Archives August 2012

I was shocked when I saw the news about Andy Reid’s son being found dead at Eagles training camp.  Even with his well documented problems with drug abuse, I had no idea that things were this bad.  I am sure it is a rough existence for a kid growing up where their father is actually more involved with their job than the family. The incredible time requirements for a NFL coach are well documented.  It can’t be helpful to the family dynamic.

There has been some cool space news the past few days.  Last week high resolution pictures were released that should finally end the speculation regarding if we actually landed on the moon or not.  There has been a long running conspiracy theory that the landing was staged and shot in a movie studio out of the US’s desperate attempt to prove superiority to the Soviets in space during the height of the Cold War.

I have read a bunch of the moon conspiracy theories, some of the evidence presented in them seem quite plausible.  I still think there is a possibility that some of what was fed to the public was false. However these new images supposedly show our discarded equipment on the surface of the moon.  You can even see the trail of footprints left by the astronauts. Since there is no  atmosphere and no weather on the moon,  everything is basically as it was left 40 years ago.

The real big space news is the huge, car size rover successfully landed on Mars last night.  If you want to see why this landing was so impressive, watch the video below.  It simply amazes me.

Well this weekend didn’t follow any traditional blueprint.  I had gone into it with two goals, get the oil changed in all three vehicles and pressure wash the pool deck/cage, one of my least favorite home maintenance tasks.

I tried to clear out some of the chores ahead of time by heading outside Friday evening and getting the weeding done.  While I was out there I snipped off some kale.  I figured I would try throwing it on top of my Friday night pizza.  I simply washed it off, cut it up a bit and threw it on top.  It actually turned out quite well.

So Saturday morning I tried firing up the pressure washer.  It didn’t want to start.  I have had this pressure washer for probably close to 10 years.  It already had a long term oil leak problem so I decided I was just going to get another washer.  After all, I had the mental target of getting the pool area cleaned so I had no choice, right? 🙂

I also told Ali I was going to pick up the dogs for the day.  Before I went to her place I stopped and got my oil change supplies which were substantial, in total I needed 16 quarts of oil and three filters.   It added up to a good chunk of change.  I softened the blow by utilizing 20 of my Autozone spiff dollars.

I then picked up the girls in the Tacoma and headed to Lowes to look at pressure washers.  I had a 10% off movers coupon I scammed off the Lowes website that I planned to use to save me a few bucks.

I found a Troybilt 3000 PSI model with a Honda motor that looked good.  It turned out the only one they had left was the display model.  I was a little leary about taking the display unit but the Lowes guy assured me it was just put together a couple days ago and should be fine, ok great.

When we got home I wanted to tackle the oil changes first.  All three fluid swaps went smoothly.  It’s funny how vehicles feel like they run better right after an oil change.  I’m sure it’s just my imagination though.

Next up was the shitty pressure washing, although having a new pressure washer to tackle the job admittedly made the job seem less arduous.   Well that feeling quickly faded and turned into frustration.

For the first 5 minutes of pressure washing I was really impressed, the new pressure washer felt noticeably stronger.  The higher pressure H2O was doing a great job of blasting green and black mildew off the white aluminum cage.

I had decided to do the outside of the pool cage first.  As I got around to the back side of the cage I noticed the pressure washer was acting strange.  When I would squeeze the trigger the engine would start to labor and the rpm’s would drop until I released it.  If I held the trigger long enough the motor would eventually shut off.  The longer I ran the washer, the worse this behavior became.  Eventually I could only blast water a few seconds at a time.

Well of course I was frustrated.  I got the new washer with the expectation it was going to make life easier.  Instead now I had to figure out what was wrong.  So I looked at a few things.  The water inlet looked clear and free of obstruction.  The oil level was a bit low so I added some.

The manual also said that having the water feed hose being longer than 50 feet could be a problem.  Well my hose was like 150 feet long but I never had an issue using a long hose with my other washer so I doubted that was the problem either.

