Archives 2011

A muscle up is a staple in higher level body weight training.  A muscle up is when you start hanging below the bar and wind up with your body fully extended above the bar.  It is basically a pull up into a dip.  Sounds simple? It isn’t.

I have been working towards getting a muscle up for at least two years.  For the first year or so my progress kept getting retarded by chronic tendonitis that I finally was able to tame with regular forearm stretching.

In recent months I have made some nice strength gains, repping out 20 + pull ups for the first time in my life.  I still however had not been able to get a muscle up, despite having the apparent prerequisite strength to do so.

My body dynamics are not ideal for a muscle up.  My long arms and even longer legs seem to have a mind of their own at times.  When you are first learning a muscle up they advise you to do a kipping variety where you use a combination of body swing and leg movement to help propel you up and over the bar.

Well my brain seems to short circuit when it comes to kipping.  If anything it seemed to hurt me, my long legs would wind up extended in front of me which pulled my upper body away from the bar instead of towards it.  Even with my bad kipping, I was getting real close to getting over the bar.

The past couple days I was doing some static high holds at the gym.  Because I have some pretty hellacious calluses and blister remains on my hands I was doing this with a false grip where your wrist is basically sitting on the bar.  I noticed that I was able to hold myself about nipple high for at least 10 seconds.  In order to do a muscle up you only need to get a few inches higher.  I thought it was good I could hold the position that high, it meant I was getting closer.

Well today at the gym I would normally be doing a 300 but I instead opted to just do body weight work to give my knee a break.  I wore my lifting gloves with integrated wrist wraps for hand protection.  The wrist wraps also made the false grip a little less uncomfortable.

I warmed up with some regular pulls ups and then did some bar dips as well.  The bar I normally use was taken when I went back so I headed over to one of the cable machines that has a small bar on top of it, about six and a half feet high.  The narrow bar required my hands to be very close together to do a false grip, no more than 8 or 9 inches apart.

So I hung down, pulled up and realized I was right at the muscle up make or break spot, I was very surprised I was able to slowly power through that upper section.  However with the base of the machine only a couple feet from the bar I didn’t have any room for my legs to move so I just held that high position.

Well I was really encouraged now, I was so close I could smell it.  I went back to the smith machine and grabbed the cross support I have used in the past to do jumping, assisted muscle ups.  I hung down, picked my feet up and pulled slowly.  With nothing blocking my feet I was able to get just a bit higher.  I was then able to use a one hand at a time technique to get up and finally over the bar! I was f’ing stoked!

I couldn’t believe that my first muscle up was a narrow grip, no kip, power muscle up.  That just isn’t how your first muscle up is supposed to be.  I never have been very conventional in most of my athletic endeavors so I guess my first muscle up should follow the same suit.

I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fluke so I did the same thing on two other spots, including the “high” bar I prefer to use for pull ups.  I walked out of the gym pumped up, unfortunately there was nobody there that would really appreciate the acheivment so I resorted to just yelling YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! at the top of my lungs when I was in the truck.

I can hardly wait to do the move on my bars this weekend on video.

So I have been hitting the Breaking Bad episodes pretty heavy now that I discovered it is available via streaming.  I think last night I completed episode 3 of season two.  It is a great show, I really am enjoying it.  I wonder if Dexter would think he needs to kill Walt? I don’t think so.

Ali will be heading over to Miami sometime tomorrow for the Escape triathlon.  Part of me feels guilty for not participating but my knee issue and incision on my head would make it impossible anyway.  The 3 bike rack we got for the Camry will work out perfectly, allowing Ali, Michelle and Christy to carpool together with all of their bikes in tow.

Randall will also be competing in his first ever olympic distance triathlon at the Escape.  I wish both him and the girls the best of luck.

I will keep myself busy with house chores of course but the big project will be my attempted brake job on the Tacoma.  I am hoping I have all of the supplies I will need for the project but I won’t be surprised if there is an additional run to the auto parts store.  I may try to Justin.tv the project.

Tonight our old neighbor and his partner will coming over for a get together.  It actually will be a send off as they are moving to New Orleans in a week or so, a major relocation.  It will be great opportunity so we are happy for them but of course we are also sad to see friends leave, especially since we don’t exactly have a huge circle of them in Naples.  Life is all about rolling with the changes.

So last week Howard only put in a three day work week so I assumed this morning when I turned the show on he would be live since that has been his pattern with the new contract, back and forth between 4 day week and a 3 day week.  Imagine my joy when instead I heard the Monday show being repeated.

I knew what this meant, now the threatened full time, three day work week has been initiated.  Now of course I realize  Howard has been in the business for more than three decades so he has the right to work as little as he damn well pleases. However, that does not mean I can’t have a boat load of reasons why I think this is complete and utter horseshit.  Let me begin.

