Archives February 2010

The one thing I was missing to be able to do a complete 300 work out at home was an olympic bar and two 45 pound plates.  I had been checking out Craigslist looking for some deals but hadn’t been able to work anything out to this point.  I decided to just stop at Sports Authority and see what it would cost me there.

They had loads of plates for sale and they were 20% off.  Two 45 pound plates would have run around $80.  The problem was they didn’t sell an olympic bar by itself, only in a complete set that included 300 pounds of weight.  The set was normally $259 but was also on sale for $209.

After weighing my options and factoring in that I still had $40 on my SA gift card I decided to just buy the set.  It’s a decent set with plates that have handles built into them which makes them easy to handle.  The handles actually enable you to use some of the plates in a similar fashion as you would a kettleball.  The set also came with spring collars to keep the weights in place.

After unpacking the weights I put them to immediate use.  No I didn’t do any heavy lifting, I used the weight plates to hold down the fabric I covered the garden with.  Yea we have another damn cold snap in place.  Luckily this morning the thermometer read 42 degrees so the stuff should be ok.

Speaking of cold, wintry conditions, boy am I glad I am not in my native PA right now.  I have heard and seen the nightmarish blizzard conditions my friends and family are enduring and it just plain sucks.

I recall in the late 90’s when I still lived in the townhouse in Wernersville we got dumped on with somewhere around two feet of snow.  It was just miserable.  The piles of snow get so high that each shovelful requires monumental effort to get the white nightmare on top of a pile as tall as you are.

This latest blizzard was made worse by the storm that just blew through only a few days prior.  If you can believe it, there is yet another possibility of major snow accumulation early next week.

To say that Ali and I are grateful that we live in South Florida would be a major understatement.  I’ll deal with our chilly temperatures thank you very much.

Ali’s trip up north was cancelled due to the horrible weather conditions.  However she still got to see her family last night thanks to Skype.  I hooked up my webcam to her pc and Ali successfully had video phone calls to both her nieces and her dad.  It was a very cool way for her to be there without really being there.  The sound and video quality was quite good. Best part of all, it’s free.

So I picked up my truck yesterday, expecting to see that they replaced the water pump that was supposedly leaking.  When I was handed the bill I saw there was hardly anything on it.  The guy said they replaced the gasket around the thermostat instead, it was pinched and leaking. Oh ok…..  I am skeptical if that was the actual source of the leak .  You can bet that if I was the one paying for the repair the water pump would have been replaced for sure.  I’ll be monitoring the ground under the truck closely.

So last night we went to the county fair.  We didn’t even bother going to the fair last year even though it’s only a 1/2 mile from our house.  The $10 per head entry fee plus $8 to park was just a rip off.  Well last night was “family night” at the fair.  They run specials on week nights to try to get bodies in the gates.  If you brought a can of food to donate your ticket dropped to $5 each PLUS there is free parking.  Somehow we actually managed to get in the gate for a total of $5.  I don’t know if the ticket clerk did some bad math or the deal was even better than I thought.  So instead of spending nearly $30 to get into the fair we paid $5, sweet!

It was chilly last night,in the upper 50’s.  I was almost embarrassed by how many layers I put on.  I adorned a long sleeve t-shirt, sweat shirt and a zip up hooded sweatshirt to keep me warm.  Even with all of that I still felt a bit cold as we walked around.

Shortly after entering the fair we passed a large food stand.  They had a huge vinyl sign in front of it listing their food items.  Every single one of them was disgustingly bad for you.  Blooming onions, fried dill pickles and the item pictured here were some of the highlights. A donut burger, a hamburger with bacon and cheese on a freaking donut.  What is wrong with people?

The highlight for the fair for us is seeing all of the animals, they had a ton of them. We saw pretty much every farm animal you can imagine.  Of course walking by the pigs and cows that were laying down sleeping peacefully made us feel bad, especially me since I still eat meat.  The idea of slaughtering the animals that we were interacting with seems unfathomable.  I rubbed a cow’s head as we walked around.

We also went into a petting zoo area that had a variety of animals including exotic ones like a zebra and camel.  We bought carrots to feed the animals.  The camel got the most food from me.  He was really good about taking stuff nicely from your hand.  He let my rub his fuzzy head.

