Archives December 2010

Wow, now THIS is someone that takes Christmas seriously.

So even though Ali knows that at this point I get as excited about birthdays as I would for a DRE, she always makes an effort to make them fun for me.  She stopped and grabbed Carrabas take out for dinner and delivered it to the door.  We enjoyed the food while watching the finale of Hell’s Kitchen on the Tivo.  I also got to enjoy the remaining piece of my birthday cake which I had saved in the fridge for a couple days, otherwise I would have none left since Ali offered Randall an overly generous hunk of it to take home with him.

There was a very cute moment when Ali was bringing in my two birthday cards, one from her and one from the pets.  She gave the card to Sadie who walked over, hopped up on the sofa with card still in mouth and gave it to me.  She is such a cute dog.

I opened gifts from Ali and afar.  Ali’s parents bought me some Xbox live cards to help me get my Live points total pumped up as well as a water bottle that fits inside of bike tri bars.  Ali got me the tri bars as well as a set of Oakley sunglasses.

I had put a cool pair of glasses on my Amazon list, hoping someone may snag them for me.  Well when I opened the box and pulled out the glasses that were still in their cleaning bag, I could feel that they seemed extremely small.  When I pulled them out of the bag I realized there was some sort of screw up, these glasses looked incredibly small, like something a kid would wear.

Ali was confused as she said she ordered them off my list.  I was confused as well because I thought the glasses I put on there were silver with reddish/orange lenses.  These tiny glasses were black with a blueish tint lens. I tried them on and they looked downright silly on my big peanut head.

The glasses were identified as XS Fives.  I can only assume that XS stands for EXTRA SMALL.  I hopped on Amazon and saw that I had TWO sets of Oakleys on there, the silver ones I really picked out and this XS pair.  I am not quit sure how the XS’s got on there.  So now we have to jump through hoops with Amazon to hopefully exchange these for the other model.

My dad and step mom grabbed me a high def web cam that will come in handy for various future justin.tv projects which will include live wow streaming. 🙂

I finished off my night watching episode 8 or 9 of the final season of Lost.  I am really drilling through it quickly.

It was a good birthday, as good as it can be for someone that has been feeling old since his early 30’s.

This weekend we have to time another race.  I also need to head out into the madness to try to finish up my Christmas shopping.  I just want it to be complete.  This is the point in the process where you stop looking at price tags and pay more attention to the names that are getting crossed off the list.

So yesterday wrapped up my at home training session.  It was my worst experience with at home training  to date.

The class was for Microsoft Hyper-V, a package that allows you to run virtual servers, something that may be advantageous in our work environment.  In our “class” we had three students, all of whom were remote.  In the past, my classes had a combination of students physically in the classroom and remotely located.  Well since there were no students scheduled to be on site, the instructor was also working from home.  This turned out to be problematic.

The teacher kept all of the students on mute for the first day.  He said if we had a question we should type it in the chat box and he would unmute us.  He said based on his years of experience he found this was the best way to do things.  I found it annoying and severely limiting as far as making the class interactive.  Most of the time if one of the students typed something the instructor wouldn’t even notice it until long after it was pertinent.  Instead he would just ramble on and we were his silent, captive audience.

Having the instructor remote added another point of failure in the data chain since not only did we need to be remoted to the training facility but to the guys house as well.  We had off and on issues with performance throughout the class with spotty audio and video, including a full out outage during the afternoon of day two that lasted several hours.

The training facility also dropped the ball when it came to preparing the student machines.  They were not configured as they were supposed to be to work with the labs.  In some cases it just caused aggravation as we had to adjust on the fly to make things work.  In other cases the misconfiguration caused some labs to simply fail.  The instructor tried to fix the problems, causing further delays and lack of productivity.  He was not successful in his attempts.

Then on the last day, the day you typically want to get everything wrapped up early, we instead had our longest day.  It was the day when the instructor decided to be the most verbose.  During the last few hours I was totally tuned out and just waiting for it to end.

During the class I was doing private chats to the other students and found out they thought it was as lame as I did.  The one woman requested a credit from her sales rep because the class was that lame.  I did the same this morning.

Late yesterday afternoon the cleaning crew showed up.  I attended to various things while they were there, one of which was pulling up the various cold protection I set up outside since the forecast was for warmer temps in the low to mid 40’s Wednesday night.

It wasn’t the exact same cleaning crew as before.  They got busy cleaning as I loosely watched while I worked.  I was a bit pleased and disappointed at the same time.   I saw them doing some unexpected cleaning like cleaning the shelves in the fridge and the pans under the burners on the stove.  But I didn’t see them wash the tile in the kitchen, utility rooms and bathrooms, something I expected to be part of the regular cleaning cycle.

The crew of three were done in about 75 minutes.  When I asked them what the bill was, the one who understood some english didn’t know.  She called the woman who runs the business.  The $100 she came up with was ok, about what we talked about but when I do the math of $20 per hour per person, it works out to more like $75. I certainly wasn’t going to try to squabble about $25 with the girls that were there.  Trying to communicate that would be like pulling teeth.  I do plan to contact the woman in charge and let her know I am ok with the money but I would like to get the time I am paying for and hopefully that time includes washing the floor.

Like I mentioned, I removed all of the covers and pots I had out on the landscape since the cold snap was forecast to finally moderate with low’s in the 40’s Wednesday night.  Imagine my joy when I got up this morning and saw 36 degrees on the thermometer.  I was f’ing pissed.  If I knew it was going to stay that cold I would have left all the coverings on.  Now my preservation efforts are more than likely wasted. Did I mention I am pissed off?

