you slide on was somewhat sticky as well which is not a good thing.

Bowling prices seem to have skyrocketed from what I remember.  For Ali and I to bowl 3 games each it cost $32.  I clearly recall $2 a game bowling.  They also no longer go by the honor system, instead they adopted a gas station-like pay first, pump second policy.  You tell them how many games you want to bowl and pay up front.  It used to be the opposite.  I guess there were too many bowl and bolt patrons that did not pay for their games?

So we started on our brief 5 minute practice session.  I still have muscle memory on how to bowl, hell I bowled all through out my child hood and in leagues for most of my 20’s.   I popped my thumb in and out of the hole a few times to warm it up, assumed my ready position, approached the line and PLOP, the ball slides into the gutter. 

My 20 year old Rhino bowling ball doesn’t fit my hand very well anymore.  Evidently my thumb has shrunk in size somewhat.  As a result I had problems all night with the ball dropping prematurely off my hand, causing it to drift left before going right.  I think I had at least 4 or 5 gutters as a result, something I NEVER would normally do.

My bowling muscles in general are not well developed.  Holding the 16 pound Rhino with a fingertip grip is tough on the hand and forearm if you aren’t accustomed to it.  This combination of issues piled on top of 7 years of rust resulted in a pretty anemic bowling performance for me.  I started off with a 120 something and followed that up with two games of 152 and 150, all three games woefully short of what I am accustomed to doing on the bowling lanes.

Neither Ali or our friends were accomplished bowlers so scores did not matter. We were there to have fun first although I couldn’t help but be disappointed in my inability to string together at least one decent game. 

We had a good time shooting the shit while bowling.  It was such a pleasant thing to enjoy some bowling without toxic smoke filling your lungs.  We finished up our three games of bowling a little after 10.  Everyone had a good time and I’m sure we will hook up again to bowl sometime in the future.

I forgot to mention one aspect of watching NFL games on the Sunday ticket that absolutely drives me INSANE, the commercials.  To be more specific, showing the audience the same two or three commercials TWO DOZEN TIMES in a game. 

It makes no sense at all.  How can advertisers think that showing the same content over and over again in a 3 hour period is not going to annoy the shit out of viewers is beyond me.  I was getting physically angry towards the end of the game every time I saw another f’ing Lexus hybrid commercial. 

Watching the games via the Sunday Ticket on Directv makes the situation even worse. When you watch a game on your local cable affiliate you get the local commercials mixed in so there at least is some variety.  I get the same commercials every commercial break, it just plain sucks.

For what we pay for the Sunday ticket the damn broadcast should be commercial free.  Just keep me tuned in to the in stadium feed during the breaks.

Saturday was our 11 year anniversary.  Besides a dinner that evening and the 25 roses on the kitchen island our Saturday was not that out of the ordinary. Well I did get a massage Saturday morning, I guess that is not very normal.  Ali met up with Michelle and went running together which was cool.  I left before Ali got back.

The massage gift certificate that I got last Christmas was due to expire on 12/1 so I figured I better use it.  I had the same woman I always do.  She does such a good job.  She rubs pretty much everything you can legally and does a very thorough job of it.  During the massage we talked through a lot of it but there were times when I was just enjoying it too much to talk.

She said that times have been tough during a down economy and luxury items like massages are going to be one of the first things to get trimmed off the to do list. She is a single mom with three boys at home, the oldest being 23.  I felt bad for her. 

Somehow we got into talking about age.  She was surprised when I told her I would be 42 in December, she guessed I was safely in my 30’s which of course made me feel like my work in the gym pays off.

After I got home Ali and I jumped into cutting the grass.  I had hoped to keep the Sunday to do list light.  After I got done weed whacking I decided to try to fix the spare tire assembly on the party van.  I had inadvertently twisted the fitting off the end of the wire that held the tire in place. At Home Depot I picked up a couple fasteners that I figured I could use to make a replacement fitting. 

I backed the van up onto the ramps and slid underneath.  First I had work the winch to drop the cable closer to the ground.  To do so there was a tube that is designed to have a handle inserted into it.  Since I was doing this myself I just held on to the wire with one hand to keep downward weight on it it and turned the tube with my other hand.  It was a slow process but I finally got enough wire out to work with.

The first fitting I tried didn’t seem fool proof enough for me.  I had visions of it breaking loose and the tire dropping out from under the van while I am doing 80 on the highway.  I opted to use the other fitting which looped the wire around a small frame and used three clamps to hold it in place.  In order for the fastener to fail all three of the clamps would have to blow out which is very unlikely.

With the weight of the tire on the wire I couldn’t just crank the tube with my hand.  I got out the tools that came with the van.  Unfortunately it looks like some dumb ass, probably Erwin Tonch, at one point squeezed the tube with a pliers to turn it.  As a result the tool designed for the job was unable to fit correctly.  I wound up using a tire iron to do the job.  Again it was a slow, forearm burning activity but eventually I got the tire winched up into place and tight against the frame.

