Archives 2011

So like I mentioned yesterday, I was undecided if I wanted to try to permanently fix the bedroom 360 or just sink the money into a brand new box since it is going to be seeing a lot of use.  Well I made a decision, I’m doing both.

First I went on Ebay and bought a 10 dollar kit that is meant to address E74 and RROD problems by stiffening the motherboard to prevent the warping that causes the problem. Then later in the day an email from Buy.com just happened to show up in my inbox pitching good deals on new 360’s. I went to their site and saw I could get a new 4 gig box for less than $200 shipped.  After verifying the “my money” account had funds I decided f it, I’m pulling the trigger.

I immediately shared my good deal with Jeremy.  A couple minutes later he sends me a link to another deal on Amazon.  At first glance it didn’t look better.  For $300 you get the Xbox and a $100 Amazon gift credit.  I immediately told Jeremy it was basically the same deal as mine except I was handing Amazon an extra $100 just so they can hand it back to me.

Jeremy responded back that I was again demonstrating poor reading comprehension, something I have been known to do from time to time.  The Amazon deal was for a 360 that INCLUDED Kinect. Woah.

Kinect typically will cost you an extra $125 or so.  I quickly realized this was actually a much better deal.  Now depending on your blog retention, you may recall I was given Kinect for Christmas, I don’t need it.  My thought is I simply sell the additional Kinect hardware, pocket the money and the Amazon credit and wind up maybe $75 ahead of the Buy.com deal, sweet.

I quickly logged back onto Buy to make sure I could still cancel the order which I could.  I then hopped back on Amazon and snagged the deal.  I thanked Jeremy for catching that deal, it is a nice one.

My mom called me yesterday in a tizzy.  She received a 1-2 punch from both the unemployment office and social security. In a nutshell in a worst case scenario it could have potentially meant she would have ZERO income coming in AND she would be on the hook to SS for several thousand dollars.

Well after trying to work through the situation with her on the phone we came up with a plan of action.  I found myself getting frustrated.

Mom had told me information about her social security benefits last year that did not make sense.  I in fact went online and found info that pointed 180 degrees from what she was telling me.  Despite that she clung to what she believed was true and did not pursue the issue vigorously to verify what was and wasn’t the case.  Well it turns out that what she thought was the case, was not.

I told mom that with matters that are this important, she can’t leave the outcome to chance.  No one at the unemployment or SS office is going to bend over backwards for her just to be nice. I encouraged her to not be a victim in this situation and instead focus on fixing it.

I talked to her again today and things seem to be ironed out in both fronts.  Her unemployment benefits are restored and instead of owing SS money she will start receiving checks several months earlier than she thought she would be.  Good job mom.

You saw that video I posted from Robert Reich the other day?  He has a few others out there regarding various big issues in politics today.  I love the guy.  I don’t know if he is a democrat or republican and to be honest I don’t really care.  He speaks plain and simple truths but does so in a way that doesn’t mask the vast knowledge that backs up these opinions.  If he ran for President I would vote for him.

While we are at it let’s throw Jon Stewart on the ticket.  If you have seen Stewart appear on the Chris Wallace and Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) shows you will quickly realize that he is a lot more than just a comedian.  He has very thoughtful and logical opinions on important issues.  Like me he prefers to not let his views be defined for him by one political party or another.  He evaluates on an issue per issue basis.

Let’s talk about my good buddy Rick Scott.  A couple days ago the state teacher association filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of what equates to a 3% income tax/pay cut to all employees connected to the state pension system.  The new policy was due to take place at the beginning of July.

When Rick Scott was running for office and shortly after his spindly, cold fingers took the reigns of the governorship his justification for f’ing with the pension was based on money.  He claimed, despite facts that showed otherwise, that the state pension was a ticking time bomb, an unhealthy monster that unjustly saddled Florida taxpayers with a financial burden they don’t deserve.

Well in recent months the pension system which is the top 5 in the country in regards to health has fully rebounded from the financial trough that affected every investor in the latter part of the last decade.  Scott could no longer cling to his claims it was a monstrous financial liability, he would look like an idiot doing so based on the numbers.

So now he invented a new reason for the pension being bad. In an article in the Fort Myers paper he said that the fight to screw with the pensions was “”… about fairness for those who don’t have government jobs.” What the f?

Ok, so now it isn’t “fair” that government employees have a retirement benefit that others do not?  Is the new goal to “socialize” employment in Florida where every job in every sector has identical benefits?

What if one employer offers better health insurance plan than another employer?  Should the employee that has the better plan be stripped of that privilege because someone else doesn’t have it?   If Joe Blow in the private sector is paid $35k to do a certain job but somebody else is getting paid $25k to do the same job somewhere else should we dock Joe $10k immediately so everything remains “fair”?

Is it “fair” that Rick Scott was able to spend $70,000,000 of his personal fortune to brain wash the light thinkers in our state?

This statement by Scott is just so ludicrous I could type until my fingers bleed shooting it full of holes.  It is as hypocritical as it gets and is a perfect example of what Robert Reich talks about being a common strategy of the rich, to keep the populace under control, pit them against each other.

I am still in disbelief that this guy actually was elected governor.

Last night was mostly consumed by mowing.  I did the weed whacking of the property over the weekend but was holding off on the mowing so Ali wouldn’t have to do it the weekend I am away.