Yesterday on my lunch break I did another attempt at the Bar-barian challenge. I made adjustments to address some of the problems with Monday’s attempt, mainly bad timing of the breaks and problems using the walker as a high speed dip station.

For timing I used my wrist watch and simply did the math instead of trying to f around with resetting the stopwatch.  For dips I decided to use two of the dining room chairs.

Just using the chairs alone doesn’t work, they want to tip backwards if I support myself on the backs.  To address that issue I drug in 160 pounds of plates from the shed and put 80 pounds on each seat.  Doing this stabilized things greatly. Using chairs also allowed me to set the width to my liking.  I picked 23-24 inches as the sweet spot.

So the attempt started out well.  My new dip set up resulted in a dramatic increase in my numbers, jumping from 15 on Monday to 25 on Tuesday.  I had to really push to get rep 23,24 and 25.  I was pumped to be off to such a good start and I figured 100+ reps should be in my sights.

Well going to failure on my first set of dips really affected the rest of my exercises.  I did less reps in every other exercise, it was pretty pathetic.  I limped to the finish line with only 89 reps, my smallest total to date.

I was disappointed but there were some positives, I used much better form on my push ups than Mondays effort and I actually managed to keep my break times within a second or two of regulation.  If you watch the video you can tell I am doing the best I could, I just didn’t have much left in the tank.

I do have one number that has increased, my age.  Today I turn 43 years old.  It seems surreal to look in the mirror and have to declare myself as that old.  All I can do is continue to try to be as immature as possible to offset the ever advancing days on the calendar. It comes and goes so fast at this age, I wish there was a way to tap the brakes.

I need to celebrate by doing 43 of something at the gym today.

I tried to make good use of my training at home day.  Not only did I attend virtually day one of a three day  Hyper-V course, I covered up plants on the property with cloth and empty pots to protect them from the frigid temps.  I still expect to have a shit load of damage.

At lunch I recorded my second attempt at the Bar-barian forums 6 pack challenge. I did this attempt inside, without a timer and used some different exercise props.  It didn’t work out very well.  I had problems accurately keeping time.  I used the stop watch I use at races.  I would have been better served just wearing my watch.  Trying to reset and start/stop the watch really f’d me up.   I used the walker that Randall brought over for my dips.  This turned out to be a hindrance as well, the handles on the walker are only 18 inches across, making fast dips very tough to do.  I actually did 5 LESS dips than on the sawhorse set up I used a couple weeks back.  Overall I did 5 more reps than the first effort but as I mentioned my break times were too long so it doesn’t count as an official attempt as far as the contest goes.

The biggest improvement was in my hand stand push ups.  I did 50% more reps, going from 4 to 6 which I was happy with.  I also increased my numbers on push ups, pull ups and chins. Today I hope to put in a few miles on the treadmill over my lunch break.  I WON’T be wearing the Nike’s.

I woke up this morning and saw that the Phillies actually managed to snag Cliff Lee somehow.  The Phils weren’t even mentioned as being part of the Cliff Lee suitors but they scored him anyway.  This gives the Phillies an absolutely incredible starting rotation, probably the best 4 pitchers to ever be on one team at a time, at least on paper.  Hopefully it translates to another trophy next year.  Of course they have to get that little hitting problem worked out.

Brett Farve FINALLY didn’t play. Good.  Time to march off onto the sunset buddy where you can send pictures of your penis till your heart is content.

So Randall came over Friday evening for a weekend visit.  Last year he came over around the same time as well.  We had a holiday party last year that we originally said we were going to repeat this year, but didn’t.  He also helped us last year with working the Shootout 5K.  Well this year he was planning to help AND run it.

He got held up at work and showed up later than planned.  It actually didn’t work out badly since Ali and I had a bunch of shit to take care of anyway after work.  We had pizza and hung out.  Of course I brought the 360 out to show Randall some of what it could do.

On Saturday morning we drove separately to the race, I had to get there earlier because I was technically the club lead for the race.  Ali and Randall showed up maybe 45 minutes after I did.  Just like last year the staff of the Shootout had done most of the prep, having an awesome registration area set up for the race.  Even though it was still pitch dark out we had plenty of light from the brilliant stadium light that was suspended from a crane high above the ground.  It was pretty awesome.

Despite the organized registration area, the last 30 minutes leading up to the start was pretty hectic.  The two people we had checking in pre-registered runners was not enough and we wound up with a very long line at that spot.  Eventually some other people jumped in to help.  I was scurrying around making sure not only the timing system was up and running but that everything else was cool as well.  With about 10 minutes to go before the start I told Ali and Randall I would take over the registrations so they could get loose.  Of course right on cue, as soon as they got up I was handed about a dozen entry forms. We had a nice bump in participation this year.  Last year we had around 500 runners, this year we wound up with 611 registered.

The race started and I took my spot at the timing table.  The first runner came across in less than 16 minutes, almost a full minute ahead of the second place finisher.  I kept my eyes open for Randall and Ali.  I was shocked when I saw Randall come across just under the 26 minute mark.  He had just set a PR on Thanksgiving for a 5K of something like 28:30.  He lopped another few minutes off of that in the span of three weeks, that is pretty incredible. Ali was smoking fast as well, setting herself a new PR of 27:13, more than a minute better than her old mark which was set like 4 years ago, wow. I congratulated both of them for their awesome efforts.