When Stern came to Sirius radio he was asking a lot of his listeners.  Not only would they be asked to pay $13 a month to HEAR him, they also would be asked to pay $14 a month to SEE the show like they could on E!  So after taxes, if a Stern listener wanted to follow Howard once he left regular radio to the same degree they could before, it was going to cost them $30 a month.

Now on top of that you have the costs of the satellite radio and if you are like quite a few people, multiple satellite radios and multiple subscriptions.  I know personally I have spent well in excess of $1000 since Howard went to Sirius JUST so I could listen to him and I don’t even have Howard TV. Yea, that is pretty ridiculous but that is what it adds up to for the 6+ years of service and equipment.

Now in addition to paying all of this money for the service we also got shorted one day a week.  Originally when he started on Sirius, Howard said they would still work the occasional Friday.  Well within a month or so that went out the window and he never worked a 5 day week since.  In addition to this, when Howard came to Sirius they gave him something like 8 weeks of vacation as well.

Even with the added expense and less amount of shows, the show still seemed worth it, at least a first.  Being able to say anything and do almost anything in the much more open domain of satellite radio was very refreshing.  The days that Howard was working he was at least still running the show consistently till 11 am or later.

In addition to his show he brought in Bubba to fill in the afternoons who I learned to like (for the most part).  It was a real nice one two punch that gave Sirius Stern subscribers what most of us would deem was good value for the money.

Ok fast forward to the new contract, which began at the beginning of this year.

Prior to signing the deal Howard performed his typical on air negotiations where he threatened to leave or flat out retire.  The audience was forced to listen to him whine about Sirius for almost the entire last year of his first deal.

Well when he announced he was staying with Sirius the initial relief was soon discolored by the details of his new deal,  even less live shows, dramatically less.

Initially Howard revealed he would be doing the alternating 3/4 day work week rotation.  He indicated that “eventually” it would be just 3 days full time but he gave the impression that would be well down the road in the contract, not 9 months into a 5 year deal.  In addition he cut the daily show length down an hour as well, he is normally off the air shortly after 10 am.  I believe he also sucked another couple weeks of vacation out of Sirius.

When you do the math, the reduction in live shows is ridiculously less.

Howard in my opinion definitely seems to be phoning it in and I think there are several reasons for it.  First of all he is an old dude, hell I think he is 58.  Not many people have the drive at 58 to do what they did when they were 28, I don’t think he is immune to that.

Second he is pissed off at Sirius.  He actually has a court case going against them because he feels they owe him money based on subscriber numbers.  In addition Sirius has not appeased Howard in other ways such as his desire to keep Bubba on the channels, instead they let him walk because they literally didn’t want to pay him anything .

This anger towards Sirius surely contributes to him not feeling bad about putting in the bare minimum amount of time in the studio.  Unfortunately whether he realizes it or not this is also a big F U to the fans that have enabled him to become a very wealthy person over the last decade.

The strategy Sirius has taken to fill the dead air is as lame as it gets.  On Thursday and Friday they replay the stuff you just heard Monday through Wednesday, talk about phoning it in.  On Howard 101 they filled the Bubba void with more endless replays of old content. It’s pretty pathetic.

Howard could do something about the lack of live shows if he wasn’t such an ego maniac.  He has a number of people on his staff that could step in and do their own shows which the fans would find more interesting than replays of replays of replays.  I’d love to hear a number of the show staff live on air without Howard constantly interrupting.

It’s really ironic that Howard’s massive ego is what makes him not want to have other staff on air when he is not on himself yet he has established he really doesn’t want to be on the air anymore.

Keep in mind that in addition to the steadily decreasing amount of entertainment the Stern channels have been providing, Sirius has been f@cking subscribers with a wheelbarrow full of additional bullshit charges that has raised the subscription price by more than 40%.  We also have the joy of dealing with one of the worst customer service companies in the country.  Every call I have made to Sirius has had at least some element of frustrating stupidity.

Howard stopped using his Twitter account because it has been stuffed with people that are dissatisfied as I am with what we now get for our money. Howard has said several times on the air to fans, tough shit, take it or leave it basically.

Well for me the value/cost equation just isn’t there anymore.  I am pretty sure once this years annual subscription is up I will be pulling the plug, not that Howard gives a shit.

So first thing yesterday morning I was in the dermatologist office for my basal cell skin cancer surgery.  The procedure is pretty much old hat at this point with as many times as I have had it done.  It doesn’t mean I enjoy it.

After injecting the area with numbing solution, which burns going in, the doc goes to town after letting the stuff set up for a few minutes.  With the cancer spot being right in front of the ear I had a front row seat to the sounds of skin being cut away, stitched and cauterized.  It’s a pretty bizarre sensation.

After cutting away the section of skin I had a temporary bandage applied while they checked to see if they got all of the bad stuff out.  Luckily they did so I didn’t need a second cutting session.  I was stitched up and out of there by 9:30 am, a very quick turnaround for a mohs procedure.

