Archives 2010

Last night when I pulled into the driveway there was a SUV waiting for me.  It was the guy that saw my lawn sweeper ad on craigslist.  I took him through the house to get to the back yard.  Sadie was all over him, constantly jumping up.  I could tell he was less than thrilled with it.  Even when we got outside she continued jumping up on him despite me telling her to cool it.  She was more excited to see this stranger than me.  Finally I took the dogs back inside to give the guy a break.

After undergoing the standard craigslist negotiation where you never pay the asking price (I dropped $25) the guy said he would take it.  Getting the sweeper into his SUV was a challenge.  I had to remove a piece of the sweeper in order for it to fit, which it barely did.  It’s nice to have the sweeper out of my hair, extra floor space in the shed and $100 in my pocket.

One of the shows I enjoy is Celebrity Rehab.  I find it entertaining to watch celebrities half heartedly try to get clean.  One of the cast members this season is Mackenzie Phillips.  I find her rather annoying and her looks at this point are almost Medusa-like. She has had a pretty wretched life filled with drug abuse and the shocking incestuous relationship with her father.

Well in the episode we watched last night Mackenzie got the bad news that her dog of 14 years was in real bad shape and should be put down.  They actually took the cameras into the vet office and showed Mackenzie crying her eyes out as she gave her beloved dog a final meal of ice cream, his favorite.  It not only flashed Ali and I back to our horrific experience when we put the cats to sleep, it was compounded with projecting if we had to repeat that scenario with our dogs whom we love so dearly.  Mackenzie couldn’t be in the room when the dog was actually put to sleep, a cowardly move in my book but she is enough of a mess as is I suppose.  By the end of the show both Ali and I needed some tissues.

Ali went on the web site for the hotel in Aspen that we will be staying at.  It turns out the place is ultra-pet friendly, no limitations at all.  It also seems quite luxurious, on the site it says prices START at $250 a night.  So now we are thinking of another dog included road trip this summer out to Aspen and back.  Should be fun.

This weekend we have a race to time tomorrow morning.  Once again it’s going to be f’ing cold which makes the process pretty miserable.

I grabbed one of those sliding, retractable screen doors at Home Depot.  I hope to get that installed this weekend. 

36 degrees at the house this weekend.  I am SERIOUSLY tired of the huge serving of cold weather this winter.

Last night after work I met up with Ali to do a run.  It was my second workout of the day.  I had completed my normal lunchtime weight training session earlier.  It was a bit cooler than I anticipated with temps around 60 with an annoyingly strong breeze.  I just had a t-shirt and shorts.  Ali actually looked at the weather forecast and brought more appropriate clothing.

 We ran a route that I hadn’t run in years.  We also ran further than I have in years, nearly 5 miles.  I felt pretty damn good throughout the run.  The only problem I had was late when I could feel that it was time to cut the nails on my bent up toes.  If the nails start to get any length to them one of my nails cuts into the adjacent toe, making it bleed.

Ali said she felt good through out the run as well.  After a quick stretch I hopped in my truck and headed home.  I have been enjoying doing training runs with Ali again.

Hopefully tonight after work someone is going to be coming to buy our lawn sweeper.  I bought the sweeper a couple years ago when I saw it on sale at Home Depot.  I thought it would be nice to be able to sweep up the excess grass clippings that come during the rampant grass growth of summer.  The sweeper worked as expected but it was just more hassle than it was worth.  

The sweeper is big and takes up a lot of space in the shed.  Getting rid of the sweeper is a key part of my Camaro rearrangement plan.  Hopefully he shows up and takes it.

Last night I was playing WoW.  I was in a 5 man random group going through a dungeon.  My role in the group was the “tank” the most important role in a group. A tank is the guy that gets everything to attack him and not other members of the group.  We were about halfway through the dungeon when my buddy Charlie logged on.  He asked if I wanted to run through some stuff with him. 

I initially told him I would when I was done with the dungeon I was in.  It is generally poor WoW etiquette to just bail on a group, especially if you are the tank since tanks aren’t that easy to find.  However after a few minutes I decided I would rather be running through dungeons with Charlie than a bunch of four strangers.  I could have just simply left the group without a word.  They would have all been left scratching their heads and probably cursing me out for leaving in an unannounced manner.

