Archives November 2010

So I had a full day planned for my mid-week day off.  I had scheduled Comcast to come out between 7am and 10am to disconnect my cable tv service.  I also planned to coordinate that with getting my antenna hooked up to the house.  I also had to collect stuff from the two sheds to be offered up at the yard sale on Saturday.

So I got up when Ali got up to go for her soon to become traditional Thursday morning run around 5:15 am.  I figured I may as well be up in case Comcast showed up early even though I knew it was a remote possibility. 7 am came and went.

I decided to get dressed and head outside to work on burying my antenna line from the shed to the house.  About half way through the process I decided I would turn the event into a live justin.tv broadcast.   There are a few funny moments in the 18 minutes of footage.

The first is around the 4 minute mark.  I had just got done describing the edger I was given by my great uncle years ago to bury the cable.  I spoke affectionately of how even though it was 30-40 years old it was still quite useful to me.  Then almost on cue, the handle breaks.  I was pissed. The other moment is towards the 17:30 mark.  You can just watch that for yourself.

Throughout the broadcast you will see me mention various times how Comcast had not arrived yet even though it was now after 9am.  I was annoyed but not surprised by their tardiness, after all this was Comcast I was dealing with.

So 10 am came and went and I still had not seen a Comcast van in my driveway.  I still refrained from calling right away, again telling myself Comcast rarely does what they say. Finally when 11 am came and still nobody was there I had enough and picked up the phone.

I was thrilled when I got the message “Due to unusually high call volumes your expected wait will be more than 10 minutes” as I held the phone to my ear.  I was on hold for 20 minutes getting angrier by the second when I heard the call waiting sound on the phone.  Figuring the likelihood of Comcast picking up as still slim I switched over to the other line.

“Hi this is Comcast.  We are just following up to perform a survey on how your service call was” WTF???!!! I said that that’s funny, I was on the other line waiting on hold with Comcast to find out where the hell the tech is, he never showed up!

The woman was embarrassed and said she would find out what the problem was.  After holding for another couple minutes she came back and apologized.  She said a tech should be there within a half hour.  I asked her if she found out what the delay was and why it wasn’t important for Comcast to let customers know when they are going to be late.  She had no answer for either.

Well I hung up, now genuinely angry.  Comcast has tied me to the house for half a day.  I ran the speech I was going to give the tech when he arrived through my head.  Well the half hour timeframe expired.  I waited another full half hour until I decided to follow up again, befuddled at how they could make a SECOND promise of an arrival time and miss it.

I called back and again got the “we have too many people calling and complaining and not enough people to handle them” message.  I said f it, hung up and got on the Comcast web site to do a live chat with someone which only took a minute or two to start.

I banged out my frustration on the keyboard, telling the guy we were now more than two hours past the appointment window and nobody had shown up.  He looked at the information on the call and typed back – “Mr Duffey, the call has been completed and closed”

What?  I never saw anyone?  The virtual rep tells me that the tech put a filter out at the pole on the road that blocks the tv signal but still allows internet to pass through.  As this reality dawned on me I was even more annoyed.

I banged out more to the rep. “Why am I told that I need to be home for this call when the tech doesn’t even come to the house?” “Why was I told on the phone that a tech was going to be out in a half hour if the call was already closed?” and finally “Part of the call was supposed to be the tech picking up the cable cards that were in the Tivo’s, now what?”

The only thing that he could account for was a customer is requested to be home just IN CASE it is necessary to get in the house.  Um ok fine but then would it not make sense to let the customer know that the call is done if you aren’t going to knock on the door?  The lack of common sense in the way the situation was handled was baffling.

So if wasting half of my day waiting was not enough, the rep told me to get credit for the cable cards (and cable modem) I would need to return them to the local Comcast office 20 miles away.  Gee, I get to make a road trip as well to fix your lack of responsibility? Great! Thanks! I just shook my head as I closed the chat window, thinking how fitting that even my attempt to break free of Comcast was marred by yet another bungled effort at customer service on their part.

Like I said I also was returning their cable modem that I was being charged $5 a month to lease.  I finally put Jeremy’s old cable modem into service.  I made a stop at the Comcast office early in the afternoon.  I was helped by a fittingly grumpy woman at the desk that was as friendly as a gargoyle.  I shoved the Comcast equipment across the desk to her, got my receipt that proved I turned it in and got the hell out of there.

Getting all of the yard sale stuff together wasn’t much fun.  I drove the truck into the back yard and used it to load up the stuff.  In addition to unwanted items I threw in a couple plastic shelving units that I broke apart into individual sections to give me additional “table” space.  We have a ton of stuff to unload.

My OTA HD project was a total success.  After burying the cable I attached it to an unused port on the grounding block used for the satellite dish.  After connecting that line in the attic to the splitter I went inside and reconfigured the Tivos for antenna only operation.  The picture quality through out the house looked great, I was very happy with the end result.

Having such a large antenna definitely paid off in this situation.  Being able to push that signal through all of that coax, split it and still get high signal level on all of the tv’s in the house is largely because this antenna is able to pull in digital air transmissions so well.

I also added some plugins to my playon.tv installation to pull in content from various online sources.  I need to get some sort of DLNA compatible device to grab this stuff back in the bedroom.  In the great room I can use the Wii for this purpose although navigation of the playon interface through the Wii is a bit clunky.  Streaming video over the Wii’s wireless connection is less than ideal.  I would much prefer to have it hard wired to my home gigabit network.

It’s kind of ironic that I am back to using the same method for my TV reception that we used in Gouglersville growing up in the 70’s.   However in that situation we only were only able to grab literally 4 or 5 stations and somewhat grainy versions at that since our location near the bottom of a valley blocked good reception from the broadcast towers.

