Archives 2012

Yesterday Ali asked me if I could pick up the dogs from daycare since she was going to be tied up at work until later.  Luckily I didn’t have plans last night so I could do it.  This was the first time I set foot inside the place.  I told the girl at the front desk I was there to pick up Nicki and Sadie. She headed into the large area that holds most of the dogs.

As I looked around the place it seemed nice enough.  The only thing I didn’t like was what my ears were hearing.  The area where the girls were kept was very noisy with dogs barking non-stop.  I mentioned to Ali that the noise level reminded me of a kennel.  To be fair, employees were walking around in the room at the time which may have been prodding the dogs to bark more for attention.  But the idea that Nicki particularly (Sadie adapts to anything) could be exposed to that noise for long periods of the day did not give me the warm and fuzzies.

Ali said that the dogs are interacted with and in different areas of the place throughout the day.  When Nicki and Sadie were brought out they were excited of course and seemed fine, not overly stressed out.  I took them back to Ali’s place and walked them quickly before heading out.

Last night I made a continuous push up attempt and posted it on my new YouTube channel.  In related news I also created and posted my last video on my old, Google AdSense banned channel.  The video is intended to steer my nearly 200 subscribers to my new channel.  It seems to be working as I woke up this morning with over 25 notifications of people signing up for my new YouTube home.

I have been working diligently on moving and relabeling my video library over to the new channel.  I moved everything I had in one spot on my system over but that only totaled 230 videos, my old channel had 356.  I have some OLD stuff that I will either have to download from the old channel and re-upload or find it in whatever directory it is hidden in.  Much of it is old volleyball and RC hobby stuff that I cut my YouTube teeth on years and years ago. I also don’t have any of the epic animated Jmo’s World on the new channel.

Doing this migration has exposed some of the weird ways that YouTube tries to flag video content on the fly.  For instance, when I uploaded my Tough Mudder and latest head shaving video (both large view grabbers on my old channel), they were both flagged as “needing more information” in order to monetize them.  Normally everything I upload is enabled for monetization because I have it turned on as a default.

Well obvious things can flag a video as not being defaulted to making cash like having a music track in the video.  Hell they will flag a video even if there is faint music playing on a radio in the background.  Well evidently they also will flag a video simply based on keywords in the video title.   As I mentioned above, these two videos were not turned on for ads.

So I did an experiment.  I deleted both of these videos, renamed them to something generic and shipped them back up to YouTube.  Monetization for both of them worked just fine.  I then went in and changed the name, added descriptions and meta tags as I normally would and everything all was still well.  Hopefully it stays that way.  My new channel just crossed 1000 total views, now it’s only 324,000 behind my old home.

Today is the release of the new WoW expansion.  Long time blog readers may have noticed that I talk about WoW very infrequently anymore.  That is because I play it much less.  Hell I didn’t play it at all for between 4 and 5 months.  With the new expansion coming out I started to play a bit within the last 2 weeks, trying to get the last of my 10 characters up to max level of 85 before the hamster wheel is once again reset. (new cap is 90)

I haven’t even purchased the expansion yet, until I get my last virtual self to 85 I won’t bother.  Of course this expansion promises a multitude of improvements, changes and new content to explore, just like all of the previous expansions to the game have promised.

My excitement level for the “new” game is mild at best, just as my overall interest in video/computer games has consistently declined as I inch closer to half a century on the planet.  I just have a lot of other stuff to do, most of it much more productive than building up a virtual self to be the best he can be.  I have enough things to improve in my real existence as is.

So Saturday morning I got up very early to go do the club run.  As I was leaving my house I saw a pile of roadkill right in front of the driveway.  It looked like an armadillo.  Then, I saw another armadillo along the neighbors fence line.  I can only assume this one and it’s smashed counterpart are the culprit for the many holes in both my and the neighbors property.  I have to admit, I did not feel my normal level of remorse when I saw the dead dillo in the road.  If I wasn’t pressed for time I would have tried to catch the other one.

So I went into the club run with conservative numbers in mind.  My right knee has been troublesome since the KOB vball tourney in mid-August.  I have run one three mile session on the treadmill in the last 6 weeks, that has basically been it.

Taking that into account, I figured it would be smart to only shoot for 4 or 5 miles.  I needed to get my running ramped up for the Tough Mudder but I don’t need to aggravate the injury. So not only did I plan to keep the distance down, I was looking for a rather leisurely pace so I could get my body acclimated again to distance.

Well the slower pace thing didn’t last very long.  My natural instinct to want to pass people took over almost immediately.  I moved up through the large group of runners and then came upon Matt who was running and talking to someone else.  Well Matt accelerated and hooked up with me.  I knew at that point my pre-run intentions were officially scuttled.  I would be running 7 miles and it would be at a decent clip.

Honestly I was kind of surprised that I was able to do 7 miles at a 9 minute mile pace without MAJOR complications. Yea I was tired but not gassed. The knee had some discomfort but not bad pain.