We saw a trained bear show.  Some old guy with a Grizzly Adams beard and his sons ran the show.  They had 5 or 6 trained bears that went through a variety of interesting and funny tricks.  However Ali was ready to bolt when the trainer whapped the one bear on the snout when it didn’t do what he wanted.  I told her it was ok and we watched for awhile longer. 

I told Ali I had no urge to walk around the rides portion of the fair.  I had a bit of a headache so doing rides was not really on the to do list.  Plus when you walk through that area you are in the midst of the hardcore carnival people, the ones that will accost you repeatedly to play their stupid rigged games that offer shitty prizes that wind up in the trash.  Plus I have flashbacks to the year where the dunk tank clown insulted me endlessly as I failed to connect on the target that would drop him in the water.  I hated that clown.

One thing I noticed that was missing from this years fair is the mega-ride.  In years past they have had a hardcore thrill ride that costs a fortune to ride, usually in the $20-$25 range.  I’ve done them a couple times.  There was nothing hardcore this year, I guess they didn’t get enough thrill seekers to pay the bills.

Ali’s favorite part of the fair is getting an apple dumpling, something she would never have otherwise.  I had a few bites of the massive dumpling along with the two big piles of vanilla soft serve. I grabbed some hot chocolate at another stand to help me keep warm.

We walked around a bit more as Ali finished her dumpling.  We looked at the tank of seals swimming back and forth and saw the tail end of the alligator show.

After the show ended the handler was allowing people to come up and hold a baby gator.  There was a larger, maybe five or six foot long gator in the pool below the stage.  The gator was getting agitated, I saw him whip his tail around and hold his mouth open in an aggressive manner. 

I looked around and saw the source of the gators agitation.  There were some Hispanic teenagers in the line that were hissing at the gator and poking their hands through the fence at him.  Stupid kids, I was cheering inside for the gator to have a little snack of Mexican fingers. 

After the dumpling was gone we headed for the exit.  Unlike prior years where Ali and I felt we got ripped off for our $30, this time we felt our $5 was well spent.  We had a chilly good time.

Today in a parking lot I saw a tricked out original Hummer.  It had at least a 2 foot lift kit along with monster tires on huge rims.  Proudly displayed on the front and sides was the name of some plumbing company.  I have seen similar examples of business owners flaunting their wealth and I just don’t get it.

Am I the only one that sees a $100,000 vehicle with a company name/logo on it and assume that the way they afforded that vehicle was by gouging the shit out of their customers?  For me at least, any company name I would see that adorned such a vehicle would never get my business.  It totally sends the wrong signal in my opinion, look at me, I made a fortune on other customers, can I make a fortune on you too?  Sure enjoy the spoils of your wealth, just don’t slap a flashing neon sign on it.

I watched the 15 minute Griswald mini-movie that was made for homeaway.com.  Man it was laugh out loud funny.  Even totally gray, balding and fat, Chevy Chase is solid gold in that role.  Man I wish he would make another vacation movie, I’d see it in a second.  Look for yourself.

Just to save you from paying 99 cents to KGB to find it for you, here is a link to Man’s Last Stand as well as link to see all of the Super Bowl commercials.

You can add Jim Carey to the list of people I have been told I look like.  He adds to a long list that has included, Jeff Gordon, Mark Fuhrman (OJ trial bad cop), some country singer who’s name I can’t recall, a Lerch/Gomer Pyle cross breed  and of course, McGyver.

Have a lot to chat about.

Friday night I was solo as Ali was at a John Mayer concert with a friend of hers.  I partied with a Marie Callendar frozen dinner and played WoW to end up my week.

My Saturday morning started out slow as I let Ali sleep in since she didn’t get home until around 3am.   I decided to finally address some of the vegetation that bit the dust during the week long cold snap.  I dreaded trimming the areca palms around the mini-pond.  In the past I have spent tons of time with a loppers cutting off the scores of dead fronds.  This time I finally got smart.