Our property has a huge diversity in grass types and length of that grass.  The areas on the outer border of our property that do not get hit with the sprinkler system haven’t grown much.  I can zip through those areas at full speed.  In contrast are the areas around the house, especially the areas filled in with thick St Augustine grass, which is much higher.  Slowly the St Augustine is expanding outward, covering more of the yard which is exactly what I want.

It didn’t take long for Ali to get hammered at work since her kitchen manager was let go.  She called me yesterday in tears, already overwhelmed by the numerous issues she is required to juggle.  There wasn’t much I could do for her but let her vent.  To make matters worse she is coming down with an illness.

I actually took an Airborne myself last night as I was feeling that nasty feeling creeping into my throat.  The last thing I need is to be sick for the Rumble.

I have been tooling around in Hulu Plus for the last week or so.  I really like the interface on the Xbox except for one thing, the large amount of content that is WEB ONLY.  It’s really stupid when you think about it.  Hulu decided to try to make itself a Netflix contender by expanding availability of it’s content to other internet devices like tablets and smart phones. Ok, great idea.

Well the problem is they made this move without getting authorization from all of the various content providers to show their stuff on these additional devices.  As a result you have a ton of stuff that will pop up with the dreaded WEB ONLY badge when you view it on your non-computer device.  This means the ONLY way you can view the content is if you are perched in front of your computer viewing Hulu in your browser. It’s just dumb.

Well one of the shows I like to watch is Wipe out and unfortunately it has had a WEB ONLY badge.  Hulu has an option on their web site to notify you if the content becomes available on smart devices. For the hell of it last night I signed up to be notified when Wipeout was freed from the WEB ONLY prison.  Imagine my amazement when THIS MORNING I get an email from Hulu saying “Hey, Wipeout can now be viewed on other devices”  Wow, that’s sweet.

Hopefully Hulu continues to work diligently in getting ALL of their streaming content to be available on anything capable of receiving the stream, just like Netflix already does.

Speaking of Hulu, I flipped on my bedroom Xbox last night, you know the $90 unit that became the $160 unit after Nicki pulled it off the dresser?  I hit the power button and instead of seeing the normal 360 load screen I am greeted with the text on the left, this can’t be good.  In addition to the onscreen error I have 1 flashing red light on the console.

I was instantly on my Iphone looking up the error.  The E74 error is another common problem with older generation 360’s along with the infamous Red Ring of Death.  The info I found indicated that typically the E74 is caused by the “Hanna” graphic scalar chip not being attached solidly to the system board.  This can be a byproduct of the well known overheating issues.  Well in my case it also could have been a byproduct of the 360 hitting the floor after a 3-4 foot drop.

I had to laugh at some of the “fixes” that are out there for this, especially the “towel fix”.  The towel fix involves wrapping your 360 in three towels and letting it run for 20 minutes, basically baking the hell out of the unit.  After letting it cool, many times the error will clear itself, temporarily more than likely.

As someone that has been involved in PC repair since the early 90’s I do not look at intentionally overheating electronics as a good fix for anything.  There is a good chance you could damage other components in the process or if you are really unlucky, start a fire.

If you want to try to fix the issue in a more permanent manner it is going to take a lot more leg work involving ripping the console totally apart and using stuff like pennies, electrical tape and heat conducting gel to create additional heatsinks. In addition you will need something like a heat gun to try to soften some of the solder connections on the chip so they can hopefully reform.  It’s a lot of work which still may wind up not working because of the core problems with the early 360 design flaws.

I am not sure what I will wind up doing.  Part of me just wants to just buy a new 360 and keep this one for parts.  The new models have an entirely different chipset that do not suffer from these various problems.  Since the 360 is now going to be occupying a prominent role in my home A/V setup I would kind of like to not have it McGyvered with bubble gum and toothpicks.

After work on Friday I was on grocery duty.  It was a double whammy because I had to get stuff at Sam’s Club and Publix.  I grabbed my Sam’s items and picked a line.  I got in a line manned by a middle aged man that had an aura of life beating him down.  I couldn’t help but picture a little word balloon over his head reading “I am 53 years old and running a cash register at Sam’s. Life sucks”

Anyway the guy checks me out and I then pull my down pants and bend over for the thing I HATE at Sam’s Club more than anything else, the exit search.  For those of you lucky enough to never set foot in a Sam’s Club you will not know what I am talking about.

After you pay for your items you are not allowed to simply leave the store.  You have to file into line to be checked out a second time.  Evidently Sam’s has such little faith in their cashiers that they deemed it necessary to double check their work.  The employee at the door counts your items to make sure it adds up to the items in the receipt.  It is beyond aggravating and to be honest I have no idea why I continue to subject myself to it.

Well wouldn’t you know it, for the first time ever, my numbers didn’t match.  Mr I Hate Life evidently only rung me up for one bag of softener salt instead of two.  After making a note on some clipboard I was told I had to go over to the customer service desk to pay for the missing salt.

I went over to the area angry I was not already in my truck and on my way.  The customer service counter was divided into two areas, the area to sign up new people and the customer service area.  The two women assigned to the area were both helping new sign ups, nobody was available to help existing customers, how appropriate.

My blood continued on a slow boil as I thought to myself just how ridiculous it is that I was rewarded for a Sam’s screw up by waiting again.  Sure I didn’t expect them to allow me to just walk out of the store without paying for the item but since their clerk f’d up don’t just point me in a direction and say go over there.  Walk over, get a body to check you out right away and apologize.  Idiots.