I picked up the dogs on the way home as Ali was going to work.  I had a number of things to address at home.  One of those things was going to be mowing but after another deluge Friday night the land was too swampy to bother.  I decided to just wait until things dry out later this week.

One of the things outside of normal chores I wanted to look at/fix was the battery in the Tacoma.  You may recall that after I replaced the starter I had some mysterious battery charging light issues that went away.  When I was looking into them I noticed the positive battery terminal had a TON of shit accumulated on it, despite the battery only being a year old.  At that time I gave the terminal and connectors a thorough cleaning and applied stuff that is supposed to prevent the corrosion from returning.

Well when I last changed the oil in the Tacoma I noticed the shit had returned in short notice.  I cleaned it off again.  The last time I had the hood open a week ago I noticed the corrosion returned AGAIN.  I also started seeing the battery light flicker off and on last week once again.  Ok I needed to look into this closer.  Under normal circumstances a battery should not corrode the terminals that quickly.

Getting the positive terminal off the battery was tough.  The corrosion had eaten into the nut and bolt that secures it, it was quite tough to break it free.

Well once I got it off I noticed something.  It looked like the positive terminal was loose, there was a crack around it’s base that leads into the battery.  It made sense.  This kind of corrosion is normally caused by leaking battery acid.  It seemed obvious that the acid could leak from the cracked casing.

I threw the battery into the van and took it back to Wal-mart where I bought it to get it replaced for free.  It was actually the second time I had been to the store I love to hate in a few hours.  I stopped there initially to grab more battery cleaning supplies.  While I was there I grabbed a new battery terminal to replace the badly corroded original.

I have to tell you, every time I go to the local Super Wal-mart, I feel like a hypocrite. The store represents everything that is wrong with America, as it sells dirt cheap made in China shit to an all consuming, fat, lazy, american population that stuff the aisles like mindless cattle.

As I walked around the store I found myself involuntarily just shaking my head at the humanity I was observing.  Maybe much like my slow transformation to a meatless diet, I can finally proclaim once and for all I will not buy another item from Wal-mart, ever.

So anyway, I got my new battery and battery terminal installed without issue.  I am hoping that is the end of my battery idiot light.

Saturday night I took my mom out to dinner at a place called the Fish House.  It was maybe 5 minutes away from mom’s place.  The nice thing about eating with mom is she typically wants to eat dinner early, meaning for the most part you miss the core of the dinner crowd.

The restaurant had a very casual feel, it kind of reminded a bit of the Snook Inn with outdoor seating, a seafood heavy menu and a relaxed atmosphere.  Mom and I sat in the covered sunroom style area. The restaurant is right on the water so you have a relaxing view as you wine and dine.  Both mom and I enjoyed our meals.  I would definitely take someone back there.

Over the weekend I had a couple odd wildlife sightings (besides the one alive and one dead armadillo).

When I was weeding the garden I pulled aside a 2×6 that is used to sit on while working.  To my amazement I was looking back at the face of a little mouse that had moved in to one of the raised beds during the last week.

After staring at me for a few moments he slowly backed down into his nest out of sight.  I put the board back in place as it was his makeshift roof.  Lucky for him, I currently have a lot of unused garden real estate until the winter planting season hits.

The other sighting was a small, young bird on the dash of the SSR.  The bird had somehow found itself on the dash of the truck (the top was down) and kept trying to escape through the windshield.

I was able to snap a picture shortly before he realized that flying the opposite direction was the ticket to freedom.

I also had a lot of buzzard visitors that came to dispose of the armadillo carcass.  I had no less than 20 of them hanging around.  These suckers are huge.  I could hear them hopping around the roof of the house while I was inside.

Sunday morning I did my second day of endurance work, riding 12.25 miles at a brisk pace (for me) and following up with 1200 in the pool.  Unlike the last time I swam at the water park in bathtub warm water, the temps were more suitable this time around.

The water park closes for the season next weekend. It sucks they close so early.  The weather here could easily support the place staying open into November but economics dictate otherwise.

The Eagles didn’t play until 4pm so that gave me some extra time to of course get things done.  After paying the bills I set the Scoobas loose on the hard surfaces while I used the carpet cleaner on the rest of the house.  After the dog excrement heavy prior weekend I figured a thorough cleaning would be a good idea.

I asked Ali if she wanted to bring the dogs over to watch the Eagles game which she did.  When she arrived I was on the phone with DirecTv.  When I flipped on the game I noticed that I was only getting the standard def broadcast, not the crystal clear HD that I normally receive.  When I tuned to the HD channels I was receiving a prompt to BUY the HD game for the low, low price of 44.99, WTF?  Well this surely had to be a mistake since everything worked just fine the first two weeks of the season.

The first person I spoke to had very limited power in the system besides being able to send a reset to the receiver.  She was not able to help me so she forwarded me to tech support.  This was another woman that seemed like she knew her stuff.  She joked about my issue and assured me she should be able to get me up and running shortly.  That’s great, except she didn’t.

