Archives July 2010

Last night I watched King Corn which was in my Netflix queue.  My uncle recommended I watch it after I saw Food Inc.

King Corn is about two young guys that rent an acre of farm land in Iowa to grow corn.  They wanted to explore what was involved in growing corn and what happened to that corn once it was harvested.

The film does a good job of documenting the advent of the corn explosion in the US which started somewhere around 1973.  That was when the US government reversed their position on farming.  Instead of paying farmers to NOT grow certain crops to maintain prices they turned 180 degrees and decided to encourage farmers to grow as much as possible, specifically corn.

The combination of the government paying farmers to produce corn and the insatiable appetite of an always growing population has pushed corn production to insane levels.  A good harvest out of an acre of corn used to be 40 bushels.  Now farmers can squeeze as much as 200 bushels of corn out of that same acre.

Increasing the yield in corn has a whole lot to do with science, pesticides, heavy machinery and chemicals.  They spray the fields with an ammonia based fertilizer.  They kill weeds with herbicides.  The corn that is sown has been engineered to be able to resist this particular herbicide.

The huge farm equipment makes tending massive corn fields relatively easy.  In the film they were able to sow 31,000 seed in their 1 acre plot in 18 minutes.

The government subsidies to farmers for corn keeps the price of corn extremely cheap.  Often corn is sold for less than it costs to produce.  Even with selling their product at a loss farmers make money soley because of the government kickback.

The advent of dirt cheap corn set off a chain event of “progress” that is the origin of most of the food evils of modern day.  Corn syrup became a sugar replacement and a much less expensive one at that.  As a result corn based sweeteners are in almost all processed foods on a grocery shelf.

Corn also is the primary source of food for our meat supply.  Cattle in feed lots are fed a diet that is is mostly corn despite them being natural grass eaters.  The corn actually damages their digestive system.  In order to combat this damage cattle are regularly given anti-biotics that wind up in the meat we all eat.

Again, it’s all about money.  Feeding animals corn based products fattens them up quicker, meaning a faster turnover to the meat plants, which means more money.

The corn based sweeteners have all sorts of negative effects on a human beings metabolism.  It is no coincidence that the percentage of obese people in the United States has sky rocketed since the advent of cheap corn.  There is a direct correlation.

I enjoyed the movie, despite it’s eye opening, discouraging viewpoint on the American food system.  There was no light at the end of the tunnel.  We have been set down the tracks of a runaway cheap food train with no brakes.  The push for cheaper and more available food has created this monster.  Do you think big business will ever go back to the old ways because they were healthier for the American public? Fat chance.

Throw it in your Netflix queue, get educated.

Well I have been a triathlete in name only.  I am a registered member of Naples Area Triathletes.  I have run, biked and swam but never any combination of the three.  I guess that all is about to change.

Ali signed me up to do the Escape to Miami triathlon in late September. We will be doing the sprint tri which is a 1/4 mile swim in open water, 13 mile bike ride and finishes up with a 5k run. I am not very worried about the run and bike portion of the event although I have never done these back to back so I may be underestimating their difficulty when paired together.  The swim worries me.

I am admittedly a poor swimmer. I can swim pretty quickly over a short distance.  I never have swam anything long.  I haven’t even perfected the breathing technique.  When I swim I feel the need to totally lift my head out of the water to breathe.  If I try to simply turn it to the side I don’t feel like a get a good breath. Obviously I am going to need to work that out in the next couple months.

I am going to officially start my training with 3 miles on the treadmill today.  Hopefully it goes better than 2 weeks ago when my ass was kicked after two.

The tri will be a nice little challenge for me.  The biggest factor is my body and specifically my knees holding up to the training.

I have been working through the 1984 version of V.  It’s getting sort of hard to continue.  The cheesy acting, ridiculous fight scenes and Fisher Price special effects are silly at first but get rather annoying after awhile.  There are a few characters that really stand out on the show.

The head V bad guy is Diana. They dress her up in these white and red body suits.  From the waist up Diana is pretty hot for 1984.  However her ass, hips and legs are HUGE.  When you look at her profile pics she is always angled in such a way to hide it but in the show it is all on display to see.  It’s humongous.