Instead in a flash of brilliance I typed in “DIARHEA OH NO!” and then left.  I was laughing my ass off as I saw the sentence flash up on the screen.  I figured if nothing else it explained my hasty departure and gave them a few chuckles along the way.

It still makes me laugh now as I read it back.  🙂

I have written several times about how good the new SyFy series Caprica is.  I actually got Jeremy into it after we watched an episode when Randall and he stayed over at our place.  The show is so damn good that I thought I would try get Ali to watch an episode or two.  Even though the series is a prequel to Battlestar Galactica it is far from just a sci-fi kind of thing.  The show is compelling with a great story line and interesting, complex characters.

Ali basically dismissed the show as something only I would be interested in based on the BG roots.  I was hopeful that if she sat down and watched the show she would get as hooked as I was.  I did my best to try to explain some of the back story to tie together some loose ends for her.

Ali has done similar things to me, encouraging me to watch some shows that she liked.  Most recently I started watching Modern Family based on Ali’s endorsement, it’s f’ing hilarious.  I thought I could repay the favor by turning Ali on to a fantastic show like Caprica.

 Well despite watching two episodes she still is not sold on it.  She told me it isn’t something she would be compelled to watch.  Oh well I gave it a shot, it’s her loss.

Yesterday I spent almost the entire day troubleshooting complications with adding a second, dedicated, high speed internet connection for our office.  I sat in my office in complete silence for hours just trying different things to fix the problems.  Finally as the day was winding up I started to make some headway.  I now have pretty much all of the issues squashed.  I hate when I can’t figure shit out.  I develop severe tunnel vision until I do.

I was reviewing my blog post from a year ago.  One of the topics was Eric from Biggest Loser going on Oprah to talk about what a loser he was for regaining most of the weight he had lost.  I was annoyed with big fat Oprah offering up her own advice for weight loss, advice she obviously doesn’t follow herself.

Well it just so happens that I watched an Oprah show with Ali last night that had another loser on it, Kirstie Alley.  Kirstie was joking about her weight loss soap opera of the last decade or so.  Once again Oprah, who still is as big as a house started throwing out the diet advice.  I had to laugh out loud at the hypocrisy of it all.  At one point Kirstie proclaimed that she was actually quite healthy, claiming her vital statistics were all quite good despite weighing at least 250 pounds.  Yea that’s a great message to send out to a nation that is already bursting at the seams with obese citizens, you can be fat and healthy!!

Oprah should NEVER do another show on healthy living. It’s like having a child molester give parenting advice.

So I had stitches removed for the second time in a month yesterday.  Hopefully it is the last time for awhile.  The scar that is left behind is pretty nasty.  I figured I can use it in the future as a topic of conversation.  I can tell women about the the knife fight I was in or perhaps the wrestling match I had with a tiger.  It will impress the chicks.

It will be nice to start lifting weights again as well as resuming my pull up program in earnest.

After having my stitches removed I picked up mom’s tax stuff.  Mom was worried that her taxes this year would be a pain to figure out because of the unemployment compensation she received as well as the 401k disbursement.  She also was worried that she would wind up having to pay into the system this year.

When I got home I punched up turbotax.com and had her taxes done in a half hour.  I called mom with the good news, she didn’t have to pay anything, in fact she was getting back more than last year thanks to various Obama tax breaks as well as being in a lower tax bracket.  Mom was thrilled.  After having months and months of bad luck mom seems to be enjoying a change of fortune.

Mom also showed me pictures of the new condo she is going to be moving into, right across the parking lot of where she is now.  It seems much nicer than the place she is in now.  She is very excited to move and I’m excited for her.

I had ideas of screening in the front landing of the house over the winter.  The idea was screening in the front landing would allow us to open the front door and let the cool winter breezes flow through the house.  When I was at Home Dept over the weekend I had a better idea. 

Our old neighbors had a cool pull out “screen door”.  Most front doors in newer homes are the “swing out” variety due to hurricane code.  A swing out front door makes a conventional screen door difficult to accommodate.  A pull out screen door install on the inside of the door frame.  It basically works like an old roll up blind.  The screening retracts into one side.  When you want to use the screen you pull it across and it hooks to the other side.  It’s easy to install, cheap, and won’t change the look of the front of the house.  I might pick one up this upcoming weekend.