So after checking out these things I started the washer back up and it ran great, for 2 or 3 minutes. Once again the erratic behavior returned.  I punched the off button angrily, knowing that there is SOMETHING wrong with this unit, damn display models…  The knowledge that I had to make a return trip to Lowe’s to address the problem did not make me smile.

It was now getting later in the afternoon and I had only scratched the surface of the pressure washing ahead of me.  I loaded the girls and the pressure washer back up in the truck and headed back to Lowe’s.  I told them there was something wrong with this one but I already know they didn’t have another one for me to exchange it with.  I figured I would just be getting my CC refunded and I would need to get one somewhere else.

The customer service rep checked with the Lowes in Estero and said they had 6 of them in stock.  She said I could go up there and get another one, not exactly convenient, but ok.  I was able to leave my problematic washer in Naples and headed up to Estero with a Lowes gift card they gave me to use to get the new washer to avoid having to redo the transaction on my credit card.

I threw my new in the box Troybilt in the back of the Tacoma, hoping to get better results although I knew I would not get time to try it out until Sunday. After dropping the dogs back off at Ali’s place I headed home.  I had time to put the new, new pressure washer together but that was it before I had to hop in the shower to get ready for a fund raiser.

The fund raiser was for the brother of a local triathlete/running club guy.  Actually it was to help raise funds to help his family travel to London to watch his brother compete in his first ever Olympic games in wrestling.

The event was very nice and turnout was strong.  There was a keg of beer and two pans of paella.  I actually watched and later helped a little bit in the paella preparation.  It was interesting to me to see how it all comes together.

I made sure to get my fair share of Bud Light throughout the evening as well.  I actually almost forgot to eat at all but eventually I grabbed a plate of the paella which was quite good.

I wound up spending the vast majority of the event outside helping out.  Compared to the other option of milling about and making small talk it was definitely the better option for me.

Ali was there, actually she was the one who told me about the event in the first place.  I really didn’t see/talk to her very much at all until the tail end of the evening.

At one point Jake got up in front of the crowd and gave a little presentation about his brother’s journey to the Olympics.  It was quite touching as he got choked up several times talking about it.  Obviously Jake is VERY close to his brother.

I stuck around to the very end of the event, helping with clean up duty, figuring it was a good idea to allow some time to pass before driving since I had a decent amount of Bud Lights.  Sean, my running club buddy with the same sounding but differently spelled name told me a bunch of people were going over to South Street, the place where I typically will hang out after board meetings.  Hmm well it was already after 10 at this point but I had no major plans for Sunday besides labor so I figured why not?

Well I had never been to South Street on a Saturday night, wow.  It was PACKED.  It was hopping with live music and alcohol flowing everywhere.  Our group had scored a table in the corner of the back room.  I sat down and just did some people watching, there was a LOT to see.

It was so loud in there it was difficult for me to carry on much conversation.  They had the Olympics showing on a number of the tv’s so that got a lot of my attention.  I also spent some time hanging on the outskirts of the bar with Sean.  The circle of people he knows is simply staggering, he is a true social butterfly.

Later in the night I was sitting back down at the table and was talking to Jake’s girlfriend.  Ironically, although I heard her earlier in the evening, it was only until later, when things quieted down a bit that I realized she had a British accent.  She seemed very nice.  She told me how her and Jake were heading over to London to see his brother compete and then are following up with a visit to Italy.  It sounds like a great trip.

So it was getting later and later and I was still there.  I had taken a 5 hour energy earlier.  I have to tell you, those things work.  I have used them several times in the last few months and without fail they seem to really combat the normal drowsiness that would hit me at anytime past 10PM.  It was now after 1AM and still was feeling human.

