Archives April 2011

So after confirming with Ali that keeping Sirius in the Camry wasn’t a very big deal considering she usually is listening to music from her Iphone in the car, I called Sirius to make the change.  I have an absolutely dreadful track record with their customer service people, they are in a word, horrible.  I was not looking forward to having to call them for anything.

So I get some heavy breathing guy named “Randy” on the phone.  He speaks poorly, slowly and sounds as bright as an outhouse.  He asks me my name and address to confirm my identity which I give him.  Then there is an awkward, extended silence where I hear nothing but his annoying heavy breathing.  I say “Are you there?”   Randy says, “Yes, can I have your name and address?”  I say “I just gave that to you!”  “Oh, ok”  I knew this was not going to end well.

So I muddle through trying to explain to Randy what I wanted to do.  I have 2 radios on the account, 1 with a month to month plan, 1 with a yearly plan that expires June 24th.  I want the radio that expires on June 24th (the Camry) to not renew when it expires.  I want the radio with the month to month service to change to an annual subscription which saves me a few bucks.

Randy said ok and after a few moments says “ok, is there anything else I can do for you?” Now there was no way Randy actually did what I asked in the span of 30 seconds.  I say to him “Is there anything else you can do for me?  We haven’t even talked about what the charge will be to switch the monthly plan to yearly?”

Randy says “What do you mean? That radio has a month to month plan already?”  I knew I was totally wasting my time with this boob.  I asked to talk to his supervisor.  Randy asks what the problem is.  I told him that I have a long track record of receiving poor customer service from Sirius and obviously you have no idea what I am even asking you to do. Let me speak to a supervisor.

Randy says “my supervisor isn’t taking calls right now”  Now it was on.  “Ok well you better find someone else there that I can talk to besides you”  Randy says he will transfer me.  Yea he transferred me alright, he hung up the f’in phone.  That mother f’r.  I was livid.

So I call back, and this time I ask the first human being I talk to for a supervisor immediately.  I am on hold for a brief period of time and then DISCONNECTED again.

So I call a third time, this time I choose the cancellation department as they typically have people with at least basic communication skills manning the lines.  I get a woman and immediately tell her I was just hung up on twice and was very angry.  She apologized. I once again explain what I needed done.

Thankfully this woman understood what I needed and was able to handle it. However I once again found myself annoyed when she mentioned the extra $15 for internet radio for the year.  I told her I would appreciate it if she could just include that since I was just hung up on twice. She met me a little over half way, offering me a $10 credit for the service.

So now I am halfway out of my financial commitment to Sirius, almost halving what I will be paying them per year. I can’t wait till I am done with them completely.  Their company sucks, badly.

I don’t know who/what I am more disgusted with in the Barry Bonds trial.  Barry Bonds is a f’ing asshole that cheated, got caught and refuses to admit it even though the entire world knows he is guilty.  On the other hand you have the ridiculousness of the federal government literally spending millions of dollars to prosecute Bonds for lying about it.

To make matters worse,  despite spending those millions of dollars, it seems that the government prosecutors may have done a piss poor job in the case and Bonds could escape unscathed OJ Simpson style.

It’s equal opportunity aberration no matter how you look at it.

So when I got home yesterday it was obvious that a storm blew through, stuff was knocked over everywhere.  It was obvious that someone was nice enough to pick up our trash cans.  I found out later it was our neighbor across the street.  Evidently the wind was so strong it actually launched one of our cans across the road and into their fence.

The dogs saw me dragging the cans around, they were out on the lanai.  Instead of going in the garage I went in the back yard and let them out.   Of course as always, they were thrilled to see me.

I left them in the yard and went back around the front of the house to go inside and turn off the alarm.  When I stepped inside I immediately noticed a smell.  After a few sniffs I thought “Hmmm that almost smells like shit”  I thought it was odd but didn’t give it much thought.  We haven’t had Nicki shit in the house in at least 2 years.

Well as I walked towards the office the smell intensified.  When I turned the corner the disgusting reality was upon me, a sizable pile of soft serve style dog shit by the dining room table.  WTF.