Post race there were a couple snafu’s.  Evidently the food layout was pretty sparse and what was there wasn’t enough as by the time late finishers came up it was all gone.  Also gym memberships were handed out as the big prize for the top finishers.  A gym membership is a very hit and miss prize with a lot more miss than hit.  Yea a one year gym membership is worth a good chunk of change but it only worth something if you can actually use it which the vast majority can’t.  They will either already have their own gym membership or they are not geographically located close enough to use it.  For example the race winner was from out of town and won such a membership. Luckily they had some extra bottles of wine that we wound up handing out to many of the gym membership winners instead. 

Randall and I were out of there before 9am.  Ali stayed and was running extra mileage with Christy and Michelle. Once we got home I started the long post race process.  When Ali got back both her and Randall retired to take naps while I continued to toil.  I had a lot of stuff to get updated. 

On top of the updating I have been loaded down with the added responsibility of running the new store I created for the club.  The store has been successful for the runners, allowing them to register for our races and pay with a credit card with no surcharge.  It has been unsuccessful for me as far as my personal sanity goes.

Having the added responsibility of making sure the runners credit card transaction is handled correctly has been a real pain in the ass.  When I came up with the idea of doing the store I didn’t think it would be quite as laborious as it has turned out.  The store is going to be like my personal Randy Moss, I plan to get out from under it soon and instead recommend the club use another race registration web site with lower fees.  I just don’t want this hassle, I am feeling pretty used up and burned out.

Saturday night we went out for my birthday dinner although my birthday actually isn’t until Thursday. Of course we went to Carraba’s again.  I found out a way to make Ali laugh uncontrollably.  Next time you see her, do this.

When we got back home we fired up the Xbox and continued playing a game we started earlier, South Park Tower Defense.  My love of tower defense games and South Park is well documented.  Putting those two things together was a win/win for me.  We played till midnight.  Get it on Xbox Live, it was only 400 points ($5).

On Sunday I was feeling pretty blah.  Randall accompanied me to Home Depot.  I wanted to get additional material to cover the garden to protect it from more ultra-cold weather that rolls in tonight.  I was unsure of exactly what I wanted to get but wound up with a 20′ x 30′ blue tarp.  My thought process was i could wrap my existing supply of frost cloth around the fence perimeter of the garden and then secure the blue tarp on top of it all.

Well that plan in retrospect, was stupid.  Randall was outside helping me test my theory.  Things were complicated by strong winds that made attaching anything very difficult.  Finally we got the fence covered in a combination of pond underlayment and old comforters.  Then we unpacked the tarp.

Well trying to manipulate a 600 square foot tarp in 20 mph winds was a joke.  We looked like a stadium grounds crew.  Eventually we drug the tarp on top of the garden but it wound up doing more damage than good.  The wind smashed down on the tarp, jamming it onto the plants below, damaging quite a few of them.  I was pissed off and told Randall to help me pull it off. This turned into a lengthy fiasco.  For some reason I though it would be easier to do it that way but the truth was I was better off just slapping the underlayment on top of the plants as I always have, f it.  It just annoys me to waste that time, money and effort.

Randall headed out around half time of the second football game.  He said he had a good time.  He is heading out to San Diego for a couple weeks which should be fun.

Again the Eagles didn’t play until late which I hate.  Luckily I liked the outcome of the game, beating the hated Cowboys.  DeSean Jackson had a MONSTER game which benefited me twice, once as a hardcore Eagles fan and secondly as a fantasy football owner who has him on my team.

This is the first week of playoffs in my league.  I limped in with a 5-8 record, just barely making the playoffs.  My shitty record meant I got to play the number one team in the league.  I had already assumed I would lose, badly.  Well Jackson’s efforts raked me in 47 huge points and as long as Ray Rice doesn’t have the rushing performance of the decade tonight, my victory should be a lock.  It’s a huge upset if I pull this off.  You can only imagine how much I am enjoying it.

I’m home for three days doing remote training, hope to regain some sanity during that time.  It feels a bit elusive right now.

I have felt stretched pretty thin lately.  It seems like I am juggling a lot of stuff and that I need a couple more hands not to mention a second brain to keep track of it all.  Last night was another one of those nights.  The list for last night included washing the sheets in the guest room, cleaning the guest bathroom, taking care of stuff for the race on Saturday and baking 6 dozen cookies for the office Christmas party. Thankfully when Ali came home she jumped right into helping me with stuff to dull the edge.

Adding to the fun is this weird eye thing I have going on.  I have been having off and on episodes of pain behind my left eye.  Sometimes it turns into a full blown headache complete with sensitivity to light.  The eye itself looks red and irritated but it doesn’t feel like there is anything in it.  When the pain comes it literally feels like someone is banging on the back of my eyeball.  This has actually happened several times before, the first time being a couple years ago.

The first time it happened I actually went to the doctor who referred me to an eye doctor.  Neither of them came up with anything conclusive that was wrong, it just sort of went away on it’s own.  The few times it has happened since it again sort of takes care of itself.  Well in the past two weeks it has been coming and going pretty regularly.  Yea it’s my eye, I know it isn’t something to f around with.  If it still is bothering me next week I will make a visit to the local med clinic.  Until then I’ll treat it with Visine.

Last night I was using my 360 to browse ESPN content.  I stumbled across some cricket matches.  I have heard of cricket of course but never watched a match.  The game sounded very confusing to me, watching it didn’t do much to clear up the confusion.

