Archives 2009

So listening back to my first attempt at audio blogcasting I was less than impressed.  I need to throw in something in addition to just a dry read of the text.  So last night I did just that.  I included some other commentary outside the scope of the blog post.  I also am not going to edit out my various f up’s, you’ll get a chance to hear the difficulty I have with speaking from time to time.  It add’s to the charm.

  So what I am doing is going back to the blog post and adding the audio link, if there is one, after the fact. So if you want to hear the audio you will need to check back on the post after it is released.  I will throw the player link at the bottom of the post typically or, just add the feed to your Itunes.  Yesterdays audio is up, somehow it runs over 6 minutes long.

In my virtual life, I have taken up a new responsibility in the game, tanking.  What is tanking you ask?  A tank in a MMORPG is a player whose prime responsibility is making sure that he gets the hell beat out of him.  A tank is typically heavily armored and possess a number of abilities that generate high amounts of threat against bad guys.  They use this threat to keep the monsters hitting them instead of hitting other members of the group.

A tank is a an absolute requirement of a group and having a bad one can spell disaster.  If a tank does his job, he is the main character that is taking damage, making the job of the healer much more manageable as he only has to concentrate mainly on keeping the tank alive.  However if a tank is unable to maintain “aggro” (aggro = the attention of all of the bad guys) then all hell can break loose as various party members can take massive amounts of damage very quickly.

Up until this point I have shyed away from tanking because I didn’t want the responsibility of it over my head.  I get stressed out enough playing as a healer which has similar amounts of responsibility. Well I finally gave tanking a shot.  So far it has gone surprisingly well. I have tanked three instances and we didn’t wipe on any of them. (wipe = everyone in the group dies)  The instances I’ve done are rather straightforward which is enough for me at this point.  In advanced game stages tanking can get pretty complicated.  You need to do certain things at certain times to be successful. 

Another advantage of tanking is you are always in demand, everyone needs you.  It’s a good way to get some high level gear rather quickly.  My tank is my warrior character. He is aptly named “Ironduf”.  This was the first character I ever created.  I’m sentimental about him.

This weekend does not have much of note on the docket.  I have various things I would like to get done around the house, nothing much of note is coming to mind.

Ali said she was finally get ready to cut her hair.  I welcomed the news.  For some reason Ali has always seemed to combat me when it comes to her hair.  I know what looks good on her yet she would discount the opinion of her husband as nearly worthless which never makes sense to me. 

 Well anyway she is hoping to go back to a style/length similar to what she had when we met, a layered cut about shoulder length. She also used to have blonde highlights which I liked.  Unfortunately I don’t think she finally saw the light and realized that maybe she should take her husband’s advice when it comes to what looks good to him. Instead I think the impetus came when my mom saw a picture of Ali with her old hairstyle and commented on how cute it was.  I guess I just need to have mom make style suggestions for me via proxy in the future. 

When we first moved down to Florida she had her hair just about perfect.  This style is conveniently captured on her drivers license photo.  All she has to do is show it to her stylist.

A chunky whiite guy was on the only calf exercise machine in the place. He did one set and then sat there on the machine for five to 6 minutes reading his paperback book until he decided to engage the machine again.

Brilliant!

The water coming out of our cleaner/softener is still not soft so I decided to take another whack at it last night.  First I used the shop vac to suck all of the water out of the salt tank. Then I removed the float assembly and used my air compressor to blow out the lines just in case something was clogged in there.  I put it back together and ran it through a recharge cycle. 

From what I understand the recharge cycle follows this routine.  Water is pumped into the salt tank to create a supply of salt water.  This salt water is then pumped into the water softener where the salty water causes a chemical reaction that cleans the resin.  The salty/dirty water is pumped out and then regular water is pumped through the system to clean it out.

Well it seems to me that the process is breaking after step one.  I saw the water getting pumped into the salt tank but I never saw it get sucked back out.  I am going to contact the place I bought the parts from in Michigan to see if they can help me diagnose the problem.  They have been very helpful up to this point.