I knew right away it was Nicki since Sadie is not a soft serve shitter.  The dogs were still outside, eagerly awaiting me to let them in.  I waited till we got inside to say something.  As soon as Nicki saw me walk towards the dining room she immediately slinked back to the bedroom with her head down, she knew I found her handiwork.

I went back to the bedroom and told her she was naughty in a stern but not yelling voice as she looked at me pathetically from her dog bed.  As I went through the disgusting process of poo removal I theorized that the storm that blew through literally scared the shit out of her.  Neither of our dogs react well to storms.  Incidents like this make me very glad I have a SpotBot.

I also realized I was incredibly lucky in another way.  I have not gotten around to updating the clocks on the Roomba’s yet since the time change.  As a result they are starting at 6pm instead of their normal 5pm kick off.  If the robots would have started at their normal time it is very likely one if not both of them would have plowed into and over the excrement road block which would have been a disgusting disaster.  For once, procrastination paid off for me.

Yesterday late in the day I told Jeremy out of the blue I was going to try to dead lift 315 pounds.  Jeremy has been working his power lifting numbers up.  He currently is maxing his DL at 235 pounds.  I hadn’t dead lifted anything more than 135 pounds since last summer.  For whatever reason I thought it would be cool to break my previous personal dead lift best of 310 pounds with absolutely not training the movement at all.

You ask what the point of this was?  Just to one up Jeremy I suppose.

So I loaded up the bar with all of my plate weights which added up to 310 pounds with the weight of the bar.  To get the last 5 pounds I wrapped two 2.5 lb ankle weights on the ends of the bar.

I didn’t do any warm up sets, I just stretched out my lower body for a minute or so.  I walked over to the bar, grabbed tight and was able to yank it up without any major issue.  As I lifted, my body became a small symphony of snaps, crackles and pops as my connective tissue protested holding that much weight.

After setting the weight down I did a quick physical inventory, no major pain detected.  The lift was a success.  If you want to see the attempt go here.

Following my dead lift I made my first attempt at this month’s Bar-barian challenge, continuous straight bar dips.  The video of the attempt is kind of funny because I failed even getting on top of the bar 3 or 4 times.

Ali and I have been talking about her next bike.  Currently Ali has an entry level road bike (same model I have) which is fine for basic stuff but not ideal for extensive riding.  Ali has been talking with a local bike shop about what she should get a few times.  Well the most recent discussion was this week.  Ali collected a lot of info about bike geometry and her measurements, the shop was happy to provide her with the info. She also decided she wanted a triathlon bike (different geometry, more expensive) versus a road bike.

When Ali was telling me the technical info I knew the punchline was coming, the price.  When Ali told me how much the prospective bike was going to be I instinctively flinched.

It was a tough subject to navigate.  Ali obviously has done a lot of research about bikes and likes the idea of getting a brand new bike that will supposedly fit her like a glove.  I however had what I thought were some very logical objections/questions about the perspective bike.

My first thought was Ali has done very little biking, she has told me many times she dislikes it and it is her least favorite of the three triathlon events by far.  Jumping in and spending a lot of cash on a bike designed to be ridden long and hard just didn’t make much sense to me based on her track record of biking.

I also suggested that she could get a very nice used bike for considerably less money if we kept an eye out on Craigslist, Ebay etc..  Hell we might even get a lead from one of our many local triathlete contacts.  As people progress up the competitive chain it is common for them to sell their bike to help pay for the newer one.

My final thought was just a reminder that the bike shop’s goal is to sell you a bike, preferably a more expensive one.

But overall, my general feeling was that based on Ali’s current commitment to biking, it made sense to move to an intermediate cost bike instead of jumping several rungs higher.  If Ali winds up doing a lot of longer tri’s I would totally understand the need to step further up in equipment level.

Of course Ali was frustrated by my objection.  She was adamant that only a few models of bikes would fit her correctly based on the bike shop’s recommendations.  She also didn’t see my point about the merit of spending that much money on a bike when she thus far has done very minimal biking as holding much water.