The pitcher/batter interaction is very funny.  The pitcher runs 50 or 60 feet before delivering a silly looking one hop pitch to the batter.  The bat is more like a big ass paddle.  I didn’t see any big powerful swings or hard driven balls.  Most swings were the check swing variety and the ball would dribble off in various directions.  I still don’t really understand how you score points or how you make outs.

I do know the one guy managed to hit a weak pop up that was caught and the crowd went wild.  That evidently was a “wicket”.  I was too tired to watch all that much of it but I plan to tune in some more so I can figure the game out.  It seems almost as odd as curling.

Randall is coming over tonight to hang out this weekend.  He is going to help us out at the race as well as run in it.  I am sure we will have a few physical/video game competitions going on.  The dogs were very excited when they saw us preparing the guest room.  They seem to know that means someone is coming.

We get a ton of catalogs that are filled with mostly junk, the sort of stuff hoarders dream of.  This particular catalog had a number of items that made me laugh out loud.  Take a look.

Ok so you simply wrap this around your stomach and the added heat melts fat away?  I mean wtf, how stupid are people.  Nice to see it adjusts up to a 50″ waist.

Have a set of nasty Billy Bob teeth?  Don’t have 10 grand to get them fixed?  Do we have the thing for you! Get a whole new set of choppers for only $80!  Unfortunately if you happen to need to eat you will have to do so with your nasty real teeth.  I am sure they look very natural and won’t affect your speech pattern at all.

Got a stiff neck?  Just wrap a garden hose around your neck and pump some air into it.  Problem solved!

Another magical fat melting device that you strap around your waist!  Just look how much weight you could lose without doing a single sit up!  Cartoon drawings do not lie!

I finally found the perfect gift for Ali to help her battle migraines.  Even if it makes you look like a member of the original V tv series.

Grandma looks pretty happy even though she now has to wear embarrassing body size napkins.

Yesterday I planned to run on the treadmill at the gym.  I was wearing my new Nike running sneakers for the second time.  I wore the same sneakers when I failed at my max pace mile last week.

I planned to run at least three miles at a more mundane 7 mph pace.  It didn’t take long until I felt like I was struggling once again.  I just felt uncomfortable while running, more tired than I should be.  I stopped after only a mile.  I walked 1/4 and then tried starting up again.  I immediately started feeling some pain in both knees as I tried to resume a running pace.  I immediately slowed the belt back down to walking pace and finished my cardio session in that manner.

I have to believe it was all shoe related.  It annoys me that I spent the money for a pair of running sneakers that I can’t run in.  I will probably just use them as my normal gym sneakers.  For now I will keep using my old NB 1060’s to run in and then get a pair of 1064’s after the holidays.

Last night was the holiday party for the running club.  The club always opts to have the party on a weeknight which I wish wasn’t the case.  It would work out much better on a Friday or Saturday night.  This year the club decided to really go upscale with the accommodations, having the get together at the local Hilton.

Both Ali and I had duties to perform at the party.  Ali was working the sign in desk and I was in charge of making sure the AV equipment was working for a small video that was going to be shown during dinner.  The schedule was an hour and a half cocktail hour followed by a sit down dinner.

Even though we were paying a ton for the accommodations compared to years past, that didn’t equate to getting ANY break on alcohol.  It was a cash bar.  I bet I spent close to $50 by the time the night was over on drinks.  I much preferred when club members were able to bring their own alcohol and share.

All the women were primped to the max, including Ali, who looked great.  It’s hard to convince her to dress up just for me for some reason.

The dinner portion of the evening was fine.  The food was good and the service was decent.  The video that I set up to play was well received by the crowd. It was about a young guy that was very overweight who found running.  It totally transformed his life.  If you would like to see it click here.

The rest of the evening went fine.  The main speaker was a local ultra runner who has just an incredible resume of accomplishments.  He told us stories about his various experiences over the years.  It was all pretty amazing but the most incredible of all was his running 450 miles+ in the span of 6 days.

One of the supposed reasons this venue was going to be worth the extra money was it was big and had a dance floor to allow people to dance.  Well as soon as the meal was over and the speeches were done 80% of the people were out the door within 10 minutes.  Even though we paid to have the space until 11pm almost everybody was out of there by 10:15.  It is a by product of having the party on a weeknight.   I am pretty sure next year the holiday party will be handled a bit differently.  Sure it was nice at the Hilton but the lush accomodations didn’t really add all that much to the event for me.  It’s much more about the people that show up.

So when I got home I had to do a few club related things in the timing system and the website even though it was already after 11pm.  When I was editing one of the web pages I noticed the scroll bar on the side looked unusually small.  A small scroll bar means a long list of things to scroll.  Well I scroll down and see a long list of bullshit links injected into the end of the page. F me, I have been hacked, again.

So I did some snooping around to see how wide spread the problem was.  Luckily the affected files seemed to be limited to the root directory of two domains.  I was pissed off.  I had been dealing with a series of problems with my web host, IX Webhosting for the past few weeks.  I have had almost daily problems with access to my content timing out or being extremely slow. Then on Tuesday they had a hardware problem that totally knocked my sites offline for 6-7 hours.  To have my content hacked was just the cherry on top.

So I call in and talk to a tech.  I explained the frustration of getting hacked after dealing with slow performance and outages already.   He looked at my content and saw the hacked files.  He said that he would take care of cleaning them as well as scanning my content for a malicious script that would have allowed the code injection.  He said he would work on it overnight and send me an update in the morning.  Ok great, good night.

So this morning I get the update.  He found that a script had been uploaded under my ftp account and that script was what was responsible for the code injection.  He  said my ftp password had been compromised and said I probably have a keylogger on my system.