She was dumbfounded for awhile, not sure why she could not get HD working on my account.  After putting me on hold several times she came back and gave me the very annoying news.  She said that because of my bastardized package, where I just have the Sunday Ticket but no regular DirecTv programming, she said that they no longer can include HD access.

I said “What are you talking about?  This worked 7 days ago and has worked for the last 5 years why would it just stop working?”  All the girl could say was they don’t offer the HD option anymore if I just get Sunday Ticket.

Well I certainly wasn’t going to take this as an answer.  I have had similar run ins with DirecTV when it comes to my package where I was told I couldn’t have certain things where eventually I could, if I pressed hard enough.  So I started the press.

I told the girl this was asinine that I am paying 300 for the Ticket, something they are giving away for free to new subscribers and I can no longer get it in HD.  I reminded her it was 2012, to make HD optional is ridiculous in the first place.  I used my normally successful tactic of asking her to put herself in my shoes.  I have been a customer for 12 years and this is how I am rewarded?

Well regardless of what I was saying, the girl said she is nothing she can do.  She said the option to add HD back into my account “was grayed out” because of my lack of a normal subscription.  Ok well then it was time to turn to common tactic two, “let me speak to your supervisor”.

The woman obviously was not pleased by my request and my belief that I would get further with someone of greater authority.  In fact she told me that although she can connect me with a supervisor, I will be told the exact same thing.  I told her I want to talk to her anyway.  She was an unhappy camper with me but I didn’t care.

So after a few minute wait (at this point the call was over 30 minutes long) I get another woman with a pleasant sounding southern accent.  She asks me what is going on although I certainly assumed she had an idea.  I recapped the scenario, basically no HD now, had HD before, fix it.

Initially the woman did do what the prior support agent indicated, said there was nothing she could do, the option wasn’t available.  Despite hearing this 7 or 8 times now, I persisted.  I told her that as a long time customer I find this very disappointing and if I it wasn’t resolved I would just cancel and be sure to let someone at DirecTV higher up the chain know why I cancelled.

Well that statement apparently got the woman to dig a little deeper.  On digging she saw that I stopped being charged an additional $10 a month for “HD access” in October 2011. Despite it’s removal 11 months ago, I had HD versions of the games until yesterday which she could not explain.  She put me on hold several times trying to figure it out.  Then all of a sudden the HD version of the game popped on the screen, it’s back.

I told her it was now working.  She was glad.  She said the trick was although she could not add HD back to the account, she did have the option to re-activate it.  Evidently that is different in the DirecTv world.  So anyway all was well again although I asked her if I was going to see this problem reoccur when I go to watch next weeks game.  She said it “shouldn’t”.  Of course I know that means it probably will. Oh well at least I had the game back in a format suitable for the 73 inch TV.

As I hung up I put an imaginary notch in my belt as I snickered mentally at the tech that said transferring me to the supervisor would be worthless.  Worthless, my ass.  Not taking no for an answer in certain situations is a valuable lesson.  I was told there was absolutely nothing could be done about the situation, but in there end, there was.

After all that effort to get the game on, it would have been nice if the Eagles put on a performance worth watching.  Unfortunately it was the exact opposite.  The Birds got smashed by the Cardinals 27-6.  Once again the Eagles and Vick had big turnover problems, the most horrific was a fumble at the end of the half when the team was ready to score.  Instead the Cardinals ran the fumble back the length of the field, a huge 14 point swing.

Once again Vick seemed to be getting smacked more plays than he wasn’t.  Some of it was his fault, some of it wasn’t.  He doesn’t seem to respond well at all when the defense dictates a quick throw to beat the rush.  Instead he holds the ball and more often than not makes a bad decision in addition to taking a physical beating.  Unless they find a way to change this trend there is no way Vick is going to make it through the season.

The game was ugly from start to finish.  At least this wasn’t one of those games that we can lament the team “should have won”.  This was a no doubt about it ass kicking.

It had to be sweet revenge for Kevin Kolb whom was traded away after Andy decided to bet the farm on Vick.  Kolb had a very solid game and was clearly the better QB yesterday.  Other than his torrid run in 2010 when he became the starter, Vick’s numbers have been middle of the pack at best.  His performance/numbers are nowhere close to the level his astronomical contract would dictate.

Well it took until the third week of September but I finally have some standing water on the property.  There have been a couple nights of torrential rain this week that was finally enough to fully saturate the ground.  The culverts at the front of the property are full and the low spots in the yard are swampy.   We are too late in wet season however to be concerned.  I am expecting most of the temporary ponds to be gone by the end of the weekend.

This week the dogs started in dog day care, something Ali set up.  Ali thought it would be a good way to help with the anxiety issues as well as give the girls a lot more activity.  So far they both seem to be enjoying themselves.  I was particularly concerned about Nicki adjusting but so far she seems to like it.  Ali said when she picks them up they seem happy and almost immediately lay down and fall asleep.

Last night was the running club members meeting and Ali’s presentation on nutrition and endurance training.  She was very nervous prior to getting on the mic but she did a really good job once she started, something that was echoed by everyone in the room.