I can understand what Ali is feeling.  I am sure it was exciting to have the merits of a certain bike sold to her and then being told that they had a prior year model that they could give her a deal on.  Like I said, she has made a lot of effort going into the minutia of bike sizing/fitting.  She also thinks I am acting like I know more about bikes than the bike shop owners which I certainly do not.

Ali also feels somewhat committed to buying a bike from this shop since she has had numerous interactions with them.  It would be awkward for her if she brought in a bike she bought used or somewhere else to have it serviced. I can understand that to a degree.

I am just applying what seems like a logical plan of progression upgrading your equipment based on your present and near term level of competitiveness.  When I first started playing baseball I had a $5 wood bat.  When I was playing  Legion ball I invested in a light weight, top end Easton model.  There were a lot of bats in between those two points.

Of course it is very easy to pull out the Camaro card in this discussion.  Ali is willing to support my buying a very expensive car for little more than my personal enjoyment.  For me to raise a red flag on her buying a particular bike would seem inequitable.

We will work something out.  If Ali was able to pay for the bike totally out of “her” money that is split off her checks every month then I would have absolutely nothing to say about it, the problem is it would take some time to accumulate the money.  Maybe we can “loan” money out of our main account for her to pay back out of her funds.  Maybe a great deal will pop up elsewhere, who knows?

Over the weekend the home button on my Iphone 4 stopped working.  I would push and push and nothing would happen.  I was like WTF????  I hopped on the internet and as is often the case, found out I was far from alone with this problem.  What surprised me was the solution I found.

Various people said they fixed the issue by cleaning out the data port on the bottom of the phone.  This was done various ways, blowing it out with air, vacuuming it out or brushing it with a toothbrush.  This seemed very funny and odd that this would do anything to fix the home button but I had nothing to lose.

I had a small amount of compressed air left so I blasted it into the data port for the hell of it, not thinking this possibly could fix a damn thing.  Imagine my amazement when the home button started working.  It has continued to work just fine since the blow out.  Weird huh?

Yesterday I tried to call my neighbor regarding hanging the sonic bark device on the fence.  She didn’t answer the phone but later responded to a text message saying she was fine with hanging the device on the fence.  She said that the dogs don’t seem to bark when they are home (not true in the least).  So we will see what happens.  The dogs were left outside the entire night last night. I am so over having neighbors.

I have received email from three or four companies that evidently use Epsilon for their email blasts.  Evidently somebody managed to snag customer email addresses from Epsilon. Nice huh?  The notifications from the companies all sound pretty much the same.  Your email address may have been compromised and you may receive spam on that address, our bad.    Sure it was only email addresses but just imagine if it was SS numbers or CC info?  That risk is always out there and consumers have no control over how diligent these companies are in their security practices.  It’s just one big blind leap of faith.

Last night Ali and I went over to the track to do more speed work.  The plan was to mix it up and do some shorter but faster intervals.  Well after only one interval Ali said she wasn’t feeling well.  We tried to continue through it but there wasn’t much point, neither she or I were getting much out of it.  We’ll reboot and go at it hard again next week.

I just posted an in depth recall of the parallel bar construction process which consumed a large part of my Saturday so I don’t need to recant that other than mentioning they are done and functional.

One thing I didn’t mention was when I was buying supplies at Home Depot Friday after work, my purchases included a $21.97 light bulb.  The compact florescent bulb that was in our master closet burned out and I wanted to replace it.

CFL light bulbs were hailed as the next great thing years ago.  They offered the same light as conventional bulbs while using a fraction of the energy.  Well they do that but they also have an ugly side to them.  First CFL bulbs contain mercury, a very toxic and poisonous  substance.  It is for this reason that they absolutely must be recycled instead of just tossed in the trash,  Well of course this is lazy America, only a small percentage of individuals are going to take the time to make sure the bulbs are properly disposed of.

Second, CFL bulbs are EMF powerhouses.  I watched videos where they measured the electromagnetic field thrown off by a CFL bulb and it was incredible.  If your house is filled with these types of bulbs you are taking an EMF shower and not even realize it.  The alternative to CFL are old, energy sucking incandescent bulbs or the new, efficient, non-EMF producing LED lights.