That line really set me off.  When IX had rampant hacking going on with their shared servers a year or two back they constantly pointed the finger back at their customers, saying the compromise was on our end, not theirs.  Later it was revealed the majority of these problems actually were the result of poor security on their end.

Getting that finger shoved back in my face really annoyed me.  I know all about safe surfing and use multiple layers of protection to prevent getting something like a keylogger.  Even so, I ran Spybot on my system in safe mode on both my home and work pc to verify I had no gremlins in there, which I didn’t.  It would be hard to imagine  that a brute force attack would have worked, my ftp password was pretty strong.

The message from the tech continued, saying their script was unable to remove the bad line of code from the nearly 200 affected files.  He said I would have to manually download each file and remove the line myself.  Well I told him this wasn’t what we talked about on the phone but I would take it up with my normal support hero, Tom, who always has been good to me.

So I started the arduous clean up process.  After I manually cleaned the third or fourth file I remembered that my buddy Charlie wrote a program a couple years ago that helped me recover from a similar hack.  Basically you download the affected hacked files into a directory, tell the program what the start and end of the bad code looks like and it goes in there and rips it out in a few seconds.

I let the program run and it worked beautifully, cleaning a couple hundred files in a few seconds instead of the few hours it would have taken me otherwise.  If you happened to stumble across this blog entry because you are looking for hack fixing info, based on the tags, I can hook you up with this hack fixer.  Just email me at [email protected].  Thanks Charlie.

So anyway my files are cleaned up, my ftp password has been changed and we added additional restrictions on my ftp account that will only allow ME to access it based on ip address restrictions.  How the hack went down exactly is still a mystery.

Howard announced this morning that he finally renewed for another 5 years with Sirius.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Sure I am happy I can continue listening to him without having to change a thing for the next 5 years.  But there was also a part of me that was looking forward to telling Sirius to get bent and take their bullshit music royalty and online listening surcharges with them.   Hell I prepared for Stern leaving by converting my one subscription to monthly so I could get out quickly.

There are some other good things about the new agreement, the biggest being they are NOW going to be streaming Stern on their official smartphone apps, a hole that angered many (including me) up until this point.  Howard also mentioned something about more scheduling “flexibility” which can only mean more freaking vacation for a guy that already has a third of the year off.  Oh well, it’s better than no Howard at all.

Tonight not only do I have to prep for Randall’s arrival on Friday, I also have to bake cookies for the work xmas party.  All I want to do is play some Cataclysm damn it…. At least I got some xmas shopping done yesterday online.

Man I really have been tardy with my Christmas shopping this year.  I have barely made a scratch in it.  There have been a combination of things that have kept me busy and distracted from this chore but “just not feeling like doing it” surely is a large part of it.

I have already told Ali that she really should keep any Christmas shopping for me at a minimum if she is serious about allowing me to get a Camaro in 2011 which would be the Xmas present to end all Xmas presents.  Likewise I don’t think Ali wants me to go nuts spending money on her since throughout the year we pretty much buy what we want/need anyway.

That still leaves a list of people to address.  Last year my siblings agreed that we are now old enough (we were old enough 20 years ago) that buying presents for each other is no longer necessary and instead we would just focus on the children in the family.  I am hoping my siblings have not forgotten the plan this year.

I need to get my ass in gear and get it done.  The problem is my schedule is pretty much full until next week.  I am running out of time to use online shopping as a viable option due to time constraints.

Speaking of buying “stuff”, much of which is not needed, I said I wanted to expand on Hoarders.  I have seen hoarding before, I remember Ali showing me a few Oprah shows that spotlighted it.  Well the show on A&E has cranked it to a new level.  Unlike the Oprah hoarders that supposedly lived happily ever after once all of their shit was taken out of the house, these hoarders fail more often than not.

Hell you have to figure they are set up for failure since the entire clean up process is compressed into two or three days.  Just removing all of the stuff doesn’t fix the source of the problem only the symptom.  The conditions these people live in are just horrible.  Quite often the hoarding is accompanied with other uncontrollable urges like compulsive shopping and compulsive eating.  These people are just a mess.  Most of them also were on some sort of disability, your government dollars hard at work.

Watching the show made me identify some shared characteristics with hoarders that both myself and others I know have.  I have a tendency to hoard data more than anything nowadays, filling my storage devices with tons of files, most of which I will never have use for again.  In the past I also was one to hoard computer equipment, cable and peripherals.  I still have a bunch of that stuff but it is pretty much contained in two Rubbermaid containers.  Clutter bothers me too much to allow it ever to get to true hoarder status. I do definitely place emotional ties though to inanimate objects, as evidenced by my 20 year old lunch box, 30 year old t-shirts and other items that I keep around just because they represent something to me and me alone.

A common scene in Hoarders is the hoarder going through a single box of junk for hours while the crew is downstairs with snow shovels scooping up mounds of junk.  This is something Ali will often do, getting mired in minutia.  She definitely has some aspects of hoarder mentality. She also has deep emotional ties to inanimate objects.  An example is the huge barrel of teddy bears that we removed from a shelf a couple years ago.

We pulled down the bears with the intention of giving them away.  However they have sat in the hobby room all this time because Ali hasn’t had the chance to do the famous act of “going through them”. When I suggested that we get rid of them at the yard sale she was staunchly against it.  I balance Ali out in this regard as eventually I will annoy her enough that she will have to act or I will just do it on my own.