I accomplished two of the three goals I laid out on Friday.  I didn’t take the time to work on the Moto Guzzi.  I picked up the hardware for my garage shelving project on the way home Friday.  I had to buy the heavy duty variety with strong brackets, double slotted rails and 20 inch wide wire shelves.  It added up to a lot of money, over $300.

When I hung this type of shelving in the utility room years ago I simply pushed the rails up to the ceiling and screwed them in, assuming my ceiling line was straight.  Well I did not make any assumptions about the ceiling being straight in the garage and it’s a good thing I didn’t.  I bought a top rail assembly that the vertical slotted rails hang off of.  This adds to the cost but it means you only have to level once.  Once the top rail is straight you can hang the slotted rails anywhere along the length.  Once I got the level out it became obvious that the ceiling was far from level, I was quite glad I spent the extra bucks for the top rail.

As I mentioned last week, the outer wall is concrete block which meant I had the pleasure of drilling with a masonry bit.  Drilling into block walls sucks, especially when it is poured concrete block where they fill the cinder blocks with cement.  It is ass busting work getting simple 2-3  inch deep holes.  I was leaning on the drill with all of my weight while up a couple steps on the ladder.  Drilling the holes was the hardest part of the job by far.  Once they were in I inserted the anchors and screwed the hardware in. Doing the front set of shelving was a bit more challenging due to having to work around the frame for the garage door opener.

Once I got the shelves up I started transferring items to them.  I immediately noticed a problem.  I had 3 brackets per shelf.  Each bracket was probably 3.5 feet apart.  There was a lot of flex in the shelving if I put heavier items on them.  One fix would have been to install additional vertical rails and brackets to offer support which would have added additional expense to an already more costly than expected project.  So instead I went the cheap route and found some unused wooden boards/shelving in the shed.  They were long enough to span the brackets and then I simply put the heavier items on top of the wood.  It’s not a perfect solution but it works and the zero cost option works out well.

After I cleaned off the remaining rolling wire shelf I wheeled it to the new storage shed.  The new shed has become overcrowded already.  I need to do some rearranging as well as relocating/giving away one of the smaller plastic shelf units that came with it.   

So now that far wall is totally empty I should be able to squeeze in my new Camaro whenever I get around to getting it.  Here is an idea of what it might look like 🙂

Later in the day Saturday Ali and I worked on going through the piles of pictures and junk that was on the dining room table.

We spent a couple hours consolidating and got some stuff back up on the walls.  We also came up with more or less of a game plan for the stuff we had left over which is cool.  I just want to make sure that we follow through and get the stuff done instead of back burnering it for several more months.

On Sunday morning I decided dust off my road bike and go for a ride.  I remember during those hot, sweaty summer rides thinking how awesome it will be to ride during the winter when the temps are far milder and the air less humid.  Well for some reason I just have not gotten around to riding at all so far this winter.

The temps sure were cooler, low to mid 50’s.  I wore my baggy bike shorts and a hooded sweatshirt.  The air felt very cool until my body temp heated up.  When I did the 17.5 mile Publix ride in the summer I typically had the wind to my back for the ride out and in my face on the way back which is not fun.  Well on Sunday it felt like a head wind for the majority of the ride out to Publix.  The combination of the wind, sore legs from my Friday workout and not biking for months really cut down on my average speed for the first half of the ride.

I was frustrated but I welcomed the idea that on the way back I should have that same wind to my back.  Well the ride back was actually worse.  There were brief periods that the wind was behind me but more often than not I was working against it.  The worst part of the entire ride was the last 2 miles before our house.  Once I made the gradual curving left the wind was crushing me in the face.  My speed drooped from 16-17 mph down to 11 and change and I was busting my ass just to keep it above double digits.

I found myself getting very angry with the wind.  I even swore at the wind, at one point yelling out loudly “Cut me a f’ing break!”    Well the wind didn’t care about getting cursed out, it continued all the way until I made the right hand turn onto our street.  I was very glad to roll into my driveway.  I need to try to get more regular with my bike riding.  The trip took 1:10 and change.  I think I have done the same distance in as little as 1:03 so that is a big drop off.

