Archives February 2013

So I left work a little early on Friday to facilitate my drive in the SSR to Longwood which is east of Orlando.  When I punched the address of the La Quinta into Google maps I saw 197 miles spit back at me.  Ok so doing some basic math, optimistically figuring I could average 70 miles an hour, I guessed the trip would take me roughly 3 hours.  I didn’t bother to look at any details of the Google info.

Well if I had looked at the details I would have seen the 200 mile route was the one that goes through the center of Florida through a number of small towns which slow you down significantly.  The I-75 to I-4 route was 250 miles.  Well when you add on three separate sessions of dead stopped traffic due to accidents, I didn’t roll into the hotel until 10 pm.  I was not a happy camper.

So I walked up to the front desk.  I saw the parking lot of the hotel was jammed.  I was glad I had a reservation.  So I give my name and the girl punches it in and makes a confused face.  She asks me how it is spelled and looks again.  It’s not there.

Well I was prepared, I had printed out my confirmation email, that should clear things up.  I hand it to her.  After she glances at it she sees the problem. I reserved a room for Thursday….  Evidently after 45 years I still haven’t mastered the skill of reading a calendar.

I covered my face with my hands in frustration.  After the killer drive the last thing I needed was this even though it was my fault.  At first it seemed like my only option was going to be being thrown into a smoking allowed room however the woman was nice enough to let me stay in their one remaining suite for the same price as my original reservation.

As I parked my SSR around the side of the building a black SSR pulled in right next to me.  As we stepped out I told the guy I bet I knew why he was there.  He was a fellow SSR Fanatic named Dan who drove up from Miami.  I talked to him a bit as we walked inside.

My suite was nice and was identical to the La Quinta suite Ali and I stayed in once or twice during our various western road trips.  It felt like kind of a waste for me to be in there by myself.    I was exhausted and after taking a shower collapsed into bed.

Well I had an awful night of sleep.  The ac unit in the suite provided great white noise when it was running but it also appeared to be on  a hair trigger thermostat.  When it hit the set temperature it would shut off and then when the temp dropped like a tenth of a degree it would rattle back to life.  This on and off cycle repeated all night long and felt like it woke me up every time it happened.  I am not sure why I didn’t just get up and turn it off altogether.  I awoke Saturday morning feeling exhausted.

When I went to grab breakfast in the lobby Dan was already there, I sat down at his table.  Dan has an interesting history.  He currently is a computer science teacher at a high school.  He spent years being a CIO and has lived in Colorado, Key West and South Beach.  We talked SSR’s a bit as well.  He had only been to one other meet up but said it was a good time.

After breakfast I got all my stuff packed up and checked out.  Before heading to the location of the event I found a nearby Dunkin Donuts using the Waze app on my Iphone.  If you use the built in Iphone nav app I strongly suggest you look at Waze.  It is NAV and so much more.

The meet up was supposed to start at 9, I got there around 8:30.  Dan said getting there early would be smart because of all the people that were supposed to show up.  When I got there I saw maybe 6 or 7 SSR’s already lined up. This was being held at a Maaco.  We were given full use of their garage, including a lift which made working under the trucks much more tangible.

I met a couple of the guys whose names I recognized from the SSRFanatics message board.  I was excited to finally meet the head of the group who goes by the handle of Dicktator. (his name is Dick)  I got his attention and told him I was Duf.  Dick greeted me enthusiastically.  Dick is 78 years old but still has a great energy about him.  I t wasn’t long until I heard a few of his dirty jokes. Between Dicktator and the rest of the group there is a HUGE collection of SSR knowledge.  I planned to tap as much of it as I could.

Since I was there early I got to throw my truck up on the lift first.  I was having my front radiator support replaced.  From the factory, the SSR has a shitty piece of plastic that is used for this role.  I bought a strong powder coated steel support to replace it.  This upgrade is highly recommended as it really helps to tighten up the front end, cutting down on the shaking and rattling over uneven road.

I was impressed at the hive mentality of the group.  Without asking I instantly had a half dozen guys helping out in the process.  Getting the new radiator support on is tricky and the installation was completed by one of the group veterans while I served as primarily a human jack support.