I spent some time on Saturday trying to track down some missing timing chips.  This is one part of the race timing process which is a pain in the ass.  The last race which was filled with first time runners was worse than normal in terms of missing chips.  We had half dozen chips that were not collected after the race.  So I get to email/call these people to ask them nicely to return the chips.  It’s a hassle.

So Ali and I got ready for our anniversary dinner.  We were going to someplace we never went before called Vincenzo’s on the Bay.  My mom had been there and recommended it. On the way to the restaurant we drove by the Delorean office in Bonita.  Yes there is a Delorean office in Bonita. The Delorean came to fame in the early 80’s when it was the focal point of the smash movie series Back to the Future. 

Unfortunately the stainless steel skinned car itself was not destined for long term success.  Well imagine my surprise when I saw at least a half dozen DeLoreans lined up in their parking lot.  I was half tempted to swing a u-turn to pull in to take a closer look.  I never saw one in person, but I didn’t want to be late for dinner.   

When we pulled up for our 6:30 dinner reservations I was surprised/pleased to see the parking lot was not full at all.  This was obviously an older, established restaurant, which I liked.  Sometimes you get tired of eating in chains where everything is rubber stamped to meet the standards established by some customer focus group.  We had a table right along the windows that looked out on the bay.  It was a beautiful view.  We were treated to fish jumping out of the water during the entire meal it was pretty cool. 

As the wait staff walked past you could feel the wooden floor move along with them.  Ali found that a bit disconcerting, I liked it.  Although I thought the place was charming, it wasn’t quite as high end as mom made it sound.  The plates were made of plastic and the prices were no more than most places we frequent.

There were some negatives.  I brushed off the short black hair that was in the butter, I just used my knife to remove it instead of making a scene.  However the biggest negative was Ali’s meal.  First off she ordered something with gnocchi.  About 10-15 minutes the waitress came back and was told they did not have any gnocchi which was a bit annoying that it wasn’t brought to our attention immediately.  So Ali ordered some other pasta meal.

Well her dish was VERY spicy.  It had some sort of pepper in it that if you got a chunk of the spice, would have you reaching for the glass of water quickly.  If you were lucky enough to get a spice free forkful it tasted ok but more often than not your luck would run out.  Ali at first didn’t make a big deal of it.  As time went on she was giving me some of it.  We considered asking for something else but we had eaten probably half of the meal so we didn’t want to appear to be idiots, if you didn’t like the food why did you eat half….  We never have been the type to send food back.  So instead Ali went through lots of water as she ate a few more forkfuls. My meal was fine so I felt bad that Ali’s was less than stellar.

We did get to enjoy some beautiful views as the sun went down.  The colors reflected off the water were awesome.  We tried to get the taste of the spice out of our mouth by splitting some key lime pie for desert.  We left Vincenzo’s with mixed feelings.  I would go back again because I liked the location, view and ambiance.  Ali was feeling more negative because of her tongue burning pasta.   I think we would give it another visit although Ali would definitely be ordering something different.

The Eagles game end result was good although there was some very annoying aspects to it.  WTF is up with the penalties?  There was over 100 yards of penalties called against the Birds, mostly on defense.  That shit has to get cleaned up. Luckily the Bucs were bad enough that it didn’t matter all that much. The defense also at times made the no name Buc QB look like a star for much of the game and they had NO answer for taking Kellen Winslow out of the picture, he burned the Eagles D again and again… 

Jeremy Maclin had a HUGE day which was cool to see. Unfortunately for me, apparently there is no room for two Eagle WR’s to have good days.  DeSean Jackson who was starting on my fantasy team did NOTHING, zero points, a fantasy back breaker.

 McNabb also looked great considering he still has two injured ribs. His stats were stellar, although the Bucs did very little to pressure him throughout the game.

Michael Vick played much less now that McNabb was back and once again he did next to nothing.  He seems to be mostly used as a decoy at this point.  So far, this dynamic, explosive aspect he was supposed to bring to the team has been nothing but hype.  He has not showed me ANYTHING yet. 

The rest of our Sunday was pretty laid back.  Ali buzzed my hair back to my military motif, I played WoW and later grabbed the Wii remotes for some Top Spin tennis.

I just love the Iron Chef show. I don’t love to cook or have some sort of adoration of food like most of America yet I never miss an episode if it pops up on the bedroom tivo.

I ordered a terabyte HDD from Tiger Direct yesterday.  Including shipping the cost was $93.  It’s never ceases to amaze me how cheap storage has become.  The new HDD will become home to Windows 7 Ultimate.

So I left work early to get out to the race site.  Yesterday was incredibly hot for October, even by Florida standards.  The thermometer in my truck read 96 degrees on the way.  So I started unloading the truck and setting up stuff when a horrible realization came to me about 4:20pm.  I forgot two bring the timing mats!  Somehow I managed to load the truck up with all of the equipment except the two 8 foot wide timing mats.  I was so pissed at myself.

