Archives 2013

Saturday morning I was up early and over at Ali’s place.  She had bought a roof rack for her Volt (for SUP)  and I told her I would install it for her, it certainly didn’t seem like anything complex.  I opened the box and looked at the instructions.  In there was a repeated reference to a vehicle specific guide that included measurements for various parts of the install.  There was no such guide in the box.  Luckily I was able to hop on Ali’s computer and print them out online.

Putting the parts together was not overly difficult.  The car specific instructions included stuff like what length you should cut plastic guides to that were slid into the rack to ensure proper spacing of the feet.  So I have the parts together and plop them on the roof of the car.  Something didn’t seem right, the feet were way too far away from the drip rail of the Volt, not even close.

I double checked the strip measurement in the guide which said I was supposed to cut right around 5 inches from the strip.  Now that I am playing Monday morning QB, I am wondering if the intention was to cut off the 5 inches and then insert the longer, 14 inch leftover piece into the rack.  However if that was the case, the instructions totally suck because it was not written or illustrated that way at all.

So anyway I knew it was now time to go into Shawn thinking on his feet mode.  I pulled out the now useless plastic guides and had Ali help me with a trial and error fitting.  I loosened both feet and then we slid them out so they were both sitting in the drip rail as they should be.  I then had Ali hold down one side while I awkwardly lifted the other and tightened down the bolt to lock the foot in place.  It took a few tries but eventually we got it where it should be.

Like most projects, it probably took longer than it should have, however if I had to do another one I am pretty sure I could cut the time invested in half.  The rack felt rock solid and ready to hold whatever stand up paddleboard Ali winds up purchasing.  The rack also can double as a bike carrier, negating the need for Ali to buy a small tow hitch for the car to transport her road bike.

Saturday I also finished up reloading the freshly painted hobby room.  Between the paint on the walls and the organization I did, the room feels transformed.  It no longer feels like a cluttered dumping ground for anything in the house I didn’t have a good spot for.  It’s warm and cozy with a real work area and plenty of open floor space.

I could actually throw the blow up mattress in there for a guest and not feel slightly embarrassed at this point. You can see all of the pictures from the project here.

Saturday night I attended my first Tarpons football game in over a month. This season has been pretty much a joke.  Going into it season ticket holders such as myself were supposed to be getting 7 home games.  Instead, because the league is falling apart, we got a total of 3 home games and two of those three games were awful blow outs. (one was 62-0)

Now to their credit, the Tarpon ownership realizes that season ticket holders were royally screwed.  As compensation season ticket holders were given free tickets to Saturday night’s championship game and also promised free season tickets for next year, although I am very skeptical that there will even be a next year.

So anyway, I contacted the team owner ahead of time as I was instructed to, to make sure tickets for Saturdays game were waiting for me at the Will Call window.  So I walk up to the window about a half hour before kick off and there were no tickets there in my name, well that’s annoying.  More annoying was my being told that the tickets they could give me were not my season ticket seats, instead they were a few rows higher, saying my normal seats were “not available”.

I told the woman behind the glass that was kind of dumb.  She gave me some explanation I didn’t really care to hear.  We wound up sitting in the regular seats anyway, nobody cared.

The game had the best attendance of 2013 at least, maybe 25% of the seats had a rear end in them.  The game also was the most competitive of the year with the Tarpons pulling out a one score victory to lock up the league championship.  I drank something like 4 or 5 Shocktops so by the time the game was over my ticket window problems were long forgotten.  I hope the Tarpons do actually come back for the 2014 season, I enjoy attending the games.  I can only hope they come back into a league situation that does not seem so rag tag.

Sunday morning I did another training brick which included a bike ride and swim.  I forgot my swimming goggles which made things sort of suck.  The first 50 meters my eyes were on fire from the chlorine.  After that they stopped burning but it still made swimming more of a pain in the ass than normal.  I wound up cutting my pool time down to just 800 yards.  I emerged from the water with two very red eyes.

Sunday I finally got to see the Hobbit.  I was a bit worried if I would like the film or not just because Lord of the Rings was such an epic trilogy and by all accounts the Hobbit story (I never read it personally) is more mundane.