Well eventually everyone from our group had packed it in, leaving just myself and Sean to close things out.  Which we literally did, not leaving South Street until 2AM, a normal occurrence for Sean, a first for me.  Like I mentioned before, Sean has the gift of gab, something that helps him quite a bit when it comes to dealing with women.  My lack of this gift definitely is a negative in this regard, perhaps I hope that I can absorb some of Sean’s gift via osmosis.

We talked about various things to wind up the night.  I actually drank very little over that roughly 4 hour period.  I had one Miller Lite and half of someone else’s unwanted beer.  I dropped the top on the SSR and headed home with my Pandora Smashing Pumpkins channel playing loudly.

When I finally got home instead of going directly to bed I instead answered email, which made little to no sense.  Finally the 5 hour energy wore off and I drifted to sleep somewhere around 3AM.  Did you know they have Olympic coverage on NBC at 3AM? Neither did I.

I woke up Sunday morning in disbelief when I looked at my clock.  It was 10AM.  I don’t sleep till 10AM, ever.  On a typical summer Sunday by 10AM I will have biked, maybe run and be ready to hop in the pool to swim.  To just be cracking open my eyelids at that time  was bizarre and not exactly a welcome feeling.  I really don’t like starting my day late.

So I got up and looked at my perspective day.  I knew it was going to sort of suck.  My pressure washer merry go round episode the day before meant I had hours of wet work ahead, plus I hadn’t even touched the stuff inside the house that needed to get done.  If you know me at all you know that I HATE having my weekend back loaded with work.

So I drug the new pressure washer onto the pool deck, filled it with gas and crossed my fingers that what I experienced with the display model was an isolated incident.  Evidently it was, I spent 4 solid hours out there blasting away.  The new washer performed quite well. making the job slightly less annoying.  Unfortunately the washing process revealed a few screen trouble areas.  There are several sections that are torn along the spline, including one roof section, meaning I now have screen repair to do as well.

I have never tried to to replace/repair a section of screen on the top of the cage.  I am not sure if I want to try it or not.  I have these visions of me falling through the cage that aren’t very appealing.

So finally I finished up with the pressure washing.  My reward for completion was to head inside and knock out the indoor chores.  My mood was not light and fluffy.

One of the things that had to get done inside was my weekly bill paying session.  Part of this process once a month is pulling out the credit card receipts from a year ago (they are kept in a folder for each month) and shredding them.

Well last August was the epic Ireland trip so in my hands were all the credit card receipts from the adventure.  Instantly I was transported back there, each receipt had a back story to it.  It seems hard to believe that a year has passed already since the trip, the memories all felt so fresh.

Of course it is inevitable that reliving those memories delivered a sobering shot of pain.  The trip was filled with so many great experiences and fond memories, to contrast it with what is now our much different reality was just sort of sad. I allowed myself to dwell on it only briefly before I shredded the evidence.

It’s times like these that really make me feel like I need a total reboot of my situation.

The Chick-Fil-A bullshit has grown into an even bigger mess.  You know once Sarah Palin starts commenting on a situation it is a certified three ring circus.  The images of people wrapping around the store to “support” Chick-Fil-A literally made me sick to my stomach.  I mean really, this is the way you are going to show you give a damn?  Sheeple are so disappointing.

I was chatting to Homey about this yesterday and he was pissed off at the calls from gay activists groups to picket Chick-Fil-A locations to harass customers.  I think that behavior is out of bounds as well.

I just don’t get it.  It is all posturing that at the end of the day accomplishes NOTHING. Well nothing except giving Chick-Fil-A a lot of Jesus dollars from gay marriage opposing religious individuals.

My position is extremism, regardless of the cause, is something I don’t support.

Last night I tried a balancing move I never pulled off before, the one hand handstand.  It is one of the BB challenges this month.  I actually held it against the wall for 25 seconds.  It was cool.

This weekend I plan to do oil/filter changes on all three of my vehicles, I’ll be running a regular Jiffy Lube out of my garage.  The Tacoma is due because of mileage, the SSR and party van are ready based on time since neither of them are driven all that much.