I had 4 or 5 beers and picked at the catered Moe’s food all night, pulling out of there by 9:15.

This weekend I don’t have  a race to time which is nice.  I have a number of things hanging out there to get done.  I also plan to reboot my running program by going to the club run Saturday.  With the Tough Mudder roughly two and a half months away I need to get my running legs back under me.

Last night was another running club board meeting.  Before I went to the meeting I stopped over at my buddy’s place to see the dog he was dogsitting for a few weeks, named Lucky. Lucky barked and carried on for about 15 seconds but once he realized I was a dog guy he was my buddy.  He looks and acts like a male version of Sadie, he’s a real good boy.

I then was off to this month’s board meeting where I got the ok to spend some money which I always enjoy.  I got the ok to get some new timing mats for the one box.  The mats we had have some dead spots and are pretty well worn.  Instead of getting two 5 meter wide mats like we currently have I will opt to buy four 2.5 meter wide mats which will give us more flexibility in mat placement.

I also will be getting the ball rolling on ordering the new bib based timing chips to use for the big half marathon I time in mid-January.

At the meeting the board agreed to compensate Ali for her new role as membership coordinator which I pushed for heavily.  In reality it also is a recognition of the various other roles she has held down for the club for the last 5 or 6 years.

After the meeting I headed over to South Street with a few of the guys and had a good time as normal.  The three Miller Lites were enough to take the edge off.

So I am in the middle of the massive rebuilding of my YouTube empire.  It is a daunting task.  Of course re-uploading over 50 gig of videos takes a lot of time.  However the real time eater will be rebuilding each videos description and meta tags.   The good news is this lengthy process will allow me to improve the description and tags so my videos grab more hits, something I didn’t pay attention to during my first 5 years on YouTube.

As I am updating each video on the new channel I hide it on the old channel so I don’t have duplication. I was glad to see the first few pennies of ad revenue trickling into my mom’s new AdSense account.  I am pretty confident that once I am done migrating and revamping, the ad dollars will be rolling once again.  Still sucks having to walk away from a YouTube channel with over 315,000 views because of some ill advised mouse clicks.

Tonight I have my second running club event in as many days, a general membership meeting.  Food and beer will be provided.  Ali is actually going to be the guest speaker for the event, using her background as a dietitian to give some information regarding nutrition and endurance training.

I picked up Ali from the airport in the middle of the day yesterday.  I had to fly home, load up the dogs and their stuff in the van and then haul ass up to the airport.

Nicki was all excited that she didn’t shit in the house during the 4-5 hours she was left alone. Instead she just left me a large pile of vomit in the corner of the walk in closet. 🙂  I should hear back the poop test results today.

Last night I started the clean up process from 5 days of dog sitting.  I set the Neato off when I got home.  Wow what a difference compared to non-dog days.  The dust bin was STUFFED after it completed it’s first segment. I figure this weekend I should run the steam cleaner since I literally have a dozen or more spots that were soiled during their visit.

Tonight is the running club board meeting.  I’ll probably hit South Street with the guys afterward.  I could use a beer or two.

So in the past when I had sole responsibility for the dogs during a work week, I would leave work a hour early to let them out.  Even with doing that they would be holding it for damn near 10 hours.  They were fine with this schedule.

Well with the new dog bathroom reality I decided I would revert to what I used to do, drive all the way home and back at lunch time.  Yes it is very inconvenient and a gas waste but I figured it would be a safe way to avoid more unscheduled use of the house as a toilet.  After all, when Nicki does this (shits in the house) it just adds to her mental issues when she see’s my reaction to the brown land mines.

So I pull into the driveway a little after 12, open the door and again get smacked in the face by the sweet smell of shit. WTF?  Nicki dumped before I left for work yet there was another pile in front of the guest bathroom and another small muddy puddle on the bathroom mat in the master bathroom.  Argh….

I banished both dogs to the outdoors while I hurriedly did clean up duty.  Thank goodness I picked up the SpotBot from Ali’s place over the weekend, it has gotten quite the work out.  Before I disposed of the shit in the master bath I scooped some into a baggy. (yes it is disgusting)  My intent was to take it directly to the vet on my way back to be tested.

I’m annoyed with the vet.  Two or three weeks ago after this bathroom issue had already been going on for a week or so, Ali took the dogs to the vet for testing, lots of testing.  The vet ran a ton of tests but they were ALL blood tests.  She said she didn’t need a stool test.  This made zero sense to me.  If a dog is defecating in an abnormal way or frequency, why in the world would you not test the stool?? Stupid.

Ali received a massive bill for all of this blood work which revealed nothing, comforted by the fact that the new pet insurance should insulate her from a big bill.  Well the initial response she got from the insurance was not good, they were only agreeing to pay a small portion of the bill, despite us paying a large amount of money each month for a comprehensive, zero deductible policy.