I remembered I had a hedge trimmer attachment for my newer weed whacker.  I realized that I could simply use it to give the palms a shave, much in the way I did to my head a month or so ago.  Instead of spending an hour trimming fronds I instead was able to have all 3 zipped down in less than 15 minutes.  I also pulled out the chain saw and chopped a hedge on the other side of the house way back. Again, power tools made the job go much faster.

Since I got the motorcycle from my dad I have been running it every weekend to make sure it stays in good running condition.  Well a few weeks ago the carbs started to leak gas once again, just like they did before I replaced the carb floats and needle/seat assembly.  I can’t get it started either at this point. 

The last time this happened the one carb float had gas in it.  It was an odd thing since they were brand new floats.  Well I haven’t checked yet  but I am suspecting that once again one of the floats may have gas inside of it.  If that is the case then the problem could be as simple as the replacement floats we have been getting are shitty.  However if it isn’t the float this time it could be some other problem.

I emailed my dad and told him about the latest issues.  I told him that I really wasn’t interested enough in riding motorcycle to want to pump a lot of money into the Guzzi to fix whatever is wrong.  After all, that is potential Camaro money I would be spending.  I said that if it is just another float problem I could try to find a source for GOOD floats, but I’m not going to do much beyond that.

I said if dad was sentimental about the bike he could certainly have it back or if he wasn’t I could try to sell it for whatever I can get and send him the proceeds from the sale.  I haven’t heard back from him as of yet.

I also took another whack at the water equipment, trying to fix the bad discoloration issue.  I reprogrammed the water cleaner again as well as screwing with the brine tank valve.  I may be seeing things, but the water in the house actually looks better since the changes.  I still haven’t fixed the leak in the pressurized holding tank which causes the pump to run every 30 seconds or so.

We got word from our accountant that once again our tax return should be considerable this year, hopefully enough to address our water quality issues once and for all.  My co-worker asked me why we don’t change our withholding so we have more in our pockets month to month instead of getting a lump sum at tax time? I guess it’s just a personal preference.  Ali and I sort of like getting a Christmas present in February.

Sunday morning Ali and decided to go for a run.  She hadn’t run since the Miami half marathon a week ago.  I came up with the idea of running around the trails at the North Collier Park, where the water park is.  We’ve talked about checking out the trail a few times but never had the chance.  It was brisk yesterday morning with temps in the mid to upper 50’s.  Ali and I laughed when we saw that the water park was open this weekend.  Now of course not a single soul was going to be in the water with air temp barely crossing 60 degrees but none the less they had the park open and the water was flowing. I thought to myself what a huge waste of taxpayer money that is (it’s a county maintained water park), to be pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons around all day for nobody to use.

We parked and found our way to the boardwalk which is part of the trails.  The boardwalk is rather lengthy and circles through a wooded area filled with cypress and slash pine trees.  It was very cool.  The entire boardwalk was decked with composite lumber, similar to what I used on our deck at home, only thicker.  I immediately started adding it up in my head.  To resurface my small 12 x 12 deck with composite lumber costs nearly $400.  Imagine the costs to do a half mile or more of boardwalk???  It had to literally be hundreds of thousand of dollars.  The county spares no expense when it comes to their park system.

This theme continued as we ran around the trails.  The complex is massive, filled with baseball/softball and soccer fields that are meticulously maintained.  They were beautiful.  It must be an awesome thing to be a young kid that plays sports in Collier county.  It’s like playing in the damn major leagues, the fields are that nice.  Damn I remember mowing down 2 foot high grass in the middle of a field to use for my little league team.

While we were running I asked Ali how far we had gone.  I was surprised when she said it was only 2 miles, it felt like we had been running longer, maybe it was because there was so much to see.  Ali also told me her knee was bothering her so we stopped.  Ali was annoyed that her knee was bugging her again, especially since she was able to run in Miami 13 miles without hardly feeling it.

After our run we went to Sam’s.  I had seen a compact gas grill that I thought Ali might like.  Our existing grill is a large 3 burner unit, bigger than we need.  Ali didn’t like how much space it took up under the limited covered space of the lanai.  I spotted a compact 2 burner unit at Sam’s I thought she would like.  It’s was powder coated red instead of the “stainless” steel our old grill was supposedly made of.  We must have the special sort of stainless steel that rusts like mad.