I walked out of there with a copious amount of bandaging over the incision, I looked like I was shot in the head.  I am not sure how many times throughout the day I had to explain the bandaging to various people, explaining it wasn’t quite as dramatic as it looked.

Once the numbing wore off the area did not feel very good at all.  I had pounding and burning that radiated outward up towards the top of my head and downward into my jaw.  You weren’t supposed to take my pain relievers of choice aspirin or Advil since they have blood thinning characteristics that aren’t helpful when a fresh wound is stitched up.  Instead I was told to take Tylenol which didn’t seem to make a dent in the discomfort.  I also had to skip the gym, no elevated blood pressure allowed the first day.

Since I couldn’t go to the gym, on my lunch yesterday I grabbed the supplies I should need to do the brake job on the Tacoma.  I was able to get new lifetime pads and two new rotors with 2 year warranty for less than $90.  Any brake job at a garage that involves new rotors will typically set you back at LEAST three bills.

Now my expenses for this will be slightly higher because I need to get some additional supplies for the work that I don’t have like a torque wrench, brake fluid, high temp brake grease and a few other things.  But if this experiment enables me to handle most simple brake work in the future it will pay for itself immediately.

I also have a fresh Tacoma problem that I am going to try to fix simply at first. When I went back to my truck after my Tuesday gym session the truck didn’t want to stay running.  If I worked the gas to keep it alive the truck protested with even more stuttering and backfiring.  Then after a few minutes it returned to running normally.

Well the problem has continued and I narrowed down when it occurs, when trying to restart the truck within an hour or so of turning it off.  If the engine is totally cold it starts normally, but if it is warm it will sputter like a jalopy for a few minutes and then will eventually correct itself.

Doing some research revealed many possible causes of course so I am going to start with the simple/free stuff first.  I am going to clean the MAF, the throttle body and look for vacuum leaks in the various rubber hoses.  The truck is getting to the age where dry rot of such items will happen.

Another possible cause is the IAC valve. (idle air control)  Evidently this valve can get gummed up with carbon.  I can try to clean it indirectly by dumping a ton of carb cleaner through the throttle body. However to properly clean the IAC it should really be removed which from what I read can be a pain in the ass, especially since it involves some brass screws that are very prone to stripping. I am crossing my fingers that I can kill the problem without having to try to rip down to the IAC.  Looks like my weekend is going to be chock full of Tacoma maintenance.

I gave Randall my RROD repaired 360 a few weeks ago.  Evidently it is still going strong for him.  However I noticed some weird shit going on with my Hulu account recently where stuff was disappearing from my queue and items were showing up in viewing history that I didn’t watch.

Well it seems that Randall’s Xbox 360 was still writing his Hulu activity to my Xbox Live profile.  After he removed my profile for the hard drive the weirdness stopped.  When I was reviewing the viewing history I saw a documentary that Randall had watched called The Future of Food.  I am always interested in information about how f’d up our food chain is so I watched it.

The film focuses on how “patenting life” has become a huge financial windfall for corporations.  One of the biggest and most evil examples of this is a company named Monsanto.  The depth of their treachery is far too vast and involved to outline here.  Instead I recommend you watch this Cliff Note’s video here or better yet search Hulu or Netflix for the film yourself and watch it. Get educated on where your food chain is now and where it is headed.  You will not be pleased to see that the food industry is just another example of what happens when corporations are allowed to run wild.

Oh FYI, one of Michelle Bachman’s stances is she thinks the food industry needs much LESS regulation.  After watching this documentary I guarantee you will see just how misguided that viewpoint is.

How ironic that I just received an email from Credo about those Monsanto bastards. Click here to sign the petition.

So I left work yesterday afternoon to go pick up Ali from the airport.  On the way I stopped at the house to pick up the girls in the party van.  As we approached Ali, who was standing by the curb both dogs were on the front seat with their heads out the window, it was cute.  Sadie wasted no time getting reacquainted with Ali’s lap on the way home.

It’s hard to believe but my home computer migration is pretty much done already.  Last night I completed it by reinstalling Sharepoint Designer 2007 on the new system. (which is now a free download from Microsoft by the way) It was the smoothest migration I can recall.  Ali was quite impressed with how quiet the new system is.

While Ali was away I drove the Camry Hybrid most of the time.  I rarely get to drive the car normally.  Well I noticed that the front brake pads are starting to squeak, a normal sign that the pads are nearing the end of their life.

I have done a decent amount of automotive maintenance in my lifetime but one thing I never attempted was brake work.  I suppose I deemed the ability to stop a car as something too important to be left in the hands of amateurs.  However that is about to change.  I did some research in what is involved in changing the disc brake pads on the Camry and it doesn’t appear to be difficult at all, basically 2 or 3 bolts hold on the brake calipers.