Getting to enjoy crisp digital HD on my 73 incher instead of a snowy picture on a 25 inch genuine wood grain console unit is another large improvement from my tv viewing experience 30 years ago.

So the other night I finished up watching Serenity, the two hour movie that wrapped up the Firefly series.  Man what a great little show that was.  If you have Netflix and went at it hard core you could watch the whole shebang in a long weekend since it was only one season long.  Highly recommended.  I can only hope they do something similar for Caprica.

Tomorrow is a day off from work but not from WORK.  I will be on the go probably most of the day between getting cable tv disconnected, hdtv antenna connected and doing yard sale prep.  At least I should feel productive by the end of it.

Ever wanted to see why I have so many typing errors?

So yesterday I called up Comcast to initiate a disconnect of my cable tv service.  I wanted to verify I could do so without affecting my internet service.  When I called up the woman asked me why I wanted to cancel?  I told her the service was just too expensive.

She said that she could handle the disconnect order but informed me there was a $40 disconnect charge.  I laughed out loud.  I said to her that I found it ironic that the reason I am dropping the service in the first place was that it was too expensive and that in order to get rid of the expensive service I am charged another ridiculous expense.  She said the charge was for the tech to come out and collect the equipment.  I told her “$40 to pull out two cable cards? I can easily do that myself”

I continued ranting, telling her that I was considering continuing to use Comcast for internet services at least but being told about yet another stupid charge makes me want to drop them altogether.  Sensing my anger the woman put me on hold to see what she could do.  After 30 seconds or so she comes back and gives me the good news that now the disconnect fee is no longer required.  She said a tech still has to be scheduled to get the cards AND put a filter on the line which would block tv signals while still allowing internet.

She said that the promo rate I got on the internet a month or so ago of $24.95 would be good until March of next year.  That is a good price so I would be dumb to change it right now.  However, after that promo expires the rate for their regular internet service (if you don’t also have tv) sky rockets up to $64.95 a month.  At that point I can either try to renegotiate a lower rate or kick them to the curb and get 10 megabit DSL for 40 a month.

I again took advantage of having Thursday off and scheduled the disconnect to happen first thing that morning.  Once it is disconnected I can go about connecting my new antenna to the house wiring and hope all goes well.

I read recently that Comcast lost something like 275,000 cable tv subscribers in just the third quarter alone. These defectors to satellite, internet streaming and OTA transmissions should send a loud and clear message to Comcast and the other cable giants.  We are sick and tired of getting billed huge dollars for cable tv packages where 90% of the channels have no interest to us. They need to wake up. Thursday is my independence day.

Saturday morning we scurried about trying to get various things done around the house.  One of those things was getting the rest of our plants in the ground as well as Ali sowing some seeds in the garden.  Hopefully we can avoid the multiple deadly time periods of frost that we had last winter that wreaked havoc with our garden and landscape in general.

I also started the HDTV antenna installation project.  Setting up the antenna took a bit of a time and a lot of referring back to the directions to make sure I had everything unfolded, extended, connected and bolted together correctly.

This sucker is huge.  It’s so big that my original idea of installing it in the front corner of the house seemed less and less appealing.  The one oak tree in that area would have likely caused issues as well due to the size of the sucker. I walked the ground trying to come up with some alternative mounting ideas.  I came up with three.

My first idea was to secure the antenna mast to one of the huge fence corner posts.  The posts are rock solid in the ground but they only extend up 4-5 feet meaning I would have 10 or so feet of mast left to sway in the wind, not a great thing.

Another idea was to mount the mast on the opposite diagonal corner of the house where there was a small section of unguttered roof line.  The problem with that spot is I would need to run the coax up along the seams in the roof over to the other side of the house where the cable enters.  That could look pretty trashy.

My last idea was to attach the antenna and mast to the smaller shed behind the house.  It has an unobstructed view to the northwest as well as a flat surface I could secure the pole to.  My worry with this location was it was over 100 feet from the termination point outside the house.  I was afraid extending the line that far would have a severe effect on signal level.

I told Ali of the three alternative options and her choice was the shed.  Having the monster antenna back there kept it out of sight which she liked.  So I decided I would give it a shot.  My thought was if it didn’t work it was easy enough to mount it somewhere else.

I drove the mast about a foot into the ground and then used a bracket to attach the pole to the structure right below the roof line.  With Ali’s help I hoisted the antenna up onto the roof and attached it to the pole.  I pointed it in the general direction, attached a piece of coax to it and was ready for testing.  After eating lunch I took the small lcd tv in the hobby room out to the shed and hooked it up to the antenna.

After programming the tv to use an antenna instead of cable I let it do an autoscan to acquire the channels.  I saw that in total it found close to 20 channels.  After it finished I started flipping through the stations and was pleased to see a crisp HD picture.  Awesome. The next part of my plan was to buy 150 feet of coax and see how my picture was running through it.

I left early to pick up my mom at work so I could stop at Home Depot to get the cable.  I also stopped at the local cycling store.  I wanted to grab a tri-top.  A triathlon top looks similar to a bike jersey, it’s very tight.  The difference is the material feels like a swim suit.  It is designed to be worn through out the event.

For me it would serve two purposes.  It would help me address my slow transition times by giving me one less article of clothing to screw with.  However with the weather forecast on Sunday I was also looking for warmth.  When I did the Miami tri I swam in just my swim bottoms.  With air temps forecast in the 40’s and water temps in the low 70’s I wanted the extra layer to help a bit with warmth.