Anyway Ali gave her stamp of approval and we loaded it up.  We drove the van because we also had to pick up our part time neighbors at the airport mid-morning.  After dropping them off I dug right into putting the grill together.  That is the one negative of buying your grill at a place like Sam’s compared to Home Depot or Lowe’s where they put it together for you.

It didn’t take long for me to regret buying a grill in a box.  I was early in the assembly process where I was attaching the sides to the base.  The directions indicated I should be bolting a piece to the sides using fasteners that screwed into some press in fittings in the sides that are already supposed to be installed. Well there was one problem, one of the two sides was missing the press in fittings!  WTF.  I start digging through the various part boxes and double and triple checking the diagram to see if I was misreading it.  Nope, both sides were supposed to have these fittings and mine did not. ARGH!

Ali came out to check on my progress and I filled her in on my dilemma.  She asked if I had any fasteners I could use to finish the work.  To be honest I had already resigned myself to waiting between 8:30 and 5pm Monday – Friday to call the customer service line in the manual to scream at them about shipping incomplete parts.  Ali’s suggestion pushed me to at least see if I had something I could use to rig it.

I searched through my rather large fastener collection and after a couple failures came up with a winning combination.  I used some left over trim screws for the 88 Vette and a drywall anchor to connect the pieces together.  I had to trim the anchors down so they fit in the cramped space bit it seemed to hold the pieces together securely.

  Putting the grill together took quite awhile, I was probably working on it for at least 90 minutes.  After I got it together I went and exchanged a propane tank, installed it in the new grill and fired it up to make sure it worked.  It did.  The old grill will be relocated to the roadside with a “Works” sign taped to it.  I’m sure it will be picked up in no time.

So let’s talk Super Bowl.  Since we weren’t throwing a party this year I was able to really take in both the game and the commercials, something that is difficult to do in a party environment.  The combination of our awesome 73 inch Mitsubishi with surround sound really makes the Super Bowl broadcast pretty spectacular.

Let’s talk about the game itself.  The results were surprising.  Early on Peyton Manning and the Colts looked like a machine.  There were several times I commented to Ali about how amazingly accurate Manning was on his throws and how nice it would be if McNabb could somehow acquire that degree of accuracy.  Peyton was hitting receivers in stride, dropping the ball over top of defenders and just making difficult throw after difficult throw without breaking a sweat.  Then the second quarter happened.

Even though the Saints only scored 6 points, including getting stuffed on a 4th and goal, they basically held the ball all quarter long, keeping the Colts offense off the field.  The onside kick by the Saints to start the second half was a huge gamble that paid off.  I think it made a real statement that the Saints had nothing to lose, they were the clear underdogs and were willing to let it all hang out to win.

As the game went on the momentum continued to build for the Saints.  Even though Manning was still moving the team you could sense an increasing level of desperation.  It was late in the game and Manning was leading the Colts down the field for what would be a game tying touchdown.  Then the most surprising thing of all happened, Peyton choked.  To be honest the blame for that interception may have fallen more on Reggie Wayne who looked like he ran his route deeper than Peyton was anticipating.  Regardless, it resulted in a interception that was run back for a touchdown that put the game out of reach.

The Saints win, a great underdog story.  I really was fine no matter who the eventual winner was.  I pity my buddy who bet heavily on the game both on the over and on the Colts.  He got taken to the cleaners.

Ok let’s talk about the non-sports part of the broadcast.  How about the Who?  Wow it was quite a visual contrast.  To have an older than dirt bunch of rockers that look every year of their age performing songs they did 40 years ago was visually disturbing.  However they performed in the middle of an eye popping extravaganza of electronics, led’s and lasers that were pretty amazing.  Ali kept laughing her ass off whenever they showed the drummer that looked like Dana Carvey’s twin in Wayne’s World.

Although I didn’t quite notice, I heard that they lip synced the entire performance which is rather disappointing.  It was obvious that Daltry was not even touching the guitar when he was doing his signature windmill move, something he went to far too often.  Why can’t we get a LIVE performance at the damn Super Bowl?  That’s pretty sad to be provided with fake singing and fake guitar playing. Enough with the old dudes too.