I hopped on the same website that I bought the Tacoma door lever bezel on and bought a set of long wear pads for $40 plus shipping.  I am anxious to see how my first brake job works out. A successful replacement would equate to at least a $100-$150 savings over what a garage/dealer would charge me.

I lost my fantasy football game this week by 5 points.  The big scapegoats are Desean Jackson and the Ravens defense.  After crushing the Steelers the week before the Ravens D turned into a bunch of pussies this week, only grabbing me a measly 5 points.  Jackson, who I had on my team last year has a very annoying pattern of inconsistency.  He will have a monster game and then basically disappear for a game or two.

So now Obama is making big headlines by proclaiming once again he is targeting the ultra-rich and the loopholes they have enjoyed since the Bush Tax Cuts were implemented in 2002.  To be honest, even though I strongly support the Bush cuts being rolled back yesterday, the statement by Obama rings a bit hollow with me.

When he campaigned in 2008 one of the things he guaranteed was the end of the Bush Tax Cuts. It didn’t happen.  Instead he offered them up as a sacrificial lamb of appeasement to the right in an unappreciated act of bipartisanship.  This pattern of appeasement has been seen repeatedly and repeatedly it has resulted in nothing positive, unless you are one of the corporations enjoying record profit taking.

Trying to trot out this promise with renewed vigor just doesn’t hold water for me.  I am much more impressed by action.  Unfortunately his window to show me any appreciable change closed once the Tea Party loonies got a foothold in congress.

My Saturday got off to a 4am start since I had to time another race.  This was going to more of a challenge than normal since I would be doing all timing related duties myself instead of having my faithful sidekick Ali helping out.  This was a new race, held at a local hospital.  The venue was really nice with ample parking and full access to the building lobby for bathroom facilities.

Luckily for me the race wasn’t huge in terms of numbers.  Even with the 35-40 walk up entries we only had a total of around 225 runners.  Even so I was quite busy, especially because I once again brought the additional timing equipment to do a chip start.  I was quite eager to atone for the failed chip start from the last race.

I ran out to the start line with about 10 minutes to go to start time and hurriedly got the box set up.  Initially I had a few issues getting connected to the box but it seemed to just be because the Elite box takes considerably longer to boot up and connect to the network than our STK Lite unit.  It was actually a decent race to use the chip start since the road the race started on was narrow, we had people 100 feet or more back from the start line.

I actually only had one of the two mats up and running since the one receiver card was sent out to Ipico for repair.  One mat was enough apparently as I successfully captured the runner start times. I was happy.

In general I was really happy with the way the race turned out.  Like I said it was a nice venue, the timing went smoothly and they had a nice spread of post race refreshments, enough for double the amount of people.  I was proud to have handled it alone as well.

Once I got home and finished up the post race work I immediately dove into chores, fully intending to get everything done.  Doing the manual labor was made more difficult by a right shoulder that was KILLING me.  Any motion that involved the right arm radiated pain from my shoulder.  Great, not only do I have a right knee that is not getting better, now my shoulder is f’d up. I tried to compensate by using my left arm wherever possible, even in tasks where it was awkward to do so.

I headed into the bathroom and buzzed my hair.  Despite my threats to bore everyone by taping the session I decided against it.  It turned out pretty well although I noticed a few stray hairs I might need Ali to attend to.

I worked relentlessly and got both the inside and outside work done by around 3.  I then headed out with the girls in the party van for some errands, they love errands.  One of those stops was at Best Buy.  The intention was to look at CPU fans.  I recently had replaced two fans in my 5 year old computer in an attempt to eliminate some annoying noises.  I was successful in quieting most of them but there was still an intermittent high pitched sound that drives Ali crazy.

So the CPU cooler Best Buy sells was something like $70 bucks. It was a big, gawdy thing.  I started running scenarios through my head.  I had no guarantee that the CPU fan was the source of the noise.  If I replaced the thing and the noise still lived, I was going to be majorly annoyed.

Just for the hell of it I started walking down the aisle where new systems are located.  I spotted an Lenovo mini-tower on sale.  As I examined the specs it seemed decent with 6 gigs of RAM and a 1TB HDD.  I took a picture of the snap tag and was redirected to the Best Buy site.  The customer reviews for the system were overwhelmingly positive, describing the system as a good value for the money.

The system utilizes a Pentium 620 processor which is low on the totem pole as far as CPU power nowadays but still a nice upgrade from my aging, power hungry, hot as an oven Pentium D system.  I justified the purchase as something Ali would endorse since it would eliminate the noise problem once and for all.  I justified it to myself by noting that for the last 15 years I regularly would replace my computer every 12-18 months.  I was now around 60 months, it was time.

The one upgrade I did have to address on the system was the built in graphics which are not up to snuff.  I picked out a Nvidia 545 card with 1.5gb of memory to handle my gaming needs on the system. I rung up my purchase and happily carried my system out of the store.  I was pretty excited to update my home system since it has been so long since I built my current full size tower.