She does a pretty decent job playing a bad guy.  Compared to some of the acting performances on the show hers is probably one of the best.

Michael Ironside is on the show as  a “good” guy.  He actually is a bad guy that winds up on the good side due to a common enemy, the visitors.  You might not know the name but you would know his face for sure.  He has been on tv for years and pretty much exclusively as a villain.  He just has the face for it.

Donovan is the worst actor in the series hands down.  He is so overly dramatic you can’t help but laugh at him.  He also happens to be ripped to shreds, in incredible shape for 1984.  Maybe he was making up for a lack of acting ability.  I know he has been in various roles over the years but I couldn’t name a single one.

He has this weird thing going on.  In almost every fight scene he magically has a pair of beat up leather construction gloves on.  I don’t know if the gloves had magical V beat down powers but they seem to show up on every episode.

His acting is so bad, it has to be witnessed to be fully appreciated.

Like I said, the show is sort of dragging for me.  I think I have something like a dozen episodes to go.  I’m not sure I can make it. Unlike Lost, where 5 seasons went down like a case of Zima, 1984 V is being forced down my throat while I am holding my nose.

I left work a little early on Friday for my trek across state to Jeremy and Mandy’s place in Boca Raton.  The truck was loaded down with my pressure washer, my extension ladder and a bunch of other stuff.  I had my tri-fold bed cover in the open position.  Well once I got up to highway speeds I noticed it was catching wind like a sail, despite the two clips that are used to keep it closed.  I had scenarios in my head where the straps break and my cover goes flying off along I-75.

I had a couple 25 pound weight plates in the back of my truck which I was using to add weight to the front of the ladder.  I grabbed one of them and plopped it on top of the cover to keep it down.  The weight was enough to keep it down even at 75 mph.

Having the bed exposed with the pressure washer in the back definitely affected gas mileage, the gas gauge was dropping faster than normal.

Once again Jeremy ordered pizza for dinner per my request.  This time he got a large which was better suited for our hungry man appetites.  Plus we had a bunch of work ahead of us.

The reason I had the pressure washer and ladder along was to clean out the gutter area around Jeremy’s pool.  He had described the scope of work to me.  I believe he said at one point “I don’t think it will be too bad”  Haha, it wasn’t too good either.

It looked to me like whomever built the pool did some miscalculations with the gutter installation.  The gutter along the roof line is too low and too narrow to catch the water if there was a real heavy rain.  Their solution was a rig job.  They cut a gutter section apart and made a crude splash guard that attached to the outer edge of the gutter and laid on top of the pool cage.

Over the years this splash guard caused tons of organic material to get trapped underneath it, pinned between the guard and the pool cage.  It was this material that Jeremy initially wanted to get out.  Well once I got up onto the roof and looked around  the job scope got bigger.

The house has a terracotta roof.  There were a number of tiles that had some hairline cracks in them.  Navigating the roof required careful placement of your body weight.  I didn’t want to break a roof tile in the process.  Once I got up there I saw that the gutter itself was PACKED with sludge.  It had to get cleaned out.

There were some other issues that came to light once we got up high.  The gutters did not drain well.  They were not installed in a manner that routed water to the downspouts on either side.  To compound the issue the holes that were cut for the downspout were ridiculously small, making it very easy to clog them.

I warned Jeremy that blasting out the gutters was going to be a very messy job, there was going to be a LOT of junk flying everywhere, including into the pool.  He knew there was no away around that so he gave me the all clear.

The pressure washer did a nice job of blowing the junk out but with the splash guard contraption in place it was blowing a lot of the junk on top of the screening where it would eventually just find it’s way trapped under the guard.  I suggested to Jeremy that we just remove the guards, they were only held in place by a few screws.  I told him removing the guards would mean that during a hard rain some rain will drop in the pool off the roof but I thought it was the lesser of two evils compared to having a clogged gutter with junk lodged under the splash guard. Jeremy took my advice, I removed the guards.

Once the guards were off I resumed cleaning the gutters.  The power washer had pushed the solids all towards the one end.  I decided I would just scoop the gunk out with my hand to minimize how much gunk would get blown onto the cage.  After getting most of the organic material out I resumed using the pressure washer to get out the residue.