As always the commercials for the game covered a broad spectrum from hilarious, to insightful, to downright stupid.  The commercial that was voted best was the Snickers pick up football game which had Betty White and Abe Pagoda in it (he’s still alive?)  I liked that one as well but my favorite commercial of all was the Dodge Charger commercial, Man’s Last Stand.

The commercial features a series of men with blank, vapid, soulless stares looking into the camera.  There is a voice over describing an endless list of concessions modern man makes to appease the whims of the opposite sex.  Each man looks more pathetic than the last until they get to the last one.  His look of despair transforms into more of a look of buried rage as the camera pans closer into his eyes.  The message is men put up with all of this bullshit so they can drive a car that they want.  It cuts to the sight and sounds of a Dodge Charger ripping down the road, all 8 cylinders emitting the sound only a man can appreciate. (ok a few women)  I LOVED this commercial.  I told Ali all they had to do was plug a Camaro in there instead.

Now of course I don’t think Ali represses me to the point that was described in the commercial but the message certainly hits home.  Men spend their lives jumping through hoops to get their prize whether that prize is sex or some toy.

I liked quite a few ads like the dog throwing the shock collar on the person, the old Bears doing a new Super Bowl shuffle, Casual underwear Friday,  Chevy revisiting his Clark Griswald role,  and the human dolphins.

There were many stupid ones like the violin beaver, Sketcher sneakers that get you in shape by wearing them according to Joe Montana, and several of the Budweiser spots.  The most annoying of all were the f’ing stupid Denny commercials with the screaming chickens.  Whoever thought that would be funny should be fired immediately.   A few more commercial thoughts:

I thought the new Hyundai Sonata looked really sharp.  They sure have come a long way since I sold the lowly Excel back in the late 80’s. 

GoDaddy really needs to come up with a new campaign, wtf this is the third year they show you a spot to try to trick you into going to their site to see a totally PG-13 ending to a pseudo sexual scenario.

Flo-tv?? WTF, who needs that?  There are already several methods to stream tv content to your smart phone??

KGB, again a big WTF?  Who would pay a service to do a search for you??  Is Google too complicated for you?  I have no idea how that business model is supposed to work. Stupid.

Anyway, a good game, good entertainment, and good food (thanks to Ali) wrapped up what was good weekend overall.

I have noticed over recent weeks something leaking from under my truck.  At first it only seemed to happen if I was parked on an incline so I tried to avoid parking on inclines.  However this weekend it leaked on a flat surface and it leaked a LOT.  I crawled underneath and looked around.  The substance had a reddish color which would initially make me think transmission fluid but it was too watery to be trans fluid.  I checked the trans fluid level and verified it was fine.

I remembered that a lot of newer coolant now is reddish in color.  I was pretty sure that was what I was looking at.  I crawled under the truck and saw it dripping from under the motor on the driver side toward the front.  I couldn’t identify the exact source of the leak however.  I did immediately have  a suspicion it could be related to the $1500 repair I had done in September that included replacing the water pump.

I took the truck back to the place that did the repair this morning.  I didn’t mention that they replaced the water pump only a few months ago.  Well I get a call mid-morning.  “the water pump is leaking it needs to be replaced”  just as he was starting to list the other items that had to be replaced along with it and before he could give me a price I stopped him and said “Yea, you guys just replaced that in September”  “We did?” the surprised voice on the other end of the line said.  I could sense the disappointment in his voice as another potential several hundred dollar windfall was fading.  “Yep, I am looking at the invoice from the repair”

I gave him the invoice number.  He said he would look it up and call me back.  I was a little surprised that they don’t do any homework on people that come in there.  They have a computerized billing system, they should be able to easily pull a history of the vehicle.  I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell them that my truck has been there several times and that I have dropped over $2k in repairs in their pockets.  Anyway, the guy calls me back and said they would replace the water pump under warranty.  I was thinking to myself “no shit, if you didn’t I would be raising holy hell” 

Hopefully this time I get a water pump installed that lasts for more than a couple months.