Ali had created her own project for Sunday, cleaning out our closet.   Our closet, specifically Ali’s portion of it (2/3) was JAMMED full of clothes and shoes.  When hanging clothing on her side I typically had to lean my body weight on the clothes to create a small space to jam a hangar in.  It was that tight.

Ali has a hard time getting rid of stuff so she asked that I could help her with deciding what goes and stays.  I laid on the bed and offered my opinions as she held stuff up, until I started to doze off.  Laying down after the tiring bike ride just zonked me out.  Ali did remarkably well cleaning stuff out.  We have four huge trash bags full of clothes and shoes to donate.  I was proud of her for making the effort to consolidate.  Our closet looks 100% better. 

Last week I ordered a wireless web cam with pan/tilt/zoom after my co-worker showed me what his could do.  I always thought it would be cool to be able to see what the dogs are doing when we aren’t home.  In the past I considered using a conventional web cam attached to a pc but running a pc all day just to run a webcam would be a big waste of power.

The Trendnet cam I got is a stand alone wireless unit that allows me to place the camera anywhere around the house as long as there is an AC outlet near by.  When I bought the camera Ali immediately gave me shit about it.  She assumed that I got the camera to monitor HER and not the dogs.  She based this on a discussion we had a few days prior about the advantages of her possibly not sleeping so late and getting out the door so she wouldn’t be so hard pressed to complete her daily schedule.

I told her that actually that discussion hadn’t entered into my mind at all when I made the purchase (it hadn’t) but she didn’t believe me.  I assured her this was for pet surveillance only.  Well anyway, the box arrived Friday and in short order I had the unit up and running.  It’s pretty damn cool.  I am able to both view and control the camera from a web browser.  I also am able to get the feed on my Iphone using a great $1.99 app.  The unit also can function as a surveillance device that can notify you of movement and send a snap shot of what it saw.  I don’t think I will need that functionality but it’s nice to know it’s there.

We watched a good amount of Olympic coverage this weekend since it all wrapped up on Sunday.  I tuned in for the much hyped USA / Canada gold medal hockey final.  The game lived up to it’s hype and then some.  Of the four major sports, hockey is my least favorite.  When the Flyers were good I used to sometimes watch the playoff games but I just never got into it.  Well one thing I did immediately notice was watching hockey in HD really enhances the experience.  It’s much easier to follow the puck thanks to the clarity and definition HD offers.

The game early on seemed to be pretty much dominated by Canada.  They were definitely the aggressor.  Even when the USA was on a power play they couldn’t get any good shots on net.  However as the game went on Team  USA started to play better.  After being down 2-0 they scored a goal to cut the lead to one.  The third period was very back and forth with both teams applying pressure at different points in the period.  You just got the feeling that Canada was destined to win it. 

Well with only a couple minutes to go it was desperation time.  USA pulled their goalie to give them a 6-5 skater edge.  This is always a risky move as an untended net can easily result in a cheap goal for the opposing team if they manage to break free.  I thought the game was over for sure.  Then out of nowhere we scored with 25 seconds to go.  Holy shit, I threw both arms up in celebration as I yelled to Ali, “THEY SCORED!”  The game was forced to overtime.

There was a change in the way overtime is handled since I last knew.  Now they make it 4 on 4 to increase the scoring possibility, that’s a great idea.  No one wants to see a tie, or a game go on for four hours.  In OT both teams had some good scoring opportunities that were turned away by good goalkeeping on both ends.  Then just as suddenly as the US tied the game, Canada won it on a quick shot under the pads that was centered.

It was a pretty disappointing way for the US to go out after battling back but there was no denying the overall success the team accomplished in the games.  As far as I know, the US was thought to have no shot at the gold medal coming into the Olympics.  It was hard to not feel good for the Canadians as well, winning the hockey gold medal during games hosted in Canada is pretty much a storybook ending.

Ali and I also took in the closing ceremony. For the most part the word I would use to describe them was “dumb”.  The ceremony was filled with sappy references and bad jokes.  I really didn’t get it at all.  You could even tell Bob Costas thought it was f’ing stupid as he described the big inflatable beavers and moose that were brought out towards the end. 