LED lights have some disadvantages of their own.  First and most obvious, they are EXPENSIVE.  To pay over $20 for a single light bulb is pretty outrageous although supposedly they have a lifespan that dwarfs both CFL and incandescent lighting.   The other issue is the amount of light they emit.  In my quick check at the store I didn’t see any LED lights that emitted more than the equivalent of a 40 watt light bulb.  (which is what I bought)

When I installed the light at home the low light power was evident but it was sufficient for a closet.  If you wanted to really illuminate an area I’m not sure what you would do.  At least I know I am not frying my brain anymore when I pick out what shirt I am going to wear.

Saturday was pretty much all parallel bars building.  On Saturday night we watched my latest Netflix dvd to come in the mail, The Social Network.  I heard this movie talked up quite a bit.  It is about the origin of Facebook and the people behind it.  I have heard the movie described as really good, fantastic and even spectacular.  After viewing it, I honestly don’t get it.

The film did a fine job of outlining the growth of Facebook from an idea, arguably somebody other than Mark Zuckenberg’s idea, into the monster site that it is now.  Facebook is engrained into the fabric of people almost as much as Google is.

The problem was I just didn’t find the movie all that entertaining.  I would call it borderline boring at parts.  It just didn’t grab me in the least.  A super nerd, gets filthy rich and steps on a lot of toes on the way?  Isn’t that what Bill gates already did? I’d give it a B.  Even Ali who is attached to Facebook like super glue didn’t seem all that excited with the movie.

On Sunday morning we did the water park deal again.  I skipped running totally this weekend because of my heel pain which, knock on wood, feels better now.  Instead we did a bike/swim brick.  Despite a stronger head wind, we covered the 12.25 mile course in two to three minutes less time.  I also managed to shave 30 seconds off my 1200 meter swim time.

The water park was ridiculously full.  At 10:15 (the park opens at 10) there was a line 25 deep to get in.  Luckily we got VIP treatment when we flashed our season passes and got to skip most of the wait.  Michelle later showed up with her boys.  When I was done swimming she hopped in and did some laps with Ali while I watched the kids.  We went over to the kiddie pool area where they both had a lot of fun.

Even though we hit the lunch shack early, a little after 12, there was already a lengthy line developing and no tables available to eat at.  By the time we left at 1:30 the lines everywhere were outrageous.  People were snaked halfway down the tower for the water slides, miles long for food and backed up at the front gate.   This is a time of year that we never visited the water park before.  It isn’t a great time to be there if you want to actually enjoy the amenities.

We headed home about 1:30.  I had already gotten way too much sun from being outside Saturday, I didn’t need to fry any further.

I received my sonic birdhouse on Saturday.  I set it up over the weekend.  It has three sensitivity settings depending on how far away the barking is.  I didn’t seem to be getting any results at the short and medium range so last night I flipped it to the highest setting.  We will see how the barking is in the next week or so.

Regardless of the barking issue I am still very unhappy with my neighbor treating her pets like this.  As the entire family relaxed out on the pool deck all afternoon yesterday they ignored their three dogs sitting by the screen door just begging to be part of the fun. Instead they were left to sit out in the sweltering sun and temps in the upper 80’s.  Nothing will more negatively affect my opinion of you than if you mistreat animals.

I have a feeling that an eruption on my part is only a matter of time and it won’t be a pretty sight.  The whole situation has been on my mind quite a bit lately and it really bothers me.

A couple years ago I built my own pull up station out of wood and pipe.  I documented the process here on the blog.  So far the pull up bar has held up very well so I thought I would expand on my outdoor body weight workout equipment by constructing a set of parallel bars using similar techniques.

Ok let’s first list everything I bought for the project, the total spent on materials came in just over $200. Everything was purchased at Home Depot.