In addition to the gunk in the gutters issue there were a few spots around the pool cage where the spline had pulled out.  I did my best to get it all back in place.  There were a few spots that were along the roof line, these were very challenging.

Jeremy’s house has a VERY high roof.  As a result it also has a very steep pitch.  In order to re-spline the screen I had to lay spread eagle with my head pointing downward.  I wanted to maximize the surface contact my body had with the roof to minimize my chance to slide off and drop through the pool cage.  It was a very delicate and awkward procedure but I was able to manage.

Jeremy and I worked into total darkness on the area.  By the time we were done the pool cage looked much better.  The same couldn’t be said of the pool that had a layer of crud in it, something the pool vacuum took care of.

Jeremy and I returned inside both wet and dirty but proud of the end result of our labor.  Before we got too comfortable Jeremy reminded me there was another furniture moving project yet, woops I forgot.

I brought over my furniture sliders for this project and they helped a ton.  We moved an old two piece china cabinet that was very heavy.  The sliders made the job much more manageable, especially once we got onto the tile in the main living area.

Finally the work was done and we could relax a bit.  Mandy made a really tasty blueberry sorbet that we all enjoyed.  Before I hopped in the shower Jeremy took a few minutes to introduce me to the world of hardcore online poker.

Jeremy is a VERY good poker player.  I have screwed around with Texas Hold Em enough to know the basic rules but I am a complete novice.  In a few seconds Jeremy was playing online at 5 tables simultaneously.  As he deftly jumped from table to table making instant decisions about the various games he explained some of the minutia about what he was doing.  It was enough to make my head spin.

The scariest thing of all is he said that at times he can be playing as many as 20 tables at once.  It just seemed beyond comprehension to me, not to mention mentally exhausting.  During the quick session Jeremy made an easy $40 preying on some “fish”.  He explained to me that a FISH is a player that has a big wad of chips and poor playing skills.  Taking his money is like going fishing.  A “donkey” is another player with equally poor skills and a small chip stack.

I was pretty beat.  I took a shower to wash the grime off and hit the sack.

Saturday I had my alarm set for 6AM.  I inadvertently woke up Jeremy when I was out on the lanai inspecting our handy work in the daylight.  The tournament was only 15-20 minutes from Jeremy’s place so even with leaving at 7:40 we still got on site on time.

We checked in and found our spot on the beach.  We saw Randall coming down the beach towards us after we got situated.  Randall decided to play in the tournament last minute.  Earlier in the week I told him I was playing with Jeremy.  He seemed disinterested at the time and said maybe he would swing by and take a few pics.

Well somehow that plan changed last minute.  Randall grabbed Tabby, a solid A player to play with him.  He followed up with a Facebook onslaught of trash talk that I mostly avoided intentionally as I knew that would annoy him more than anything I could say. I did however make some provisions the day before.

When I grabbed groceries for the tournament I also picked up a sympathy card.  Jeremy and I signed the card Friday night and sealed it.  The plan was if we planned Randall and beat him we would give him the card, a great jab in the ribs. Anyway we greeted Randall in a warm and friendly manner with no hint of our desire to beat him, badly.

Jeremy and I had only played in a tournament once before several years ago with limited success.  He had not played a single beach tournament in 2010.  My recent track record at tournaments had been nothing short of pathetic so needless to say I did not have very high expectations.

I also agreed to do something I never do on the volleyball court, play the right side.  I have pretty much always played the left side in doubles, it just feels natural for me.  Well Jeremy really dislikes playing the right so I said I would play it.  I figured I couldn’t do any worse, why not try it?

Our first match was against two young guys, one graduated high school a couple years ago, the other graduated this year.  They both played on the same high school volleyball team.  One was the outside hitter and the other the setter.

They were good at controlling the ball.  Jeremy and I struggled a bit, making a number of unforced errors.  The kids beat us pretty easily 25-16.  Oh well, here we go again.

We only had a 4 team net.  If we wanted any chance of making the playoffs we HAD to win our next match.  We were playing two older guys, probably in my age range.  I reffed their first match, both guys seemed solid but not spectacular.

