Archives 2009

Last night after work I started getting ready to paint the dining room.  I pulled stuff off the walls and moved the furniture around.  The one cabinet I was able to move without pulling all of the glassware out.  The large china cabinet was a different story, fully loaded it was right about at the limit of what I could physically lift so I pulled the drawers and various stuff out of it after which it was more manageable.   I moved the big table against the one wall.  My plan is to paint 3 walls in the room, move the stuff back and then paint that final wall. Sounds like a plan.  All we need is for mom to help us finalize our color decision, buy the paint and get to work.

I did my first 300 since May yesterday.  I was somewhat pissed at myself.  I only did 23 pull ups during the first set but did the rep count of everything else leaving me two shy of the magic 300 rep mark, something I haven’t done since Novemeber.  Well I am hoping to do another session next week during which I will get the full 300 reps come hell or high water.

My Uncle Randy dug up some more old pictures from his collection.  Two of them are pictures of my beloved 69 Firebird convertible.  I only had one picture of the car for the past twenty years, well now I have three.  This picture must have been early on in my ownership stint.  It still has the original moon caps.  Later on I added Cragar SST mags and air shocks to give it a more “aggressive” stance. 

In the picture is Missy and I believe my sister in the back seat.  The second picture is all about the short shorts.  Behold my legs in all of their greatness.

I am thinking that I am somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 or 19 years old in the picture. Man I loved that car.

My uncle also dug up another real old picture I never saw before. This time it is my great grandmother, my cousin Jennifer, me and cousin Steve all checking out a Mad magazine at my grandparents house during some Christmas in the 7o’s. 

I was a big fan of both Mad and Cracked magazine.  I read them regularly.  Growing up Steve was probably one of my closest friends as well as being my cousin.  Sadly once we both reached adulthood that bond faded and I haven’t seen him since my mid 20’s.  I had some brief email contact with him a year or two ago but that was it.  It sounded like he was doing well. Oh yea I guess I should post the picture.

Sooner or later we are going to buying a new lawn tractor and when we do I will no longer be shopping the home improvement megastores to do so.  Since we had the house I have bought two riding lawn mowers, a Murray from Home Depot and a Cub Cadet from Lowe’s.  The purchase itself was just fine.  However, post purchase my opinion quickly soured.

The reason for this is simple, the damn stores have no brand loyalty in mowers!  One season they will be stocked with Cub Cadets the next it will be John Deere then Toro then Arens etc. etc.  As a result they also abandon carrying parts for the mowers they used to sell which is EXTREMELY annoying.  Two years after buying my Cub Cadet I could no longer get blades for it from either of these stores.

So when we finally pull the trigger on a new mower purchase I plan to get it at Sears.  They sell Craftsman mowers, period.  They will always sell Craftsman mowers, they will always have parts for Craftsman mowers.  As an added bonus they have a nice variety of mowers, including 54 ” models that are reasonably priced.  Adding a foot to our mowing width could easily cut 25% off the amount of time we have to spend on the tractor each week.

They also have a TON of accessories for their mowers, even a front bucket!

I stood by my first Camaro in person yesterday.  Ali had told me that there had been one in the parking lot at work for the past couple days so I swung by to take a look.  I spotted the car immediately.  It was a red base model.  A woman that worked there had also wandered over to take a look at the car.  She commented on how sharp it looked.  I agreed.

The base model Camaro is no slouch, it has a 300 HP motor and shares most of the styling cues of the upgraded model that I want to eventually get, the SS.  I wasn’t nuts about the red color but the car looked sweet regardless.  Ironically this morning I saw my second Camaro ever in the Naples area on the way to work.  This one was a black SS with the ground effect package.

Someday I will be rowing through the gears of one, someday.

The other day I also took a picture of the current state of my tonneau cover on the Tacoma.  As you can see, having 20 gallons of water laying on a cover is not a good thing.

 My mom is going to be coming over for a few days this weekend.  Ali has a conference for a few days so we could use mom’s expertise as a dog baby sitter so I don’t have to run home from work at lunch time.  We might have mom help us start on painting the dining room if she wants to.  Mom has always enjoyed painting.  That is one trait that she did not pass down to me, I don’t like painting much at all.

I saw a bit of the Michael Jackson thing yesterday.  Some of it was touching, like when his daughter and Brooke Shields spoke on mic.  Some of it was gaudy and over the top.  For example I thought it was silly that all of the Jackson brothers were wearing sunglasses, matching suits and single white gloves.  For once in their lives could they possibly not be a circus act?  Bury the poor guy already, he has to be pretty stinky by now. 