Ali is going to have to take that up with the vet as well.  Apparently since the vet knew this was going to be submitted to insurance she charged full boat, knowing her reimbursement would be less than that.  Well now that insurance has not kept their end of the bargain I would expect the vet to make a significant adjustment to the bill.

So last night before bed, I had the dogs out late, they did their last backyard bathroom jaunt at something like 10:20.  When the alarm sounded this morning I stumbled into the bathroom and discovered overnight that Nicki shit AGAIN, on the only clean bathroom mat that was left.  It was a substantial pile.

I was in disbelief.  Nicki didn’t even flinch as she watched me reveal her latest actions.  She hit for the cycle when I walked over to her bed and saw she threw up on that as well over night.  I found this too disturbing to even yell about.

Regardless of whatever physical issues that could be causing her to have to dump so often the fact that she could shit in the middle of the night, 20 feet away from me and not even make an effort to let me know she had to go(crying by the bed is what she used to do) is very concerning.  It’s like she has forgotten the last 9 years of housebreaking completely.

So a large part of my morning was spent once again cleaning up excrement.  Nicki’s rapid transformation from a healthy 9 year old to a neurotic, slow moving old girl  with a disregard for housebreaking in the last few months makes me very sad.

Of course I blame the marital split for at least accelerating the change.  Nicki has never been good at dealing with change and this is about as changed as you can get from a dog’s perspective.

So anyway, I am supposed to hear back from the vet today with the results.

My mom’s Adsense account is now officially up and running.  I decided I would do the final piece of my master plan to get my YouTube channel back in the money making business, associate it with my mom’s Google account.

I made the switch but noticed the monetization tab for my account was still disabled.  WTF.

So a few searches revealed that once your YouTube monetization tab is disabled, much like a disabled AdSense account, you are basically f’d.  They won’t allow you to reconnect it with another AdSense account.  BASTARDS.

I really don’t get this draconian approach Google has chosen to take when it comes to their advertising program.  If someone is willing to provide you content that you can jam ads into, why would you turn it away?  Argh, this is madness.

So that left me with exactly one remaining option in my fight for freedom.  I would have to create a brand new YouTube channel and associate my mom’s AdSense account with it. So that is what I did.  In the process I wound up creating a couple additional Google accounts that will never be used.  This again was due to the stupid way Google locks you in.

I logged out of YouTube and then clicked the NEW USER link to create a new Google account, my thought being this new account would take ownership of my old YouTube stuff so my mom’s account can be connected to the new one.  Well the second you complete the Google account it instantly associated it with it’s OWN YouTube account, locking the two together, permanently.

You can not break the association, all you can do is cancel the YouTube account but that STILL does not release the Google account to be used with something else.  Ok this is just asinine.  Finally I managed to associate my old YT channel with a placeholder account and the new one with my mom’s account.  It was very frustrating.

There are a couple things I did find interesting about this entire process.

First when creating my mom’s AdSense account there were TONS of warnings about clicking your own ads and soliciting ad clicks.  It would be impossible to claim you did not know about this if you signed up for an AdSense account TODAY.  However when I created my account 4 or 5 years ago there was none of this, in your face, warning.

Second, apparently there is no longer a requirement for your YouTube channel to have a certain amount of views before you are offered the option to monetize your videos.  I was able to turn on monetization of my new channel immediately.

I now have a ton of work in front of me.  I need to reupload all 350 plus of my videos, as well as recreate the descriptions, tags and categories.  There will be some small perks in doing so as I will be able to better organize my content as well as add some additional tagging that should help generate additional views.  I’ll be lucky if I get it all done within a couple weeks.  I certainly hope all this effort is worth it.

Here is where all my videos will be living in the future.

Wow Mitt really has been sticking whatever appendage he has in his mouth lately huh?  First you have his poorly expressed thoughts about the Libya situation and now the video of what he really thinks about the other 47%.  Watching the attempts at damage control should be quite entertaining.  The bottom line is Mitt is just a rich doofus trying to emulate someone who really gets it. He’s doing an extremely poor job of doing so.

Have you ever read in detail about his days at Bain Capital?  When you dig into exactly how Bain worked it WILL disgust you.  He has a track record only a guy like Rick Scott could love. Slimy.

So by the time Friday rolled around I was totally over my training class, I couldn’t take it anymore.  By that time I had gotten what I needed out of the class, a basic understanding of how IP6 functions and is different than IPV4.  Unfortunately for me the class dealt with high end router/switch technologies that I have no use for in my current job environment.  Hell, a lot of the acronyms I never even heard of before.

Even with 5 days dedicated to the class, there was entirely TOO much content jammed in there.  It was ridiculous.  Even if the instructor did nothing but read each slide non-stop I don’t think we would have gotten through everything.

The instructor didn’t help the situation either.  Don’t get me wrong, this guy was a Cisco GENIUS but he was not so brilliant in time management.  Earlier in the week he was very sloppy with making sure class started on time, breaks were observed and lunch hour was actually only an hour.  Plus he didn’t set any finite time on the labs we did which was dumb.  Instead of saying “you have 40 minutes for this lab” it would be open ended which resulted in hours being wasted.