Again there was tons of lip syncing going on by the musical performances.  Michael Buble in particular was HORRIBLE at it.  It was pathetically obvious he was faking it.  I just don’t get it, why the f can’t you actually SING at the Olympics!!??  I think Neil Young might have actually been singing,  hopefully….

So besides the sappy, corny closing ceremonies I think Canada did a nice job hosting the games.  Now of course it’s a far cry from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics which set the bar incredibly high for me.  I enjoyed watching the Vancouver games.  I enjoyed watching the Olympics, I always do.  The Olympics inspire dreams of what it must be like to represent your country competing against the best in the world.  What an awesome experience that must be.

It’s Friday yay. 

My weekend plans are mild. I plan on getting the hardware to mount shelves on the far concrete wall in the garage.  I’d like to make some progress on the dining room table full of pictures, art and knick knacks.  Maybe I’ll work on the Moto Guzzi some more.

I’m sitting in my office with all of the overhead lights out.  The only illumination is the answering machine circuit board lamp my uncle made, the light from my dual monitors and the light that spills in from the small windows along the hallway. I just feel like sitting in the dark today and it saves energy to boot.

My former high school classmate and current Facebook buddy posted that he swears he saw a ghost the other night while taking a leak at a bar.  He said that as he was at a urinal a stall door opened and a white form/figure came out.  The only problem is this guy rarely posts anything that is on the level so my assumption was he is bullshitting.

It would be kind of a cool thing if I saw a ghost.  When I was younger I had some weird experiences.  I never SAW anything but I certainly freaked myself out enough.

Our basement in the hundred year old farm house was particularly scary.  It smelled of must.  The switch at the top of the steps only lit the steps.  To light up the rest of the basement you had to pull strings on a handful of light sockets around the area.  I can’t tell you how many times I would reach for a string and feel like when the bulb came on I would be faced with some sort of grotesque creature. 

Behind the furnace was the scariest place of all.  I assumed that was where something would hide.  I would rarely even look in the direction of the furnace if I was in the basement out of fear.  I remember during a few brave moments I would pull one of the lights on the furnace side of the basement and walk defiantly into the area, trying to flush out whatever was there.  I never saw a thing, never heard a thing but it sure scared the shit out of me.

I’ve also described in the past my feelings about the piece of art that my uncle made.  My mom had it on top of a shelf that was at the bottom of the steps to the attic (our bedroom).  It had a face in it that was pointed to the side.  For years I imagined that this thing was looking at me.  As I would go down the steps I would hardly ever look at the thing for fear it would be blinking back at me.  Of course the few times I would sneak a glance it wasn’t staring at me.

I had similar feelings in the barn, another dark and scary place.  Everytime I went to grab my bike out of there there was a bit of fear involved.

I have always more or less disregarded those experiences since I was a child.  A child has a very active imagination that can manifest itself into actually believing there are “monsters in the closet”.  However if I saw a ghost as an old, mostly logical adult that would change the game for me.  As a person that basically believes that when you die you are worm meat and little else, seeing a ghost while not under the influence of some substance would throw a wrench into my belief system.  If ghosts exist then who knows what really happens when you check out?

BOO!

At the gym they had the live health care debate on so I hopped on a cardio machine close enough that I could read the closed captioning.  I watched the debate go on, alternating between both Republican and Democratic participants.  Both sides made some good points and Obama seemed to be genuinely interested in taking in all opinions.

Then it was John McCain’s time to speak.  McCain was not interested in talking so much about the health care issue itself.  He was more interested in grilling Obama about the lack of transparency, secret backroom deals and obvious lobbyism that created the 2,400 page piece of legislation.  Obama refused to discuss the process and instead stressed that their time today was meant to be used to talk about the issues that are preventing an agreement being reached.  I actually was on both sides of the fence on this.

Yes Obama is right, the summit isn’t about mudslinging, it isn’t about rehashing what was obviously a f’d up process that was utilized to give birth to this bastardized health care proposal. Yet, I yearned for him to directly address McCain’s questions.