Extreme hoarding is a mental condition that can be just as debilitating as other addictions.  I heard the show  Interventions is just as disturbing.  I’ll have to see if it is available.

I took off the Friday and Monday since my good buddy Troy was flying down for a visit.  His flight didn’t arrive until 1 pm so during the morning I cleaned up around the house, prepared the guest bedroom and bathroom.  Ali has been working a lot of hours recently so she hadn’t had a chance to do her normal hotel level prep.

I decided to take the van complete with my canine co-pilots to pick up Troy.  Troy had last been down at least 5 years ago so he knew Nicki but never met Sadie before.  I expected the dogs to carry on a bit when Troy entered the van but it was surprisingly calm.  Nicki, who typically always barks at any face other than Ali our mine initially, didn’t make a peep.

Troy said he had a decent flight.  Even though the air temps in the upper 60’s felt cool to me they felt good to him.  On the drive home we caught up a bit on things.  Since Troy doesn’t have his instant messenger client up very often and doesn’t get a chance to read my blog on a regular basis, most of our communication are via the occasional email normally.

We had no big plans for Friday night.  Ali stopped and grabbed pizza on the way home.  It didn’t take long for me to pull my Xbox 360 out into the great room and hook it up to the 73 inch Mitsubishi.  I loaded up Madden Arcade football to take on Troy.  Early on in our relationship Troy and I would have many epic Madden football games at my house in Wernersville.  During that time the balance of power swung back and forth between us pretty evenly.

Well in 2010 Troy got the nod.  After the first game which he won barely he continued on winning two more games by pretty lopsided scores.  As you would expect, I didn’t suggest we play that game any more during the weekend. We enjoyed our pizza and drank beer the rest of the evening.

We hadn’t made any definitive plans for Saturday.  We threw several ideas around on Friday night but couldn’t really decide on any.  Saturday morning we couldn’t make up our minds either so we spent a couple hours watching  my new favorite show, “Hoarders”.

Earlier in the morning I upgraded my Xbox Live membership from the limited free version to the full blown $60 variety.  Doing so turned on several things for me like real time online play against other people. It also enabled Netflix on the 360.  I have used Netflix in many ways since I got it including through a regular web browser, the Wii, the Ipad, the Iphone and my Tivo.  The 360 interaction is the best by far.

Many of the other display methods only allow you to browse your existing Instant Queue but you can’t find anything new.  The 360 interface is fully functional and is backed up by a rich, vibrant UI that makes the experience really shine.  Anything I streamed loaded quick and looked great.

So anyway I just happened to stumble across the show first season of Hoarders,  a series that runs on A&E about people that have allowed their lives to become destroyed by their uncontrollable need to have stuff.  Well let me tell you, this show is just unbelievable.  I have many thoughts on it which I plan to cover in a future entry.  It really is shocking and telling about the world we live in at the same time.

Finally I came up with an idea for the day.  I asked Troy if he would want to go up to the off leash dog beach with the dogs.  He said that sounded good.  Ali originally planned to nap instead since she was tired from her run but she later decided to join us for the fun.

It was indeed a good time.  The cooler temps may have kept some away as I don’t think there was ever more than 10 dogs on the beach at a time.  Nicki had been there a few times, we never took Sadie.  After some initial trepidation, Sadie jumped into the fun, engaging both dogs and their owners in her normal friendly style.  Nicki, who in the past spent most of her time at the dog beach with her tail between her legs and cowering by our side, was surprisingly interested in interacting with others as well.  It seems like having Sadie around has pulled Nicki out of her shell a bit.  If Nicki sees Sadie having fun it makes her feel more at ease.

The dogs had a great time.  I waded out into the water and had a pack of dogs following me.  Sadie dropped a few logs in the water, something Nicki usually enjoys doing.  I actually managed to retrieve the poop from the water, doing my best to be a responsible dog owner.  You can see the retrieval process in this justin.tv stream I shot during the visit. It was not an easy task.

We hung out there for close to an hour before piling back in the van to head home.  As you can imagine the dogs were a sandy mess after their fun.  Before allowing them inside the house Ali and I gave both of them a quick mini-shower with the hose outside.  Neither of them enjoyed it very much.

Troy and I decided we would head out to the casino in Immokalee a little bit to gamble.  I was kind of hesitant since I didn’t really feel like blowing money but I set a $100 stop loss figure in my head.  Troy had been to the casino before but that was pre-renovations when it was little more than a warehouse with slot machines.  It is a much nicer facility now that they added table games to the mix.  Too bad they couldn’t make it smoke free as well, man I hate the stench.

So after walking around a bit I decided to play some blackjack.  The smallest minimum was $10, twice what I prefer to play. $5 tables let you ride out cold streaks much easier with a smaller wad of cash.  Troy didn’t join me at the table, he was a bit spotty on his knowledge of the game. I told him I could  help coach him.  In a nutshell you make all of your decisions assuming any down cards are a 10.  He opted to head off to some video poker machines instead.

I was doing half decent for awhile.  At one point I had grown my $100 in chips to $150 or $160.  Then they brought in the cooler.  Blackjack players are superstitious.  One of the things that they don’t like is if the dealer changes when the table is HOT.  A hot blackjack table is one where the dealer is busting on a regular basis.

Well the buxom blonde that had been bringing me good luck had her break.  The homely girl they brought in her place cleared out the table in no time.  In addition to the cooler I had issues with an older couple playing in front of me.  The guy was veering from what the “book” says on a pretty regular basis.  This behavior can be quite annoying for this reason.