I was so glad when I clicked the TERMINATE button for the video conference for the final time.  It was a long week in the virtual classroom.

So I had a race to time Saturday morning.  I was out of the house early, right around 5AM.  I got Nicki to take a dump before I left so I figured I would be in the clear till I got back around 10.  Sadie didn’t dump beforehand but traditionally she is fine when it comes to not dropping deuces unless outside.

Well when I got back to the house I was hit in the face with the lovely stench of dog shit.  In front of the guest bathroom was a large pile of what looked to be Sadie shit.  In the master bathroom on one of the mats was a small runny puddle of Nicki shit.  I was not pleased.

I pointed out each pile to the offending canine and used my stern voice to let them it was NOT ok.  I then got to the pleasant duty of doody clean up, before even starting on all of the post race work that I needed to do.

Nicki’s shitting in particular is the most perplexing.  It was a tiny amount of crap, certainly she didn’t do it because she could no longer hold it.  Like I mentioned, she went before I left.  Part of this is our problem.  We have conditioned Nicki to associate taking a shit with getting treats her entire life.  Now it’s like she feels the need to HAVE to eject something from her anus nearly every time she is outside because she wants the reward.

This could all be stress related because of the uncertainty of bouncing between two living arrangements/time schedules.  Nicki is much more schedule/environment dependent than Sadie is, who can roll with just about anything.

On top of the shitting I have been treated to multiple episodes of vomiting.  Twice overnight Nicki has thrown up and Sadie has barfed more than that as the result of her insistence to ingest grass when I am not looking.  Every pile of vomit she produces always has grass mixed in with it.

Saturday night I went out and saw Lawless.  It was surprisingly good although were some cringe worthy moments with graphic violence.  I’d give it a solid A-.

On Sunday morning I was thinking about doing the DD bike ride.  Instead I decided to go to the swamp early with the girls to beat the heat.  We were in the empty parking lot before 9AM.

The first thing we saw were two deer in the parking lot. It made me think we might see a lot of wildlife this time around.  I had not been to the swamp since June.  I figured the summer rains would have brought the water levels back to their max, bringing in more wildlife.

As we walked the boardwalk we came across an older gentleman who wore a volunteer shirt.  He was towing a wagon that had wood and cordless power tools.  He was replacing rotted boards.  I talked to him a bit and told him I saw a few boards he already replaced, it looked like he did good work.

When we entered the main trail I was surprised by a couple things.  First the water levels weren’t as high as I would have expected them to be in mid-September.  Second, the grass on the trail looked like it hadn’t been mowed all summer long.

At some spots the grass was almost knee high.  Not only was the grass high, it was wet from the early hour of day.  In no time my feet were drenched.

I was a bit worried about how Nicki would do on the walk because of her recent mobility issues.  I was happy to see that she kept pace for  most of the walk.

Unfortunately we did not see much wildlife at all during the hike, outside of the deer in the parking lot, the only other animals we saw were two baby gators sunning themselves.

Repeatedly during the walk I had to scold Sadie for trying to munch on the high grass.  I don’t know what her deal is with her grass craving.  You would think she is part bovine.

By the time we got back to the van the temps had started to crank up.  I was glad we got there early.  Although Nicki did well during the hike, later in the day I could tell she was feeling the side effects.  When she would get up after napping she looked very stiff.

So I took in the Eagles game, basically assuming they would get smashed by the Ravens who looked great in their opener while the Eagles fumbled and bumbled their way to a narrow one point win against the stinky Browns.

Well with the way the game started it seemed my assumption was right on.  I couldn’t believe that Vick ended the Eagles opening drive with ANOTHER interception, this time in the end zone.  The Eagles turned the ball over THREE MORE times on top of that, an embarrassingly bad stat.  I think in the first two games they have turned the ball over 9 times.

However in the end they managed to grind out another come from behind, grind it out win, this time against a much better opponent. The Birds actually set some sort of record as being only the 5th team in NFL history to start a season 2-0 after committing this many turnovers.  A dubious title but I’ll take it.

Last year these were the type of games that the Eagles would consistently find a way to lose in the end.  The fact that this year they are finding a way to win instead gives me more hope that the team could actually perform up to their talent level this time around.

On a side note, the replacement NFL officials are an absolute joke.  I mean they are embarrassingly bad.  There were some horrible call and non-calls on both sides of the ball on Sunday.  This has not been the exception, the entire time the replacement refs have been in place week in and week out they have sucked, plain and simple.  The NFL needs to fix this.  If important games late in the year start getting decided by these bumbling boobs there is going to be hell to pay.

So I will be entering my 4th day of Cisco IPV6 training today.  To be quite honest I am ready for it to be over.  This class is designed for someone that has their nose in routers 24/7 and in networks much larger than I support.