I am listening to the Wing Bowl on my Iphone.  The Wing Bowl has become a Philadelphia tradition now going on it’s 18th year.  It is basically a wing eating contest but it has blown up to unbelievable levels of popularity.  The event is filled with fat men, hot “Wingettes” and a stadium full of drunken spectators (at 6am). 

When I lived in PA I actually talked Ali into going into a Wing Bowl.  It was unforgettable for sure.  I’ll never forget as we sat in the upper deck watching a drunk stumble up the steps with beer in hand.  As he approached he put his index and middle finger in a V shape, held it up to his mouth and flicked his tongue between them in a rather disturbing manner.  It’s needless to say Ali was less than thrilled to be there.

It’s cool to be able to listen to the event again, it sounds just as I remembered.

Last night I had a weird dream.  I was back at the main Sovereign building in Wyomissing.  Well I was and I wasn’t.  It was at that location but when I was inside the building it was very old inside.  I saw my old buddy Brad there, he was showing me around the place.

We went to the top floor of the building.  I saw a huge drainage pipe coming out of the main network room.  I recalled that I installed the original pipe when I used to work there.  I noticed that it looked like the pipe had some work done to it, including some shoddy sections that looked like they were just wrapped in tape. 

I pointed to the taped area and said “Just taped??? I can’t believe that held.”  “Yep it held up” Brad said.  I commented that it had to be a hell of a mess when the pipe broke with all of the computer equipment below.  Brad just shook his head and said “Oh yea, it was terrible.”

At one point I found myself in a deep dark room in the building.  I saw an ancient looking “laptop” on a desk.  It was actually more like one of the old “luggable” Compaq systems.  I turned it on expecting it to not work.  To my surprise it fired up, booted very slowly and connected to the Sovereign network.  Wow.

Finally I wound up out in the parking lot by Brad’s vehicle, a Range Rover.  He opened the rear side door.  Inside was his son Luke and another young girl who I think was Bubba the Love Sponge’s step daughter Julia.  Brad also had his two dogs in the Range Rover, they looked like twins except they were different colors one was dark gray and one was light brown.  The gray one seemed to like me, Brad said his name was Shadow.

Dream over.

Yesterday after work I got the urge to go out and do some 300 exercises.  I have a YouTube feud going on with this weird British guy, the one that endangered his kid with the pull up stunt.  I have been trolling him on YouTube after I saw his original silly pink haired pull up routine. (hence my Pinky nickname for him)

Anyway I thought I would see how long it would take me to do 25 pull ups and 50 box jumps, video it and post it to Pinky as a video response.  I lugged the camera outside and went to work.  I struggled more than I would have liked.  I obviously am not in prime 300 form or anywhere close to it.  I completed the two exercises in right around 8 minutes.

After I finished I realized that I should have thrown the push ups and clean & press into the routine as well.  Oh well, guess I’ll add those next time. Here is the latest proof of my waning sanity.

Ali is going away to a concert tonight.  I am anticipating yet another busy weekend.  For the first time in several years we are not having a Super Bowl get together at our place.  I sort of thought of it late and by the time we asked a few people they had other plans.  Oh well, Ali and I will have our own little event.  We will be making vegetarian pigs in a blanket.

About a year ago or so Collier County started installing red light cameras at several busy intersections.  Naples, like most areas had issues with idiots screaming through red lights and causing accidents, sometimes fatal.  When the county commissioners approved their installation there was some mild complaining but the general sentiment was red light runners are dangerous and if this curtails that behavior it is worth it.

Well now fast forward to present day.  It turns out the reality of the red light system was not exposed before they approved.  Everyone, the commissioners, the sheriff, the general public assumed these cameras were used to nail people that ran through an intersection when the light was already red or when somebody turns left across traffic after their green arrow has turned red.  Well they aren’t used at all to catch left turn on red people but they are used to nail right turn on red offenders by the hundreds.

The way the system works is this.  The company that installs the red light cameras does it for no cost to the county.  They generate their income by taking a slice of the citations that are automatically issued.  The county also gets a slice of this pie.  Well when they started releasing the statistics for the citations people were outraged.  90+% of the citations were for right turn on red offenders.