Say the dealer is showing a 9.  You would play the hand assuming she has 19.  Well this old fart would have like 14, a hand the book says you hit on.  Well quite often he would say he “feels” a bad card and he would not hit.  I play by the book and I get the 10 that busts me that he should have gotten.  Then the next card would be something that I could have won with.  This happened to me quite a bit, it was seriously pissing me off.  Sure it’s his prerogative to play that way but if that is your style you are better suited to be the last person dealt and not the second.

I saw a lot of stupid play like people splitting 8’s when the dealer was showing a 10 and then doubling down on top of that.  I was like wtf???  They lost a bundle on those hands.

So anyway I finally bailed on the situation with $25 of my original $100 left.  Things really went downhill quickly, I bet I lost 7 out of 8 hands at the end.  Troy did not fair any better with video poker.  We headed home with the gambling itch more than scratched.

Saturday evening we went out to dinner at Carrabas.  I drunkenly lamented to Troy about the various changes they made to the restaurant over the years.  We had a nice meal that was enhanced by happy hour 2-1 drinks.

Sunday was the big day, the main reason Troy flew down.  We were going to the Dolphins/Browns game.  Troy and have a mini-tradition of going to see NFL games together.  Years ago we went to Green Bay to see the Eagles play and then last year I flew up to his place to go to a Ravens game.  This year we decided to stay close to my stomping grounds.

Last year we miscalculated just how early we had to leave to get to the Ravens game.  As a result we were subjected to being the target of an angry mob as we forced a mass of humanity to split so we could park.  We didn’t want to make the same mistake again so we decided to leave around 9 am.

We needed to pick up tailgating supplies so I figured I would stop at the Ave Maria Publix.  It would also give Troy a chance to see “Catholic Town” up close and personal.  As usual the store was practically empty.  We grabbed a couple subs, some chips and beer.  After we got back to the van Troy quickly went back into the store, returning with a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper and a lottery ticket.  He delivered one of the funnier lines of the weekend, saying he wanted to “sin it up” since we were in Catholic Town.

On the way over to the stadium I got a text from Randall asking if I was going to the game, he saw my Facebook post that indicated I was.  Randall has season tickets to the Dolphins.  He was considering not going since he didn’t have anyone to go with.  He said I could pick him up and then we could use his parking pass to save 25 or 30 bucks.  Plus Randall knows the lay of the land which would be another huge bonus.  We stopped an picked him up and continued the drive in.

I figured Randall and Troy would get along just fine, they both have no problems talking.  I was glad we had Randall along as we approached the quagmire near the stadium entrance.  Luckily we didn’t have the same cluster f to navigate as we did in Baltimore.  We parked in a decent spot along a fence, right next to a port-a-potty.

We had about an hour to tailgate.  The three of us had a steady flow of alcohol going.  I opened up the back of the van and stood there, peering out over the roof line at the crowd below.  It was then that I shot the first of several brief justin.tv feeds of the day.

We headed into the stadium with about 20 minutes to go till kick off.  As we approached we saw a pack of Browns fans doing the famous dog pound barking.  I had to laugh when some Dolphin fans started chanting in response “We ….got…LeBron….”  It made me laugh out loud.

We had a bit of a problem when it came to the seating situation.  Randall had tickets for two seats.  We had tickets for two seats.  We had three people.  We decided to just sit in Randall’s area and hope that the rightful owner of the spare seat would not show up.

By the time we got situated they were just starting the national anthem.  It was sung beautifully and was accompanied by the unfurling of a football field sized flag and punctuated by an awesome F-16 flyover.

The game started but it was really not the focus of my attention.  I was pretty drunk at this point so I found it more interesting focusing on what was going on around me.  Drunk football fans are quite an interesting bunch to observe.  The game was pretty low scoring.  I was surprised how many empty seats I saw in the place, even by the end of the first quarter I bet a third of them were empty.

Somewhere late in the second quarter some people actually showed up for the seat that I was squatting in.  The three of us took that as a queue to leave.  We headed out to the concourse and hung out for a bit during half time.  We decided to go over to the section where Troy and my tickets were, on the other side of the stadium.  We found a large block of open seats that we plopped ourselves into.

This section seemed to have a large amount of Browns fans in it which added to the fun.  Randall, who was fully decked out in Dolphins gear, got into an argument with a female Browns fan a few rows back.  Somehow it came up that even though Randall was originally from Cleveland he is now a Dolphin fan.  This woman was incensed that he would betray his Cleveland roots and gave Randall a hard time throughout the rest of the game.

I had an embarrassing incident when my cup of beer slipped out of my hand and bounced on my knee, spilling at least half of it on both myself and Troy.  There was a small amount that splashed on a guy in front of me which he wasn’t very pleased about.  I just laughed it off.  Troy cut me out of the beer circle after that point.

So the game was decided late when the Dolphins QB threw a bad interception that turned into a game winning field goal for the Browns.  I shook the hands of the happy Browns fans around me and congratulated them on the victory like it actually mattered to me.  I was wearing my Dolphins visor so I looked like a fake fan.

In the process of leaving the stadium I got split up from Randall and Troy.  I figured it was no big deal, I would just meet up with them at the van.  I walked in the general direction I thought I needed to go.  Before the game I took a picture from the van of the stadium so I used the angles of the picture to direct me.  Well I got to the fence line and nothing was looking familiar.  In fact there was no parking along this section of fence line.