While it was up there I asked one of the guys about some of the vibration noises I was hearing when the top was up.  When the catalytic converters were replaced it looked like one of the heat shields was a bit messed up.  He shifted the shielding around to hopefully fix it.  Dicktator said that when the cats were replaced you normally want to replace the O2 sensors as well.  He said they can start to rattle as well as they age.

By the time I got my truck down a lot more guys had showed up.  It was very interesting seeing the various customizations guys have done to their trucks.  Some of the mods seemed to have crossed the line from cool to over the top.  The most visually and technically stunning was the gull wing door mod I saw.  Man that had to be tough to get set up. (and expensive)

Everyone I dealt with was really nice and friendly.  As I expected, I was the youngster of the group.  Of the 30+ SSR owners there there may have been 2 or 3 including myself that were under 60.  The great thing was they all had a youthful spirit about them.

The group arranged to have a food trailer brought in as well which was a nice touch.  I enjoyed a nice veggie burger for lunch.

I installed a rather simple upgrade while my truck was in the parking lot, LED brake lights.  Upgrading to LED’s required replacement of the flasher module as well.  The LED’s are brighter and just look cool, especially at night.

All of the work getting done inspired me to tackle one more project I was on the fence about doing, ripping my radio out to relocate the ground. Since I installed the Pioneer unit I have had an issue with engine whine getting picked up by the stereo.  My hope was relocating the ground to another location would fix the problem.

I figured if I was ripping things apart I might as well install the amplified antenna I bought several months ago to address my poor radio reception.

Well as I was digging into the dash I started having various visitors, wondering what I was doing.  Some of them were guys that had never ripped their dash apart before and were hoping to pick up some pointers.  It didn’t take me long to have the front cover as well as the A pillar and cowl covers torn off.

Some of the guys looked at what appeared to be total chaos and expressed  concern about my ability to get it all back together.  I assured them I had ripped it apart several times so I should be ok. 🙂

Installing the amplified antenna wasn’t too hard.  I located a ground to use in the cowl area and tapped power from the radio harness.  I moved the ground from near the instrument cluster to some bare metal above the passenger footwell.  Moving the ground didn’t help the engine noise issue.  I fixed that by turning down the gain on a potentiometer that was installed as part of the new radio. All in all I may have spent a couple hours working on this project.  I got a bunch of sun in the process since I was doing this in the lot with the hard top retracted. It felt good to get it done.

I did one more project on my truck.  One of the guys had his single bar frame support replaced with a better double wide model.  He gave me his old support.  I installed it alongside my existing support to stiffen up my frame even further.

Once I finished up that I jumped in to assist with a  a couple other things.  I was most helpful with a guy that was adding bluetooth to his existing factory radio.  I helped him come up with a place to tap power from and then helped him with the unfun job of getting the front dash cover back on.

I stuck around until after 5, well after the majority of the guys had already pulled out.  Before I left I said goodbye to Dicktator who was busy all day and was currently in the middle of an ignition switch replacement.  I told him I had a good time and was looking forward to the next meet up.

My drive back home was uncomfortable.  My lower back was screaming from two consecutive days of long drives.  I was also very tired from the night of miserable sleep followed by a day of wrench turning.  I took a 5 hour energy to keep myself alert.

The entire drive home was topless.  I definitely could feel the difference from the two frame stiffening additions I made.  The truck did not rattle around nearly as much as it used to.  The LED tail lights looked cool in the darkness of night and I enjoyed blaring the radio without the annoying background whine.  The drive back was thankfully devoid of accident back ups, I got back to Naples in just under 4 hours.

If you want to see all of my pictures from the event look here.

I slept like a rock Sunday night, not getting up until close to 8AM which is very late for me.  I had work to do, of course.

After weeding the property I turned my attention to replacing the two damaged screen panels.  One I ripped, the other Sadie did.  I grumbled to myself as almost on cue the wind started picking up as I was pulling out the tools for the job.  Luckily Alison was dropping off the dogs so I utilized her hands to hold the one screen that was most affected by the gusting wind.