There have been so many acronyms thrown out I stopped counting once we reached triple digits.  I have been able to get what I wanted out of the class so far which is some basic understanding of IPV6 addressing and the fundamental differences between it and IPV4.  All the other stuff is heard and quickly forgotten.  If I ever have the need to dig deeper into some of the higher level things that are being discussed I have a massive, bible size, course book to refer back to.

I mean seriously, would you want to listen to someone talk about “OSPFv3 IPsec ESP Authentication and Encryption”?

So last night I returned to yoga.  Class went ok.  There was an awkward moment where the instructor told us to partner up for a cobra pose exercise.  Well everyone else had partnered up besides the one other guy in the class who happened to be right next to me, so we were stuck with each other.

The one person laid on the ground while the other sat on a pillow that was across the ass, pinning the hips on the ground.  Then as the “bottom” arched up, the top was supposed to grab the shoulders and help the stretch.

Yes it was weird but I just rolled with it.  The next time a partner scenario is mentioned I will be more aggressive in grabbing someone of the opposite sex.

Today Ali flies out to PA again.  I am picking up her and the dogs, dropping her off at the airport and then returning home for another day of over my head training coordinated with the first of 5 days of dog sitting.

So yesterday was a frustrating day.  The news about my AdSense account getting yanked really bothered me all day.  The remote class I was sitting through was not all that exciting and for the most part, was dealing at a level of TCP/IP expertise that I am nowhere near.  I knew I was out of my league when the first two students that were introduced where from the Department of the Interior and AT&T.  So for the most part all day I just tried to cherry pick the information that would be helpful in our relatively small network.

Ali dropped off the dogs for me to dog sit so she could get more time in at work since she is leaving for PA again at the end of the week.  Having the dogs all day was nice except for the times Sadie is sitting by my office chair, staring,  giving me the “I want to do something fun” face and the two times that Nicki threw up in the bedroom.

This class is based out of Denver and was supposed to have hours of 10-5.  Well the instructor, who is extremely good and knowledgeable, unfortunately also has a tendency to talk a lot off the class material.  As a result we didn’t finish up to close to 6pm EST.  That isn’t very cool.

After I was done with class I was rammy from sitting in a chair all day.  I immediately headed outside to do a Ray’s Way.   Later last night I decided I had enough of “long” hair and gave myself another head shaving, on video.  Yesterday I also put together the footage Jeremy shot of proper pressure washer operation.

I received word back from Google overnight that they are reviewing my case.  I am hoping I beat the odds and get the account reinstated.  It would be such a pain in the ass to start over.

So today is 9-11.  The idea that 11 years have gone by punctuates just how quickly time can fly.  All of the memories and feelings of that day still seem very clear and tangible in my mind, unlike most of my other 11 year old memories.

If you asked me on 9-12-01 if I thought we would still be dealing with issues from the horrible events the day before, 11 years in the future, I would have said , no way.  But here we are, still feeling the repercussions from those few hours where the world basically stopped and watched with mouths agape.  The open wound has healed but the scar tissue will remain for generations to come.

So Saturday morning was the cross country meet that I was timing.  I showed up on site about 5:30, the first race didn’t start until 7:45.  I was glad I got there as early as I did, there was a lot to do since this event didn’t have the normal collection of volunteers that a typical race has.

Even before the sun came up I was sweated through my shirt, it was brutally warm and humid, without the sun beating on me yet.

The timing for the event was a challenge.  I had various issues.

One of the most frustrating issues was the physical danger the finish line provided.  Because a cross country meet is run on grass, the finish mats are placed upon grass.  Well the grass at the park was relatively high.  Very early on we saw issues with kids stumbling across the finish mats.  They would not be paying attention to their foot placement as they finished, most likely because they were exhausted, plant their foot right in front of the mat and then catch that same foot as they took the next stride.

We had a bunch of near misses where kids almost fell and a handful that actually did fall.  The one boy went down really hard.  We tried to minimize the problem by weighting down the sides of the mats to keep them taut  but it did not prevent the problem.  To be honest I am not sure how to avoid the issue in the future short of having the finish area grass mowed very low.

I noticed about halfway into the event that a number of kids that had not run yet would gather by the finish line to cheer on the other kids.  Unfortunately some of these spectators got too close to the timing mats with the timing chip that was on their sneaker, inadvertently getting scored for the wrong race.  If there was any good fortune in this, it was for the most case JV runners  got mis-scored which is less critical.  However it still wound up as a big headache at the end when I was trying to figure out why I had so many scoring anomalies.

Finally we had a number of kids that simply were wearing the wrong chip.  The coaches were responsible for making sure their kids wore the correct chip.  There was nothing I could do to prevent that from happening.

It was a pretty stressful morning as I had some other technical challenges to figure out on the fly but in the end everyone was happy.  By the time everything was cleaned up and put away it was after noon.  By the time I was done doing all of the associated work at home it was about 2:30, a long day of timing.

I quickly worked on whatever chore related items I needed to get done, cutting a few corners this week because I was just too damn tired to give a shit.  Saturday night I stopped over at Ali’s to drop some stuff off.  She threw in some pizza we had for dinner.

