Archives 2013

So my weekend had no outside obligations so I decided to fill it up with internal things.  I woke up Saturday morning with a spring in my step.  The bright sun and cool, crisp temperatures seemed like an ideal scenario to get stuff done.  I was outside and weeding by 7:30.

I decided I wanted to get the rest of the landscape beds mulched on Saturday.  After weeding was done I pulled out in the truck.  I made a pit stop on my way to Home Depot at mom’s place.  She was at work but had asked me if I could take a look at her noisy toilet.  I also dropped off a bunch of stuff I harvested from the garden for her.

From my years of yard maintenance I know that the back of the Tacoma will hold about 30 bags of mulch. I also knew I would need more than 30 bags to finish the job which included the orchard, the border around the pool and the two raised areas around the palms in the front yard.

I also made a pit stop at the pool store.  When I went to flip on the pump Saturday morning to run the pool vacuum I got nothing, the pump acted like it was dead.  I smelled an electrical burn that concerned me.  The last thing I needed was to have to replace the pool pump after all of the money I have spent on other home repairs/improvements the last few weeks.

Well after verifying that there was power going to the pump I jumped on the internet to get some guidance.  Maybe it is something I can fix easily myself.  Thankfully it was.  There is a large capacitor that can go bad on a pool pump.  The only thing I had to verify was that the motor was not seized up.  Luckily on this Pentair pool pump that was easy to do.  There is a plastic cap that covers the shaft of the motor. After removing the cap, a quick grab and twist verified the motor itself was spinning freely.

The local Pinch a Penny had replacement capacitors as this is a pretty common failure.  I was a bit surprised that it cost $43 but I was still way ahead of the $500 I would have potentially spent if I didn’t do any homework and just replaced the pump.  The replacement of the cap was easy.  I was quite relieved when I threw the switch and the pump came roaring back to life.   I taped the process just in case there are others on the internet looking into replacing their own pool pump caps.

So as I was spreading my first 30 bags of mulch I found myself kind of enjoying it.  The labor was steady but not brutal, the sky was bright blue, humidity low and the temperatures perfect for working outside.  I could hardly believe the orchard consumed almost the entire 30 bags of red mulch.  I knew I would be heading back out for another load.

I decided to grab another 30 bags although the rough estimation in my head told me I probably could get away with only 25.  I figure it is better to figure a little high than go low and wind up having to go back out once again.

By the time I was almost done spreading the mulch the lustre had worn off the joys of yard work.  Ironically, the sky by that time had become overcast and looked like rain could be looming around the corner.  Just as I was in the homestretch of ripping open the 30 additional mulch mulch bags I was startled by the sound of a voice behind me saying “Excuse me, sir”..

I jumped a little bit as I spun around.  It was a young guy, a younger looking guy and a young girl.  They were people that lived up the street that said they were interested in the garage fridge I was giving away for free.  I had posted it on the community Yahoo groups email list I started several years ago.

In the ad I said that if needed, I could help deliver the fridge in my truck although I was hoping to not have to follow up on that offer.  When I saw their mid-size sedan in the driveway I knew I would be put to work.  I backed the truck up to the garage and with the help of the two young guys hoisted the original fridge that came with the house into the bed of the Tacoma.

I haphazardly used one of my ratcheting straps to keep the fridge from rolling anywhere.  Luckily I only had to go a few streets up the road.

The house the young couple lived at was at the very end of the street.  The house was WAY off the street and required traversing a twisty, bumpy sand driveway to get there.

The house was interesting.  You could tell that when it was built there was some real thought and effort put into it.  However it looks like at one point it probably became when of the many foreclosure casualties in my area.  The young couple obviously didn’t have the means to keep the place well maintained.

We guided the fridge inside using my hand truck.  It felt kind of weird leaving it at a strangers place after being under my roof for over a dozen years.  Oh well, it freed up room in the garage and hopefully will serve it’s new family well.  The young couple thanked me for my efforts.  I headed home and resumed my labor.