After successfully completing the repairs I was extremely agitated when later in the day I saw a panel on the other side that was ripping along the spline.  Argh!

Mid-afternoon I decided to do something I haven’t had done in at least a decade, have my hair cut by someone other than myself or Alison.  When I do it myself it is next to impossible to do anything other than buzz my entire head to one length.  When I try to do a taper it usually turns into a mess.

I drove down to the nearest Sport Clips to give them a try.  I was surprised it was so busy on a Sunday afternoon.  There were 6 other guys waiting.  Luckily with three women cutting hair it didn’t take too long, I may have waited a little more than a half hour.

I told the woman that I normally just buzz my head down with either an 1/8″ or 1/4″ inch attachment.  She suggested we go less aggressive.  She buzzed the back and sides with a 3/8 attachment and hand cut the top to finger length.  Since it was my first time there I got the VIP treatment thrown in for free.  This included a shampoo, scalp massage , and a hot towel over your face.  It was actually quite nice.

I can definitely tell the difference having a pro cut my hair, I think it looks good although since it isn’t skinhead short it means I would need to attend to it on a more regular basis.  I am not sure if I will use Sport Clips exclusively from now on but it was a positive experience.  Whenever there are a few beers, a video camera and a clippers in the house you never know when I am going to go nuts.

Nicki made my dog sitting duties a little more gross than I anticipated.  While she was briefly indoors unsupervised she dumped a small puddle of diarrhea on the rug near the kitchen and two small ancillary puddles elsewhere.  This was after she did double dumps in the yard shortly beforehand.  This is the first incident like this since the excrement nightmare surrounding my PA trip.  Luckily, unlike that time, her loss of control seemed to be isolated although it didn’t make me feel much better as I held my breath during fecal clean up activities.

When I got my new Iphone, the Apple guy informed me that there was a 36 dollar “upgrade fee”.  Since both Ali and I upgraded our phones that meant I had an extra $75 added on to this month’s bill.  Well the Apple guy also told me that if I simply call up ATT and ask them to waive that charge, they normally will.  So that’s what I did.

After a 5 minute phone call and confirming I had been an ATT customer since 2007 they rep had no problem making that charge disappear.  Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

Tonight I am planning to run 10 miles after work.  Never did that before.

So since the new Bar-barians web site launched it has been very well received.  I have heard many positive comments.  I mentioned that during the afternoon of the first day for the new site it got shut down by my web host because it was using too much cpu time on the shared server it resides on. A couple components of the site were identified as problematic so I changed/eliminated these items, hoping that would solve the overload problem.  Well yesterday afternoon I saw they once again disabled the site.

I immediately got on the phone with my web host to get it turned back on.  They told me the site is still consuming too many cpu cycles.  With a WordPress site like I am running, the pages are very script heavy.  Scripts utilize cpu time to execute.

The guy on the phone said the Bar-barians site has been very busy.  He said in the past 30 days it has received 750,000 hits.  When I did some further digging I discovered that 500,000 of those hits occurred since the site went live FOUR DAYS AGO. Woah.

Having a popular site is an awesome thing.  However in this case the popularity is causing a problem.  If I can’t find a way to get the resource usage of the site down we will have to move it to a place with more dedicated resources. I got the web host to turn the site back on.  I told them it just launched so there are a ton of people hitting the site since it is all new. I said I would expect the usage to level off in a few days.

I took additional steps to reduce the sites footprint, installing a caching plug in that creates a static version of the pages, which it serves to most visitors as a flat html file instead of scripted php page.  In theory, this should greatly reduce the burden on the server.

I am hoping the combination of these things will keep the lights on at the Bar-barians site.  Moving it to a dedicated platform would result in much higher hosting costs.  I did speak to the guys about turning all of these hits into ad revenue.  With that much traffic it is quite possible that higher end hosting could be more than paid for with ad dollars.

Speaking of ad dollars, I just earned my first $100 of ad revenue last month (took 4 months to get there) since I had to start over from square one with AdSense after my personal account got shut down.  I an doing whatever I can to maximize my ad potential, running them on my YouTube channel, here and on my Dufisthenics blog.  I am still looking to catch lightning in a bottle like I did with my Tough Mudder video on my old channel that was approaching 90,000 views.   I really thought my cake break video might be that ticket.