So I headed to mom’s work for pickup.  After she got done working I followed her to her place so she could drop off her car.  Mom is pretty much a physical wreck right now.  She has complained of back issues for decades but now she has a recent knee surgery and a strained groin on top of that.  Her 25 or so years of paying little attention to her health and fitness are starting to show some consequences.

After getting back to the house we went over Ali’s checklist to make sure we didn’t miss anything before heading out.  The dogs of course were thrilled to see their Grandma as always.  We piled in the party van around 6 and hit the road heading north.

The triathlon was in Boca Grande.  Ali had checked out room prices in Boca Grande itself and they were ridiculously high.  Instead we decided to stay at a Days Inn in Port Charolette about 40 minutes away.  On the way up we stopped for dinner at a Steak and Shake.  Up until that point my only SnS experience had been the take out variety.  Sitting down for dinner was not all that memorable although I did enjoy my portabello – swiss burger.

When we got to the hotel it was already getting cold out.  Ali and I commented repeatedly how much the swim portion of the tri was going to just suck.  Ali had told me more than once she would be fine just bagging the event completely because of the weather forecast.

The room itself was quite nice surprisingly, I didn’t expect much out of a Days Inn.  It was clean and well kept with a fridge and microwave.  That was enough for me.

Unfortunately I slept very poorly on Saturday night.  I woke up so many times I lost count.  I woke up for the last time on my own before the 4:45 alarm time.  Ali said she had an equally difficult time getting solid sleep.

We planned to come back to the room after the 7:15am race to shower and check out so we didn’t have a whole lot to do before leaving.  We left for the event before 5:30. The air felt very cold, even more so by the persistent wind.  The 15 seconds from the hotel to the van was not fun, imagine what a few hours in it will feel like?

The drive into Boca Grande went smoothly.  They allowed the triathletes to cross the toll booth onto the isle toll free which was a nice gesture.  From what I could tell in the dark, Boca Grande seemed quite rural compared to much of the ultra-developed areas of SW Florida.

We checked in for the race and found out that they were canceling the swim portion of the event due to dangerous water conditions. Instead they were replacing the swim with a 1 mile run so the event would be a run/bike/run deal.  Ali and I were very happy to hear of the change since both of us were dreading the swim.  When daylight came and we saw just how rough the wind whipped water was we were even happier.

So after getting our race numbers written on our bodies and picking up our race packet we went and parked the van.  Ali was not very thrilled with the idea of being out in the windy and cold conditions more than necessary.  She had something like 5 or 6 layers of clothing on and still felt cold. I unpacked the bikes from the van and we headed up to the transition area.

After getting all of our stuff set up we had 30-45 minutes just to hang out in the chilly air.  We saw a few familiar faces and tried to take our minds off being cold by milling about.

Finally it was time to start.  They had three waves, men/women 39 and under, men 40 and over and women 40 and over (and relays).  Ali was in the first wave and started three minutes ahead of me on the one mile run.  In my wave was one my fellow running club members who also is a  board member and one of the central figures in the running community, George.  He has been running forever and is a serious runner that has run many marathons, participated in many triathlons and still finishes high in his age group even though he is getting close to 60.

I told George my goal for the one mile run was to use him as my pacer.  I stayed with him for the whole mile and as a result turned in a nice 7:48 time as a result.  That was the last I would see of George however since he got out of transition ahead of me and smoked me on the bike.

I had heard from others how the majority of the bike race will be into a head wind.  When I first started the bike which initially went south I was like, hey, what wind?  I was doing 23 mph plus during the brief southerly initial part of the race and it wasn’t that hard to do.  Then came the turn around.

All of a sudden going 23 easily transformed into doing a very difficult 15-16 into the wind.  Our direction was not directly into the wind at that point, eventually it was.

There was a section of straight away that went on for miles where the cold wind was just slamming you head on.  It was pretty hellish.  I pedaled into it the best I could but even with exerting myself I was struggling to go much faster than 14 mph.  Even with that slow speed I was doing better than many others whom I passed while going at the slow pace, one of which was Ali.

I was concerned for Ali, I knew how much she HATES riding bike into a head wind, a 50 degree, 15mph head wind was just about worst case scenario.  I passed her and then didn’t see her a second time on the ride back in.  Evidently I missed her while I was on the long turn around loop.

That ride out into the wind seemed to go on forever.  I remember feeling frustrated as some of the higher level riders would pass me easily even with the wind in their face.  When the turn around did come I was very happy. Now the wind that was punishing me for so long was helping to push me along.  I kept my pace above 20 all the way back to transition.

I still was not happy with my transitions, they were better than Miami but still when you compare them to most other racers they were slow.  Going from bike to the final run took the longest.  I just seemed to be fumbling with everything, getting my bike shoes off, sneakers on, helmet…. I was cursing under my breath.

So I hit the run course.  My legs felt very stiff as they always seem to do at first during the bike to run portion.  Early on I just try to keep moving, I have no desire to run “fast”.  I ran more than the first mile alone, I didn’t pass anyone and nobody passed me.  As I ran I noticed I had a constant taste of blood in my throat.  Evidently the cold air hitting my sinuses on the bike had made them bleed.  It was not really a great sensation while running.

Around a mile and a half I heard someone coming up from behind me, it was a woman who obviously was a decent runner.  I wasn’t real thrilled with her passing me so I accelerated and ran with her for awhile but eventually she pulled ahead.

The run course was quite nice, looping through the quaint town of Boca Grande.  It was a large contrast from running in the cement sprawl of Miami.

During the last mile or so I could hear there was another female behind me, relatively close by the volume of her breathing.  I never looked back but I knew she was there.  I didn’t want to be passed again so I picked up my pace as the finish line neared.  I managed to stay ahead and forgot to even look at who was chasing me once I finished.