Why was the health care bill process such a mess?  Why were the promises of open, televised debate on the issue not kept?  Why is it ok to fill the bill with kickbacks to various legislators special interests to ensure their support? Why would certain states make out better than others? All of this shit really pissed me off.

Now I already know some of the answers to those questions.  Obama lacked the power to do it, plain and simple.  Now whether he knew all along he was promising something he knew he couldn’t deliver (transparency) or he actually thought he had the momentum to do it is up for debate.  He simply can not declare that Congress televises all aspects of their proceedings.  He can ask nicely but there is no law saying they have to abide by any of it.  Congress, both Republicans and Democrats do NOT want the general public to see just how disgustingly dirty the legislative process is.  They would never agree to full transparency.

Perhaps I would have felt better about it if Obama would have just fessed up and said something like ” John, I did make the promise that the health care reform process would be more transparent.  I agree with you it has not followed the course I would have liked it to and I regret some of the compromises that were allowed to find their way into this bill. I want to fix it.  I am hoping that today is the start of true transparency”

Despite what some blog readers may assume, I do not have political blinders on by any means.

Today is a WOOT OFF by the way.  Nothing like blowing a few bucks on geeky junk to make you feel better.

I’ve been running Windows 7 Ultimate at home for several months and have been very pleased with it so far.  I have been anxious to run it at work.  My new Windows 7 workstation arrived this week.  I wasted no time getting to work.

I have had 3 or 4 new workstations over the last few years.  Each time I got new hardware I elected to simply back up the old workstation and restore the OS intact onto the new hardware.  Using this method made the migration quick, but it also lent itself to making my pc into a huge cluster f of software.  You can see what my desktop looked like.  When I opened all of the programs on the start menu it literally almost filled up the entire screen.  Anyone that works in IT knows a PC benefits greatly from starting over from scratch once in awhile.  I just had SO much stuff on my pc I dreaded doing it.

Well going to Windows 7 was enough motivation for me to finally bite the bullet and start from scratch.  For the past two days I have been going through the arduous process of sorting through my stuff and determining what I really need, reinstalling apps and moving data.  I now am using the Windows 7 box as my main computer.  I still have my old pc up and running so I can easily access anything I may have forgotten.

So far Windows 7 has been as great at work as it is at home.  There have been a few challenges.  I am running 64 bit Windows 7 Pro.  There are a number of apps we use at work that won’t run in a 64 bit OS.  A few years ago you would have been SOL in this situation.  Well Windows 7 handles this in a very slick way utilizing Microsoft Virtual PC.

Basically you download and install Virtual PC and a Windows XP disk image (both free).  After that is up and running you install your problem application into the XP virtual PC.  After installation you need to make sure the application shows up in the All Users program group.  Being in that group ensures the application will be available in XP application mode.

What is XP application mode you ask?  Basically what happens is any app in that group will show up on your Windows 7 box as a sub menu under Windows Virtual PC / Windows XP mode Applications.  When you click on the program it automatically launches a virtual XP session and then launches that app.  It’s VERY slick and makes Windows 7 able to literally run almost ANYTHING that ran on Windows XP.

Just like my home system, my work pc is ultra fast and responsive even now that I have the majority of my apps reloaded.  Of course I am also benefiting from the upgraded hardware, a Core 2 quad processor with 8 gig of ram.  I am a BIG Win 7 fan.

Yesterday at the gym I followed up on my 3 mile run with Ali on Monday by doing another 3 miles on the treadmill.  I can’t tell you the last time I ran two three mile sessions in a three day period.  My knees have been doing quite well lately.  The only side effect I have is a sore lower back this morning.  It doesn’t feel too severe though.

Today is the big televised health care summit.  Do you expect anything to come from it?  Nope, me either.

How would you like to get chewed on by a killer whale?  Wow imagine being in that crowd during the show and seeing that all go down?  Traumatic.

I also would hate to be that speed skating coach that told his skater, who was on his way to locking up the gold medal, to change lanes incorrectly, resulting in the skaters disqualification.  Imagine being directly responsible for costing a kid 4 years of training to achieve the ultimate, a gold medal.  Wow, I cannot imagine the guilt.  Sure it was just a mistake but it’s a mistake a coach at that level should just not ever make.  I hope they have him under suicide watch.