Well I have no idea how closely the movie follows the book but I do know the movie was great.  It felt right in step with the LOTR films and I enjoyed it from start to end.  I am looking forward to the release of the other two scheduled Hobbit films. Solid A from me.

I didn’t get a chance to rotate the tires on the truck this weekend to see if my vibration is tire related or something else.  Hopefully I get to do it one night this week after work.

I did manage to replace the toilet arm and float in the master bathroom.  The old arm was encrusted in rust, surely contributing to some of staining I get in the bowl.  I am hoping it’s new brass replacement will keep things a bit tidier.

I didn’t really talk about Ali and I filing our divorce agreement on Wednesday,  it was emotional as I expected it to be.  One thing I did not expect was to get annoyed at the process of filing the papers.

When we walked up to the window and told the clerk we wanted to do she immediately started shoving a FAQ paper at us and telling us how she was unable to give us any legal advice.  Evidently she thought we were asking how to file the paperwork.  We slowed her down and told her we had the paperwork in hand and just needed her to process it.

So after a very slow process, made slower by some computer issue the woman was having, she hands us the paperwork which included a final court date in mid-July, a day that Ali is going to be out of town of course.  We told her that date was going to be no good.  The clerk said the only way to change it was to write a letter to the judge to request a date change. WTF??? Several parts of this made no sense to me.

First, when she was processing the paperwork, what would be so difficult to throw out a tentative date to us, asking if it works for us?  Second when we indicated that the date was a problem, why can’t the clerk simply immediately hop right back into the system and change to another date?  It seemed totally stupid.

So the next day we got it rescheduled, however waiting 24 hours translated into a new court date 3 weeks later than the original, I don’t get it.  At this point we just want to get this over with.  That point now will not arrive until summer is firmly on the downside in mid-August.

The hobby room painting is done but the room reassembly that is going to include some major sorting, throwing out and reorganization still needs to be completed.  That process will take up a decent chunk of my weekend.

All week in Naples it has been raining thanks to the tropical storm that is now moving up the coast.  Alison was supposed to be heading to PA this weekend but cancelled because of the shitty weather.  As a result my dog sitting weekend has been cancelled as well, a bit of a bummer.

I am annoyed that I am still feeling wheel vibration in the Tacoma, especially at highway speeds.  I assumed the vibration I have experienced for quite a while was due to the old worn out tires.  Now I’m not sure.

The easy thing is to guess that the new wheels are not balanced properly but I sort of doubt that is the case.  To test the theory I may do a diagonal tire rotation on the wheels/tires to see if the vibration feels any different after changing tire positions.  If it does, the truck will go back to Tuffy to check balance. If that comes up clean, there are more problems lurking in the suspension.

This weekend has a loose framework in place.  I will tighten it up as it comes.

So the final interior room that is still the blah builders white, the hobby room, is getting painted finally.  This room has been the dumping ground for stuff that had no other good spot like race timing gear, RC plane paraphernalia, exercise equipment and other various junk.

I pulled most of the loose items out and split the pile between the guest bedroom and the great room.  As I pulled it out I saw lots of sorting that needed to be done.  There are a lot of Ali items in there as well as stuff that can be thrown out or recycled.

I didn’t bother to put much thought into the color for the room, opting for the same pleasant sandy shell color that is used in the main living space and master bedroom/bathroom.

When the room is put back together I plan to do some major rearranging and optimizing.  It should be a nice facelift.

The only painting that is left on my to do list is painting the walls of the garage.  I always had this dream that it would look sweet in Eagles Midnight Green with silver on the back wall. 🙂

This morning I did my first real world video of my robotoaster in action.  It is simply incredible.  Hold on to your seat.

I forgot to mention some other robot news in my household, my Neato is getting replaced.  I mentioned that I had battery runtime issues a little while back.  I was only getting 10-15 minutes per run and was occasionally getting a “Please press OKAY to restart. Battery Issue (ooo2)” error.

I had a new battery set sent to me which I installed a couple weeks ago.  Well the new battery runtime has been steadily going downhill as well and the battery error has still been popping up randomly as well.  So I called Neato back and they told me they would send me a replacement unit, cool.

It’s too bad, up until the recent battery issue my XV-14 has been absolutely bullet proof. Doing it’s job well while requiring a fraction of the maintenance my Roomba army used to require.  The new bot should show up early next week.