My official time was 1:25:53, much better than my 1:37 something I posted in Miami but this race can’t really be compared because of the differences, the biggest of which being the deletion of the swim.  The cooler temps and lack of hills helped me dramatically in my run time which was something like 4 minutes faster than Miami. I waited and cheered Ali on as she crossed the line.  She looked quite relieved to be done.

We partook in the post race food and drink for a bit.  We took a brief look at the finish results.  It was a very small event with only 127 finishers.  My age group was the largest with 12 finishers.  I finished 9th out of 12.

Ali and I didn’t stick around long as we needed to get back to the room to shower and check out.  After cleaning up we got out of the room with about 5 minutes to spare before the official 11am check out time.  On the drive home we made a very necessary Dunkin Donuts stop.  Without it my ability to drive would have been severely impaired due to drowsiness. When we got back we ate lunch before I took Mom back home.

Before the 4:15 Eagles game I did some more work on the HD antenna.  I hooked up my 150 feet of additional coax to the antenna and hooked it to the tv to see if the picture quality suffered.  I threw this process on justin.tv for some reason. I was happy to see that all channels still came through just fine even with the additional cable length, it meant I should be good to go with the shed as a permanent location for my OTA transmissions.

The cheap lcd tv lacked a signal level meter which would be helpful in optimizing the direction of the antenna.  I figured my Sony in the bedroom would.  I unwound the cable and routed it in the lanai and into the bedroom window.  After hooking it up to the tv I was able to get a clear idea of my signal strength. The numbers I saw for the networks were all good, right around 80 out of 100.

Of course I want that number as high possible so later in the day I had Ali on the phone watching the tv while I made small adjustments to the antenna direction.  I wound up getting 84-88 signal strength which should work just fine.

I really didn’t have any expectations for the Eagles game.  They had that ugly loss to Tennessee before the break where the defense just looked horrible.  Having Peyton Manning and the Colts come into town looked like a recipe for disaster, even with Andy Reid’s perfect 11-0 post bye record.

Well the Birds managed to scrape out a win, surprising the hell out of me.  Despite the positive outcome the game brought out several episodes where I was screaming at the tv.  Some of the biggest rants were screaming at the ref’s.

First there was the penalty on the Collie hit.  That was total bullshit.  Yea it was a hard hit but it certainly wasn’t dirty.  Collie lowered his head and caused the contact.  It is total lunacy to think a defender can change his direction at the last split second to avoid that contact.  The NFL has gone way overboard now with this shit.

Then at the end of the game when the Eagles have apparently squashed a Colt come back with a fumble recovery, the refs call a ridiculous personal foul because Manning had the back of his helmet brushed by a defenders hand.  I mean just put flags on the guys, this is insanity.

I was also screaming at Andy Reid for challenging the Vick play on the goal line when it was obvious he didn’t get it, costing the Eagles a potentially important time out.  Reid has a dismal record on challenges, one of the worst in the league.

The Eagles continued to shine in penalties as well.  Every week Reid says the team has to cut back on penalties and every week they rack up double digits in that category.  It is embarrassing.

But even with my screaming aside, the team won which is all that anyone will remember.  Reid is the best coach in the game, a week after the bye at least.

Man I went into today thinking how I really need another day to get stuff done this week since daylight after work will be a scarce commodity.  I need to finalize the antenna install which means burying 150′ of cable as well as gather up and organize our many yard sale items from various locations.  I had visions of doing both via flash light.

Well when I got to work I realized that Veterans Day was this week, one of the odd days that we get off.  My prayers have been answered.  I should be able to knock out all of that junk on Thursday, perfect timing.  Now if I had another solid week off I could address some of the other larger projects that loom on the horizon for the 2010/2011 winter season.

I am amassing a decent size chunk of streaming video on Justin.tv, if you have some time to kill, feel free to go nuts watching it here.  All of the footage from the triathlon is there as well as in depth coverage of the HDTV antenna installation.

This weekend is going to be consumed mostly by our trip up to Boca Grande to participate in another sprint triathlon.  We are heading out Saturday evening and we won’t get back until early Sunday afternoon.  Mom was nice enough to offer to dog sit again in our absence.

The tri means I have to get a bunch of stuff done in a compressed amount of time. One of the things I would love to do is get my new HDTV antenna set up although I am not sure I will be able to work it in.

I have some complications to work out with the antenna install.  When I had an antenna on the house when it was first built in 2001 installation was pretty easy.  However this time around I now have gutter going around almost the entire roof line meaning I can’t easily secure the mast to edge of the roof.  I will either have to attach it to the front left of the house where there is still bare roof line or attach the mast to the concrete wall via some sort of long brace and Tapcons.

At some point I need to work in earnest on collecting stuff for the yard sale.  Since the clocks change this weekend I will have no daylight after work to get anything done outside during the week. Add in knocking out normal household chores, getting stuff packed and ready for the triathlon and you come up with yet another weekend that will fly by.

Last night I fired up my justin.tv channel to record my first weighted pull up attempts in months.  I was able to knock out two dead hang reps with the full 50 pound vest on.  If I hung a bit longer I may have been able to squeeze out a third.  If I can get up to 6 or 7 reps I am pretty sure victory in the pull up challenge would be a lock.

I have a couple goals for the triathlon. First is to survive what is sure to be an uncomfortable swim since the air temp is forecast to be in the low to mid 50’s.  Second, cut down on my transition times from the Miami event which were dreadfully long.  I am hoping just cleaning up the transition will allow me to shave a few minutes off the 1:37 and change time I posted my first time out.

Nothing much to report.  Last night I mounted two 4 foot long landscape timbers to my yard sale sign and had Ali help me put it in the ground down the street.  Now everyone that lives in our area should at least know about it.