In addition to the mulching, I grabbed some additional stuff at Home Depot as improvements to the yard and garden.  For the garden I grabbed a tray of a different kale variety and cauliflower.  Both will be great home grown food additions if they flourish.

For the yard I bought an avocado tree and a coconut palm.  The avocado tree was planted up front in the spot the remains of the frost murdered plumeria resided.  In the past year I discovered that I like avocado.  It just happens to be a GREAT super food.  It would be awesome to be able to eventually grow my own.

The coconut palm was planted where the palmetto used to be.  The coconut palm that is planted off the corner of the pool cage is probably my favorite tree on my land.  That actually started as a tree of roughly the same size as what I bought.  It’s now probably 30 feet high and has fronds that are 12 feet long.

I just happened to have enough castle wall stone left to make a small border around the palm tree. I weed blocked and mulched the area for aesthetics.  I am crossing my fingers it takes hold and flourishes.

By the time the last tool was put away I was thoroughly spent.  I had managed to fill pretty much the entire day with various work although I did like the fruits of my labor.  The landscaped areas look much better with their new thick coat of mulch.  You can see all the pictures from the day here.

Saturday night I made the mistake of downing a couple Bud Light Platinums on an empty stomach compounded with a dehydrated body, I hardly drank any water all day long.  The end result was my getting buzzed extremely quick.  While buzzed I went on a Facebook posting spree, throwing up a bunch of random, mostly stupid things.  Moral of the story, don’t drink and post to Facebook.

On Sunday morning I got off to a late start thanks to the clocks jumping forward this weekend.  My planned brick at the waterpark didn’t get started until shortly before 11.  I had a surprisingly decent bike ride, averaging  18.5 mph on the 12.5 mile ride.

Ali showed up to join me for the swim portion of the brick.  I put in 800 meters at the pool, the last 400 were at a fast (for me)  8 minutes.  It was really surprising because my swimming endurance felt pretty damn awful.  I felt gassed after the first 200.

The was my first brick of 2013.  Hell it was my first swimming since last September and I don’t think I have done any fast biking in almost as long.  It felt good to get out there. I hope to reestablish Sunday bricks as part of my normal fitness routine.   I just need get them done earlier in the day.

On my way home I stopped at Ali’s place (she was not home) to get a book case she no longer needed since the Ikea additions to her place.  Once verifying it was the correct width to fit in the vacated fridge wall space, I loaded it into the truck.  Doing this myself was tricky.  I carefully slid the shelf down the carpeted stairs which include a 180 degree turn and then awkwardly hoisted it on to the tailgate.

It fit the wall perfectly although a finished wood shelf may not look very stylish in a garage setting.  It gave me a lot of functional storage space over the fridge, which had become a one shelf storage area in the past year.

The SSR got a needed bath Sunday afternoon.  It has had a bug facial since the SSR meet up.  I never get tired of washing the truck.  I love the way it looks when I am done.

Sunday night Ali and I went to go see the Great and Powerful Oz.  Since neither of us had plans we figured we might as well go together.  Ali is a huge Wizard of Oz fan so the idea of a prequel to one of her favorite films of all time was appealing to her.  I went to get out of the house, I don’t share Alison’s love of OZ.

The movie wasn’t bad although I was fighting a severe case of drowsiness throughout.  Ali thought it was really good which isn’t surprising since she loves the story so much.  Personally I’d give it a B or B+ but if you love OZ you will be into this film for sure.

So once again I had IX Webhosting turn off the Bar-barians web site.  I am finding myself thoroughly annoyed at the way they have been handling the issue of CPU utilization.  When the new BB site first launched in early February I had no idea it would get as much traffic as it has.  In 30 days it got somewhere around 2 million hits.  Hits are page views, not 2 million unique visitors.  That is a lot.