So today one of my Obama hating friends asked me how I felt about Obama since the latest headline about Verizon phone records being collected by the NSA.  Of course my first reaction was to laugh out loud a little bit as I normally do when the “Blame Obama!” crowd attributes everything negative that happens in the government to Obama. They seem to believe he is directly involved in every email, text message, phone conversation and decision that is made within the geographic boundaries of Washington D.C.

Of course I think it is shitty that the government basically scrapes all communication that is made within the country and keeps it for safekeeping.  I read about the new underground mega-datacenter that was recently completed whose main purpose is to store, inspect and catalog mountains of communication, all in the name of keeping us “safe” thanks to those sweethearts at Homeland Security.  Yea that agency that was created by W along with the Patriot Act to protect us from “terror”, what a joke.

Do I think that Obama has stuck to his 2007 election promises that included protecting civil liberties? No, not really, but can you please give me a list of presidents that have delivered on the majority of their election promises?  I think you would be handing me a piece of blank paper.

If he is guilty of anything it is allowing the Homeland Security behemoth to keep rolling forward in it’s privacy smashing practices since it’s 9/11 era inception.  Does he have the power to dismantle the agency?  Theoretically yes, realistically no.

I really don’t understand the outrage or surprise with this story, to me it is old, old news.

So I walk into the gym today and notice that some of Retro Fitness stickers and signage had been taken down and replaced with stuff that said “Royal Fitness”, WTF?  Evidently overnight the gym had morphed, no longer being a Retro Fitness franchise even though every piece of equipment has the logo slapped all over it.

To me this is a path I have seen before at Powerhouse Gym, the old shit hole I was a member of for years.  They had a musical chair front desk staff, then they dumped the Powerhouse franchise and within a year they closed the doors and like a thief in the night pulled all of the equipment out, even though they were selling one and two year memberships right up until the time they closed.

I would not be surprised at all if the same basic scenario plays out here.  I certainly hope not.  Despite the drama and several annoying aspectsabout the gym, overall I am satisfied in what it offers me in equipment and location (close enough for lunch workouts).  If it goes under  I would need to do an overhaul of my gym options since there is no way in hell I would consider going back to the lunk alarm infested Planet Fcking Fitness.

So I heard a lot of buzz about this past Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode which I had not seen yet.  Fortunately my eyes didn’t stumble across what the shocking development was.  Last night I finally sat down to watch the episode with Sadie by my side and Nicki lounging on the floor.

Now of course I won’t give details of what happened but let me tell you, it lived up to the hype.  When it went down I am sure my mouth drop opened.  I had an inkling that something was up but I did not expect anything close to the scale of what actually goes down.  As the credits flashed up silently I sat there on the sofa, still trying to digest what just happened. Wow.  One of the most shocking moments in my tv watching history.

Today Ali and I are supposed to officially file our divorce agreement at the clerk of courts office.  Almost on queue, today’s weather is very gloomy and gray, unusual for Florida.  It’s going to be a sad moment, regardless of both of our hopes that it actually leads to happier times for both of us.  Things aren’t officially official until you get a court date to stand in front of a judge to affirm your intentions and he/she signs the order.

I’m not looking forward to the sadness these final steps are going to contain but at the same time I know it’s part of the storm that we have to navigate to get to better times ahead.

I must be stressed out, last night I was hoarding food big time. I feel like a slob today, need to get things high and tight asap.

One of the issues with living out in such a rural area is there is an abundance of “redneck” behavior that varies from annoying to outright dangerous.   One behavior that falls into the dangerous category are people hauling ass down the road on 4 wheelers.

This has been a long running problem, as captured on video by myself year and years ago.

I don’t really care that they are using the public roadway, even though it is technically illegal to do so.  I do care that they are doing somewhere around double the posted 30 mph speed limit on the things.  There are kids, animals and other traffic on the narrow two lane road, going that fast is moronic and reckless.

Well we now have a new moron that has stepped up the idiotic ante.  He speeds up and down the road on his red 4 wheeler, while holding a wheelie….  No, I am not kidding.  He isn’t just popping a wheelie for a few seconds, he is holding it for several blocks at a time.