Now if you read the law for right turn on red verbatim it goes something like this, a vehicle turning right on red has to first stop behind the white line for approximately 3 seconds, after doing so they can move forward and if traffic allows, they may then turn right on red.  Yea, ok, NOBODY does that.  Obviously this is all about just f’ing over motorists that are performing a maneuver that everyone, including law enforcement does.  You pull up to the intersection, make sure nothing is coming and then make your turn.  Yes I may not even come to a complete stop, my wheels could be inching along a bit.

Now granted, there are assholes that will roll right through a right on red without even slowing down at all.  Sure, nail those people, but if someone pauses, looks and makes his turn they should not be ticketed.

Well understandably people are pissed off about this.  What I find amazing is this revelation by one of the commissioners stating that they were unaware that right on red offenders were going to be targeted with this system.  They said nobody in county government to her knowledge knew this.  How the hell does that little detail get left out?  Well there is a wave of sentiment against the red light system now, hopefully it’s enough to get them to concentrate on the truly dangerous driving maneuvers instead of the purely profitable ones.

Moveon.org came to fame during the Bush years as one of the administrations harshest and most persistent critics.  Surely most Rushtonians equate the organization to purely liberal agendas with no common sense to help meter their message.  Well it’s simply not true.

Moveon has continued to try to get their word out even with a democratic leader in place.  They were very vocal in their opposition to the watered down, compromise stuffed health care plan that came before Congress.  They would have preferred to have it killed than passed in it’s end form.

Today they sent out another bulletin about AIG having the balls to pay out a hundred million dollars of bonuses to executives while they are still on the tab to the American public for BILLIONS.  It’s insanity pure and simple and moveon is as sick of the bullshit as I am.

Read on:

Yesterday news broke that AIG—the bailed-out insurance giant—will give out another $100 million in bonuses.¹ Seriously?

These are the people who wrecked our economy. And AIG still owes taxpayers $182 billion.

Their priority should be paying us back—not giving out obscene bonuses.

But unless Congress acts—by blocking bonuses at bailed-out banks or imposing heavy taxes on them—they’ll keep wasting our money. Can you sign our petition telling them that serious action to rein in bonuses is long overdue? Clicking below will add your name.

http://pol.moveon.org/aigagain/o.pl?id=18831-6800852-4mPcj7x&t=3

The petition says: “Bailed-out companies shouldn’t be allowed to waste money on bonuses until they’ve paid back their debt in full.”

Bankers in other countries have already gotten the message that their behavior is unacceptable. England and France have imposed heavy surtaxes on outrageous banker bonuses.²

But the banks still hold enormous power in Washington—as Sen. Dick Durbin put it, “They frankly own the place.”³ And they’re using all of their lobbying clout to oppose any attempts to rein in their bonuses.⁴

So despite the huge outcry over the last round of AIG bonuses, Congress still hasn’t done anything to stop Wall Street from giving out huge bonuses. AIG’s bonus plan is unacceptable. Clicking below will add your name to the petition letting Congress know they need to do something to stop it.

http://pol.moveon.org/aigagain/o.pl?id=18831-6800852-4mPcj7x&t=4

Thanks for all you do.

I have been working on getting a replacement for our internal firewall box.  My plan is to upgrade the hardware AND the old Wingate software I am using for firewalling with a slick 1U server and ISA Server 2006. 

I worked with ISA (it was called something different when it first came out) years and years ago in the late 90’s and haven’t touched it since.  The Wingate software we have used here has worked fine but it’s less than ideal in some aspects.  I have been screwing around with ISA 2006 off and on for almost a week and I am starting to develop a bald spot from scratching my head so much. 

I’m familiar with the rules that are typically used in firewall config but I’m not getting results as I would expect when testing ISA.  I’m sure it’s just me trying to dive into it with no formal background.  So far I haven’t even been able to have a test client pass through the firewall and telnet to a different network segment.  I’ll keep plugging away of course.  I need to find a simple guide for basic config of the product.  If you look at official MSFT white papers it is very easy to get lost in the boat loads of extraneous bullshit they include.