Hey Sarah Palin stepped down as governor the other day and I forgot to mention it.  I heard her goodbye speech was the typical rambling, non-sensical dribble America has come to expect from her highness.  I don’t buy the spin that this was a move to help her in a bid for higher political office. 

Leaving the office makes sense if you have been offered and accepted a higher position.  Walking away unexpectedly with nothing lined up is just irresponsible if she actually cared about fulfilling the duties she swore to do.  Instead I am sure that this had more to do with the various investigations that have been ongoing into various shady events that she has been involved in since she has been in political office.  Maybe she got tired of putting out fires.

If Sarah Palin EVER becomes president I will then know definitively that America has collectively lost it’s mind for good.  There is no turning back at that point.  She makes George Bush look like Einstein.

I have been messing around trying to get Outlook Anywhere to connect to our new Exchange 2007 installation.  I have been battling through various hurdles like getting getting a correct certificate generated, getting that certificate installed on a client pc and testing the connection.  I have been able to get a SSL connection to OWA so I figured once that was the case, Outlook Anywhere should work as well…. not.

If you Google “outlook anywhere problem” you will get a massive amount of hits, basically, it’s a pain in the ass.  I also discovered it is even more of a pain of the ass if you have Exchange 2007 running on Windows Server 08.  Evidently Outlook Anywhere does not like IP v6, you need to disable it.

I was further baffled when I was able to connect to the RPC proxy in the browser by going to https://myexternalurl.com/rpc  After supplying my credentials I got a blank screen on a secure connection just like I was supposed to.  I then went a step further and used RPCPING to verify that I was indeed talking to my Exchange server and it was accepting my credentials, it was. Well what the hell then?

Every time I would try to connect with my Outlook client I would be presented with a credentials dialog, I would provide them only to be slapped in the face with an “Unable to connect to your exchange server error…”

Well after looking at countless pages filled with countless suggestions I finally came across one that worked.  They simply said to add two entries to the local hosts file on the Exchange server that looked like this.

192.168.1.10   servernetbiosname  (local server name)

192.168.1.10 servernetbiosname.domain.local  (fully qualified server local name)

That simple change did the trick!  I was able to connect.  Wow what a headache.

Now keep in mind this suggestion will only help if you already have established that you can connect to your Exchange server rpc directory.  If that doesn’t work you have more homework to do.

Yep I am still hitting EA Active regularly.  I really like it.  The workouts are demanding and do a good job of giving you almost a full body workout.  The only part that seems somewhat neglected is the chest.   There is good variety in scenery, music and exercises.  A 20 minute workout on medium difficulty is guaranteed to have you sweating generously.There is a lot of stuff to like about the title but let me point out a few flaws.

  The game supports the Wii Fit board in various exercises yet it doesn’t utilize it to incorporate tracking your weight.  In order to do that I need to fire up Wii Fit.  I would think this would have been pretty easy to incorporate.

 I am in the middle of a 30 day challenge.  Part of the challenge is accomplishing 20 workouts during those 30 days.  Last week I did a 30 minute partner workout with Ali.  I got no credit for the workout towards my 30 day challenge.  Instead I HAD to do a workout from the 30 day challenge screen if I wanted to get OFFICIAL credit, dumb.

Sometimes it is a bit awkward holding on to the Wii remote and nunchuk while trying to grab the elastic band handles.  The game can also be a bit finicky when reading your movements during certain exercises.  It’s aggravating when you you see your on screen avatar standing still after you already completed the movement.  Over time you realize that the controllers need to be held a certain way in order to be picked up more accurately.

None of these complaints are major, it’s a great fitness title, the best I ever played.  If you keep moving from exercise to exercise at the pace that is intended you really are working hard.  The in-game trainer can be cruel by doing things like sending you into a set of explosive side to side jumps immediately after completing a long set of side to side lunges.  However in the big picture that is exactly what you need to help keep things progressing.

I really like using the game as a supplement to my mostly strength training lunch time workouts.  I feel like it really is helping me in total body fitness.  My lower body especially is getting much needed attention.  My knees have felt significantly better since I started with EA Active.

If you have a Wii and want to get in shape without hiring a trainer, get the game, stick to the program, watch your diet and reap the results.

We were given Friday off since the 4th fell on Saturday this year.  I took advantage of the day off by coming to work.  It wasn’t too bad I only spent a couple hours there doing some work on our firewall and moving some mailboxes over to Exchange 07. 