We played better against these guys and got up to pretty large lead midway through the game.  However then we started to struggle a bit.  You could feel the tension level start to ratchet up as our lead kept dwindling. At one point our 7-8 point lead was trimmed to 2 or 3.

Up until this point in the tournament my hitting was poor once again.  My timing was bad, I wasn’t hitting with any sort of authority and I was just struggling.  Well on the last point of the second game I hit a ball hard on a set that was in the middle.  It actually felt good. That hit was a turning point for me.

In my normal beach hit I would typically pass the ball (hopefully well) and then angle my approach to the net in a left to right manner.  I typically liked my sets on the inside so I would need to angle pretty significantly to get to the set. Well that causes problems.

First of all you are playing on the beach where there is wind, sometimes significant wind.  Often the set will get blown around.  If you start your approach thinking the ball is going to be in one spot and it suddenly winds up a couple feet in another direction you have to basically stop your approach and start it again.  Well I am too old/ too slow to do that effectively.  I also NEED an approach to get a good swing at the ball.  I can’t just stand in place, jump up and expect to get anything on a hit.

Well that last hit in the second match I started in the middle of the court and approached the hit more or less straight instead of at an angle.  Doing this helped me several ways.  It was much easier to drift a little right or a little left to hit as opposed to having to stop and change directions abruptly.  It also kept the ball in clear view, out in front of me making hitting much easier.  The rest of the day my hitting was much improved.

Our third match was against a team of two fish that had no business being on the court.  We stomped them 25-7 without really trying. So we had made the playoffs, a nice feather in our caps.

Once the other BB nets finished up (3 of them) the playoff seeds were set.  Our first match was against Randall and Tabby!  Randall had an up and down day with some spots of both good play and bad but they got off their net as the second team.  We were the second team on our net as well.

This match was our Super Bowl, Jeremy and I wanted to win badly. We had visions of just how perfect it would be to hand Randall the sympathy card afterwards, now all we had to do was win.

Early on the match was pretty back and forth with both teams siding out.  About midway in Jeremy and strung a bunch of points together and opened up a sizeable lead.  When we were sitting at 19-11 (game to 21) we pretty much knew we had the victory locked up.  The final score was 21-13.

Jeremy and I kept our celebration mild.  We were both proud to have won convincingly, especially with the added pressure of having the sympathy card waiting in the bag.  Once we made our way back to the tent we handed Randall the card.

He was like “WTF?”  he opens his sympathy card and had no choice but to laugh, it was damn funny.  It’s something he wished he thought of himself no doubt.   He was good natured enough about the loss although I know he wanted to win as badly as we did.  We tried to not rub it in too hard.

Even though the victory over Randall was all we really could ask for, we had more volleyball to play.  Our semi-finals match was against another pair of skilled indoor players.  Jeremy and I really played consistently that game and took care of them rather easily, paving our path to the finals.

If you would have told me that we would be playing in the finals on Saturday I would have asked if I could smoke some of what you were smoking, yet there we were.

Ironically we were playing in the finals against the only team that beat us, the young guys from our net.  They managed to carve through their playoff opponents to set up the rematch.

Randall was in good enough spirits to offer to tape our finals match which was nice.  The finals unfortunately didn’t go all that well.  Jeremy and I didn’t play bad but the kids played better.  They dinked the hell out of us placing balls deep if we were short and short if we were deep with great precision.  They were both very fast so it was not easy scoring points, they chased down a lot of balls. We wound up losing in the finals 21-14.

Despite the loss I was still in very good spirits.  How could I not be?  The day went much better than I had hoped.  After collecting our 2nd place prizes, a t-shirt and sand socks, we headed back to the tent where Randall conducted a post game interview.  As is the norm in our videos, the commentary was more entertaining than the action.

Eventually we packed up, said our goodbyes to Randall and headed back to Jeremy’s place.  I was anxious to get back on the road and back home.  I thanked Jeremy and  Mandy for their hospitality and said goodbye to heir adorable little boy Connor.  I was back in my driveway in about two hours.