It was then on to Publix where I had a very lengthy list to complete.  For some reason I get very unsettled when I am the recipient of a large grocery bill.  To me, anything over $100 is nuts for just the two of us.

Saturday morning Ali got up early to go to the group run.  I decided to bypass it since I had plans to possibly run as part of a Sunday brick.  I didn’t take advantage of the situation by garnering any extra sleep.  I was out of bed at 5:45 am.

Ali was gone a good portion of the day so I kept myself busy around the house with various items.  Among those items was setting up the 7th raised bed in the garden.  I also cleared out some items that were either dead or on their way there, clearing out a bunch of space in the other beds.

Saturday night I suggested to Ali that we go out to dinner and a movie, Xmen 1st Class.  Originally I thought about going to Silverspot for the second weekend in a row.  However the only showtime they had was 9pm, too late for my tastes so instead we went up to Coconut Point.

On the way there we stopped for a quick dinner at Tijuana Flats, a Mexican chain that we both like.  The place was nearly empty.  We both enjoyed our meal.  When we got up to Estero we still had some time to kill.

We first went into the Trek Bike store to look around.  I enjoyed looking at the ridiculous $7000 carbon bikes.  These bikes ditch the traditional handle bar and replace it with something that looks like a wing off a plane.  We bought a new seat bag for Ali’s bike and some chocolate Goo for me.

After that we still had time to jump into a Coldstone knock off place where Ali got ice cream and I followed with a chocolate shake.

I was a bit worried when we approached the theater, it looked busier than normal.  The thing I love about the Coconut Point theater is it is always empty.  We never have a problem getting a good seat.

My fears were unfounded when we walked into the theater and saw 4 other bodies.  We grabbed a nice seat about half way up and dead center.  Unlike Green Lantern, which I sadly heard has many horrible reviews, Xmen 1st class had been given positive acclaim.  To pull this off with a cast of mostly lesser known actors (except Kevin Bacon) made the acclaim more impressive to me.

The film didn’t disappoint.  I thought it was pretty damn great from beginning to end.  Ali felt similar.  I’d give it a solid A, go see it.  I loved the couple 5 second cameos that were wedged in there.

When I was sitting in the theater I shifted my body position and felt something snag on my jeans.  I thought nothing of it, thinking that maybe a rivet or something got hung up on the arm rest.  Well when I got out of the car at home and the seat cover on the driver seat followed me out of the vehicle I realized what had happened, I sat in gum.

Some f’ing asshole thought it would be cute to dispose of their gum on the theater seat.  I evidently neglected to do a full scan of the seating surface before I sat down.  This was not a little bit of gum.  I had a good half dollar sized glob of the shit smashed into the left rear pocket area.  I was PISSED.  Before I went to bed I quickly looked up gum removal tips on the internet but I was too tired to attempt any removal that night.

The next day I decided to use the Goo Gone suggestion for removal since we had some.  The other suggestions like freezing the item or using an iron seemed like too much of a pain in the ass.  I angrily futzed with the pants using a rag, a butter knife and the Goo Gone, trying to remove all of the remnants of gum.  Despite my swearing filled efforts, there was still a bunch of sticky residue even after using a half bottle of the junk.

I had enough and decided to just throw the jeans in the wash and see how they come out.  Before I did I soaked the spot with more Goo Gone and Shout.  I also filled the detergent cup in the washer with pure Shout.  I was amazed they came out of the washer totally clean, gum gone.  I got lucky.

Originally I had plans to do a ride/run (maybe swim) brick using the water park as the hub.   When Ali woke up she said she felt ill.  I decided to scuttle the water park aspect of the training. I also decided to not run. Since the Rumble is this upcoming weekend I decided I should try to coast into it without major knee impact activities like running.

I opted to do the 20 mile Dunkin Donuts ride.  I left the house much later than Randall and I did the weekend prior, not hitting the road until after 9am.  I paid for the tardiness with additional heat.  By the time I reached DD at the 10 mile mark I was a sweaty mess.

Overall the ride went well, I averaged the exact same overall pace as the ride with Randall, without the benefit of being able to draft him for 10 miles.  I spent almost the entire ride back on the aero bars.

When I returned I jumped in the pool to both cool off and do some tethered swimming.  The last time I used the tether I was amazed how much more difficult it felt than swimming conventional laps in a pool.  The total lack of forward momentum and no wall grabs and push offs every 25 meters made short work of my endurance.  I don’t think I could even do 5 minutes straight before I stopped.

Well this time I did much better with it.  I discarded my normal side stroke kick and instead just did conventional kicking.  After a short adjustment period I found a stroke and breathing pace that worked for me.  I swam in place for 12+minutes and I could have gone longer, I was just curious what time I was at.  I think the next time I tether swim I will do it with the kitchen timer, setting it to count down and sound the alarm.  I’d love to eventually be able to go non-stop for a half hour.

Yesterday was Father’s Day.  Ali got me a nice present from the dogs and Tuki, a cool Phillies shirt.  I also called my dad and wished him a good day.  He just got back from a week long motorcycle trip.  It sounds like the home renovations are finally winding down for him.  It’s a good thing, he was burning through money like crazy with costs exceeding estimates by leaps and bounds.