After leaving the office I stopped by the truck accessory store.  I need to get my tonneau cover replaced.  My bed cover has been in poor shape for a long time.  Over the years the three cross supports and rear support have all broken.  As a result there has been nothing to keep water collecting in the cover like a pond for the past couple years.  Well it finally took it’s toll last week when the weight of the water ripped the one side rail clean off.  Instead of replacing it with the same style I decided to spend an extra $75 for a folding cover similar to what is pictured to the left.  It has integrated supports that will not snap over time.  It should get installed later this week. After the truck store I stopped and grabbed groceries as well since it was on my way home.

We decided to further utilize the extra day off by knocking out the normal weeding/mowing/ weed whacking duties on Friday afternoon.  It was cool to have that out of the way for the weekend.

Our 4th of July started ridiculously early, I set the alarm for 3:45 am, yes that is not a misprint.  We needed to try to get to the race site as close to 5am as possible for the 7am race, there was much to do.  This was our first time using the brand new Ipico timing system.  We were rolling the system out at the biggest race we time all year, a rather daunting test.  Once we arrived on site we realized we should have some bug spray, they were nasty.  It was also incredibly warm and humid.  Even though it was still pitch black out I was sweated through my shirt in short order.

We began the mad scramble to get all of the equipment set up.  Runners started showing up already at 5:30 am.  The chaos ensued.  We had a number of volunteers there but the problem was nobody had the time to instruct them on exactly what they needed to be doing.  This is a common theme with most of our races, disorganization.  We recruit bodies to show up but we don’t have individuals on site whose sole responsibility is making sure that everyone knows what they are doing.  Ali and I try to throw instruction out there as we can but we are both far too busy attending to day of race registrations and setting up the timing equipment to be of much help.

Soon the place was MOBBED with runners.  There was nobody available to help Ali with typing in the day of entries so I had to jump in and help as I could.  It always amazes me how many people wait till the day of the race to sign up.  We had around 230 people do so out of the nearly 900 race entries. 

Entering day of entries is a VERY frustrating process.  In order to ensure that runners are timed accurately we need a few pieces of information, their name, birthday,  gender, zip code and their bib number.  It’s crazy how hard it appears to be to get this information.  Ali and I were constantly getting entries that were incomplete or written in illegible chicken scratch.  We instructed the people at the desk to double check that the information was legible.  Some either forgot or were too overwhelmed by the mass of humanity to do so.  We really need to work hard on getting the registration process to go smoother.

So about 10 minutes before the start of the race I still had not finished doing the prep work on the timing hardware.  I told Ali we had to move the laptops over to the finish line so I could do that while she finished putting in the entries.  Never having done the pre-race setup on this system in live conditions added to the stress.  I also was missing a printer cable, I accidentally left it with the old timing hardware.  Luckily one of the board members was able to run over to his office and borrow one for me to use.  I actually was late getting to the start line, they had to wait for me to get there.

So the race starts and I head back to the finish line to help Ali finish putting entries.  I synch the time on the computer to the time on my watch. then the timing hardware is synched with the computer.  I punch in the race start time as 00.07.05.30, or 7:05 am or so I thought.  The first runner came screaming down the last stretch and crossed right around the 15 minute mark.  His name  and time pops up immediately, cool.  The timing system appeared to be working fantastic, each runner that crossed was read immediately.  When big clusters of 6 or 7 runners crossed simultaneously it handled it just fine.  With the old DAG system it would have been a nightmare trying to hear if I got the same amount of beeps as runners.

Well after about 100 runners finished I thought I would produce the first set of results.  When I pulled up the results screen I noticed something was wrong.   The times all showed as 7 hours and change, wtf??  I mentally scrambled to figure out what was going on for a few moments until I figured it out.  The start time I entered needed to be shifted over to the left, I inadvertently had told the system the race started at 12:07 am…..

Great now how do I fix it?  I knew how to erase the results and I knew I could manually import the times from a file however the first file I looked at did not have all of the finish times.  After a few more moments of panic I found another file that had all of the times.  I changed the race start time, imported the file and the numbers were then correct, whew.

After that drama the rest of timing the race was a dream.  The Ipico system continued to read times perfectly and the new software made result generation much easier than what I was accustomed to.  The hardware is also incredibly easy to set up and tear down.  I had the race awards done before they were even ready to announce them.  We had the race site cleaned up by 8:40 am, a fantastic accomplishment after putting on a race of that size.  On the ride home Ali and I both took turns verbally patting each other on the back for making the new system work in such testing conditions.  All of the other races should be easy in comparison.