Yesterday I was talking to my mom about her internet/phone bill that I pay for her.  I noticed the monthly amount was more than it normally is.  She called to find out what the deal was.

Mom had complained forever that her package didn’t include free long distance which didn’t make sense to me since it is normally thrown in anymore.  Well once the customer service rep was looking at mom’s account she realized that there was something wrong.   She said that mom should have been getting free long distance all this time.

So as an apology they agreed to give mom the next tier of internet speed, free long distance and a $10 discount over what she was being charged.  Wow, that’s cool.

Last night at the grocery store I had another act of niceness take place unexpectedly.  I was checking out and had no coupons.  The cashier noticed one of the things I was buying had a coupon in the latest Publix flyer.  She pulled it out, scanned the coupon and saved me three bucks.  Of course she had no obligation to do so and I would have never known there was three dollars I was leaving on the table that I didn’t need to.

She did it just to be nice.  It reaffirmed my faith that not all people are scumbags, just most of them. 😉

Tonight I shove off for a 200 mile drive north and east to the location of my SSR meet up.  I booked a La Quinta that is near by which should afford me a good nights sleep instead of my getting up with the crickets to drive up there Saturday morning.

It will be an interesting experience meeting all of these guys that I only know via a message board.  I expect to return with a greatly expanded knowledge of my truck and an appreciation for the good will of fellow SSR owners.

So yesterday the USPS announced that they are planning to discontinue Saturday delivery of mail in August.  (packages would still be delivered)  Reaction to the announcement has ranged from “who cares” to outrage.  My reaction is somewhere in the middle.

I think what annoys me the most is this problem is not solely because of the decline in mail volume in our new digital age where “letters” are electronically delivered across thousands of miles in milliseconds.  Actually it’s root cause is because of another wonderful edict issued during the W administration (2006) where the Post Office was required to pre-fund 80% of it’s retirement benefits, something no other government or private business is required to do.

If you would like to read more about this, look here.

So anyway, cutting back Saturday mail delivery isn’t going shake my world however I am concerned for what it means in the big picture.  The estimated cost savings of 2 billion dollars is only a small percentage of the huge operating loss the PO has been operating under since the change in retirement funding was ordered.

I have to laugh when lightly informed people are dismissive of the post office, acting like it is no big deal if they go out of business.  They are the second largest employer in the country for cripes sake.  Just like most Tea Party stances, as long as the job that is lost is not theirs, they don’t give a fck.

These same people often like to throw their catch all fix to the problem, privatize the PO, or let UPS and FedEx take over.  Have you shipped anything recently through either of these carriers in the past couple years?  Prices have skyrocketed.  Just this week It cost me $14 to ship a small 6 pound package to northern Florida.  Yea privatization would be great, for UPS/FedEx stockholders.

I have now had my new Iphone 5 for a a few days.  I really am digging the phone although it is mostly just because it more of what was already a good thing.  I like the larger, better screen, faster hardware, better camera and LTE wireless connection.  Despite the hassle of retooling my phone accessories, I like the smaller “rocket” USB connector too.

At first I was going to sell my old Iphone 4 but I might keep it and jailbreak it to use for whatever floats my boat.

Last night I made my first ever kale chips, a great healthy alternative to potato chips.  They are very easy to make.  I took 4 branches of kale, you pull the leaves off the stem and lay them out on a cookie sheet.  Then spray them with some sort of healthy oil like coconut oil or olive oil and then sprinkle the “chips” with sea salt or whatever spices you like.

You throw them into a 400 degree oven for around 10 minutes and you are done.  They will shrink dramatically from baking and might look a little disfigured but they taste great.  Try it.

So this week I tried to do another squatting followed by running brick.  My three rounds of light but deep squats were going well.  As I was coming up on my final rep I did it with a little extra thrust.  Well as I racked the bar I felt a bad stabbing pain by my left scalpula.

I felt like I could hardly move, any attempts to move my arms to stretch it out were met with some serious pain.  I just walked around slowly and kept trying to stretch.  I assume somehow I pinched a nerve.