I told Ali of our adventures, she was proud that we did so well.  She had been very busy herself all day, doing lots of stuff around the house to minimize what I would need to do on Sunday which I greatly appreciated.  As I did a physical inventory while washing the sandy grit off in the shower I realized I came out of the event basically unscarred.  Besides normal soreness my problem areas like the knees and shoulder felt fine, that’s awesome.  I was also very glad that the off and on lethargy I had been feeling did not creep into my body at all during the previous 24 hours.

Sunday morning the first thing I did was rip off the volleyball video and dump it to youtube. I knew Jeremy and others would be anxious to see it.  After that I decided to do some tractor work.  I was excited to see that all of the parts I ordered for it showed up on Saturday. I had grand ideas of getting everything installed and being able to actually mow grass later in the day.

So I first started with putting the new mower deck together.  I opened up one of the spindles.  I immediately noticed that the spindle did not have the dust caps installed over the bearings, instead they were just laying in the bag.  I opened the other spindle and that one had the dust caps installed correctly. Grrrr.

Well my fears were confirmed once I installed the spindles.  The one that was sans dust caps had a much higher friction level than the other one.  Presumably the lack of dust caps allowed the bearings to dry out while it sat in storage for who knows how long, great……  Well I could either hope this doesn’t present a problem or once again contact the place I got it and send it back.  I opted for the latter.  If I am going to spend all of this money and time on the tractor I want the parts to be in good working condition.

I installed whatever else I could on the deck until I moved to part two, replacing the transmission belt.  I was already frustrated enough by the spindle problem.  In retrospect my level of frustration was about to increase tenfold.

I have replaced many belts. Mower belts and most recently van serpentine belts are on the list.  Well the transmission belt on a Cub Cadet took things to a new level.  I looked up the procedure in the owners manual and immediately dismissed it.  First the manual said I needed an air/impact wrench.  I have a compressor and an impact wrench but I hardly use it.  The compressor I got off ebay seems pretty shitty.  I have had poor luck using it to do stuff like remove lug nuts.  I figured if it couldn’t do that it would be pretty useless in the tractor repair too.  I further dismissed the instructions when it talked about removing a battery tray that was supposedly under the seat.  My tractor has the battery in the engine compartment.

The transmission belt is in an extremely bad spot, tucked up tight to the body under a bunch of stuff.  I struggled mightily to gain access to the belt with no success.  I turned to the internet for assistance and found some advice that seemed extreme, unbolt the motor.  Not only did I unbolt the motor, I unbolted the muffler, a piece of the suspension and anything else I thought could possibly get me access to the damn belt.  I was so frustrated, I had wasted my entire morning f’ing around with the damn tractor.  Tools and various tractor parts were strewn about the floor  of the garage as a testament to my nightmare.

Then shortly before going inside to eat lunch I said f it, I might as well try my impact wrench.  I fired up the compressor, put my 5/8″  socket on and squeezed the trigger on the bolt holding the pulley on.  It popped right off!  Mother f I couldn’t believe it.  I had tried turning the bolt off with my socket but was unable to get it to break loose.  Evidently the quick and sudden force of an impact wrench was exactly what was needed. If I only tried that 3 hours ago.

After lunch I went back outside and was able to complete the belt install in short order although in retrospect I still would have needed to unbolt the motor.  I put everything back together and fired it up.  At first I panicked when I stepped on the pedal and nothing happened. I quickly realized I still had the tranny disengage lever pulled.  After I released it the tractor was once again moving under it’s own power.

I had Ali to come out to test the clutch that engages the PTO while I laid down and looked.  That worked correctly as well.  So at this point all I need is a spindle and I should be back in the mowing business.  I certainly have become well versed in advanced tractor maintenance in the process.

I was really burned out by the time all the tractor crap was over.  My weekend was quite full of energy expenditures already.  Despite this I found more to do.  Ali and I worked in the garden a bit.  We had to thin the corn which has come in fast and furious.  Instead of throwing out perfectly good plants we tried to transplant them to open spots in the garden to give them a chance to grow.  We also thinned out beets and onions.

We harvested our first ever watermelon from the garden. We may have harvested it a bit early but we were afraid that if we left it out much longer the bugs would destroy our prize. We have attempted to grow watermelons several times but never were successful.  Usually the bugs and/or excessive rain killed them.  We actually have three melons growing, hopefully we get to enjoy them all.