I made a run out to Home Depot to grab a couple things for the garden to plant and a battery for my Firestorm drill.  I need two cordless drills operational for an upcoming  rusty pool cage screw replacement project.  I grabbed a couple pepper plants and some more lettuce. I planted those in some of the open space in the existing raised beds.

I filled the new raised bed exclusively with seeds, including corn, beans, carrots and beets.  I am hoping they germinate successfully.  We have to remember to thin out the seedlings as recommended.  Sometimes we skip that part and I am sure it hurts our overall yield.

Ali was feeling better late in the day so she asked about going out on her bike.  Even though I had ridden earlier I was fine riding around our streets with her.

Ali didn’t take out her tri bike, instead we took out her trusty Dawes road bike that we just got back from Christy.  Ali hadn’t ridden it in months.

We went up and down a side street and then up our main street which is about 2 miles in length.  Shortly after we made the turn around I started to feel a thumping sensation under me.  I looked down and saw my rear tire was flat, F me.

I called ahead to Ali and told her to stop.  I examined the tire and quickly found some metallic object wedged in it.  It was more of a gash than a puncture.  I told Ali to ride ahead and grab the truck.  I told her I would just walk the bike until she got there.

Walking on the road in my bike shoes is not much fun, the soles of them are hard plastic with a hard metal cleat in the front.  I sounded like a bad tap dancer as I trudged along.

When we got back home I wasted no time hopping on Ebay and buying another set of tires, puncture resistant ones at that.  They also have a cool red stripe around them that will accent the red frame of my Dawes.  The tires that were on the bike were the original, low quality, no namers, that came with it.

If you haven’t been checking out the “year ago” entries you should.  This time last year we were in the middle of our epic trip.  Some good stuff is to be found there.

Ali lost her kitchen manager at work this week.  As a result she will be back to handling the responsibilities of two jobs until a replacement is hired/trained.  It’s unfortunate since she was just starting to get into a more manageable schedule where she often had two full days off from the place during the week.  Hopefully the candidate search won’t take too long. One positive about the dual job scenario this time around is Ali has been given the green light to bring in another dietitian to help lighten the load.

This is my last weekend before heading up to PA next week to participate in the 20th annual Pottstown Rumble.  I last participated in the event in 2008 with Randall where we had a disappointing performance.

This time around I am resuming my partnership with Charlie whom I played with twice before at the Rumble.

My history with the tournament goes way back to the mid 90’s, it’s hard to believe it has been going on that long.  I have played with a total of 4 different partners at the Rumble, Scott, Rich (partner for epic 1999 win), Charlie and Randall.

Charlie had not played volleyball in a few years and has been working hard to get back into fighting shape.  It will be interesting to see how everything works out.  I arguably am in the best overall shape of my life although that does not necessarily translate into volleyball shape.

This weekend we don’t have concrete plans although I am sure biking and running will be in there somewhere.  I would love to include some swimming in that agenda but more than likely the water park will not have done anything regarding the lap pool situation since maintenance/upkeep appears to be a very minor part of their concerns.  I am going to be majorly pissed off if it remains closed for months on end like other broken items at the park.

Last night Ali more than made up for her last apple crisp which was a bit on the dry side.  She made a new one with apples from our own tree and it turned out fantastic, really, really good.

This should clear it right up for you.   Maybe even pull you out of that fog that has enveloped so many individuals in the country the last decade or so.

Last night after work I attended the monthly running club board meeting.  As the lengthy meeting was wrapping up some intense thunderstorms were rolling in.  I got soaked just in the brief dash from the door to my truck.  The drive home was pretty nasty with near blinding rain.  I hit a couple patches of standing water on the road that sent 20 foot high plumes of water over the sidewalk.

When I got home I finished the soaking process as I removed the items from the truck and then stood in the rain with the dogs so they wouldn’t be afraid to pee.  I then had to retrieve the one chair on the lanai that had blown into the pool. When I came back inside I stripped off my sopping wet shirt.

Our area really needed the rain so in the big picture it was a good thing.  Unfortunately this storm was pretty nasty and knocked out power for over 30,000 people in the area.  Luckily we were spared and kept the lights on the entire time.

I had a funny moment later in the evening.  As I stepped into the shower and started getting wet I looked down and saw a cockroach.  How nice.  It was alive.  I assumed it came out of one of the drains.

Well my no kill policy on living things even applies to cockroaches, at least in small numbers.  I turned off the shower and stepped out to grab a tissue to snare the bug.  For some reason, I didn’t feel like bothering to cover up since I was soaking wet.  I walked through the house to the garage, naked.  I planned to throw it outside.

Now of course I hadn’t lost all sensibility so I didn’t want to appear in my birthday suit for all to see in an inappropriate place like the garage.  Before I hit the button on the opener I looked for something to cover up the important parts.  That something turned out to be the lid to the trash can.  I hit the button to the door, held the lid over my mid-section and threw the unwelcomed visitor outside into the rain before immediately closing the door.  Ali was up in the office and was not witness to this oddity.

When I was reading this month’s Wired magazine I saw an article about a new company one of the Twitter founders created called squareup.com It is a service that is designed to make it incredibly easy for the normal Joe or small business to accept credit cards for payment of goods and services.