The race didn’t start until 6:15 so luckily I had some time to sprint home and grab the mats.  It’s amazing how annoying other drivers become when you are truly trying to get somewhere in a hurry. I got back to the race by 5:20.  Things were more or less under control. 

Ali was handling the day of entries.  When I went over to her the band that was contracted to play started up.  Immediately we were unable to hear each other.  Obviously there was a lack of thought put into band placement.  Having music blaring on the speakers 20 feet from the registration table was definitely not an ideal situation.  You basically had to scream if you wanted someone to hear you.

Adding to the misery was the weather conditions.  The blazing sun and high humidity made for some pretty uncomfortable working conditions.  The one thing that was not a problem was the timing equipment.  Although this was the first team format race I ever timed, I had no problems at all.  The system performed perfectly.  Last year they scrambled to figure out the team scoring by hand.  This year I had it done in 30 seconds.

During the race I got to talking to a runner that I knew but never really engaged in conversation.  I was flabbergasted by what he told me.  He was in car accident 15 years ago and as a result he lost all of his memory prior to that date.  He basically I had no idea who he was.  He said he had to even relearn how to talk and write.  He told me how he has three college degrees but remembers nothing about them.  He has run four 100 mile races in his lifetime although he doesn’t recall the runs prior to the incident.  What a bizarre thing that must be, losing all recollection of who you were. 

So the race wrapped up and we started to pack up.  Even though the sun was now down I was still sweating buckets.  Clean up took longer than normal due to a smaller pool of volunteers than normal.  It’s tougher to get them on a Thursday night.  I was on the way back home a little after 8.  It was a fun event to time, I just wish it wasn’t on a week night.

So we got our latest electric bill, the first one since we adopted the new pool pump schedule that results in us running it 3 hours a day instead of 8.  Both Ali and I were hoping for a significant drop in our bill as a result.  You can imagine our disgust when we see the $280 something bill, more than September… 

We were both extremely annoyed.  The only small victory was that in comparison to October 2008 we used on average 5kwh less per day.  I think our AC system is the biggest culprit here.  My inspection a couple weeks ago confirmed it was yet another example of the half assed work that was performed during the construction of our place.  I bet the thing has leaks all over the place which is making it very inefficient.

Last night was the finale of the two week Spook medicine routine.  Thank GOD.  Spook appears to be back to normal, as normal as she gets at this advanced stage of her life.  I can only cross my fingers that  we are out of the woods for cat health issues for awhile.

Today I am going to partake in a little mini fitness challenge.  I want to try to run a mile on the treadmill at 8 mph pace which translates into a 7:30  pace per mile which is pretty much top speed for me.  On a 5k my best time translated to right around an 8 minute mile pace so it sounds reasonable that I should be able to do a 7:30 pace for a single mile.

Speaking of running, Ali has resurrected her running career.  Her and Michelle are making tentative plans to try to run a half marathon together.  Ali had this goal a few years back when she took up running but knee problems derailed her goal.  So far her knee has been holding up to the training.  Hopefully it remains that way.  That would be quite the accomplishment if she pulls it off.

This weekend is our 11 year wedding anniversary.  We aren’t doing anything as fun as the trip to Georgia we took last year.  Instead we are just going to dinner to a nice place on the bay.  Nothing spectacular but we’ll enjoy it.  One of the nice things about being with someone as long as we have been together is you can enjoy big things like a trip or little things like a dinner for two equally well.

I’ve adjusted my potential Camaro purchase downward.  Originally I was aiming for the top of the line 2SS model which has stuff like heated leather seats, ambient interior lighting and the 4 pack console gauges.  I also am leaning towards skipping the $1200 RS package which includes stuff like different wheels, different color tail lights and the halo style head lights. 

There are a couple reasons I am considering the switch.  The VAST majority of SS purchases are the 2SS model with people opting for the top of the food chain.  Same deal with the RS package, most people get it.  I sort of like the idea of having the less prevalent model.  The 1SS comes with cloth seats instead of leather which Ali would happily embrace.  I’ve read that the cloth seats actually are more comfortable.  At it’s core I get the same beastly engine and power train so I wouldn’t be losing any seat of the pants thrill.  Most importantly of all I would be able to easily shave five to six grand off the sticker price where it could potentially cost me less than we dropped on the Camry hybrid. 

Who knows, we still are pretty far removed being ready to make a move but at this point I think a 1SS will be the way I will go.

Today I heard Howard complaining that people don’t like how he takes 10 weeks of vacation a year.  I am among the ones that don’t like it.  What I really don’t like is he actually takes much more than that off and conveniently forgets to add those numbers in.  It annoyed me enough that I sent this in to the show although I doubt he would dare read it on the air.