I was skeptical I would even be able to run.  Eventually the pain level started to go down although the first mile or so on the treadmill was still painful.  However by the time the 2+ mile mark was reached the pain had disappeared.  I am hoping it stays that way.  It was pretty severe.

There was a woman at the gym today that was drawing a lot of stares, surely as she hoped.  She was decent looking but had a very fit body.  However the reason she was getting stares was her choice of outfit.  She was wearing white, thin, short shorts along with a top made out of similar material.

She chose to pair this with dark thong underwear that was clear as day.  There was absolutely nothing left to the imagination.  I had to laugh as I saw pretty much every man in the gym walk by her as she was on the prone leg curl machine, which put her rear end front and center.

It just so happened that the machine she was on was right in front of my treadmill. 🙂

Last night when Ali came out to pick up the girls she brought along the final piece of tax documentation that was needed to send to the accountant.  This will be an interesting tax return since it will include the huge tax credit for Ali’s Volt purchase.  As I mentioned before, I already have 3 or 4 potential uses for my portion of the refund, depending on how sizable it is.  The 1099’s we both get from the running club for what we do eats into that figure a bit.

I have had a small hole in one of the pool screens for awhile.  It was done via sloppy ladder work during the tree trimming in November.  Since the hole is small I haven’t felt a huge need to address it quickly, obviously.

Well last night I walked out to let the girls outside and saw a nice huge rip in one of the bottom screens.  I recognized the handy work immediately as Sadie’s.  Several times she has gotten very excited about something and pawed at the pool screen, tearing it with her nails.  The odd thing is in the past when she did this, she always used the tear to let herself out into the back yard.  She didn’t do that this time although it looks like she probably stuck her head through the tear.

So anyway, this hole IS large so it looks like screen repair has just gotten moved to the top of the chore list.

Yesterday after work before picking up the dogs I stopped by Best Buy to grab some audio connectors I may need if I get a chance to work on my stereo during the SSR meet up.  So I walk to the front to pay for the stuff.  They have one of those portable rope systems set up to divert people down and around a display of items that they hope you will pick up as a throw in purchase.

So I follow the intended flow and am 6 feet from joining the line of 5 or 6 people.  All of a sudden a nerdy looking older guy pulls the rope aside and inserts himself into the line in front of me.  Very quickly there is an internal mental discussion that takes place.  Of course my immediate desire was to blurt out “Uh, you didn’t just jump in line ahead of me did you?”  However for that statement to be effective it needed to be said immediately as the moron committed the act.

The more rational part of me stepped in, offering up that perhaps he simply did not see me approaching or questioning the worth/benefit of berating/embarrassing the man.  My aggravation subsided pretty quickly and I actually wound up getting out of the store faster than he did because they opened up additional registers.

I have to admit though there was that small smoldering part of me that still had a desire to deliver an elbow to his forehead as I walked out.  Logical? No.  Would it have been briefly satisfying? Yes.

For the past month or two I have been working behind the scenes with Rick from the Bar-barians on redoing their website. The old site was getting stale and had mostly static information in it. I made the suggestion of using WordPress to do the new site since it is flexible, powerful, yet relatively easy to work with.

Rick is a photographer and has background in working with pictures digitally. He worked on a lot of the images/graphics used in the site as well as migrating over information from the old site to the new one.  I worked more on the back end, adding features, a message forum, connections to external content like YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and more.

On Sunday I redirected the domain name to it’s new location, virtually opening the doors of the new site for business.  So far the reaction from everyone has been very positive.  Visually, the site looks 100% better. The functionality, interactivity and information available have all been greatly enhanced as well.

I had a bit of a freak out moment yesterday when Rick told me the site was offline.  I confirmed it indeed was and I contacted my web host.  They told me that it was taken offline because it was spiking traffic.  Evidently so many people were hitting the site that it was using too many of the web server cpu cycles.

I found out a couple plug ins I was running on the site were the primary cause of the overload so I disabled them.  Hopefully the web traffic the new site creates will level out.  Otherwise I would have to look into getting the site out of a shared server environment.