I have been really working hard at getting the site as optimized as possible by doing things like utilizing W3 Total Cache, implementing a CDN via Amazon Cloudfront and making dozens of little tweaks to minimize the load on the shared server.  My efforts have gotten CPU usage down significantly but IX still says it is too high.  Ok fine, I understand the need to keep utilization down.  What I don’t understand is how poorly IX is at handling the situation professionally.

Each time they turn off the domain I have to call them, let them know I was going to do additional tweaking and then they would turn the domain back on.  In the support ticket it always says they will check usage again in 48-72 hours to see if my changes helped.  Well what has happened each time is this recheck date passes, the domain is still online, so I assume what I did worked.

Well instead what happens is a random amount of days after the stated recheck someone actually does it.  When they do, instead of notifying me of the new usage numbers, they just shut the domain off again without notifying me first, requiring me to start the process all over again.

There are several problems I have with the support I have gotten on IX on the problem.  First, nobody “owns” my ticket.  Each and every time this happens I have dealt with a different person, none of which has a grasp on what has been going on.  It’s very annoying that they don’t assign tickets to individuals so they work with customers to resolve them completely.

Second their repeated pattern of letting their own recheck dates pass seems crazy and piles on to the frustration.  In this latest incident, I was told the domain was going to be rechecked on March 6th.  It actually wasn’t checked until FOUR DAYS LATER.  Since I had not been contacted on the 6th I assumed I was in the clear.  BAM, nope, you are dead, again.

Third, IX does not give their customers a way to check their cpu utilization themselves.  It requires one of their network administrators to pull a report.  This means there is no real time way for me to know how much of an impact the changes I am making are helping.  I make a tweak and then basically know it didn’t work when they turn off the domain again.  It is VERY inefficient.

So I am done trying to shoehorn the Bar-barians web site into my current hosting account.  I have several options.  The cpu usage on my account looks like if I split the BB web site onto it’s own shared hosting account it would fall under the CPU threshold at IX.  However after all the aggravation with the way IX has handled the issue I don’t really feel like rewarding them with more of my business.

I could move the site to shared hosting with a different provider, one that has a reputation of being more friendly to WordPress hosting and has better tolerance of the demands WordPress hosting can put on a server.

Finally I could look again at moving the site back to the Amazon cloud.  However I am not sure what size instance I would need to run the site efficiently.  Depending on the size I would settle on (a micro instance was woefully underpowered) I could wind up with a sizable hosting charge.   I am also not sure how keen I am taking on the responsibility of administering the virtual Linux server from floor to ceiling since I only have very limited knowledge of the environment.

So anyway, this week I will be looking in earnest at new home for the Bar-barians site, I need this Groundhog Day scenario to come to an end.

So last night I threw my latest Netflix DVD into the Xbox, Snow White and the Huntsman.  I don’t really recall why I added it to my queue in the first place.  Maybe it was because Charlize Theron is hot? Anyway, the movie was fine, I found it mildly entertaining.  Besides Charlize, it also has Kristen Stewart and the dude from Thor in the cast.  It is a decent Netflix rental and not much more, I’d give it a B.

On thing I would give a solid A+ to is my new sound system.  Not only does it sound awesome, I just love the network connectivity.  It allows me to wirelessly stream any audio from my Iphone 5 to the system from anywhere in the house.  This morning I was blaring the Stern show via the Sirius Iphone app on the system.  It works for Ipod music and Pandora as well.

Last night I got a jump start on my weekend work by doing laundry, cleaning Tuki’s cage and the bathrooms.  This weekend I am planning to load up the back of the Tacoma with 30 bags of mulch to cover the landscaped areas that did not get touched as part of the pond border project.  Unfortunately, 30 bags might not be enough to cover what is left.

The water park is now open again on weekends.  I am thinking of firing up my training bricks by doing a decent bike ride followed up by swimming.  My shoulders (especially my right one) hurt like hell once more and swimming seems to be a very good way to keep that under control.