So my contact from the county really is trying to get my FEMA flood insurance issue to go away.  He copied me on an email that was sent to Fiserv that in a nutshell said “Look here dumb ass, he isn’t in a flood zone and here is the proof”   He told me that he was successful getting the requirement dropped for somebody else.  I am crossing my fingers the strategy works in my case as well.

I left work early yesterday to go pick up Ali at the airport.  I went home, grabbed the dogs and headed back out in the van. Of course the dogs were thrilled to see Ali. Luckily after the first couple rocky days out at the house of “incidents”, Nicki settled down for the last half of their stay and was acting normally.

After dropping off Ali and the dogs I headed home since I had stuff to do.

So yesterday was “Support Chik-fil-a day” .  This was brought about by the backlash from a statement their CEO made opposing gay marriage.  There had been a call to boycott the restaurant chain for the statement.  I find this scenario stupid from many angles.

The biggest dunce hat goes on the head of the CEO. As the head of a large business that makes it’s money by selling food to the public, I would think CEO 101 states you should never utter a word about religious/social/political issues.  You will piss someone off and there is nothing to be gained by that in his position.

The call to boycott Chic-fil-a also seems like a bit of an overreaction.  I would be content to trust independent thinking individuals to be able to make this choice on their own if they found the statement to be annoying. (I do)  I don’t need someone to tell me to boycott a business, I just won’t go.

Then finally we have the people that are hiding behind “Freedom of Speech” as a veil to support their opposition to gay marriage.  Puh-lease…   I wonder if they would be so eager to support the CEO’s freedom of speech if he said he supported abortion, of course not…

So it looks like if the world is going to end in a few months it isn’t going to be via Nirubu (Planet X) as some people assumed.  If Nirubu was coming it was supposed to be almost as large as the moon in the sky by this point.  No worries, there are still plenty of ways the planet could still be obliterated…

Did you know you now can collect rewards for doing your searches on Bing?  Check out some of the stuff you can redeem the points for.  Not a bad deal at all.

I am all about getting back end perks for my normal everyday activities using things like my Amazon credit card, my Autozone points account, my DD punch cards and more.

In related news, I have averaged 3 bucks a day in ad dollars from You Tube the last few days, multiply that times 30.

So as promised, I dug into my personal flood insurance caper yesterday and as expected it lead to heaping mounds of frustration.  See if you can follow this long and twisty tale of stupidity.

My first call was to a local county government phone number that was identified as the flood insurance hotline.  This number was supposedly the place to go to get help with problems regarding the new flood maps.  I called twice and got voice mail, I left a message, hoping for a call back later.

My next call was to the credit union, I wasted my breath going into a detailed explanation of why I was not in a flood zone as the woman said that she was the wrong person to talk to.  She said the credit union doesn’t make the determinations, I had to contact FEMA.  Obviously she has gotten a number of complaints as she had the number to call readily available.

So I call the number given to me, talk to a woman, again give my background situation and again am told that she isn’t the one to talk to.  I had to talk to the department that specifically deals in LOMA’s (map amendments).  She gave me the number.

Ok so finally I was talking to the right person.  I explained to him how the bank is telling me I need flood insurance even though FEMA’s own maps say that is not the case.  Obviously whatever data the bank determination is utilizing is out of date.  I asked him how do I go about getting a LOMA to get this corrected?

I could hardly believe what he told me.  In order to get a LOMA I need to go through an application process.  There is a substantial form to be filled out.  I also need to include a copy of my deed and a photocopy of my FIRM panel (elevation/flood zone mapping).  I then have to mail this to FEMA and wait.  He said it can take up to 60 days to obtain a LOMA, if it is granted.

I was flabbergasted.  I think I literally said, “You are kidding, right?”