2 – 10 foot sections of 1 1/2″ diameter galvanized pipe

4 – 8 foot long pressure treated 4×4’s

1 – 2 inch, ridiculously expensive ($29) wood boring drill bit

4 – 6 inch 9/16″ bolts, nuts and 8 washers

4 – 1 1/2″ PVC end caps

4 – 50 lb bags of quick set concrete

The first step was to decide how close to the pull up station I wanted to place the parallel bars.  I decided 8 feet was a good distance and I used two of the 4×4’s to mark it.  I wanted my supports for the parallel bars to be the same distance apart as the pull up station supports. (a little more than 4 feet) I then dug my first two holes with the post hole digger.  I went approximately 30 inches deep, I wanted to have 5.5 feet of the post above ground.

I got the first two posts in the ground and level with each other.  I measured level by putting a board across the top and throwing my level on it.  I used another 4×4 on the ground to make sure the posts were square with each other, laying it against the side of the supports and making sure it was flush.

I put some of my heavy landscape stone on top of the top board to keep the two posts stationary. (in addition to some small back filling)  I then cemented the first two posts in place since they would be my reference points for the next two posts.  To cement a post in I filled the hole a third of the way with water, added concrete until it extended above the water, added another third of water, more concrete and then topped of the hole with water and the last third of concrete.

So far the process was going well, it was pretty much the exact same formula I used for the pull up station.  Well adding two more supports multiplied the frustration level quite a bit.

After measuring my favorite dip station at the gym I knew I wanted the bars of my station to be about 25 inches apart.  I also needed the second two supports to be parallel with each other, as well as parallel, square and equidistant with the first two supports.  This proved to be much more challenging than expected.

It took me a ton of trial and error to get the last two posts in place.  I’d get them level and then they wouldn’t be square.  Or I get them square but then they weren’t 25 inches apart on center.  I bet I spent a solid hour just f’ing around trying to get these final two posts as perfect as I could. You are trying to be precise with a hunk of wood in an open, sandy hole, it just isn’t that easy.

Finally I called the second set of posts as “Good nuf” and cemented them in place.

The first set of posts had been cemented for a couple hours at this point so it seemed safe to progress onto the hole drilling, pipe threading phase.  I wanted to make sure that drilling into the top of the support did not significantly alter it’s position.  To help ensure this I attached a board between the top of the first two supports temporarily to reenforce them.

It was then time to get the expensive drill bit out.  The 2 inch bit was a perfect diameter for the 1.5″ pipe, allowing just enough clearance to slide the pipe in.

I eyeballed how high I wanted the hole to be by standing next to the post and lifting my hands up to where I could get up on the bar without jumping.  It worked out to be about 8 inches below the top of the 66 inch post.  I wanted to make sure the hole was not too close to the top of the post to make sure it didn’t weaken the wood and split.

Again I eyeballed center on the post, tried to keep my drill as level and straight as possible and started drilling.  The bit seemed to be well worth the money I paid for it.  It made a clean, quick hole in the 4×4 with little fuss.  I had to go back and forth in the hole a few times to give me a fraction on an inch of additional clearance to make the pipe slide through easily.

To mark my second hole I extended the pipe to the second post, centered it on the post, put a level on it and then used a pencil to mark the bottom of the pipe.  In retrospect this was a less than ideal  technique.  I would have been better served with a 2nd set of hands that could have drawn a complete outline of the pipe on the post.

I then lined up the bottom of the drill bit on the line, centered it up and drilled my second hole.  When I tried to thread the pipe through the second hole I had great difficulty in doing so.  I had to use the drill bit to shave extra off the inside of the hole before I could work the pipe all the way through.

When I looked at the far side of the second hole I saw what the problem was.  Evidently when I drilled the second hole my trajectory was not perfect, the drill must have been angled slightly right and down.  It’s a side effect of freehand drilling.  The only way I know you could avoid this is by pre-drilling the holes on a drill press or using some sort of rig that you could attach to your drill.

So although it wasn’t perfect, I got the pipe through.  It was time to do the other side.  The first order of business was to make sure the second pipe was at the same height as the first.  My method for doing this was holding my 4 foot level against the bottom of the first pipe, finding horizontal level and then marking that spot on the other post, that spot would be the bottom of my second set of holes. Again there may be better ways to do this but this is how I did it.