When I got home I immediately noticed something in front of the left fence line.  A closer look revealed it was a turtle. I wasn’t sure what direction he wandered in from or where he was hoping to go.  All I knew is I didn’t want to see him wind up as turtle road kill, something I see far too often in this shitty, thoughtless driver infested area.

As I picked him up he hissed a little bit but then settled down.  He actually had his head poking out a bit as we walked to the far back of the property.  I sat him down by one of the fill pits that transforms into a pond during rainy season, figuring he may enjoy it back there.  He was several hundred yards away from any roadways at least.

Now of course I had a shitload of work to do when it came to migrating my old computer to my new computer.  My plan had multiple stages.  First I pulled the internal 2TB hdd from my old system that is used for back up and installed it in the Lenovo.  I then took my old computer into the hobby room and attached it to the network connection in there and turned it on.  My plan was to copy files from it over the network as well as using a RDP connection to it to verify/check configuration settings. I also installed the upgraded graphic card in the Lenovo while the case was apart.

So I put the new Lenovo in place.  It is a mini-tower form factor, significantly smaller than the full size tower it was replacing.  It was nice and quiet when I turned it on, I really couldn’t hear it at all, Ali will be pleased.

The first thing I needed to do was join my home domain.  This exposed the first hurdle.  The new computer came preloaded with Windows 7 Home Premium which does not support joining a domain, great.  Now Microsoft is “nice” enough to bundle in the ability to upgrade your OS to other versions on the fly.  I could upgrade to Windows Professional for $89 or to Windows Ultimate, which I was already running on the old system, for $139.  Ouch.  Well the last thing I felt like doing was spending that much money to get a version of Windows 7 up and running that work on my domain.  It could quickly turn what was intended as a bargain purchase into not much of one.

Well just for the hell of it, I thought I would try using my product key from the copy of Windows Ultimate I received for hosting that fake Windows 7 launch party.  I did not expect it to work as I recalled that the copy I had supposedly would only work/activate once.  Well imagine my surprise when the Windows Anytime Upgrade took the code.  Within about 10 minutes I was up and running with Ultimate, very sweet.

I spent a good portion of the rest of the evening starting the migration process which surprisingly wasn’t all that bad.  Since I keep most of my data in an organized manner, moving it across was pretty straight forward.  All of the software I needed to reinstall I could download from the web.  I even got WoW moved across Saturday night and was very happy to see I was holding a steady 60 FPS no matter where I was in the game.

I fell asleep quite content with my Saturday.  Topping off a solid day of getting stuff done with a new pc purchase gave me the warm and fuzzies.

Despite having more work to do on the computer swap, I hit bed early since I was getting up early to do water support for Michelle.  It was an early bedtime kind of weekend, despite being solo.  I turned off the light before 9pm on Friday night.

I had my alarm set for 5am Sunday however I woke up on my own at 4, how nice.  I figured I would get up and get ready, plus I could do some more computer migration work.  I was supposed to meet up with Michelle at 6:30.  She was actually starting her run at 4am, running around her development. She had a total of 23 miles to cover.

I got there early due to my early wake up.  I figured I would ride around the development and try to find her.  I was unsuccessful, instead I just met her at our designated spot at 6:30.  I was surprised that Michelle had already got 13 miles in and had 10 to go.

I had made some adjustments to make my role as bike support more comfortable.  I pulled the clip pedals off and threw on regular mountain bike pedals.  I also doubled up on my butt padding by wearing my spandex tri shorts under my baggy bike shorts. The two changes definitely helped.

Doing the bike support wasn’t bad at all.  Michelle had a strong run, only really slowing down the last 2-3 miles when the sun was rapidly heating things up. We finished up a little after 8:30.  Michelle thanked me for the support which I was more than happy to do, I know support really helps with runs that are that long.

I had brought stuff along to swim at the water park but I decided against it.  The park didn’t open up for over an hour and I figured I could make better use of my time working more on the computer migration. Instead I grabbed a large coffee from DD and headed home.

A friend of mine had posted a clip of the ending of the Mayweather/Ortiz fight.  It was quite the scene. By all accounts Mayweather was winning the fight easily although in the final round it was pretty apparent that although Mayweather was outpointing Ortiz, he wasn’t really hurting him.

Ortiz actually was putting Mayweather against the ropes a few times, dropping some bombs.  Well during one exchange Ortiz did an obvious, deliberate head butt, a dirty move for sure.  The ref immediately flagged Ortiz for doing so and took a point away.  Ortiz, to his credit,  knew it was shitty, hugged Mayweather and presumably apologized.