Last night I decided to be productive and clean the bathrooms.  Ali’s schedule for the next few days is rather packed and I figured it would be one less thing to get done this weekend.  I went the extra mile and did some cleaning in there that doesn’t get done regularly like cleaning off the shelves and cleaning the tub that hardly ever sees usage.

We also had what appeared to be a permanent coating of crud on the floor of the shower.  Last week I had some good success removing a stain around the drain of the guest bathroom tub drain using a combo of Lime Away and Clorox Clean Up.  I figured it was worth a shot on this crud as well. 

I soaked the floor of the shower first with the Lime Away, let it set for a few minutes and then followed up with spraying it with the Clorox stuff.  The fumes from the Clorox was overwhelming, I opened the window and turned on the exhaust fan to air out the room.  Once my eyes stopped burning I hit the floor of the shower with a brush and the crud came right off.  Shazam!  I used the Lime Away on the shelves in the shower as well which had some staining, again the product worked like a charm.  In retrospect I don’t think you even need to use the Clorox clean up.

Ali was surprised to see me wiping down a toilet when she got home.  She appreciated my efforts of course.  I proudly displayed our nearly new looking shower enclosure.  She was impressed with my results.  She has spent tons of time scrubbing that floor with other products and never got such results.

Today the dogs have their annual physical.  Part of it is blood tests.  To prepare, the dogs were not allowed to eat after midnight.     They were not happy girls this morning.  During my morning routine there are three potential treat sessions.  When they first go out to take a leak they both get a small treat and Sadie gets half a cup of dry food for “breakfast”.  As I prepare my lunch meat sandwich they each get some slices ripped up and fed to them.  Finally right before I leave I take them out again and if they take a dump they get yet another treat, normally dehydrated chicken breast.

Well this morning they got no treats and were very confused.  I was stared at the entire time by two sets of dog eyes, wondering when the treats were going to arrive.  The funniest moment of all came when I was applying the lunch meat to my sandwich. 

I typically put the the meat on my sandwich and then carry extra slices over to Nicki’s plate to tear them up. She was sitting right by me as I was preparing my sandwich.  After I was done I snapped the lid back on the container and put it back in the fridge.  As I did Nicki gave me the funniest double take and a “what the f are you doing!!!!!” look.  She had despair in her eyes as her beloved lunch meat went back into refrigeration.  I tried to console her by petting her and telling her she was still a good girl.  I’m sure she thought she was being punished for some reason.

What an exciting entry, computer firewalls, cleaning tips and dog stories all at one time!  I better check my blood pressure.

Besides doing a real nice job shooting pictures of the RFTP, Jeremy also did some pretty slick work the night before with the camera.  He used several techniques to create some pretty cool images.  One technique involved having the subject, myself or Randall, stand still while Jeremy would light up our body from both sides while the shutter of the camera remained open.  He also was able to “write” with the light behind us.  It provided for some very unique looking photos. We used the same technique to light up our big coconut palm as well, using my mega flashlight.

The most amazing shot of all to me is this one. Looks pretty ordinary right?  Well what if I told you this was shot at 9pm at night in total darkness?  Evidently if you leave the shutter open long enough the light, even tiny portions of it will accumulate to the point where you can make an image look like it was shot during the day.  I found this pretty incredible.

If you want to see all the pics he shot go here. 

I received an unexpected email from an old co-worker of mine.  Way back when I started my blog in the early to mid 2000’s he was one of my few regular visitors.  I jokingly nicknamed him the Yard Gnome because of his generally small stature.  He always enjoyed giving me shit for my opinions on certain subjects.

Well he stopped being a regular viewer/contributor years ago due to a busy work schedule and a general overall annoyance with some of my responses to his responses.  I did however put him on the notification list for my blog posts so he has been receiving excerpts all along, which he claims he never even reads.  Well he read the one from last night regarding the Vegas-Obama debacle and he was not able to resist letting me know his thoughts (via email)  Here they are. How I miss gnomey…..

Yard Gnome – Obama said what?….”You are lousy at spending your money so let me spend it for you” ?!?

First time I opened one of your emails in months and I see you want big government…
Hey, come on back to Reading and take advantage of our still too generous Public assistance programs.

You can wander around downtown with all of your like-minded, contribute nothing, I got to git mine, democratic friends.