Another first is our blueberry harvest.  Again we have tried to grow them before unsuccessfully.  So far we have probably picked a couple dozen perfect blueberries.

Ali has been on a roll lately with cooking.  When I got back Saturday night she made a really good Boboli pizza.  It tasted great and was healthy as well with a wheat crust and a ton of vegetables.  On Sunday she made a real tasty dish with potatoes, egg and more vegetables.

I got to do my first full run with the recently repaired Scooba.  My repair held up just fine.  Replacing the cleaning module and squeegees made a dramatic difference in the amount of the water it siphoned up.  I dumped much more than normal out of the dirty water tank.

Bed felt good last night, it was a tough but satisfying weekend.

Last night on the way home my first stop was at UPS.  They had tried to deliver some .5 pound, signature required thing for a couple days.  I had no idea what it was.  When I looked it up I saw it was coming from California which didn’t ring a bell either.  When I got to the counter and handed the slip over the woman went back to grab it.  She came back with a UPS Express envelope.  She said “oh there are a lot of people getting these today”  Puzzled, I asked what it was.

“Your appliance rebate”, she says. Oh wow, I almost forgot that was still in the pipeline.   The woman then went into a bizarre story about how she received a rebate as well.  The bizarre part was she didn’t buy any appliances.  Evidently her sister fraudulently filed a claim for a rebate using bogus information and used her sisters name.  Wow, I wonder how many people pulled the same stunt.  Whenever there is a government handout you can bet your last dollar that people will be scamming it, sad.

I opened up my envelope and pulled out my preloaded American Express card for $344 and some odd cents.  Instead of giving you a check that you could put in the bank the refund came in the form of these cards that you HAVE to spend, an interesting way to put more money back into the economy.

When I got home I had a bunch of stuff to get ready since I was leaving right from work to head to Jeremy’s place on Friday.  I loaded up my pressure washer, extension ladder and a number of other things into the back of the truck.  Jeremy has another project he asked for some help with.  Last time I was there I helped him hang up some gymnast rings in his garage.  Most people would be put off to be asked to do home maintenance after driving across the state.  I happen to not mind at all.  In fact, I prefer having something to do.  Everyone knows that sitting around making small talk is very low on my list of things I enjoy doing.

Once I got all of my stuff together for the trip ( a lot of stuff)  I turned my attention to the Scooba.  The replacement solution valve I ordered showed up in the mail. I wanted to get it fixed asap since I was going to be gone half the weekend.  I would be hard pressed to find time to do it otherwise.

I have torn apart many Roombas but never my Scooba which has been more or less trouble free for the 3+ years I have owned it. I had a surprisingly hard time finding a tear down reference for it but eventually I did find a site that had some basic disassembly procedures.  The process is documented in my prior entry.  I made it a stand alone entry so it would be available as a reference for others that run into the same issue.

No need to rehash it but the repair was a success.  I need to grab some new wheels and a vacuum port for the Scooba.  After that it hopefully should be ready to give me another couple years of floor scrubbing goodness.

Tomorrow Jeremy and I will be playing in our second tournament as partners.  The last time we played was 3 or 4 years ago and it wasn’t all that successful.  Needless to say coming out of my previously announced retirement from volleyball may be ill advised considering my recent history on the court.  On top of that I still am suffering from an energy deficit and Jeremy somehow developed instant planar fascititis  after walking around the house in high heels.

If we make the playoffs it will be a HUGE accomplishment.  Regardless of the outcome I think we will manage to have a good time.

A week or so ago I was getting my Scooba ready for it’s weekly cleaning run.  I attached my primer bulb to the solution valve and heard a CRACK.  Damn it, it broke off.  Well I hoped it would still run but I was not so lucky.  The Scooba would not start.

I did a little looking on the internet and was surprised there wasn’t a whole bunch of info regarding a broken solution valve and/or how to replace it.

Well I found a place that sold a replacement valve for around 30 bucks. However they didn’t have any replacement instructions.

Eventually I found a basic disassembly guide for one of the older versions of the Scooba, luckily the procedure is pretty much the same for the 380.

I have ripped MANY Roombas apart and replaced various components on them successfully.  Doing so gave me confidence that I could handle a Scooba repair as well.