So after the ref finished the point deduction he was looking away for some reason.  I don’t know if he ever uttered the command “FIGHT” to signify the resumption of the match.  Well obviously Ortiz thought action was not resumed as he had both of his hands down by his sides as Mayweather smacks him in the face.  Ortiz is obviously surprised by this but instead of putting his hands up, he looks to the ref, I assume to say WTF?? Well Mayweather follows with another punch that lands squarely on Ortiz’s unprotected chin, knocking  him silly.  Ortiz’s hands were clearly down when both punches were delivered. Even if the punches were legal, there was no way to classify them as anything but cheap.  Obviously Ortiz thought time was still out.

So after the controversial finish we are treated to even more fireworks when Larry Merchant interviews Mayweather, asking him the obvious questions about the ending of the fight.  Well a few questions in Mayweather loses it and screams at Merchant, saying he has always been critical of Floyd and that he doesn’t know shit about boxing.   As he walks away from Larry, Merchant fires back that if he was 50 years younger (Larry is pushing 80) he would kick Mayweather’s ass.  It was GREAT.

It was the most interesting thing that I have seen come out of boxing for at least a decade if not more.  You know there HAS to be a rematch.

Despite my best intentions, I was unable to stay awake for the entire Eagles game, falling asleep for good early in the second half.  Watching a game in bed is a recipe for shuteye.  Well it appears I was lucky to miss the ending.

The Eagles had a 31-21 lead going into the 4th quarter and collapsed.  Vick left the game with a concussion in the 3rd quarter but even so, a team with a reasonably solid defense could close that game out. Instead they fell flat and lost a game by all accounts they should have won easily.

Last night during the game they flashed a stat that revealed just how bad the Eagle D was last year and possibly this year.  Last year 76% of the time an opposing offense entered the red zone, they scored a touch down.  The Eagles rated dead last in the league.  In fact, no team in over a decade has posted such a miserable defensive red zone performance.  No wonder Howdy Doody was shown the door. Last night the Eagles set the fail bar even higher, allowing the Falcons to score a TD in all FIVE of their red zone appearances, sad.

It seems the core of this problem is the round robin linebacking crew the Eagles have had the last several years.  This year the Eagles are starting a rookie at MLB, Casey Matthews.  Thus far it seems the only thing he shares with his outstanding LB brother Clay is the long hair.  Casey has been in a word, awful.

The good news I guess is it is early in the season.  Hopefully there is enough time to do something about it.

I was surprised that when I woke up on Sunday my right shoulder was dramatically better.  I hardly felt any pain at all.  It felt so good that I almost went outside and did a bar session but I reconsidered, erring on the side of caution.  The last thing I needed was to injure it again.

I wish I would have a similar miraculous recovery from my right knee issues.  I still have persistent, deep stiffness and soreness in the joint, especially when getting up from the seated position.  It seemed like even biking with Michelle aggravated the knee a bit.  I need to get this sorted out.

So today I receive an email from the president of Netflix, Reed Hastings.  The letter started off being an apology for the recent ridiculous decision to dramatically increase the price of their service essentially doubling the cost to the consumer if they want to have both DVD’s in the mail AND online streaming.   He starts off trying to explain why the change was made. Ok, that’s nice that he is at least making an effort.  However as I read further I was in disbelief.

Reed goes on to explain that Netflix is making further changes to their service, breaking the DVD part of their offering into another entity called Quickster.  Quickster is going to be a totally separate site, while the streaming part of the business will still be called Netflix.

This is an incredibly idiotic move, especially on the back of a price increase that already flushed a number of customers away.  Let me explain why.

Currently when you search for a title you will see if it is available via DVD AND via online streaming.  If it is available via streaming, there would be no reason to wait for the DVD to arrive in the mail.  Well with the new proposed arrangement you would no longer have this ability.  You could wind up renting a DVD in Quickster even though it is available via streaming from Netflix.  The two sites do not interact so the only way you can tell if this is the case is to search both sites.

So Netflix’s brilliant strategy is to RAISE prices and offer LESS convenience.  I don’t know anything about Reed Hastings but if this was his brainchild he is a dipshit, no doubt about it.

I love what Netflix offered me but these recent developments make me think more and more about going without.  I don’t enjoy dealing with stupid companies.

So once I fed the dogs I hurried out the door to get to the Ave Maria Publix, a tradition when Ali is out of town.  The reason I needed to hurry was because the store closes at 7pm. Catholic town shuts down early.  Even though students are back on campus it didn’t make a dent in the amount of people at the store.  The main lot had less than 10 cars in it.

Shopping at the Ave Maria Publix always takes some getting used to since the layout is rearranged and condensed from what I am accustomed to with our normal super sized Publix.  I went down most aisles alone, only occasionally having to pass an employee facing shelves.

At the checkout I actually had to wait in a line of one.  It wasn’t too bad though since they only had one register open and nobody even bagging.  I genuflected as I walked out of the store and said a few hail mary’s on the way home.