Put in a 5K on the treadmill yesterday at the gym.  I don’t want to do anything too hardcore this week since we have the triathlon on Sunday. The weather forecast for the weekend looks a bit chilly with low’s in the 50’s. It could make for a rather cold swim for me.  Ali has her new wet suit to insulate her if need be.

The other day I discovered a site called justin.tv.  It is pretty amazing stuff.  It is a site full of video footage, mostly made by individuals.  It allows for instant and effortless live streaming of content using either your webcam or Iphone (Android too)  I was amazed that it actually streamed the entire way home from work in the truck.  I think the most interesting footage so far is me creating the dogs dinner which involves much more prep than any food I put in my mouth.  I suspect justin.tv will be utilized to broadcast many events in the future.

and I’ll do it here again.  The leader of CREDO, Michael Kieschnick.  His description of what the political climate currently is echoes my feelings exactly.

What a truly brutal election. One rare exception was the crushing of Texas Oil’s Proposition 23 in California (see CREDO’s campaign at stoptexasoil.org), which proves that even unlimited corporate cash can be beaten back — if it is disclosed and fought by grassroots mobilization.

At CREDO, we fight hard on the issues, but we don’t take sides in partisan elections. As someone who cares about progressive issues, there is no doubt that Tuesday’s results will make for even harder times for our country. It is crazy making to realize just how extreme and misinformed much of the new Congress will be.

There is little reason to expect any useful legislation from the Tea Party-dominated House or the dysfunctional Senate. Swing votes in the Senate have really troublesome names: Lieberman, Nelson, Manchin, and Pryor. In fact, this Congress will do damage to anything even remotely progressive.

So let’s take a look at what happened and what we can do now. Bear with us as this is a bit longer than our usual missives. The media, unfortunately but not surprisingly, will be of no use in making sense of Tuesday’s results, and even less so in helping chart a course for the future.

There is a lot of evidence that the state of the economy, and employment in particular, drive the results of elections — and this one was no exception. As the saying goes, “If you think the economy is working, ask someone who isn’t.” We have an economy stuck in a deep ditch, with corporate profits and bank bonuses soaring while long-term unemployment is at near Depression levels.

The Republicans shrunk the first “stimulus” package and filled it with tax breaks, even as corporate Democrats helped them along, blocking any effort to restructure mortgages in bankruptcies, freeze foreclosures or force banks to lend money. The election outcome was partially baked in early 2009, when the White House preemptively conceded on the scale and provisions of the stimulus package and chose to coddle the banks. To watch this unfold was simply maddening.

Making matters worse were other factors. Among the most damaging were the actions of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which seemed energized by the new President, and took the radical step of rehearing a campaign finance case — now known forever as Citizens United. In ruling 5-4 that corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money for and against candidates, the Court transformed the electoral landscape in a way potentially more profound than its 5-4 ruling that seated George W. Bush as president. As many predicted, the Citizens United ruling unleashed the greatest wave of corporate spending in history, though it’s a safe bet to say that their spending in 2012 will make this year’s outlay look modest.

In an astonishing turn of events, the right wing was able to kill — essentially murder in public view — the organization that registered millions of poor and working class African-American and Hispanic voters in the last six years. I am speaking of ACORN, of course. By editing video completely out of context, and using the right-wing media machine to perfection, Andrew Breitbart was able to convince the mainstream media and eventually Congress, that ACORN was an election-stealing organization that had no qualms giving advice to pimps on how to increase revenues. Fulfilling Karl Rove’s wildest dreams, Congress, including most Democrats, voted to block public funding for any of ACORN’s laudable and effective housing or tax assistance programs, and ACORN died a quiet death. There would be no millions of new registrants.

Traditions are important in the Senate, but almost always to the detriment of progressive change. The health care reform effort was a victim of Senate conventions. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the critical Senate Finance Committee solely due to his long tenure, stalled development of a health reform package for many months in order to “negotiate” with Republicans on his committee. They weren’t interested in the least, and walked away from the discussions muttering bizarre comments about reforms “killing grandma” and setting up “death panels,” because Sarah Palin says so. The behavior of Baucus would be laughable if it were not so utterly destructive.

No matter what one thought of FOX News in the 2008 election, Murdoch’s monster went on a rampage over the past two years. Serving as both an instigator and an amplifier for the craziest and most offensive pundits, FOX News misled and misinformed the American people on every issue, and effectively became the public face of the Republican Party. Glenn Beck’s show became so toxic and spewed so much venom that one of his devoted fans took it upon himself to plot the execution of key leaders of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, who had figured prominently in Beck’s rants. Fortunately, the madman (the fan, not Beck) was stopped before he accomplished his mission.

We could go on, of course, on all the missed opportunities, the cave-ins, the sell outs, and the unpopular and misguided war in Afghanistan.

But the results are in. The House of Representatives is in the hands of the most corrupt Speaker-in-waiting ever, the Tea Party is ascendant, and the U.S. Senate, however dysfunctional it has been, is poised to be much worse.

For those of us who had hopes that the Obama Administration could seize the moment and enact popular progressive changes, this is a bitter pill. And like many, we grieve at the lost opportunities.

But now we need to brush off the dust, suck it up, and plunge back into substantive fights. Politics is not fair — indeed, U.S. elections are rigged in profound ways! But walking away is not an option at CREDO Action, and we hope you will join us in some of the actions below we think are strategic in the new political landscape:

1. Commit to Taking Down FOX News. So long as FOX News has any credibility within the Beltway, it will be a pipeline for malicious material that will poison our political culture. Join our friends at Color of Change: turnofffox.org/landing?credo.