Getting the Scooba apart was a bit of a challenge since it was my first time but it wasn’t hard.  After maybe 20 minutes I had it separated into two halves, allowing me access to the valve.

The replacement solution valve is actually an assembly that includes the valve, a clear plastic tube that runs to a manifold and a wire and connector that plugs into the logic board.  Since the Scooba is an electronic device that deals with liquid the system board is tucked away under a rubbery plastic cover that has to be removed.

Removing the old valve involves pulling the clear plastic tubing from the manifold and then carefully moving wires around so you remove the connector to the logic board which snakes around the perimeter.

Once the old piece is out installing the new one is pretty straightforward.  If you have a hard time remembering things like I do, you may want to take some pictures of the Scooba as you are taking it apart to assist you when it comes to putting it back together.  There were a couple spots last night when I referred to the pictures I took, it helped.

When routing the new wire and pushing the existing wire back, make sure you are careful.  A pinched wire could result in a dead Scooba.

After putting everything back together I dumped some water in the unit, primed the new valve and held my breath as I hit the power button. The robot started right up and started scrubbing away.

While I was working on it I replaced the brush module and squeegees since they had never been touched in the 3 years + old model. I need to get replacement tires as well as the vacuum port.  Both are very worn.

I was pleased that I was able to get my Scooba back in business for $30 and a bit of elbow grease.  If you would like to see all of the pictures I took during the process you can view them here.

Duf: there was some new dude at gym
Duf: pudgy italian looking guy
Duf: so annoying
Duf: sweating like a pig
Duf: every exercise, over the top noises like he was lifting heavy when it was all light
Duf: sweated all over the benches
Duf: didnt wipe a single one down
Duf: disgusting
Duf: and smelled as well
Duf: from rep one on, UH, UH, UH, UH
Duf: GRRR, GASP, GROWL, UH, PHHHH
Duf: times like that I always wonder if it is worth the potential downside to say something
Duf: like “dude, look at the bench, wipe it off”
Duf: or ” can you cut down on the “I am taking a big shit” noises during your set?”
Duf: or “dude you really smell”

So Ali got back from her conference yesterday.  She was glad to be home although she did miss the bed at the Ritz.  Ali missed it so much that she went to Target and bought some bed topper thing that supposedly is similar to what the Ritz had.  I told Ali that I thought our bed was comfortable already and we already have a memory foam topper on it.  I also questioned the wisdom of spending money on something non-essential like this when we are still recovering from post road trip expenses compounded by tractor repairs, need for tires on the Camry, etc…

Well Ali never likes to be questioned about her spending especially shortly after just returning home.  I admit my timing wasn’t great but it just struck me as odd that we both recognize the huge outlay of cash we have dropped yet only one of us seems all that bothered by it.  Admittedly between the two of us Ali and I make a good living and it would take a financial H-bomb to derail us.  Still I would like to practice thoughtful spending whenever possible.

Maybe one of the reasons I was hyper sensitive to this was finding out the new market value for our house in the 2010 tax roll.  It took another MASSIVE 90k hit in value from the previous tax year.  There are several shocking things about this.  We have had 90k hits in recent years but that was off of the old hyper-inflated real estate values.  Hell at one point they had our house on the books for 460k.  But this 90k hit comes off the top of already majorly depressed numbers.

At this point our home is actually worth less than what we paid for it in 2001, now that is pretty damn depressing.  Obviously we are trapped in our house.  Luckily we weren’t actively trying to move anytime soon.  Refinancing would be an impossibility.  The only bright side to this is our taxes will be lower.

So yesterday I received the new mower deck for the tractor.  After eating dinner with Ali I headed out to work on transferring the various parts from the old deck to the new deck.  As I did I quickly discovered I needed some additional parts.

I was missing a few bolts that must have fallen off after years of abuse.  However my biggest problem came when I tried to unbolt the spindles.  The damn bolts snapped right off leaving the frozen remains of it buried inside the spindles.  After I snapped the first one I tried hitting the remaining bolts with wd-40 and PB rust buster but it made no difference.  Each one was frozen solid and the head simply snapped off.