When I set up the Google checkout store for the running club I did a lot of investigation about credit card processing and merchant accounts.  Setting up a merchant account required a bunch of steps and hassle.  On top of the normal per transaction fee there are numerous additional ancillary charges including a flat monthly fee, minimum monthly transaction fees and a large cost for an actual CC reader.  With Squareup, that all goes away.

They charge you a flat 2.75% of the transaction price if you swipe the card.  If you are keying the data in the charge is 3.5% plus 15 cents, either way it is a sweet deal.  On top of that they send you a free reader that works with an Iphone/Ipad and Android phones.

When you take a payment the money shows up in your bank account the next day for your first $1000 in monthly sales.  Once you cross $1000 they hold the funds for 30 days which I assume is one way they can offer such low fees.

Signing up was incredibly easy.  In the span of 5 minutes my account was created and verified.  The verification process is pretty interesting.  You enter your name, address, phone number and the last 4 of your SS number.  You get verified by answering various questions based on your credit report.

The first application that came to mind for this service was for the running club.  It could give us a way to accept credit card payments on the day of the race, something that has been requested by race participants on a consistent basis.  Of course the situations this could come in handy are nearly infinite.  Check it out yourself.

It looks like Ali was unfortunate enough to pick up a common side effect of getting crammed in an enclosed space with other human beings for hours on end, she started feeling sick yesterday.  She started feeling ill early in the day and last night was showered and in bed very early for her. It’s not great timing since her training schedule for both the marathon and Olympic distance triathlon are supposed to be ramping up in earnest now.

I just set up a Drobo at work and it is damn cool.  What the F is a Drobo you asked?  It is a NAS/External HDD rig.  There are tons of NAS devices out there and I have seen a lot but the Drobo is the coolest I have had my hands on.

The Drobo makes raid simple.  You basically throw SATA drives in the unit and it will configure what you have for maximum storage along with maximum redundancy.

It is hot swappable, comes with simple as dirt indicator lights and software that makes it easy to monitor the health of the unit.  There is no need for matched drives you can throw anything into the box and it will use it.  You can also grow the size of the unit dynamically, all they way up to 16TB by simply swapping out a smaller drive for a larger one, one at a time until you do all the drives.

If you are looking for an external HDD enclosure on roids or stand alone NAS, I highly recommend taking look at their stuff.  I will be using this unit as direct attached storage for my Backup Exec 2010 R3 server.

I noticed the other day that it is full moon time again.  I made note that I didn’t feel as awful as I normally do during this time of the month, cool. Well yesterday my buddy at work stepped on a landmine.

What began as a request for assistance got real ugly real fast.  When I asked for further info about a problem my buddy made a comment about how I don’t believe what he tells me and if I didn’t want to help him he would just figure it out himself. He flipped the switch.

I was pissed that just because I wanted more info about the problem that he twisted that into me not wanting to help him.  I responded angrily at first and quickly accelerated to enraged when he continued to engage me further.  The f bombs were flying out of my mouth fluently, I am sure quite a few people in our section of the building heard the ruckus.

When my co-worker saw the flames shooting out of my eyes he said that he was only kidding about me not wanting to help him although I didn’t detect any sense of kidding when it was said.  I told him if that was true, I apologized for flipping out.

Later he stopped in my office and said it was a bit scary, he obviously had never seen me uncorked before, very few people have.  I apologized again later in the day.  Even if what he said pissed me off it was not cool to go nuts on him as a result.

I guess I didn’t escape the month’s cycle after all.

So Randall wasn’t due to arrive at my place until somewhere around 7 on Friday.  I figured that would work out well, it gave me time to work on setting up my second Xbox.  I had it hooked up in the bedroom in a few minutes.  I slapped my old 60 gig hard drive on it and started the process of updating the software on it, it looked like the 360 had not been used on the internet in ages as it had the old, old version of Xbox Live on it.

This Xbox came with the wired adapter for the controller.  I opted to use that instead of pairing one of my wireless controllers with the 360.  While software was downloading to the Xbox I decided to multitask and headed out to the kitchen.  All of a sudden I hear a loud crash followed by Nicki SPRINTING out of the bedroom.  Oh no….

I turn the corner and see the 360 on the floor with all of the cables yanked out.  When I left the bedroom I did so with the wired controller laying on the bed.  Well evidently when Nicki followed me out she managed to get herself tangled in the wire, panicked and ran.

My instant emotion was anger.  I yelled at Nicki even though I knew it wasn’t really her fault, saying dumb stuff like “How could you not see the wire there?!!” even though I knew there would be no reply.  Nicki cowered because of my obvious anger.  I later comforted her when I calmed down,  after all it was really my fault.

So now I had to attend to the 360.  My worst case scenario was my new used 360 was now dead from the impact. When I plugged it back in I was pleased to see it still powered up although I immediately noticed a fan noise that was not there before.

Knowing of the 360’s history of overheating I knew a noisy fan was not a good thing so I decided I had one option, rip it apart.  I hopped on YouTube and in a few moments was watching a video outlining the tear down of the hardware.  Along the way I got some background on the Red Ring of Death issue along with a novel way to fix it.

With my years of PC repair experience ripping apart the 360 wasn’t hard but if I didn’t watch the video I would have struggled since there are a bunch of little hidden plastic snaps to be released.