Learning from my errant drilling on the last hole, I did my best to stay as straight and level as I could with both holes on the left side of the station.  I fared better on this side, unfortunately since the first pole was slightly off you could see a minor height variation on the right end.  Oh well.  I hopped on the right end and did a couple dips, I could hardly feel the height difference during the motion.

At first I was considering leaving the full 10 foot length of pipe intact.  However I reconsidered when I realized having more pipe coming out the side with the bad holes just emphasized the slightly mismatched angle.  I decided to have a shorter length of pipe extending from the right than the left.  It will give me some variation in usefulness and make the right side stronger when using it for stuff like racking a barbell.

I chopped 2 feet off each pipe with my sawzall, leaving me 8 feet of pipe to work with.  I threaded the pipes back through the holes and was now ready to bolt the pipes into place so they don’t move around.  I used a 9/16″ metal drill bit to go through both the wood and pipe.  I used my off hand to hold the pipe securely in place to keep it from spinning.  After doing so I slid the bolt through with a washer on either side.

Next I tapped the PVC end caps onto the pipe to protect hands from sharp metal edges.  The fit was snug enough that I didn’t need glue them on.  The last thing I did was attach a wooden brace across the bottom of both sets of supports for additional rigidity.

It didn’t take me long until I was up on the bars testing them out.  The width of bars felt just about perfect for dips which I was happy about.  The small difference in bar height on the right side didn’t affect the usability of the parallel bars at all.  The slight visual flaw does bother me a little bit but I’ll get over it.

Yesterday I finished the project off by applying two coats of water sealer to protect the wood from the blazing Florida sun.

In retrospect the two main hurdles were getting the 4 posts aligned properly and drilling PERFECTLY straight and level holes by hand.  The straight hole thing could be addressed by a drill press.  I was thinking an alternative for getting the posts aligned would be attaching a temporary, properly spaced 2×4 frame around the posts when it is out of the ground.  Then you would leave that frame attached as you dig your holes and set level.

In total I spent around six hours on this project. Although it was definitely more challenging than building my pull up station, overall I am pleased with the outcome of my latest body weight exercise project.  I am sure it will get many years of use.  Feel free to send any questions or comments to me at [email protected].

If you would like to see ALL the pictures from the construction process, go here

 

From Parallel Bars Construction, posted by Shawn Duffey on 4/02/2011 (22 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher 2


 

Last night Ali had asked me to walk her through an upper body workout.  Her training for distance running/tri’s is very cardio heavy but unfortunately doesn’t do much to make her stronger physically, especially in her upper body.  So when she got home from work I pulled out our assortment of dumbbells and walked her through a routine.

For the most part I tried to have her superset between opposing body parts.  It is the most time efficient and beneficial way to do a weight workout since the limited rest between sets also works your endurance.  I put her through around a half hour work out.  She was pretty spent at the end of it.  I’m sure she will be sore today.  I think it is a smart move by her to want to diversify her routine a bit to include strength training.

Last night I also made my last attempt at the March Bar-barian challenge.    In my previous attempts I held myself above the bar for 1:05 and then 1:06.  I was hoping to break the 1:15 mark.  Unfortunately my muscles failed at 1:09.  It’s an improvement but a very minor one.  Hell some of the young scrawny kids on the forum were able to up their times by 30 seconds or more in the span of a month.  This month’s challenge is max continuous straight bar dips.  I’ll be giving that a shot for sure.

The big item this weekend is I plan to construct my parallel bars.  They will be built in a manner similar to my existing pull up station, 4×4’s sunk in concrete with a 1.5″ or 2.0″ diameter pipe threaded through them.  I plan to pick up the materials to build the station after work.  Of course I will document the process much in the same way I did with the pull up station. Also much like the pull up station and almost every other project I undertake, the blueprint is totally in my head and will be modified and improvised dynamically as the work unfolds.

My physical activity this weekend will be hampered by my hurting heel.  The back of my right knee feels less gimpy today than the day before but my right heel is still painful.  I am 90% sure it is the start of planar fascitis so I need to nip it in the bud before it gets chronic.