So I got the Tacoma back yesterday.  Unfortunately it turned out to be the opposite outcome of the PV AC repair, it wound up costing much more than I expected.  There were no shenanigans involved though.  In addition to the timing belt I had them do the brakes.  When they got the front of the motor apart to change the timing belt they also found the front engine seals and water pump were leaking.  It only makes sense to fix those issues as well while everything is ripped apart.  They wound up redoing the front brakes, flushing the brake lines, cleaning the rear brakes, replacing the water pump, front seals and all engine belts.  The grand total for the work was $1450.  Yep that is a big egg but the sale of the old party van covered it barely. So much for having money left over to do other projects, oh well.

So I have been messing with the idea of doing podcast versions of my posts.  I had several hurdles to making this happen.  I had to figure out how to get an Iphone voice memo off my Iphone and into a mp3 format, how to create a proper podcast feed and how to get the feed into Itunes.  I found I would be able to use a plug in for WordPress to create my podcast feed which is pretty slick.  In addition it can create a player link right inside of a post as you can see below. 

The one remaining snag is getting the feed accepted by the Itunes store.  For some reason when I submit the feed to the store it isn’t liking the URL for some reason.  I am able to manually add the same feed url to my Itunes so I’m not sure what the difference is.

Now of course, I don’t expect many people to bother to download an audio version of my blog, hell maybe nobody will.  However there are some readers of my blog that do not know me personally. For them, it may be interesting to put a voice with the wacky words that they read on a semi-regular basis. 

I’m not quite sure how I would want to do this.  I am thinking that perhaps a once a week podcast would work out the best.  It would give enough content to fill a few minutes without being too long.

Like the blog itself, creating an audio version is more about benefiting me more than anything else.  Forcing me to read out loud and enunciate clearly is something I definitely could use more work at.  My hope is as I get more comfortable I will be able to ad-lib off of the reading the posts instead of just reading them.  Who knows, perhaps I could even employ guest readers from time to time?  I mean who wouldn’t want the sultry sound of Randall’s voice dictating my mundane existence?

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

[podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/bluesky.mp3[/podcast] [podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/PartyVanKeepsonGiving.mp3[/podcast] [podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/AnotheroneBitestheDustDumbAss.mp3[/podcast]

Just a test to see if I can get it sucked into Itunes.

If you would like to manually add the podcast feed to Itunes you can use this: https://blog.duf.net/?feed=podcast

Hmm I wonder how interesting it would be to be able to download mp3 versions of my posts? I read a few of them into my Ipod. It would be fun for those that can’t read.

It would have the side benefit of forcing me to read and speak clearly, something I suck at. Take a listen to my examples and let me know what you think.

When we first moved to Florida one of the things that I remember loving the most was waking up, looking out the window of our small two bedroom apartment and seeing bright, blue sky almost every single day.  It just made me feel good for some reason.

I never get to experience that sensation anymore because Ali has adopted a blinds closed policy since we built the house.  I can understand that she likes them closed to extend her sleeping hours which can go a solid two to three hours after mine.  Still, I miss the sensation of waking up to that deep, bright blue.  

Hmm there is a second bedroom….

The sale of the old party van combined with the surprisingly low amount of cash spent to fix the AC on PV 2.0 has given us a little bulge of cash that I am using to knock other items off the to do list.  Today the Tacoma goes in to have it’s timing belt replaced.  The timing belt in these motors needs to be replaced as preventative maintenance.

Instead of a timing chain, Toyota employs a rubber belt to maintain engine timing.  If you ignore replacement of the part and are unlucky enough to have it break there is a good chance the upper end of your motor will be trashed. It’s a pretty expensive repair because there is a lot of labor involved. While it is in there I am going to have them give it a good once over since for the last 60,000 miles the only things that have been done is oil changes and air filters.

I got a quote from the dealer of a grand to have the timing belt done.  The place I am taking it to are ex-Toyota mechanics that were recommended to me by two co-workers.  They will do the work for almost half the cost of a dealer.

I’m hoping to have a few dollars left over to redo the deck in Nicki’s area with composite lumber that will never split, crack or rot.

My back is feeling better although after a few steps of running after the dogs inside I could feel the throbbing in the area.  No running for me in the short term future.

Yesterday I posted two football related status updates that may have seemed odd.  The first was about Brian Ehrlacher being out for the season with a dislocated wrist.  I guess I don’t have a good grasp on the seriousness of the injury.  To me it seems like the sort of thing they could immobilize with a cast on game day.