I texted Randall and asked where they were.  Just as I did I realized my mistake.  We entered the stadium on the far side.  When we switched seats we were 180 degrees from where we entered.  Doh.  So I had a long ass walk around the parking lot until I finally got back to the van where Randall and Troy had been for a long time.

The parking lot was of course a mess so we figured we would just hang out for awhile.  Troy and Randall polished off the 18 pack of Miller Lite we bought.  I decided against any further drinking since I would be manning the wheel of the van whenever we left.

We had some fun doing the post game tailgate thing.  We got involved in a game of catch with some middle aged woman and another guy.  However shortly after it started they got side tracked into something else so Troy, Randall and I just kept playing with their ball.  We decided we played enough when Randall threw a lame duck that bounced off the van, over the fence and into the street where it just narrowly missed getting run over by a police car.

I once again had the back of the van open and was sitting on the roof.  As I was up there some guy asked if he could “borrow my van”.  Since I was still somewhat drunk and not fully understanding what he meant I said “sure”.  The guy climbs up onto the back of the van and then uses the open doors as support.  His intention was to use the van as a make shift ladder to allow him to jump the fence.

The chain link fence was about 8 feet high and had a shrub on the other side that went all the way to the top.  Once the guy got his center of balance over the fence he plummeted through the shrubs and on to the sidewalk below.  I peered over and yelled down to the guy, asking him if he was ok.  He stood up and jogged across the street while flashing the thumbs up sign.  Funny stuff.

So finally, about an hour after the game was over the lots were clearing out.  I hadn’t had anything to drink in close to three hours so I felt ok to go, plus Troy gave me a Red Bull to help clear out any cobwebs.  On the way back Randall said something about Jeremy offering that we should stop by for dinner.  I figured it was just a courtesy offering without real intent so I told Randall to call up Jeremy to call his bluff.  I figured the last thing Jeremy’s wife would want is three guys that spent the afternoon drinking at a football game to show up at her door on a Sunday evening.  Well to my surprise, the invitation stood.

So we were headed to Jeremy’s place.  In retrospect I feel sort of bad since I didn’t even really ask Troy if he was ok with going to the house of someone he didn’t know at all.

Going to Jeremy’s house gave me a chance to meet their two month old daughter, Ainsley.  We also got to play with Connor, their cute little boy.  Even though we were only at Jeremy’s place briefly, we managed to cram a lot of things into that time.  We had a 25 pound weighted pull up competition, drank spinach and orange juice smoothies made in Jeremy’s $500 Vitamix blender and even got to do the customary Rodgers hard labor, lugging in his heavy 9 foot tall artificial Xmas tree from the garage.

Jeremy arranged for us to go eat at a nearby bar/restaurant.  Mandy was going to stay home with the kids.  I followed Jeremy in the van.  Originally Jeremy was told there would be a 40 minute wait, something I wasn’t cool with since I still had to drive back across the alley.  Instead we decided to eat at the bar which had no wait, fine with me.

Jeremy had invited another few friends to the bar whom I met later.  They all seemed like good people.  We finished up our meals and I was ready to roll, not looking forward to a pitch dark two hour drive across the alley.  We dropped off Randall and after Troy failed to find matches in K-mart we headed out.

The drive across the alley was not much fun.  I was tired from a day of drinking and eating. I stopped around the halfway point.  I told Troy it was a bathroom break.  It was but the primary reason I stopped was to save a frog.  Evidently there was a tree frog that was tucked into a crevice in the van.  He had made his way out onto the windshield and was pinned there by the 80 mph wind.  I didn’t want to see the thing dry up or get smashed on the highway.  So once we pulled off I corralled it in my hands and released it in the grass as Troy shook his head.  He always has had a skeptical view of my desire to save dumb animals.

We rolled into the house around 10:30 pm.  It was a pretty exhausting day but filled with memorable moments which is what we are always looking for.  Neither Troy or I wasted any time before retiring to bed.

Monday morning once again we didn’t have anything planned and it was good that we didn’t, neither of us were feeling all that energetic after a day of football related activities.  The 360 kept us busy as we played some F3 racing as well as watching a couple more Hoarders episodes on Netflix.

I came up with the idea of stopping for lunch at Panera on the way to the airport.  Panera is dog friendly as long as you sit outside.  The temps in the 50’s made eating outside a little less than ideal but we grinned and beared it in order to bring Nicki and Sadie along.

After eating we had a little more time to kill so I went a small park near the gulf where we walked the loop with the pooches, a nice way to wind up the visit.  The dogs were confused when Troy got out of the van at the airport and they weren’t able to follow.  They both seemed to really enjoy his company.  I wished Troy a safe trip and that was that.

I spent the rest of my day doing a few things around the house.  One of those was addressing my bedroom Tivo.  Apparently my 500 gig hard drive in the thing died, it would not go past the “Welcome! Powering up…” message. Normally this would be a long drawn out recovery which would require buying another drive and obtaining a vanilla image to restore from.  Well I happened to still have the original 160 gig drive so I slapped that in.  After running guided setup again I was back in business, albeit with significantly less recording space.

I am seriously considering just canceling the 2nd Tivo.  Last night I used playon.tv to catch up on the Fringe episode I missed as well as an episode of Ultimate Fighter since the Tivo now was wiped clean of the recordings that were on the big drive.  The main function it has served is as a third tuner in the rare case we have three shows we want to watch at once.  Now with playon if I can’t record something to the Tivo in the great room I could always go back and stream it via playon.

I spent the rest of the day doing some computer work, watching more Hoarders episodes and playing some more F3.  It was a quiet way to wind up a noisy weekend.