As I was taking it apart it became apparent that the unit had been ripped open before.  I am pretty sure it may have been fixed for RROD already which is cool.  With the cover off I plugged the 360 in to verify where the noise was coming from, it was one of the two case cooling fans.  When I unplugged the 360 I spun both fans.  The quiet fan spun freely, the noisy one stopped after a few revolutions.  Great, the fan is f’d up.

Then on a whim I took my hands and grasped the noisy fan and squeezed it on the center hub.  I felt and heard a reassuring “CLICK” like I just pressed it back into place.  I spun the fan by hand again and it spun freely.  I plugged the console back in a viola, no more noise. Sweet.

I put the 360 back together and took it back to the bedroom to continue the configuration.  I ran into another issue.  I no longer had a network connection. WTF?  After some troubleshooting I eventually figured out what I think happened.  When the 360 was pulled off the dresser it yanked all of it’s cords out, including the CAT 5 cable that is actually snapped into place.

When I did some examination of the network port on the 360 I saw some of the wires appeared bent.  I grabbed my dental tools and after some frustrating, tedious manipulation had the wires back where they should be, or so it seemed.  Despite my labor I was unable to get the hard wired network  connection working. Perhaps if two of the wires when power was applied touched it could have damaged the port. Great, so now a USB wireless adapter will be required to get the 360 on the net.  I was annoyed as Randall pulled up.

I had a frozen pizza in the oven for dinner.  Randall had made a stop at the Catholic Town Publix on his way in.  He reported he actually had to wait in a three person line at check out, wow they must have been PACKED.

While we ate pizza we watched a Netflix item that was recommended to me, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virgina. This documentary is about some redneck, trailer trash family in West Virginia.  It has to be seen to be believed.

Sue Bob is probably my favorite White.  She claims she is the sexiest of all of the Whites.  The problem is if you close your eyes and listen to her voice you swear you are listening to man, a very deep voiced man.  Every scene that involves her speaking is just solid gold.

Pretty much every member of the family is on drugs and most of them are collecting government disability and do not work.  If you want to see the end result of government entitlement program abuse, look no further.  If you have Netflix add it to your queue now.

After the flick I was surfing on my Xbox and found a little gem in their downloadable game content, the original Track and Field.  This game came out in the early 80’s and I was a HUGE fan.  I can’t tell you how many quarters I dumped into the machine over the years.

The control was simple.  You had three buttons.  Two buttons you hit alternatively to run and a third for actions like throwing and jumping.

I was never great at the game, only getting middle of the pack scores.  I often would watch in amazement as people would generate tremendous speed using various techniques like the two fingers on each button technique or even the pencil lever trick.  I used the standard two hand slap fest method.

Well the game on the 360 was only 499 Xbox credits so it was a no brainer, I downloaded it.  Randall used to play the game as well so he was into it.

In our early matches Randall had a definite speed advantage using the buttons to run although I still won many events with better timing of the action button.  Later on when I discovered that I could also run by moving the thumb stick back and forth Randall’s speed advantage was gone and I won almost every event.  It didn’t take long until those old familiar Track and Field pains came back.

To rapidly hit buttons or slap a thumb stick back and forth you tense up the entire side of your body.  My index finger literally was sore the next day, funny stuff.  Late in the evening I actually played an Xbox Live T&F game against someone else.  He generated incredible speed.  I can only assume he is using some sort of special controller technique to do so.  Even though he beat me I put in a respectable showing.

Randall was up and out the door around 6:30 Saturday morning to head up to Siesta Key for a volleyball tournament.  The plan was for us to catch Super 8 that evening when he returned.

I set my alarm for 6 am to make sure Randall was on his way.  I also figured getting up early would get me a jump start on the day, something I always appreciate.  After easing into the day with some WoW play time I started on stuff around the house.

After knocking out the rather large weeding session I turned to this weekends designated auxiliary project, tree trimming.  The pygmy palms in the front of the house were badly overgrown and received attention first.  Then I hit both oak trees followed by the coconut tree in the back.

The right tree had a few low hanging branches as well as some that were almost hitting the house so I lopped them off, it was pretty minor work.  The left tree was another story.

This tree is smaller but has now grown into the line of sight of my Directv dish.  I have always had in the back of my mind that I would eventually just have to cut this tree down.  However instead of doing something that severe right now I instead cut the parts of the tree that were in the way.  This was pretty grueling work with a pole saw. The branches of an oak tree have thousands of these tiny little “fingers” that make it difficult to get a clean angle to saw.

Trying to cut relatively thick branches high above your head with a pole saw is physically challenging.  Doing it in 90 degrees and humid weather makes it all the more challenging.  As I was cutting away I did my best to make sure I was not disturbing any bird nests that have popped up in this tree from time to time.

After a good 45 minutes of dirty, sweaty work I had once again given my dish a clear view of the sky.  From the front of the oak tree you can’t really tell how severe of a chop I performed but from the side you surely can.  It looks like a big machete lopped off much of the back half of the tree.  Hey, I need to see the Eagles.

After a dip in the pool I went out to run a few errands, I had a number of things I needed to get.  I took the party van and brought the girls with since they love a trip more than anything.  I figured each stop was going to be very quick.  I locked the van and left it running with the A/C blasting.  I have a spare key.