2.Tell the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act during the lame duck session. We were able to defeat the Texas Oil Initiative, Prop 23 in California, in part because we knew who the enemy was — having disclosure of corporate contributions brings the enemy out in the open for us to take on and fight. The DISCLOSE Act passed the House and came within a single vote of passing the Senate. One vote. You can join this fight by taking action with Public Citizen at citizen.org/disclose-act-action.

3. Keep fighting to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. This issue will get resolved during the lame duck session. Take action at act.credoaction.com/campaign/bushtaxcuts.

4. Sign up for the fight for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision by declaring that corporations do not have the legal rights of humans. This may take years, if not decades, but we should start now. Please join Free Speech for People: freespeechforpeople.org/.

5. Tell the FCC to use its existing authority to establish and defend net neutrality. Our friends at Free Press are leading this charge: act2.freepress.net/sign/put_up/.

6. Demand that the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service investigate the political organizations set up by Karl Rove to launder millions of dollars in secret cash to change the outcome of elections. Act now at act.credoaction.com/campaign/investigate_crossroads.

7. Defend the EPA from castration by pro-coal interests in Congress. The EPA accomplished almost nothing during the Clinton years because the Gingrich-led Congress used the budget process to prohibit the agency from doing its work. This battle has already started. The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign is a great way to join this fight: sierraclub.org/coal.

8. Convince the Obama administration to stop appealing progressive court rulings on matters like the Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the state secrets defense against torture and wiretapping. Urge the Department of Justice to change its approach at act.credoaction.com/campaign/stop_appealing.

9. Urge Democratic senators to do away with lifetime tenure for committee chairs and open up all chair positions to majority vote elections. This will go a long way towards more progressive legislation. Take action with us at act.credoaction.com/campaign/end_seniority_system.

10. Demand that the Department of Justice enforce the provisions of the national voter registration law that require state governments to offer to register all voters at departments of public welfare and motor vehicles. Many state governments simply ignore these requirements and this is a cheaper and more inclusive way of registering voters than the campaigns of the now dead ACORN. Urge Attorney General Eric Holder to expand voter registration: credoaction.com/campaign/enforce_motor_voter.

I suspect you are angry and exhausted at this point. I know I am. But let us not forget that the values and ideals we fight for are greater than any one election. They still endure, and so must our fight. We have a lot of work to do.

Michael Kieschnick, CEO
CREDO Action from Working Assets

I didn’t watch any football at all this weekend since the Eagles were on their bye week.  As a result I missed out on two funny cluster f’s.

First there is Randy Moss getting cut by the Vikings a mere three weeks after being obtained for substantial compensation, a third round draft pick.  Evidently Moss’s mouth earned him the pink slip as he heaped praise on the Patriots after they beat the Vikings while indirectly calling Brad Childress a douchebag for not listening to Moss’s advice on how to win.

Sure Moss looks like an idiot but that was already his MO, he has always been a loose cannon.  Brad Childress in my opinion comes out as an even bigger idiot.  Cutting Moss three weeks after paying dearly for him is insanity.  The way Childress didn’t announce his intentions at a news conference after the cut was already made was cowardly.  Childress has already been made out to be Brett Farve’s bitch, this Moss fiasco has more than likely punched his ticket out of Minnesota.

I saved the best mess for last, our old buddy Donovan McNabb.  Evidently the wheels are already falling off his relationship with his new team and I have to admit, I love it.

I knew that statistically McNabb was not having a great year with 7 TD’s and 8 int’s to go along with a very low 76 QB rating.  Even so the Redskins managed to win some games and currently sit at 4-4.  Well evidently on Sunday against Detroit the veil was pulled back.

The Skins were down one score with around two minutes to go, crunch time.  Well instead of having McNabb come out to run the two minute offense, Shannahan plops Rex Grossman out there who promptly turns the ball over, ensuring the loss.

When asked about the stunning decision right after the game Shannahan explained he thought Grossman had better knowledge of the two minute offense.  WTF??? McNabb has been with the team since Easter and he can’t be trusted to run the two minute offense???  HAHAHA.

The next day Shannahan changed his story, saying the reason was because McNabb didn’t have good enough cardio to run a two minute offense. HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!  Philly fans are way too familiar with the image of McNabb dragging ass at the end of the Super Bowl when we needed him the most.  Unlike Andy Reid that never calls out a player, evidently Shannahan has no such fear.

Of course this spun into the media digging deeper into the obvious rift.  I heard stories that that Shannhan has been unhappy with McNabb’s practice habits for awhile.  Evidently the Skins tried to change his mechanics to address his hit and miss accuracy issues.  Imagine after 11 years in the league someone telling you NOW is the time to change your mechanics.

As a fan that spent more than decade being frustrated by some of McNabb’s shortcomings and Andy Reid’s failure to address them, I get some sort of weird satisfaction from seeing him struggle in Washington halfway through the season.

Well the election is finally over.  Ironically the race that I cared the most about is still technically undecided, the Florida Governor race.  Rick Scott, the man that spent $60 million plus to BUY the election has a small lead that will more than likely hold up. His campaign has followed the book on dirty politics to the letter.  He used mountains of money to run continuous smear campaigns against both his opponent in the primary and the general election to influence the weakly informed.

This “best defense is a strong offense” technique was a way to prevent people from paying attention to just how unqualified and shady he really is.  I mean how does this state elect a man whose company committed fraud against Medicare to the degree that they were smashed with a 1.4 BILLION dollar fine?  The guy pleaded the fifth 75 times during the investigation to avoid incriminating himself.

But even if you are silly enough to throw all of that out, all of you have to do is look at the guy and watch him speak to know he is lying.  He looks and sounds like an old time con man.  How somebody could watch him talk about anything and have confidence in the man is beyond me.