The second was about Shawn F’in Andrews. Shawn Andrews is an offensive lineman for the Eagles and he was a pretty good one for a few years.  He missed all of last season due to injury and it was just announced he is now missing this entire season as well.  Along with the injury there has been talk that a good part of his issues are of the mental variety. 

Well the reason it was particularly annoying that he was scrubbed for this year was his blabbing about  how he was going to be a “beast” this year and various other bragging remarks that seemed totally inappropriate for a guy that hasn’t been on the field for more than a year.  He also is apparently a wannabe recording artist.  You can check out his channel on youtube.  On the channel you can see him laughing, talking hype and doing everything except acting like an athlete that is injured to the point of missing yet another full season. Unfortunately for him his youtube channel has been discovered by angry Eagles fans.  The comment section is filled with venom towards Andrews, including some negative comments from me. 

It angers me to see a guy collecting the NFL equivalent of welfare.  20 months should be long enough to recover from just about any ailment, I can only assume that he hasn’t been working as hard as he should have been to get better.  F him, by placing him on IR I think the Eagles have raised the white flag on this lazy mental case. He will be out of the NFL sooner rather than later.

Patrick Swayze died yesterday after his long fight with pancreatic cancer.  To be honest I am surprised he held on this long.  I always enjoyed his flicks, the favorite of mine would be Point Break.  Sure it’s sad he died but 57 isn’t a horrible age to go, he was just about to enter the slippery slope into the abyss of old age.  Man there have been a lot of names dying lately, more than I can ever recall in such a short time period.

It didn’t take long for me to find annoying things at Planet Fitness.  Last week I got to watch four Haitians sit in the already small free weight area and do NOTHING but shoot the shit for at least 30 minutes.  They didn’t move a single weight during that time period.  Luckily I didn’t need the benches they were occupying needlessly.

One of the most annoying things about Planet Fitness is the myriad of rules they have.  One of these rules is you aren’t allowed to use cell phones on the gym floor.  I believe the rule is meant to prevent two things, people sitting on equipment while they yap on the phone and cell phone camera bandits that may try to snap up shorts or down shirt shots of a female in a compromising position.

  Well a woman was using her cell phone on the gym floor.  She was aware of the rule because she was using it back in a corner out of view from the front desk.  It didn’t matter, the cell phone police sniffed her out.  An employee spotted the infraction and made the woman end the call.  Although I don’t agree with morons blabbing on a cell phone while they tie up a machine, I found the incident disturbing.  Whenever I am in the place I feel like I am under surveillance.

I caught the end of the Patriots/Bills game.  I tuned in with about 5 minutes to go.  It looked like the Patriots were surprisingly going down in flames in their home opener to the Bills.  New England was down two scores and had just received the kick off.  Well Buffalo did the typical, stupid prevent defense that allowed the Patriots to march right down the field and score with about two minutes to go. 

 Instead of an onside kick New England decided to kick the ball deep.  The kick went a few yards into the end zone.  Instead of doing the smart thing  like taking a knee, the guy instead decides to run the ball out.  He takes a big hit and instead of going down and protecting the ball he continues to battle to get a meaningless yard or two and in the process gets the ball yanked out.  The Patriots recover the fumble, go down and score another touchdown and the Bills fail when they get the ball back. Game over.  That kick returner is  grade A dumb ass.  Of course the special teams coach should have been screaming at them ahead of time so they knew that protecting the ball was the number one priority. 

Hey I was happy, TO gets to enjoy a crushing loss in his first game as a Bill.  Hopefully there are many more of those to come.  I can hardly wait for his first temper tantrum. 

 There was an odd moment after the game.  Suzy Kolber was trying to interview Tom Brady after time ran out but Tom refused to stop to talk to her.  So instead Suzy kept running after Tom trying to shout questions at him.  Tom had no interest in speaking with her and only threw out a couple one liners as he continued to run off the field. It was awkward.  You can see the blow off here. maybe Tom was afraid he would be lured by the same spell that Suzy used on Joe Namath.

I locked up top points in the league last night.  I had 35 points more than my closest competition and beat my opponent by 65 points.  I can only hope the good fortune continues.

So even though my back was bothering me big time since Thursday I was determined it would clear up enough to the point where I would be able to play in the volleyball tournament on Sunday. Randall had texted me on Friday night asking if I wanted him to look for a sub based on the updates on my back issues. I told him I’d be ok.