I have seen him doing this somewhere around a half dozen separate times but last night he was really going nuts.  I saw him go back and forth in front of the house at least 10 times.  I finally had enough and sent in a “tip” to the sheriff’s office, letting them know of the behavior and when it typically occurs.  I plan to try to capture the guy’s antics on video shortly to add to my “morons on tape” video collection.

I was amazed when yesterday I received a check in the mail from the place that did my ultrasound several weeks ago.  This is an occurrence as rare as Haley’s Comet, getting money BACK from a medical service provider.  Evidently they must have billed me more up front than necessary based on the insurance reimbursement they received.  Kudos to them I suppose for sending me the difference, I would have never known otherwise.

I hear all this buzz about what happened on Game of Thrones this week.  Luckily I have not read exactly what the buzz is about.  Tonight I plan to watch the episode myself while Sadie and Nicki keeps me company.

On Friday night I watched Another Earth, my latest Netflix dvd. ALERT, this will be a spoiler but it may save you from some of the frustration I experienced.  I recalled the previews for this movie, it seemed interesting, a second version of Earth all of a sudden shows up in the sky. Neat.

So the movie starts and the plot is about a young girl and a tragedy that occurs in her life.  Ok that’s nice, why is there a second Earth?  The movie continues,  the girl plot continues, which is fine, but still I am waiting for why there is a second Earth?

They show a live broadcast where a scientist establishes communication with the other Earth.  Not only does she communicate, she communicates with HERSELF, the version that lives on the second Earth! Cool, finally we are going to get into why the fck there is a second Earth!

Here come the movie credits, I still have no idea why there was a second Earth.  It’s like that was just a secondary part of the movie.  Are you kidding me?  Sure the story and plot wasn’t bad but it was 180 degrees from what I went into the movie looking for, which pisses me off.  No it isn’t a bad movie but don’t go into it thinking you are going to find out much about Earth 2.  I can only give it a B because of the bait and switch.

On Saturday I picked up the girls since I had another day of mostly outdoor labor planned.  The fence received the most attention.  First I went around the entire perimeter and hammered in new staples in a few spots where they popped out and tapped in the others to make sure they were snugged up.  Then I put a fresh spool of line on the weed whacker and knocked down the crap around the entire fence line, inside and out.  I also mowed the area OUTSIDE the fence line just for fun, something that gets done very infrequently.

On Saturday night I saw another movie with Earth in the title,  After Earth, the latest father/son effort from Will and Jaden Smith.  The premise seemed mildly interesting despite Jaden Smith being involved.  I still was stinging from watching Jaden in the New Karate Kid a couple years back.  I thought his acting at the time was basically awful.  I thought since he was older now that he surely couldn’t be quite so bad.  I was wrong.

Jaden is fine running around and doing physical things on screen.  However any time he has to actually speak, it is painful.  It is some of the worst acting I have ever seen.  Maybe I am being too tough on the kid but I have seen plenty of movies featuring child actors that are great.  I don’t think Jaden should get a pass because his dad is Will Smith. Jaden sucks as an actor IMO.

Adding to Jaden’s poor acting was a plot that was predictable and ridiculous at times. (spoiler ahead) In a nutshell, Jaden spends the entire movie being a pussy, and then for 3 minutes becomes Superman and then returns to pussytude.  It is just stupid.

It all made sense when the credits started to roll, the movie was directed by M Night Shyamalan. M had a couple big hits early in his directing career but has become more famous for directing one stinker after another for the past half decade or more.  They used to use his name as a promo for the movie, now they don’t bother to even mention it.  Well it was nice to see M Night hasn’t lost his touch.  I’d give the movie a B or maybe even a B-, fine for Netflix, dumb to pay for otherwise.

On Sunday I was up super early, 3:45 am, to head out to the Naples Fitness Challenge, a long running triathlon that I did once in 2011.  I wasn’t participating this year but I was getting there early to help Bill, our GCR equipment guy set up stuff.  Even though this isn’t an official GCR event it utilizes a ton of our stuff.

Setup before the race went fine, we had a lot of hands on deck helping out.  Once the race started I went into spectator mode for awhile, cheering on the participants and snapping some pictures. See my photo album here.

After the race I again jumped in to the clean up process which seemed more grueling due to the hot sun beating down on us along with the escalating humidity levels.