So Sunday morning I had to get up early once again, this time to drive over to Jeremy’s place to pick up some furniture items he no longer needed, a computer desk and a queen size bed.  In exchange I was giving him my old pressure washer that I no longer needed.

I left my house right about 7AM and pulled into Jeremy’s place a few minutes after 9.  After hanging out and playing with the kids a bit we headed over to the townhouse that they rent out, where the items were located.

When I first saw the desk I grabbed one end and lifted it, the sucker felt HEAVY, too heavy to lift into the truck without mutual hernia risk.  I lightened the load by removing all drawers and doors.  After doing so it was more manageable.  The back of the Tacoma barely accommodated the desk, box spring and queen mattress but we squeezed it all in there.  I used two high strength ratcheting straps to lock everything securely for the long 70 MPH trek back across Alligator Alley.

Jeremy suggested we grab sandwiches before I head back which we did and took back to his place.  I got back out on the road about 11:45.  Obviously I was going to miss the start of the Eagles game but I could listen to it on Sirius en route.  I recorded a how to use a pressure washer video for Jeremy which will be released shortly.

The drive back across the state SUCKED.  The furniture in the back of the Tacoma had various negative effects.  Crosswinds caused a lot of unwelcomed swerving  as I was rolling along.  I needed a firm grip on the wheel at all times.  The stuff also stuck up above the cab of the truck by a couple feet, creating an aerodynamic nightmare.  The truck was working hard to simply maintain the speed limit and the gas gauge was dropping at a rate I had never seen before.  I was quite glad when I pulled into the driveway with the gas warning light on.  I had filled the truck to the very top before leaving, meaning I only got something like 250 miles out of a full tank of 15 gallons.

When we loaded the desk onto the truck I had a brief thought in my head about the usable work area on the new desk.  It kind of looked to be on the small size, especially since I have a 27 and 23 inch monitor.  Well the first thing I did when I got home was put a tape measure on the desk space, it was only 36 inches.  I instantly knew I was f’d.  There was absolutely no way I could make my stuff fit.  I started chastising myself for not considering this before driving across the state.  My thought process was simply “uh that desk looks nicer than my desk and Jeremy wants to give it to me” and nothing else.  I was frustrated, very frustrated.

Well my original plan was to give my existing desk to a neighbor that was looking for one.  I guess the new plan is to see if she wants Jeremy’s desk.  Luckily she did.  Getting the desk into her place was quite the challenge and required temporarily removing some parts of the desk and a closet door so I had space to clear a tight corner.  After much effort we finally got it slid into place.

I did set up the queen bed in the guest room so the trip wasn’t a total fail but damn I was annoyed with myself.

The annoyance didn’t subside after watching the Eagles game.  Wow.  Vick threw 4 interceptions and had the Browns drop another couple should be int’s.  He did not look good at all.  The Birds were very lucky to pull out a 17-16 win against a BAD Browns team.  How bad?  Their rookie QB completed a THIRD of his passes for just over 100 yards and threw 4 interceptions as well.  The Eagles performance did absolutely nothing to convince me they learned a damn thing from last year where they lost a TON of games they had absolutely no business losing.  However if this trend continues, Andy has exhausted his last safety net.

This morning I got a very alarming email, saying my Google Adsense account was disabled!  As you know, my recent good fortune with generating ad dollars via Google, primarily from my YouTube videos has been something I am VERY excited about.  In order to have more of a good thing, a month or so ago I added a small banner ad to the bottom of the posts on my blog and encouraged people to click the ads, thinking that driving more traffic to the ad sites is a win/win.

Well evidently this behavior is frowned upon by Google and is laid out somewhere in the encyclopedic terms of service that they provide.  Somehow they determined that too many of my clicks were coming from the same IP addresses and as a result killed my account.  I have a couple problems with this.

First off, if my blog readers were clicking the ads, the extra clicks could not have been more than a couple dozen a day, it isn’t like I have some bot out there registering thousands of ad clicks.  Second, if this behavior was problematic, why is it outside the scope of reason to send me a warning, saying , “Hey this shit is not allowed, here is your one warning and then you are done”  I think that is reasonable.  As is, my only option is to submit an appeal through their sterile, faceless, email only support system and hope I get connected with someone that is reasonable.

This decision by Google f’s me several times over.  It negates any outstanding money they were due to pay me and stops my generation of any further income via AdSense via the blog OR YouTube.  This snowballs into my YouTube account, removing my YouTube partner status, meaning I no longer generate totally legit ad dollars on my YT videos, which infuriates me.

If my appeal is successful, I can get that reinstated but I think I am screwed out my unpaid revenue dollars regardless which is bullshit.  Unfortunately in their terms of service, you agree that Google can basically say FU at anytime for any reason.  I have no leverage and can only hope my appeal is successful.

Yes, in the big picture those clicks violated the terms of service, although if I actually knew they were a violation, I certainly would not have encouraged blog readers to click away.  I am really bummed out about it.

I think I have reached my frustration limit for a three day period…