Well when I woke up Saturday morning my back was still KILLING me. I realized that I was being stupid.  Even if I did play, I would suck.  I wouldn’t be able to move quickly, not to mention jumping. On top of that there was a high probability I would aggravate the condition where I could screw something up royally.  I mean WTF, this is lowly BB volleyball, not the Olympics.

So early Saturday morning I texted Randall and told him that maybe he should look for a sub.  He called me later in the morning to let me know he found someone to play and to check on my condition which I appreciated.  Unfortunately the report I got back from the beach wasn’t good, they didn’t make it out of pool play.

Ali was out on Saturday and one of her stops was Home Depot where she grabbed me a timer for the water heater.  The plan was to install the timer on the heater as part of our assault on our sky high electric bills.  However later in the weekend the plan was scuttled.  I had several reasons.

While I was looking up info on installing the timer I found an article that said if you had a water heater that was manufactured after 1996 it is already very efficient.  In fact some of the new heaters may run as little as two hours a day.  Well our heater is only a year old and is set to energy saving mode.  The potential lack of appreciable savings factored in as well as accessibility of the box. The heater is tucked behind the fridge in the garage and a set of wire shelves.  With the frequent loss of power we have down here there would be the need to reset the clock on the timer pretty often. Unless I relocated the box far away this would be a pain in the ass.  So I decided to scrub the project.  I did however change the  pool pump settings to run for three one hour sessions per day instead of one long 8 hour run.  It will be interesting to see if I notice any degradation in the pool water quality.

I spent some time on Saturday working on the new party van a bit.  I fixed a couple minor things and cleaned the interior up somewhat.  I experimented with the various electronics to see what worked and didn’t work.   The van has a shitty Audiovox stereo installed by the 2nd row of seats.  The radio has an analog tuner and a cassette tape deck.  It does have one cool thing, an AUX input.  This allows you to plug something like an Ipod into the port and then jack into the various overhead audio ports to listen to the audio throughout the van, pretty neat.  I pulled out the TV, I am not sure if it was ever actually used.  Unlike the VCR that is modified to run off a DC cigarette lighter plug, the TV was a regular tv with a regular AC plug.  When I tried plugging it into one of my DC to AC inverters it pulled way too much juice and would not turn on.  I just pulled the tv out since it would serve no purpose. 

While Ali was gone the dogs and I went for a quick ride.  It was hot and humid as hell on Saturday however the inside of the van with functioning front AND rear AC was like an ice box, I was very pleased.

Wow what an Eagles game.  When the game started with the Panthers going on a long scoring drive on their first possession I was thinking we were in for yet another poor defensive performance like we had seen for most of the pre-season.  Man did they ever turn things around.  Their defense started creating turnovers by the bunches and capitalized on most of them with points.  By the time they were done the Birds had rolled up a 38-10 ass beating on the Panthers.

This reminded me of the way they started last season with a beating of even greater magnitude laid on the Rams.  However there was a big difference this year.  The Rams SUCKED.  The Panthers had the best record in the NFC last year and were undefeated at home in the process.  For the Eagles to do what they did is VERY impressive.  Unfortunately there was a negative among all of the rainbows, Donovan is hurt again.  He broke a rib after getting cheap shotted on the way into the end zone.  His status is up in the air.  Even if Donovan does play, I don’t know how his play could not be affected.

Kevin Kolb came in after McNabb got hurt.  At first he looked pretty relaxed and efficient moving the team. However as time went on he looked less polished and made some bad plays.  I don’t know if a 100% healthy Kolb is better than a McNabb with broken ribs.  Perhaps pain killers and a flak jacket will be enough to allow McNabb to play.

I had a blow out huge fantasy football weekend as well.  I had the Eagles defense AND Drew Brees, both had HUGE days, scoring over 100 points between just the two of them.  I should have top point total for the week wrapped up which will ring me up a nifty $50 spiff.

On Saturday I reactivated the Directv Sunday ticket in prep for the game.  It is a ridiculously expensive $400 if you want the games in HD.  When I first started getting the ticket in 200 is was $200-$250. There are some very cool things you get for all that money though.  Last year you were able to log on through the internet and watch any game as well as get in depth stats for the fantasy football owners.  Well this year they added an app for the Iphone that rocks!  You can stream any Sunday Ticket game via the Iphone, get stats, watch just highlights and pause the action at anytime.  It is fantastic.  The video quality was surprisingly good of course I was connected via my home’s wireless network.  I don’t know how it would perform over 3G.  