During clean up I managed to gash my big toe pretty well when a piece of fencing fell over.  I had a pool of blood in my flip flop.  Of course if I was smart and wore sneakers instead of flip flops I would have avoided injury.  Thankfully the truck had a med kit.  I slapped a band aid on the bloody/sandy wound to stop the bleeding.

Even though I didn’t actually do the race, I felt sleepy like I did.  Sunday afternoon I had a two hour plus nap instead of doing the ancillary exercise I was thinking about earlier.

So yesterday the new garage looked at the Tacoma and confirmed what I already indicated, the driver side rear wheel bearing was bad.  They recommended replacing the bearings on both sides because of the age of the truck just as Tuffy did.  The dollar number was actually a few dollars MORE than what Tuffy quoted.  Well the truck is there already, I told them to just do it. The guys I dealt with at least were much more customer friendly.

I picked up the truck last night and the wheel bearing noise is gone, but the noise was gone before I spent one dollar on the tire replacement task.  That is the bitter irony of all of this expenditure.  Even $1600+ later the truck now doesn’t feel significantly different than before I dropped a dime, despite 4 new tires, a new tie rod and 2 wheel bearings.  It still will vibrate around 70 mph and the steering wheel is now slightly off center. Yea the new tires look better than the 5 or 6 year old Firestone’s but the bang for the buck equation is woefully in the red.

Spending that much money repairing a truck that might be worth $4-5k tops is a frustrating reality.

My robotoaster showed up yesterday.  I wasted little time unboxing it and plugging it in.  Working the toaster was very easy.  Select the toasting level from 1-7 and hit the TOAST button.  The bread is slowly lowered into the body of the toaster and then guards pop in from either side to keep it centered.

Once the toast is in position there is a bar graph on the front display that graphically shows how much time is left before the toast is done.  When finished the bread is lifted out of the toaster and an “all done” noise is sounded, cool!

I ran the toaster through a number of cycles to play with it.  I shot a quick video of one of the cycles. 

I was going to simply discard the crude Toastmaster that has adorned the house for a dozen years.  However Ali reminded me that we got that toaster at a second hand store when we moved here.  For whatever reason that instilled a sentimental value into the old thing that makes me pause to toss it.  If anyone needs an old reliable toaster let me know.

This weekend I have no huge plans although I will be heading to a local triathlon to both cheer on my various friends that are participating and to help Bill with setting up and tearing down equipment that the running club is loaning the event for the race.

My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is yanking the Start Menu out from under me.  Thankfully, there’s an app for that…

Nothing much to say today.

My truck is in the shop to hopefully be repaired without causing major blunt trauma to my wallet.

My super toaster is supposed to show up today, breakfast prep will never be the same.

So yesterday Tuffy was supposed to call me to let me know the cost for getting the rear wheel bearings replaced on the Tacoma.  I waited till 10am I never heard anything so I called them.  Brad answered the phone.  I reminded him he said he was going to call me.  He said he was just checking the price now (yea sure), and he would call me back.  Ok fine I gave him my office number and waited.

1:30 came and I had not heard back.  I was getting annoyed as I normally do when someone tells me they are going to do something and then do not follow through.  I call again and get the assistant manager.  He looks up my name in the computer and sees that Brad did indeed get pricing yet for whatever reason neglected to call me.

He gives me a repair price of almost $700.  I was like WTF?  The number sounded ridiculous.  He started breaking down the various parts which included doing both rear wheel bearings something that evidently is recommended.  In his numbers were no price breaks or discounts taking into account that the bearing noise was non-existent until their mechanics laid their hands on the truck, which I pointed out to him.

So I told the guy no thanks, I will look elsewhere to do it.  I hung up frustrated that I now got to add the local Tuffy to the growing list of garages that  I won’t be frequenting.

I did a search online and found a small two guy garage that has TONS of positive feedback regarding their customer service, fair pricing and knowledge.  I called them up and made an appointment for tomorrow to have the work done.  Hopefully my 10 year search for a garage I can trust can finally come to an end.

I’m not really sure what I will do at the gym today.  My knees still hurt from running and my forearms hurt from tire flipping.  I guess I could do glute squeezes.