My buddy at work who endorsed Dexter very early on also had been encouraging me to throw Breaking Bad into my Netflix queue.  I have never been disappointed in his television recommendations in the past so I finally got around to getting my first dvd yesterday.  I threw the DVD into my Xbox before bed and started watching.  By the time I turned the Xbox off I had watched all 3 shows on the 1st DVD, it was after midnight.

The premise of the show is really different.  A chemistry teacher that had to work a second job at a carwash to get by finds out he has lung cancer.  In order to provide for his family since he won’t be around all that long he decides that he would embark on a career of cooking crystal meth, putting his chemistry knowledge to practical use.  The lead is played by the dad from Malcolm in the Middle.

It’s a great show, trust me.  You WANT to see it.

This solo weekend will be quite busy.  I have a race to time tomorrow.  Not having Ali around will put a lot more demands on me.  I am hoping the race doesn’t have a bunch of walk up entries.

When I get home I surely will want to try to knock out all available house chores before the sun goes down Saturday.  Then Sunday morning I will be up and out early providing water support for Michelle for her long, long run.

I’d like to get some time to buzz my hair as well. I may video the session, demonstrating my new and improved technique.  Having my hair high and tight will be a good thing with my skin surgery next week by my ear.

Yesterday Jeremy linked me to a picture of an elite female cross fit winner.  Where is she you ask?  On the right.  Yes, the little muscle bound asian is named Kristan Clever.  Yes, she looks like a total he.

Jeremy and I discussed Kristan and her appearance.  I think her marine haircut is the biggest obstacle in seeing her as a woman.  Well that and the huge shoulders, ripped arms and thick neck.  Still if she had a ponytail I think it would make a big difference.

All I know is she can do more pull ups than I can.

I dropped Ali off at the airport this morning.  She had a flight that would make a rooster yawn at 6:30 am.  We piled in the party van and brought the girls with.  Sadie rode shotgun on Ali’s lap the entire way.  It’s a relatively quick trip for Ali as she will be returning Monday afternoon.

So on my way home last night I stopped at Pet Supermarket to grab some dog food.  After grabbing the 3 cases of the expensive dog food as well as some bird food I made my way to the counter.  On the counter were a number of items including half a dozen cans of dog food, a large bag of dry food and a couple other things.  As I approached I asked the clerk if these were somebody’s since nobody was on the other side of the counter.  He told me the woman went out to her vehicle to grab some coupons she had.  Ok fine, I told him I would go interact with the African Grey and another parrot they had in the store.

I saw the woman had returned so I made my way up to the counter to patiently wait.  She had pushed a couple pieces of paper at the guy.  I wasn’t paying attention at first but I soon realized there was a conflict brewing.

Evidently the coupons the woman retrieved were Petco coupons, not Pet Supermarket.  Pet Supermarket actually does honor coupons from competitors for items.  One of the coupons was for a $1 off a can of the canned food she picked out.  Ok, no problem.  The other coupon was for 10% off your entire purchase.  That was a problem.

The manager explained to this woman that they honor competitor coupons for merchandise but can not honor generic catch all discounts since they are not redeemable to a manufacturer.  It made sense to me.  Well this didn’t make sense to this woman and she was bitching mightily about it. She argued that that the store should basically accept any coupon from any pet store, regardless of what it is for.

Well when she realized she wasn’t going to get her 10% spiff, she said all she was going to buy was the single can of dog food that she will get the $1 off for, leaving her other pile of shit on the counter.  I at this point had waited at least 5 minutes while this circus went on, I was annoyed.  The bitch marched out of the store with her single can of food.  I guess she showed them.  I hope that was her dinner.

Yesterday Ali texted me this picture from her parking lot at work. At first the freakout reflex kicked in.  When I saw the tan car underneath the other car it looked like our Camry at first glance.  After closer inspection I was relieved to see it wasn’t.

Evidently some old woman in her 70’s that obviously should not be behind the wheel of a car anymore smashed the gas instead of the brake and pulled a Dukes of Hazard on the other vehicle.

She was quite lucky to only smash a single vehicle.  She was even luckier she didn’t plow over a person.  I understand old people are resistant to losing their drivers license and the loss of mobility that accompanies it.  However many of these individuals are truly dangerous behind the wheel.  At a minimum, more frequent testing of their driving skills should be required once a certain age threshhold is passed.

After my post work mini-workout and dog dinner prep, I headed outside on the tractor.  We actually have had 3 or 4 rain free days which allowed the standing water on the property to dry up.  I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to mow down the high grass that was sitting underwater for a few weeks. Despite the water being gone, the ground underneath in some spots was quite squishy, resulting in some more tire spinning/mud slinging action.

Highlights from this evening may include a trip to the Ave Maria Publix and if my heart survives that I may even clean Tuki’s cage.

Ali had mentioned how it would be cool to see a Broadway show while we are in NYC.  Well I am not exactly a theater kind of guy but I am a super hero guy.  I was happy that Ali was open to seeing the Spider Man show.  After doing some research I secured us two tickets the Tuesday before we fly back home.  They weren’t cheap of course but I think it will be a great addition to the trip.