This was quite similar to the way Washington lobbyists buy votes and influence in Congress.  You have to ask yourself, how power hungry must an individual be to spend $60 million of his own dollars for a $185,000 a year position?  I guess we are about to find out. If you actually voted for Tricky Rick, grats on being among the bamboozled.  Enjoy the ride.

On a national perspective the Republicans made big progress, gaining control of the House and picking up a few seats in the Senate as expected.  The election results are a testament to what America has become, a bunch of lazy, quick fix, me first, f the rest, rampant consuming cattle.  Cattle that are too lazy or short sighted to think back to the true cause of why we are here and why trillions of dollars have been spent to try to fix it.

I remember.  Too bad most did not. At least the endless political robocalls will cease.

Last night when I got home it was raining.  I had planned to go out and till the new soil into the garden but I certainly didn’t want to do it in the rain.  Luckily the rain stopped 15 minutes later so I decided to venture outside.

I first dumped my 9 bags of compost and garden soil around various spots in the garden.  I then snapped on my new tiller attachment to the weed whacker and got busy.  I tilled in two perpendicular directions to loosen the soil as much as possible.  I followed up with the rake to even out the furrows created by the tiller.  By the time I was done I had two nice planting areas on either side of the garden with a small path down the middle.

By the time I was done sunlight was fading but I decided I wanted to get some stuff in the ground.  I wound up planting almost everything that was edible including onions, lettuce, swiss kale, two varieties of tomatoes, and two varieties of peppers.  By the time I got done it was after 7 and almost pitch black.  Everything I planted only took up one side of the garden, I am not sure what we will plant on the other, possibly one of the fruit shrubs we got. (blueberry, black berry, raspberry)

You may recall in mid-October I changed my one Sirius subscription that was due to expire in the end of November from a yearly plan to a monthly plan.  My thought process is if Stern does not renew with Sirius I will be cancelling their service immediately so I didn’t want to be locked in for another year. The rep that handled my request said that once the year on that radio expired November 24th I would be switched over to month to month billing.

So imagine my delight when I have an envelope from Sirius in the mail yesterday.  I open it up and pull out a bill with an orange flyer that has in big letters YOUR PAYMENT IS PAST DUE IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!  I was PISSED as I glanced over a bill that showed I owed them $12 dollars and change.

I immediately got on the phone and after a typically annoying 10 minute wait got somebody. I explained that I was not supposed to see a bill until my current year subscription expired. The rep said that when I called in before they switched me immediately to monthly billing. WTF, that was not what was supposed to happen.  The rep apologized and said that she could not fix the problem, I had to be transferred to billing.  I asked her if I would have to wait another 10 minutes to talk to someone in billing because I had stuff to do.  She said no, it should be immediate.  Well after 5 minutes of dead air I hung up and resisted the urge to throw the phone against a hard surface, f’ing idiots.

So first thing today I call back Sirius.  I once again explain the situation to another customer service dude.  In addition to being annoyed about being billed before I should have been I mentioned to the guy that I saw Sirius tries to charge customers an EXTRA $2 if they want a paper invoice sent to them. That wasn’t going to fly either.

So after typing in all of my complaints I am once again told that I have to be transferred to billing.  I told the guy I was put on a dead air hold the night before.  He said he will transfer me directly.

So after a brief hold the phone is answered with an Indian accent.  I thought to myself “They didn’t just transfer to f’ing INDIA for the billing department….” Yep, they did.  I had to try to explain my problem to a robotic, hard to understand, Indian.  He basically tried to reiterate that I saw the charge because it was the result of my request to switch over to monthly billing.  I had ZERO patience at this point.  Being transferred to India to put the issue to bed enraged me.  I cut him off mid-explanation with “Please transfer me to the cancellation department”

Once again I am ported back to the United States.  Evidently if you are ready to cancel you are good enough to talk to someone that speaks English natively, if you need your bill corrected you get marble mouthed Indians.

For a third time I explained the background.  I said I wasn’t going to pay a penny before my year runs out November 24th and there was no way I was going to pay an extra $2 a month for a bill. The woman understood my frustration and did her best to accommodate me.  She waived the charges that were showing on the account and gave me 2 months of the monthly service for free so I shouldn’t see a monthly charge until December.  I gave her my CC info once again so they can bill the card directly to avoid the invoice fee with the understanding that I was not committing any more than one month at a time.

It will be interesting to see if what I was told will actually take place.  I will not be at all surprised if I have to call them ranting and raving in a few weeks.  Sirius just sucks, plain and simple.

My co-worker came across this cool Iphone app called imut8r that allows you to turn someone into a freak in a couple minutes.  I had fun Friday mutating myself, the dogs and even Ali although she won’t let me post hers. For a 99 cent app it is amazingly powerful.  There are literally thousands of monsters you can become with the many combinations available, highly recommended.

Saturday was yet another bust ass day around the homestead.  The woman that does the house cleaning was supposed to stop by in the morning to look at the house.  She got tied up and rescheduled to come by in the afternoon.

Ali did most of the tractor mowing before she had to head out to go into work for a few hours.  I got on the tractor and finished the regular mowing and then headed into the back yard to finish that as well.  I managed to get the tractor stuck four or five times during the process as I tried to mow down the ditch as much as possible.  Pulling the tractor out of the ditch with nothing more than my two hands wasn’t much fun since my back was very sore from Friday’s 300.

Later in the afternoon the kids next door came over to play with our dogs and then head into our pool for a bit.  The girl actually tried to put a bathing suit on Sadie which didn’t stay on very long.  Sadie loved having two kids in the pool with endless energy.  She chased them around the edge for a solid half hour.