Anyway, it’s exciting to be involved in the site relaunch.  If you want to see the fruits of our labor, go here.

Last night I quickly gave the SSR  a bath for my trip this weekend to the central east coast of Florida for a SSR Fanatics get together.  A bunch of SSR owners are getting together with tool boxes in hand to work on their trucks.

I am planning to install an upgraded radiator support that helps stiffen the front end and LED brake/tail lights.  I also would like to possibly work on fixing the ground on my radio that is causing engine whine noise in the speakers and maybe install an amplified antenna I have had hanging on my workbench for a few months.

I also want to get some opinions on a couple other nagging issues I have had with the truck.  The group has a combined encyclopedic knowledge of the SSR so I can’t imagine a better source of advice.

It’s going to be interesting meeting the group members.  From what I can tell, most of them are at least 20 years older than I am.  I am pretty sure I will be the “kid” of the bunch.

Friday night I was at Ali’s place until almost 10 o’clock.  I wanted to get a head start on the various handyman duties I had to do there, the biggest of which was assembling her four pieces of Ikea furniture, which were three book shelves and one glass door cabinet.

We actually got more done than I expected, completing the assembly of three of the book shelves.  After doing the first one, each subsequent unit took less time.  The biggest time sink is hammering in the 500 nails in the rear that hold the press board backing in place.

Despite getting to bed after 11 Friday night I had it in my head that I wanted to run 10 miles Saturday morning at the 6am club run.  I drug myself out of bed and into the cold air.  The temp was right around 50, cold if you are standing around but great to run in.

I ran most of the 10 miles by myself, only hooking up with a nice woman for the last 3.5 miles, that I found out later is friends with Alison.  My average pace for the run was right around 9:15, not fast, but at this point I just want to get my legs/knees ok with carrying me for that period of time.  I’d like to get one or two more 10 milers under my belt if I am going to do the Hooters half marathon.

I went straight from running, back to Ali’s apartment to resume the projects.  Assembling the cabinet was very similar to constructing the bookshelves, the biggest challenge was adjusting the hinges so the doors closed well.

So before buying the furniture Ali had done some measurements and determined that the cabinet and two bookshelves would fit on the wall in front of the staircase.  I did some quick eyeballing of the furniture and realized the three units would consume far too much real estate to fit.  A new layout was needed.

Alison had a hair appointment at 11 so before she left we talked about various arrangements but didn’t firmly decide on one.  I told her I would work on the arrangement and other tasks that were left while she was gone.  I first attended to the other, non-furniture related tasks which were hanging an overhead light in the office and hanging a drying rack in the small utility room.

I then returned to the main living space to sort it out.  I wound up relocating a large chest to the office where it barely fit underneath the sewing table.  I then centered the remaining bookshelf on the shorter wall, put the dog eating tables where the chest was and moved the old existing book shelf to the top of the stairs.  I even got rid of the mountain of empty cardboard boxes, put the bedroom furniture back in order (we had started moving that around too), and even swept the steps with the Dyson.

Ali returned to her place surprised to find I had made order out of the mild chaos she left in a little more than 2 hours.  It’s a skill I have always been good at.

She was appreciative of my efforts as she checked out the end result of the labor.  Unfortunately I was not done, we wanted to head to the Apple store and upgrade both of our Iphones.  I had plans for Saturday night so I was worried that the Apple store would be SWAMPED on a Saturday afternoon.

Alison and I could hardly believe when we turned the corner and saw all the blue shirts.  They had a TON of staff on the floor, I didn’t count but I bet there were at least 30 employees on the floor.  Despite there being a large amount of customers on the floor as well, we had an Apple guy immediately available to help us.

We already knew what we wanted, Iphone 5’s, the only thing to be determined was how much memory we wanted in the new phones and the color (black or white).  Ali went with a 32 gig white phone and I did the same thing in black.

The efficiency of the store is pretty damn amazing.   By using a wireless iTouch device the entire transaction for two phones was completed in minutes.  In total I am not sure if we were in the store for even 20 minutes.  I seriously expected to be in there at least an hour and a half.