So now I also need two new spindles, the most expensive part of the deck outside the deck itself.  If that wasn’t aggravating enough I realized as I was moving hardware that the new deck was damaged. (red arrow points to it)  That piece is supposed to be a right angle.  Instead it looked like it was dropped/hit and as a result bent the piece.  I was so pissed.  Instantly ideas of the hassle involved with returning the deck flashed through my head. Without any control I yelled “Mother f’r!” quite loudly.  I was so aggravated.

So now I had to think what I wanted to do.  First I took pictures of the damage so it was documented.  I just could not see going through the hassle of returning the deck.  I already moved a bunch of stuff across plus returning it would slow down the tractor repair completion even further.  I decided I would try to bend it back.

I grabbed my hammer and started hitting the piece until it looked to be close to a right angle again.  It wasn’t that hard to get back in shape although I am worried that the bend and re-bend could weaken that part of the deck.

You can see the condition the old deck was in, not good.

So after going as far as I could with the deck I went inside to order the extra parts I needed.  It added up to another $220.  I was not pleased.  The current tab for tractor repairs is right around $600 if I include the transmission belt that I have not received yet.  I could have bought a lightly used Troy Bilt 42″ tractor off Craigs List for the same money.

The tractor will be out of service for awhile yet. I doubt I will see the additional parts until next week sometime.

I still don’t feel right energy-wise.  Still sleepy, still fade quickly when doing anything cardio-wise.  Even so I am going to press on and play vball this weekend with Jeremy although I don’t expect the performance to be much outside of a circus act.  If this feeling continues into next week I am going to have to break down and see someone about it I guess.

Ladies, if you listened to the Mel Gibson tapes you learned one important thing (besides that Mel is a complete lunatic asshole)  You ALWAYS want to blow a guy BEFORE going in the jacuzzi.  ALWAYS.

Tuesday was my last night flying solo, Ali comes back this afternoon.  The night was pretty uneventful.  I made a huge dinner that consisted of a frozen chicken patty delicately prepared in a frying pan, baked Ruffles and a glass of ice water.  Every time I look in the fridge I see flashbacks to Food Inc.

I went outside with the dogs for a bit and did some work on my bar station.  I tried a new move that I have seen done in many videos.  You pull your body so your chin is about bar high, then you slide your body back and forth towards one hand and then the other in a controlled fashion.  I was surprised I was able to do the move at all but I’m sure it didn’t look nearly as polished as the examples I have seen.

I played some WoW, watched some more 1984 V episodes and again was asleep very early, 9:34 pm the TV was turned off.  I am such a party animal.  Hopefully I got all of the condoms off the ceiling fans….

Yesterday I got my DirecTv bill in the mail.  I saw that they started to bill me for the Sunday Ticket package.  They changed the plan this year, for the better.  For the past several years the sold the Sunday Ticket for like $300.  However, if you wanted the “luxury” of watching the games in HD you had to pay another $100 for the Superfan package, a TOTAL rip off and money grab.  The fact that ANYONE is charging a premium for HD in 2010 is ridiculous.

Well it looks like they finally came to their senses, they are no longer charging extra for HD.  However they still have an add on package that they were happy to charge me for without asking. For an extra $50 you can watch the games on your computer and/or smart phone.  A nice little geeky add on but something I really have no use for, why waste the 50 bucks?  I called Directv and asked them to kindly remove the add on.

I have said time and again, generally speaking, the more you know about somebody the less you will like them.  In the past couple days that has certainly been true for me after reading details of two celebrity controversy’s.

First I read the transcript the woman gave police regarding the Al Gore massage incident. Wow.  No wonder Al & Tipper are calling it quits.  He comes off sounding like a big, fat, nasty perv.  I mean grabbing her hand and mashing it into his pubes? Jamming his tongue down her throat like a scene from Aliens?  Gross dude.  Stick to saving the world.

Then I heard the Mel Gibson rant to his ultra-hot Russian girlfriend.   He sounds like a certified maniac, and a woman beating, racist one at that.  What a piece of shit he is.

I just can’t help but feel sickened by the hypocrisy that Mel and so many other “good Catholics” put on display for the world to see.  Listen to the tape, it is unreal.