One of the stops was at the local nursery.  My initial desire was to find something to replace the tree that I plowed into with the neighbor’s mower which subsequently died.  I decided to go with a Plumeria.  They can grow into beautiful trees that produce awesome blossoms.  The downside is they are sensitive to cold, especially when they are small.  I am just crossing my fingers that we avoid a deep freeze this winter.

While I was there I spotted a hand edging tool, just like the old one I got from my great uncle which broke during the the HD antenna installation.  I used that tool to bury a bunch of wire so I was happy to find a new one.

I also had to go grab the wireless Xbox network adapter.  The $69 price tag meant my 360 that was originally a deal was now not much of one.  Oh well, at least it works.

So I was actually unwinding later in the day, awaiting Randall’s return from Siesta Key.  It kept getting later and later, I had not heard a peep from him.  It was now 6pm.  The movie started at 7:25.  I figured Randall would show up any minute, have to take a lightning fast shower and we would roll out.  Well at 6:15 I get a call from Randall.  He was just LEAVING Siesta Key now (90 minutes away).  WTF??

I was baffled on how it could take so long, especially when he later told me they lost in the first round of playoffs.  So we had to improvise.  I told him I would just meet him at the theater.  I gave him crude directions over the phone and texted them to him as well.  I told him he would have to call me when he got there as there was no way he would arrive before the movie started.  I would have to then come out, flash my electronic ticket and get him in the theater.

I arrived at Silverspot around 7 and ordered a chicken finger basket that I took into the theater with me.  I had my phone out with the ringer turned off so I could spot his incoming call.

We had decided to see Super 8 after originally talking about seeing Hangover 2.  I had no problem making the switch based on my movie theater philosophy.  Certain films just get no benefit of being viewed in a theater among them are chick flicks and comedies.  I’ll be just as happy watching Hangover 2 on my 71 incher at home.

To be honest I knew next to nothing about Super 8 going in except there were two very high profile names involved, J.J. Abrahms and Steven Speilberg and it was about something weird going down in a town.

About 15 minutes into the movie my phone lit up, it was Randall announcing his arrival.  I scurried out to get him in.  I thought the movie was great.  The story was very well written and interesting.  It had a bit of an ET (ok a head chewing ET) like vibe with the movie being based on a group of young kids.   I was very glad we opted to see it instead of Hangover 2 at the finish. I’d give it an A.  Randall liked it as well.

When we got home Randall filled me in on his day of volleyball which sounded pretty frustrating.  He said his last game in pool play was against a team that had a sandbagger.  It was bad enough that he sandbagged but he also was the worst case of an over warm upper that I have ever heard.  Randall said that between he and his partner they hit at least 50 warm up balls which is unreal, especially that late in the day. I would have been insane.

Randall’s playoff game sounded equally frustrating when they lost to another one of my most hated things, a co-ed team playing in the men’s division.  Not only did they lose, they lost after holding a pretty big lead.

This was the tournament series that last year played under old school rules and also included free Corona beer for players.  This year they removed the beer and reverted back to current rules.  Throw in the hotter than hades heat and I was quite glad I missed the event.

Even though I wouldn’t have minded sleeping in on Sunday, Randall said he would rather get out the door early to do our ride to avoid some heat.  The plan was to do the Dunkin Donuts ride (20 mile round trip) and then head to the water park where we could run/swim.

Randall was interested in trying out Ali’s bike.  He hopped on it and the seat height actually looked ok.  I jumped on my Dawes and we took off.

Randall and I exchanged lead rider roles half way, I was ahead the first 5 miles, Randall lead the middle 10 (broken up by coffee break) and I did the last 5.  In the past when Randall and I have ridden together he has had to consciously slow down to allow me to hang with him since he does tons more riding than I do. This time that wasn’t the case.

I think the extended cardio work I have been doing along with additional leg strength work has helped me improve despite still not putting many miles in on the bike.  We averaged right about 20 mph on the way out and over 18 on the way back into a headwind.

Randall did say he felt some significant differences riding the tri bike.  Unfortunately he wasn’t really able to test out the tri position the bike is made for very much.  When he got on the aero bars his knees were grazing his elbows.

After a brief pool and splashy splash session for Sadie we changed gear for the next part of the brick.  When I got to the water park around 10 I decided to grab our passes right away.  I was immediately annoyed when I approached the window and read the sign stating the lap/dive pool was closed for maintenance until further notice.

As much as I like the water park, they really do a poor job fixing things there.  The high diving board has been closed for “maintenance” for at least 4-5 months.  The dancing sprinklers that little kids love are broken and closed again.  The on site lockers have as many broken units as it does functional ones and NOW the lap pool is broken again.

Actually the explanation I got from some kid lifeguard was now the low diving board is broken and for some reason that means the entire diving/lap pool had to be closed.  That makes no sense to me. So I went out and told Randall swimming is off the agenda. He wasn’t all that disappointed since he isn’t a great swimmer.

We headed out on the run.  Randall hasn’t been doing much running recently but he said he would try to keep up with me.  We ran together until the 3 mile mark.  At that point I told him I was going to go ahead and push for the last mile of the 4 mile jaunt.  When I got back Randall was nowhere to be seen.

I was a bit concerned as he was really struggling towards the end of our run. I had visions of him passed out from heat stroke or something.  I walked around out on the sidewalk trying to spot him which I eventually did, just before I was going to start going out on the trail looking for him.  Evidently he bagged it at the 5k mark and walked back.