Of course nothing compares to watching the game in brilliant HD on a 73 inch tv with surround sound.  It just looks so damn good.

I forgot to mention that when mom was over this past weekend she brought along two dvds.  These had old home movie footage that my Uncle Randy had ripped off of ancient reels of tape.  It covered the time period of mom’s childhood, not in it’s entirety but a good chunk of it.  Although there was no sound and in many sections the video quality was awful, I still found it fascinating to look through the time machine.  I had only seen a handful of picture of mom when she was younger, the films were filled with images of mom, my uncles and grandparents that I never saw before. It was fascinating.

The resemblance between mom and my sister Torrin at the same age is pretty staggering, they almost look like twins.  My Uncle Butch looks very similar to my cousin Steve during the same time period. My grandfather looked like a younger version of what I always a remembered, a guy that always seemed happy and full of energy.  Uncle Randy was definitely the star of the show getting more camera time than anyone else. Perhaps movie cameras became more popular shortly after he was born.  Seeing the greater Reading area 50 years ago on the screen was very interesting to me.

In total it was probably close to three hours of footage.  Ironically mom was the one that wanted us to cut it short, I could have watched that stuff for hours on end.  Unfortunately I have no idea whatever happened to any video footage of our youth. My thanks go out to Uncle Randy for doing that, it was cool.

So I asked Ali to rub my aching back last night.  Although it felt good at the time it seems to have done more harm than good.  I was awakened at 1:30 am by the pain in the area.  No matter which way I laid in the bed I could not relieve the discomfort.  Finally I got out of bed and took two advil, once they started to kick in I finally was able to fall back asleep.  I am hoping that I make a very speedy recovery as in 48 hours I will be running, jumping and diving in the sand at South Beach.

When we redid out counter tops we splurged and bought a black composite granite sink to go with it.  The sales pitch was this type of sink is nearly indestructible, impervious to pretty much everything.  Well I noticed from day one that when the sink was totally dry it didn’t look very nice at all, it had a white hazed look to it.  Over time this discoloration has gotten worse.  The other night Ali used considerable elbow grease trying to scrub the sink thoroughly to remove the film.  It didn’t make a difference.

So last night I once again turn to the internet for answers.  In 10 seconds I am looking at a message board post of various other black granite composite sink owners that have the same problem.  The solutions to it were intriguing and varied.  People reported using magic erasers, Avon Skin So Soft, mineral/baby oil and even WD-40 to bring the color back to their sinks.  We happened to have both a magic eraser and mineral oil so I first hit it with the magic eraser which didn’t seem to make much of a difference.  After the sink dried I wiped it down with the mineral oil and BAM it looked great.  The sink still looked great this morning.  From what I read you have to apply the mineral oil on a routine basis but it is very easy to do so that shouldn’t be an issue.

So of course I did not forget that today is 9/11/09, a full 8 years after that dreadful day we all remember so well.  9/11 marked a period in history where the country was united like never before, we were no longer democrats, republicans or something else.  All that mattered was we were americans.  Ironically after the aftermath of 9/11 started to settle in it started the most divisive political period in my lifetime.  The division between the left and the right today is so deep and combative it seems like there will never again be anything that can be unilaterally agreed upon again.

The horrible 9/11 event reeks of controversy as well.  While many people simply refuse to entertain even the remote possibility that some parts of US government had their hands in events that lead up to the catastrophe, there are simply too many unanswered questions regarding the incident to ignore. I mean hell, one of the things that was portrayed as a negative about Van Jones was he dared to sign a petition that questioned the validity of the government’s 9/11 explanation.

  With all of the deception that has become a staple of US policy in the modern era, why for some reason people think this is outside the boundaries of possibility confuses me.  If you are able to simply read the information presented here and draw your own conclusions I challenge you to maintain your stance the the government came clean about the events of 9/11.  No I’m not saying that George Bush ordered planes to fly into buildings, however there are far too many head scratchers presented for it all to be conveniently filed under the coincidence category. 

Hey even opening up your mind to the idea that we were deceived once again regarding 9/11 is a scary thing to do.  Who wants to believe that our government would try to pull the wool over our eyes over such a horrific tragedy?  It’s far easier to just accept the official government explanation. It’s safe.