When we got home after unloading the car and doing a chip inventory Ali retired pretty quickly back to the bedroom for a well deserved nap.  I stayed up and worked on getting the results online as well as getting all of the equipment cleaned up and put away.  We were somehow missing 6 chips after the race. 

The rest of the day was enjoyable, we actually got some more chores done inside the house but we also spent a considerable amount of time enjoying the pool, making burgers on the grill for the 4th and watching a movie.  When we were sitting by the pool in our new zero gravity knock off lounge chairs I commented to Ali how it seemed like we did SO much for one day.  I guess when you start your day at 4am that happens. 

The movie we watched was Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian, I had this for quite awhile but never got around to watching it.  Much like the first movie I enjoyed it and once again it sort of felt like a poor man’s Lord of the Rings meets Harry Potter.  I’d give it a B+.  Not worth seeing in a theater but a nice rental.

Sunday was rather busy again but we had a healthy amount of relaxing time as well.  We decided to knock out our July cleaning project right away, the utility room.  We have been rather lax in doing the monthly cleaning project.  In the past 6 months we may have done it half of the time.  The utility room is small, maybe 6 x 12 but we spent a good couple hours cleaning it.  We have a bunch of shelves in there that are loaded with stuff.  We took everything off the shelves, sorted it, cleaned it, threw out unneeded stuff and put it back.  The utility room is also where the litter box resides.  As a result everything had a generous coating of dust on it.  We spent a lot of time wiping everything down including the baseboards and even batteries.  Well Ali cleaned the batteries and the holder they are in.  The room may not look significantly better to the casual observer but Ali and I can tell the difference.  It smells less dusty as well.

We again spent a decent amount of time both around and in the pool.  Sadie of course was involved in the fun.  She once again fell in the pool inadvertently while playing the splashy splash game.  This time instead of swimming towards the steps like we hoped she would she tried to get out in the deep end.  Instead of forcing her to go to the steps I just gave her rear end a push so she could get out.  Boy does she LOVE getting splashed, it’s crazy.

Last night I watched another movie I had for awhile, Slumdog Millionaire.  I knew little about the movie except I heard it was good (although somewhat depressing) and that it was up for multiple academy awards.     I had NO idea that movie was about Who Wants to be A Millionaire (Indian version)  I thought it was about an Indian slum lord.   

It was a very different type of movie for me.  The movie plot seemed incredibly detailed and complex.  The way the past and present was tied together was pretty brilliant.  The movie featured some very disturbing images of life in India.  It certainly would not do much to bump their tourism numbers.  India is definitely off the “must visit” list although it was never on in the first place.  Talk about decrepit living conditions….

Anyway the movie was good, just good in a different type of way for me.  This was all about the story and character development.  They did a great job in both regards, I’d give it an A.

I forgot to mention that the mess that was all over the hood and door of my truck miraculously cleaned itself while we were out west. Before we left I had washed and waxed the hood but I still could see some staining, I had not addressed the driver side door at all.  Well when we got back I could see no more evidence of staining.  Evidently the combination of intense south Florida sun and torrential rain had dissolved the stuff.    Before we left I dropped 30 bucks on various rubbing compounds and waxing tools to get the mess off.  I guess I didn’t need it.  I still plan to use what I bought to give the truck a thorough once over.

I finally started reading a book I bought a few weeks back call The Dumbest Generation.  The book is about the irony in today’s digital age where there is more knowledge available than ever, yet young Americans are dumber than ever.  They aren’t dumb in a clinical sense, I’m sure they have the same brain capacity of prior generations of Americans.  They just don’t use their brain.  The book isn’t just making broad, baseless claims, it uses information gathered from many sources to back up this analysis.  Young Americans are very tied up with being social consumers and little else.  Young America has very little to no knowledge of history, politics, government or little else that does not affect them in a very direct and singular manner. 

Yes I don’t need anyone to point out that although my age would exclude me mathematically from this classification I still am a regular participant in many of the same vices the book claims to be  the source of this intellectual anesthetic.  Facebook, blogging, texting, Twitter, MMORPG video games, 200 channels of TV are all symptoms of the new dumb reality.  I know that I participate in all of these.  I am under no illusion that these things do have a dramatic effect on an individual’s performance in society.  You are connected but isolated at the same time.  You prefer to text your thoughts rather than say them.  Your idea of a good time is a raid on Ogrimar instead of getting together with friends.  I get it. 