First of all, I only have 45 days to respond to the banks request for flood insurance, if I don’t respond by then they sign me up for flood insurance automatically at the highest premium rate.  I explained this to the guy on the phone.  He said he understood and that was why their official recommendation is the homeowner just buys the flood insurance and then if they get the LOMA they can USUALLY get their premium refunded.

So the official FEMA stance is I should buy flood insurance that I don’t need, that MIGHT get refunded once this clusterf is sorted out.    I followed up by pointing out the lunacy that I was being asked to jump through all of these hoops to prove that FEMA’s own data was correct, it was insane.

The guy on the other side of the phone understood my frustration, it simply does not make any sense but that is what is required to get a LOMA.  I asked why is it that a federal agency like FEMA can not simply punch in a home address and get their current flood zone information?  He couldn’t explain why, just that it doesn’t work that way.

I knew this guy was just the messenger and had absolutely no power to do anything but direct me into the bureaucratic pile of bullshit.  I told him to send me the form although it was looking like just paying an unnecessary $150 to a surveyor might actually be the least painful of my options, as silly as it is.

So later I got another brainstorm.  The flood insurance form said it was managed by a Fiserv, a huge company that is the back end to many banks.  On there was contact information so I figured what the hell, I’ll call them and ask why they are using incorrect data for flood zone determination.

So I get a guy on the phone and he has a HORRIBLE Indian accent, I could literally not understand him.  Eventually after many tries I conveyed to him what I wanted to find out.  He said he would have the person that handles flood zone inquiries call me back, great.

So I had left my cell phone number as my call back.  I get the call, on the other line is someone with an even more garbled Indian accent.  It was ridiculous.  I told the guy I could not understand him at all and asked him to call me back on my office hard line, which he did.

Talking to him on a real phone made little difference, his english was horrible.  I was so frustrated that I was obviously thrown into one of those infamous Indian call centers.  Trying to communicate what I needed was excruciating, time and again I would ask him what he said and he would simply repeat it in the same garbled english.  I was going insane by the end of the call.

The call was left at they would get back to me which I was 95% sure would never happen.  To be honest, I almost would prefer they didn’t, I despise when companies outsource their phone banks to India.  I am convinced it is a deliberate effort to frustrate customers to the point where they abandon action requests, plus companies love being able to pay pennies on the dollar for Indian phone armies.

So by the end of this series of phone calls I was done.  I realized that when my neighbor warned me that she could not get anywhere trying to sort out the same thing she wasn’t kidding.  I thought I would be able to plow my through to a solution.  Instead I slammed head first into a wall of apathy, paperwork and incompetence.

I had pretty much given in to just paying the money to get the survey.  It was a cheaper option than buying flood insurance I don’t require.  However later in the afternoon I actually got a call back from the local county flood hotline.  The woman I spoke to said they have gotten a number of calls from homeowners in my boat that are being asked to purchase unnecessary flood insurance.

The woman gave me the name of another guy whom has been working on these issues for other people.  So I made my 7th or 8th call of the day regarding this issue.  Finally I got some encouraging news.

The guy I talked to was already dealing with other credit union customers having the exact same problem.  He said he is working with them to get the problem corrected.  He asked for my info and said he would call me back with an update.

Well I was amazed when I got a call around 8PM from him.  He asked for some additional info but he said he was successful getting the designation fixed for another credit union customer and was hopeful he could do the same for me.  I am crossing my fingers.

Last night after work I ran over to Mom’s place to drop off some mail and have the girls visit her.  Mom was nice enough to make dinner for me as well.  It was a good visit.  Mom mentioned something to me about how she would like to replace her fridge with the one I turned off in the garage months ago.  Even though it is 12 years old, it is still probably half the age of what she has in her kitchen.

I told her she should have said something to me right away if she wanted it.  She is going to see if she can get the ok from her landlord to yank out the old one.

I also threw an old spare tv and vacuum cleaner that was taking up space in her closets into the van.  When I got home I sat them both by the road.  As expected, both items were gone when I got up this morning.