We headed into the park and almost directly to the lazy river, we earned some laziness.  We had three relaxing loops around the circuit, including three trips through the “rapids” where they dump water on you.

After that we had lunch and unfortunately were joined in our meal by swarms of flies, they were constantly on you, not much fun. We both sort of dozed off a little bit under the umbrella after lunch before we headed home.

I treated Randall to a couple episodes of Hoarders Sunday afternoon.  We both were amazed at just how f’d up human beings can become.  Randall told me later that like us, he wound up cleaning some shit up at his condo when he got home later.

Randall and I grabbed dinner on his dime at El Apetito before he headed back east.  I thanked him for the company since Ali was away.  It was a fun couple days.

My Monday was designated as a relaxing day for me.  I tended to sweeping the floors and some laundry but did no heavy lifting.  I did throw down my first entry in this month’s Barbarian challenge, knuckle push ups.  I grinded out 40 reps with solid form.  I hope to at least hit my age before the month is done.

I did a lot of WoW on Monday, something I haven’t done much of at all in recent months.  I left the house to pick up Ali for her scheduled 4:45 arrival at the airport at 4:15.  I had with me a small vase with various flowers I picked from our property, something I have done before.

I heard my phone ring when I was about 10 miles out.  Ali said it was her third time calling me, somehow I didn’t get or hear the first two calls.  Evidently her flight was ahead of schedule.  I felt bad as I pulled up to the terminal and she was pretty much the last person waiting.

Of course I had the party van with the dogs along.  They were very happy to see their dog mom.  Sadie wasted no time hopping up on Ali’s lap and staying there for the ride home.  I had talked to Ali for a while the night before on the phone so I knew most there was to know about her trip. I stopped and grabbed us a Publix pizza for her welcome home dinner which she appreciated.

Last night was low key.  Ali was pooped from her trip that had a lot of go go go in it. She was glad to sleep in her own bed.

Swiss cheese elbow

Description:

1. The act of injuring your elbow while opening a zip lock package of sliced swiss cheese

2. Injury normal occurs on the anterior elbow surface

3. Injury typically occurs in adult caucasian males over the age of 40

So I hurried home last night so I could feed the dogs and then head out to the Ave Maria Publix.  You see, unlike most Publix that close at 9 or 10, this one closes at an early bird special time of 7pm.

As I pulled into the Ave Maria complex I drove by the now infamous abandoned gas station/convenience store.  This building was started, almost finished and then promptly abandoned.  I assume whomever built it saw the writing on the wall of Ave Maria’s colossal implosion and decided to cut their losses and run.

To catch people up to speed that may not know, Ave Maria was the first new catholic university launched in the last three decades.  It was designed to be a nearly self sustaining town literally in the middle of nowhere.  The university was supposed to be the hub of luxury homes, golf courses, shopping and more.  This was the brain child of the founder of Domino’s Pizza, Tom Monaghan.

Well Ave Maria had awful timing.  They broke ground towards the end of the construction/real estate boom.  By the time they were open for business we were firmly in the grease covered slide to the bottom.  The last time I heard they had sold only 10% of the homes in the area.  All of that proposed retail never happened, except for the Ave Maria Publix.

As I pulled into the 95% empty parking lot I had my choice of several front row parking spaces.  As I entered the store that is in the shadow of the massive Ave Maria church I was greeted by perfectly faced aisles with nobody in them.  I think I could have counted the customers on one hand.

Since the store has a totally different layout it took me longer than normal to find my items.  Luckily the list this week was pretty short.  They had one check out line open with nobody in it.  I was in and out of there in about 20 minutes.  I almost felt like I should have genuflected as I walked out the door.

The rest of my night went smoothly.  I did some prep of the guest room.  Nicki gets very excited when she sees us stripping the bed, she knows it means someone is coming.  She will be excited to see Uncle Randall I’m sure.

My weekend with Randall should work out well.  He is actually using my place as a launching point to head to Siesta Key Saturday to play in a vball tourney with Tabby.  Then he will come back and hang around till sometime on Sunday.  I will be able to get done what I need to around the house while he is at the tournament.

He is bringing his bike so we can put some miles in on Sunday. We also have tentative plans to go see Hangover 2 Saturday night.

As I mentioned, I have been real happy with using my Xbox 360 to serve up TV entertainment, especially with adding Hulu + to my arsenal which already included Netflix and Playon.tv.  I enjoy it enough that I think I am about ready to dump the Tivo that is in my bedroom.

Right now I have been migrating my 360 between the bedroom and the great room as needed.  It’s a bit of a pain in the ass.  Last night on a whim I took a quick look on Craigslist to see if anyone was selling a basic 360 for cheap.  Low and behold I found one, a guy selling his unit since his son went to college and no longer uses it.  The price was right, $90.

I called him and found out he lived right of a road I use for my commute to work.  I asked him if he would be interested if I picked the 360 up early on my way in.  Surprisingly he said that was fine.

I rolled up to his house this morning at 7:30.  When I was greeted he asked me if I could talk quietly, evidently his other son was upstairs asleep.  He had the 360 hooked up to his tv so I could verify it worked, which it did.  We quietly completed the transaction and I was on my way.

I have some extra vaca days to use, even with the upcoming time off I have for my PA Rumble trip and the Ireland adventure.  I decided to burn one by taking Monday off.  A three day weekend just sounded nice.