The fact that I am interested in reading a book about this very phenomena is a clue that I am not beyond hope. That and I can still tell you who the vice-president is and can point out  Egypt on a world map.

As I was on the way to the gym I was startled when I felt something jump onto the back of my head and grab on.  Instinctively I swatted furiously at my hair only to see a damn tree frog wind up on the dashboard.  Who knows how long he was in the cab of the truck.

Well the last thing I wanted was for him to jump into some crevice where he would later die and stink up the interior so I threw my gym towel over him to keep him contained until I found a safe place to stop.

Well the little sucker wiggled his way out from under the towel and started hopping around.  Luckily I snagged him as he jumped onto my lap.  I pinned him with the towel until I could roll down my window and deposit him outside.  Tree frogs are everywhere….

My Uncle Randy has always been a pack rat, just like my grandfather was.  He has turned his fascination with “stuff” into a career of sorts.  For decades he has been turning ordinary, everyday items into functional pieces of art.  On the left is our wedding gift from my uncle.  It is a lamp made out of circuit boards from an old answering machine.  The legs of the lamp have two of our party favors attached as “feet”.  I’ve always loved the lamp and it resides in my office at work. He has made some amazing pieces, take a look at just some of them here.

Well anyway his pack rat mentality also extended to the realm of pictures.  We recently found out that he still has a huge collection of old photos, many of which I have ever seen before.  He posted a bunch of them to Facebook, including my infamous 7th grade perm school picture as well as various old pictures of Todd, Torrin and my mom.

Take a look below at some of them, it’s my 4th of July present to you.

Mom looks happy

I know I don’t and if you read the details of the plan you won’t either, even if you think of yourself as very green friendly as I do.

He must have spent a lot of time with his nose pressed up against the window.

Seriously though the Cap and Trade bill looks horrible.  Nancy Pelosi has really become quite irritating.  Do you want the federal government requiring you to do an energy audit before you are ALLOWED to sell your home?  No thanks. 

It’s a very sad thing to me that a worthwhile cause like being environmentally friendly can get drug through the mud and come out the other side looking like this.

Has anyone else noticed that Missy, who used to be a routine reader and commentator on my blog has vanished?  In case you didn’t know, she was my first serious girlfriend in high school.  The last thing I knew she had a myriad of health issues going on many of which unfortunately related to her unhealthy lifestyle.  On her blog I commented as much, encouraging her to see these health problems as a reason to get healthy.  I don’t think she appreciated my suggestion.  Oh well, when we split up back in the 80’s it wasn’t exactly on good terms anyway. 

Yesterday during the class I was suffering from remote control overload.  I had my dual screens jammed full with various remote control sessions.  I was remoted to the instructor’s pc, my classroom lab pc, and my work pc which was in turn remote controlled into a couple servers at the office.  I found myself feeling very stressed out as I tried to multi-task between the various sessions.

There has been a lot of discussion on Facebook about community days starting back up in my home town of Shillington.  When I was growing up Community Days was a big deal for most.  It happens about a month after school left out so there was still plenty of summer left.  Many of the good looking girls from school showed up at community days to show off the tans they had been working on at the pool.  However I don’t recall doing anything that “fun” at community days.  I don’t think I ever rode on the rides as they were mostly cheap knock offs of real amusement park rides.  In fact I think the most fun I had there was spending a lot of time at the radar gun stand.

At that time I was in the middle of my dreams of being a major league pitcher.  As a pitcher I took pride in being able to throw HARD.  The radar gun booth was the chance for me to affix a number to exactly how hard I could throw.  There was one problem, the radar gun seemed to hate me.  Although I would be rearing back and letting loose with all my might I would rarely see a number that got out of the upper 60’s.  I think I may have clicked into the 70’s a few times.  I remember my frustration as I would make attempt after attempt that would crash into the background with a satisfying SMAAAACK,  only to have a number pop up that seemed ridiculously low. This HAD to be total bullshit.  I had several theories of why my numbers were low.     

I assumed the gun was positioned in a way to read a right hander’s throw since the vast majority of people throw right handed.  There also is the variable of where on the background you hit.  You could throw a ball with the same effort to two different spots and get a significantly different reading both throws.  Whatever the reason, I threw my arm out many times at community days hoping to pop a number that would be written on the high score sign.  It never happened.

Just a side note, when I was being scouted by MLB scouts at our high school games I was told they clocked me at right around 80 mph.  Not good enough to make the big show.