The cleaning lady pulled up mid afternoon to survey the house.  She was obviously spooked by the dogs although I assured her they were harmless.  I took them both outside where they barked the entire time.  The dogs will add a layer of complication to the process.  Instead of being able to have the woman and her crew come and go as they please we will need to make sure Ali is around to corral and control the dogs, otherwise Nicki would be barking constantly and Sadie would be up in their face.

Vanessa asked me how often I was thinking I would use her.  I initially said maybe every 6 weeks or so.  She said that with the dogs she would recommend doing it once a month.  My 6 week idea came from the schedule my buddy uses with her.  However he is a minimalist with no pets and zero clutter.  His house basically looks like a model home.

On the positive side she said we didn’t have much tile which cuts down on the scrubbing they have to do.  On the negative side we have a lot of “stuff’ sitting around which adds to the cleaning time.  What they do is an initial deep cleaning where they clean just about everything you can imagine from floor to ceiling.  This deep cleaning costs around double what a normal cleaning does because it is so extensive.

I liked what I heard.  The idea of having the house professionally cleaned on a regular basis is appealing.  If after having it done a few times I decide it isn’t worth it I can always stop the service.  Ali of course is all for it, she loves the idea of doing less cleaning.  Ali is too busy this week so our first deep cleaning probably won’t occur until next week sometime.

Another one of my Saturday projects was sign creation.  I wanted to make two signs, one for a big community yard sale we are planning for mid-November and another one for the neighborhood email list.  I used plywood left over from the hurricane shutter project.  I painted the signs pure white to provide the best contrast with black letters.  I finished up the email list sign, complete with mounting it towards the end of the road. The yard sale sign hopefully will be wrapped up after work during the week.

I had a surprise Saturday afternoon when I saw a 7 foot long narrow box show up by my front door.  It was my new HDTV antenna.  I popped the box open just so I could grab the instructions to look them over. Of course you need a pole to mount an antenna to.

Later in the weekend I went to Home Depot, Lowes and even Best Buy looking for an antenna mast.  I struck out at all three places.  I found this very odd.  OTA antennas are pretty popular nowadays due to the outrageous cost of cable, I didn’t anticipate not being able to find a pole to mount one on.  I had to once again turn to the internet and grabbed 15 feet of antenna mast and some mounting hardware off Amazon.

Sunday morning Ali and I had to pry ourselves out of bed to time another race.  This race is unique,  it encourages runners to come in costume since it always is held right around Halloween.  Ali and I got into the spirit ourselves and dressed up for the race.

Ali also planned to run in the race so her costume had to be tolerated for 5 miles of running as well.  She went with an old cheerleader costume we had in the Halloween bin.  It looked cute on her.  I went with the venerable Jason mask teamed up with my throwback Randall Cunningham jersey and bucket hat.

Timing of the race went fine although we had some problems due to it being a run/walk event.  We had some people that were walkers that mistakenly were put into the running division which skewered the results until we discovered it.

Ali had a tremendous race, crossing the finish in less than 45 minutes which translated into a speedy 9 minute mile pace. On top of that her and the girls went back out to do another 5 miles as part of their half marathon training regimen.

Ali and I drove separately to the race because she once again had to run into work for a bit.  I went home and unloaded the truck as well as performing the post race duties.  By the time Ali got back I was just about finished up.

She was totally exhausted and even though we planned to go to the water park, she asked if she could lay down for a bit to take a nap.  I didn’t mind, it gave me a chance to shoot my last Bar-barian challenge videos for October.

I had made one attempt earlier in the month at the challenge which was max continuous push ups and got 42 reps.  I figured since it was Halloween I would dress up for this last attempt.  I dug out my Spartan costume, complete with sword and shield and headed out to the dog deck.  I managed to get three more reps this time which I was pleased with, for a total of 45.

There was a side contest as well where you do diamond push ups instead of the regular variety.  Diamond push ups are harder, you bring your hands together so that the space between them more or less forms a diamond.  They emphasize the triceps more than the chest.  I switched into my Jason mask for the second set.  Going to failure just a few minutes prior definitely affected my diamond push up number but I still managed to do 34 of them which was decent for me.

By the time I got done processing the video Ali was ready to head to the water park.  This was the last day the water park was open until Christmas break.  I have come to really enjoy spending part of my Sundays there and was a bit sad that it was coming to an end.

The place was very empty, even with temps in the upper 80’s.  I wanted to do another 1600 swim session.  Ali was still feeling wiped out from her run so she decided to just work on her tan instead.  I stopped briefly after the first 800 to spit in my googles, they were fogged up badly and it was annoying me.  After less than a minute break I was back at it. I did each 800 meters in 17:30 or less which was a good time for me. After my swim we just hung out for awhile.  We didn’t hit any of the water attractions, both of us felt glad to just unwind for a bit.

After the water park we hit Lowes.  Like I mentioned, the primary intention was to grab an antenna mast which I struck out at.  However we also grabbed materials to start our winter garden.  We grabbed a variety of vegetables, some compost to amend the soil and a couple dirt cheap clearance plants, some of which were as cheap as a dime, yes, a dime.

When we got back home it was late in the day.  I just dumped the stuff in the garden for the time being.  Getting the garden ready will be another to do list for the week.

Our Sunday night was busy as well.  Ali made a huge salad that we will be able to consume during the week.  We also did the bills, dishes, and laundry right up until bedtime.  The weekend flew by.

Ali and I were mapping out the weekends for the next 2-3 months.  It seems like almost every single weekend has something going on until late January.  Next week we continue the string with a sprint triathlon in Boca Grande.  Let the fun begin.