We got done so fast that we had time to stop in Best Buy to pick up cases for the phones.  Ali likes the Lifeproof cases that are very expensive but are like encasing your phone in a big bulletproof condom.  I went with a simpler but effective silicon case that protects the phone from impact.  I got a high end screen protector as well although I felt disgusted with myself for forking over 25 bucks for it, more than I paid for the case.

I didn’t have a lot of time to play with the phone before heading out but I did like the larger screen, the faster performance of not only the hardware but also the LTE network the phone can hook into and the talk to text feature which is pretty damn handy for on the go communication.  I also asked Siri a couple questions and I liked the answers she gave me.

Since my Friday night and Saturday were eaten up I didn’t get started on stuff around the house till Sunday.  Since I am going to be gone a good chunk of this upcoming weekend it was important that I get some stuff done.  I picked up the dogs and had them hang out with me while I worked.

The weather at least was awesome while I toiled, the cool morning temps evolved into pretty much perfect temps as the day went on.  I had almost every opening in the house wide open to take advantage of it.

Late in the afternoon I had my immediate list done so I turned to ancillary items.  One of those items was installing some hooks onto my pull up station.

This idea came into my head last week for some reason.  I thought that if I mounted some sort of anchoring system on either pull up bar support I would be able to utilize rubber resistance bands to add a new dimension to my work outs.

The hooks I installed were bought at Home Depot.  The only challenging part of the install was using a tape measure to ensure both hooks were mounted more or less parallel to each other.  Once the hooks were mounted I simply strung one of my bands across, slapped it over my shoulders and did a few reps.  It worked just as I hoped.  If you want to see my two minute explanation you can see it here.

So since Ali was coming out to pick up the dogs anyway I suggested she just stays and watches the Super Bowl.  She stopped at the grocery store and picked up some food that we always would generally reserve for the big game, stuff to make pigs in a blanket (veggie dogs of course), spanikopita and bagel bites. Food that is wonderfully awful for you but is that is totally in bounds by Super Bowl standards.

Regular blog readers will know that for most of the last 6 or 7 years we would host a small party at the house with the famous betting board which would be stacked with dozens of quarters.  Obviously there was none of that fun this year.  It felt both familiar and awkward to have Ali and the dogs hanging out in our new situation as we watched the game.

The game itself was very, very good.  One of the best I can recall with a big comeback by the Niners falling short with less than two minutes to go in the game.  Despite the excitement I was so tired I found my eyes drifting closed time and again.

The 35 minute power outage was pretty interesting.  Since I was watching the game time shifted on the Tivo I was able to thankfully fast forward past a lot of the filler CBS had to do until the lights were back on.

The half time show I guess was ok, if you really like Beyonce.  For me however I thought it was kind of blah.  I told Ali I always like when a Super Bowl halftime show has a bunch of performers you never see performing together, performing together.

I thought the commercials this year had the normal amount of laugh out loud moments along with the spots that leave you scratching your head.   I don’t really have any specific commentary about them although the Clydesdale being reunited with his trainer was very touching.

By the time Ali and the dogs left it was after 11.  I woke up this morning REALLY wishing the day after the Super Bowl was a national holiday.

Last night I was very busy between stopping at Home Depot, getting in a last minute BB challenge attempt, cooking dinner, doing laundry and cleaning Tuki’s cage.  Before I knew it 9pm was staring me in the face.  My weeknights just seem to evaporate more often than not.

I am now up to date on Catfish episodes, in case you were wondering.  If you are considering using Facebook to nurture new romantic relationships, I advise strongly against it.  Evidently FB profile deception is quite commonplace.

This weekend I am hoping to get all of the stuff that needs to be hung, installed and put together at Ali’s place taken care of.   Once it is all done she should pretty much have everything she needs furniture wise to be able to take ownership of various things of hers that are still out at the house.  The only thing that could use more attention is some storage organization down in her garage.

I’d like to get a 10 mile run in tomorrow too but the idea of getting up at 4:45 am to do it sounds really, really shitty.

Yesterday I filled out a brief questionnaire for the Mars One project, letting them know why I would want to be part of the team that is making the one way trip to Mars in a decade or so.  I would do it, seriously.