The Escape from Miami triathlon is coming up in a couple weeks.  This was the first triathlon I ever participated in last year.  Ali has been signed up to do the Olympic distance event this year.  I had not decided if I was going to do it again or not this year.

My initial reservation was because the event was brutal, particularly the run at the end back and forth over a massive, steep overpass.  Since then I have done 3 other triathlons and have done better each time so I am pretty sure the Escape wouldn’t be quite as daunting this time around.

However more recently the issue has become more of a physical one.  My right knee is really bothering me right now.  When I get up from sitting any period of time my first several steps have a pronounced limp from stiffness and soreness in the joint.  My right knee has always had soreness from running but it was typically short term and would be ok by the following day.  Well since the Central Park run that has not been the case.

After my 7 mile run on Saturday the stiffness/soreness returned and is still sticking around.  It’s bad enough that the normal Wednesday squat routine at the gym is off the table.

So anyway this knee thing helped make my decision for me regarding the Escape, I’m not going to do it.  I need to get healthy enough to pull off the Tough Mudder in December which dwarfs the Escape in terms of punishing your body.

I had ideas of maybe just tagging along to the Escape with Ali and the girls to serve as a photographer but I’m not going to do that either.  First it allows me to watch the dogs instead of bugging my mom to come out for a day. Second watching others participate in athletic events that I normally would do myself doesn’t do much for my self esteem.  It will just be a formula for frustration. I also got the sense from Ali that she would kind of be into it just being an “all girls” weekend anyway.

I made the mistake of watching some clips from the latest republican debate.  It just aggravates the hell out of me.  The only candidate I like on that side is Ron Paul.  Romney, Perry and Bachman make my skin crawl for different reasons.

Yesterday for some reason an odd event from my childhood was floating through my head.  When I was a kid I had an autograph book.  I don’t really remember the real intent of the book but in a nutshell you were supposed to get the signatures of various common everyday people like a policeman, the grocer, firefighter etc…  Well I was into completing the book with all of the signatures of the various types of people.

I had actually gotten a few of the signatures and was sort of proud of my progress.  Well my Dad one day thought he would be helpful and signed different spots in the book I was missing with fake names.  One of them he signed as John Q Public.  I recall quite vividly being very upset that he did that, forever tarnishing my autograph book, invalidating it.

Why I was thinking about this yesterday I couldn’t tell you but all I know is it is a memory that is burned into my head.  I can still exactly picture what John Q Public’s signature looked like.

Yesterday I forgot to report on how the Directv repair call went on Friday evening, maybe because it was such a simple fix.  As you may recall, I had a couple theories on why I had zero signal on my receiver.  One was it was related to the heat mark I saw on the access card.  The other was the dish was bumped out of alignment when the house was painted in March.

The first thing the tech did was go outside to check the dish.  He installed a new grounding block and fine tuned the dish alignment.  In the process he cut the end off my HDTV antenna cable, thinking it was unused.  I told him what it was and he put a new end on the cable.  His portable signal meter indicated he had good signal out at the dish. Ok so the problem lies inside.

He takes his signal meter inside and connects to the coax coming out of the wall, no signal.  Hmmmm, wtf.  The tech said he needed to get behind the tv to check the port.  I told him that before he did that, it might make more sense to go up in the attic where the cables go into splitters.

Well 5 minutes in the attic revealed the problem.  The wrong cable was hooked up to the receiver. Of course I was annoyed as this is a simple problem however I was stumped trying to figure out when it would have gotten f’d up.  When I installed the HDTV antenna last year I had to redo those splitters but that was way before the end of football season so I should have noticed the problem right away. Well however/whenever, it happened, the problem was fixed.

Directv annoys me with the way they handle their Sunday Ticket package.  For a few years they were forcing you to pay extra if you want to watch the games in HD which was bullshit.  Then last year they changed that requirement and included HD in the package for free, gee, how nice.  Well they also offer to make the package available for streaming via an Iphone, Ipad, Android or PC but the outrageous $350 you pay for the Sunday Ticket isn’t enough to include this service, you need to drop another $50 in their lap for it.  F that.  I am so sick of service providers raping customers.  I guess the only way we can fight back is with our wallet.

So the next DVD in my Netflix queue (speaking of money grabbing assholes) was Jackass 3.5, the dvd only follow up to Jackass 3D.  3.5 basically has a bunch of stunts that weren’t deemed as good enough for the theater version.  It was in a word, lame.  I just found it a chore to get through.  The stunts just weren’t all that entertaining or funny.  At this point I can say I have have had my fill of Jackass.  If there is a Jackass 4D or 5D sequel in the works I won’t be checking it out.  Thanks for the laughs over the years Johnny but the series has run it’s course, 3.5 gets a C.

Woot off today, FYI.