I might buy my Tacoma valve cover gasket kit this weekend.  Once I have it hanging on the pegboard it will give me visual motivation to get the job done.

This is a few days old but I have been meaning to comment on it.  Am I the only one that thinks it is bat shit crazy that the Ravens made Joe Flacco the highest paid player in the NFL?  Sure he had a good run at the end of the season but his NFL career clearly shows he is on the high end of mediocre or low end of good QB’s in the NFL.  I don’t get it.

Maybe I am jaded by what the Eagles did in 2010, throwing a mountain of cash at Mike Vick after 8 good games (followed by 24 not so good).    I think less of Joe Flacco for proclaiming he deserved Drew Brees type money.  Have some humility or at least let your agent say those type of statements.  Dumb ass, rich dumb ass that is.

There is this guy that started showing up at the gym  the past couple months.  He annoys me.  He is a short stocky type of guy with some tattoos.  He is a notorious half rep squatter, never getting his thighs past 45 degrees no matter if he is squatting 315 or 135.  However none of these things are the true annoyance.

He wears sunglasses in the gym.  Most of the time he has them propped up on his forehead but there are plenty of times, especially when he is squatting, that he is wearing them conventionally.  I have pondered why an individual would choose to wear sunglasses while they work out in the gym.  After much serious contemplation the only thing I could come up with was he is a douche bag.

For years I had a little guilty pleasure I would partake in, roughly once a week on my way home from work.  I would drive through the McDonalds that is on my way home and order the same thing each time, two hamburgers, a small fry (medium if I was feeling crazy) and a Diet Coke.    Yes, it went against the normal nutritional tenants I try to follow but I looked at it as a cheat day, and a pretty minor one at that.  One fast food meal a week isn’t going to hurt someone as active as I am.

Well anyway, when I decided to give up beef, pork and poultry last year I also was unintentionally giving up my McD fix.  For the most part I haven’t thought about it or missed it.  But for some reason today, it got into my head, probably because I heard a Filet O Fish commercial on the radio.

It made me realize that the FoF could be my new go to meal if would go to McD’s again.  I looked up the nutritional info on the sandwich and it actually isn’t too bad at all,  around 400 calories if you leave the defacto cheese and tartar sauce on it. If you drop both of those, which I would, it drops down to 270 calories.

Now don’t get me wrong, if this sounds like I am advocating McDonald’s patronage or suggesting it becomes a substantial part of anyone’s diet, I’m not.  Jeremy was quick to point out to me that regardless of the nutritional sins a Filet o Fish may or may not have, there are other reasons to not ever step foot in McDonalds, such as their existence being one of the primary reasons so much of the beef, pork and poultry that I choose not to eat, is consumed by hungry mouths around the world.

My eating a meal at McD’s would definitely qualify as a hypocritical act.  I wouldn’t argue that at all.  I just hope you wouldn’t argue with me when I suggest I am only joining the club that we all already belong to in one way or another.

Who knows, my McD urge may fade away but at least I have a plan if I do find myself walking under the golden arches sometime in the future.

Last night was spent getting the pool deck back in order.  Before I started I did a full walk around to carefully inspect the work since it was now totally dry.  It looked really good.  Although Giovanni was not good at all at following through on a schedule there is no doubt the company does good work.

I am VERY glad I decided to paint the deck the accent color instead of the wall color.

Putting the deck back together myself was a challenge.  When I pulled stuff off the deck there was no issue with dragging the bigger/heavier items off the stained, faded and shitty surface.  Well I certainly could not use the same casual approach when putting stuff back.  I struggled to carry the big table back in through the narrow screen door myself without letting it touch the ground.  The smaller table was a challenge as well because I left the ceramic tile top on it.

I used the moving process as an opportunity to do some sorting and removing of things I didn’t need/want or were just trash.  The two cheap, made in China, sling chairs I bought only a few months ago got put out by the road.  They were already starting to rust and looked like shit.  Get what you pay for.

I also cleared out a bunch of old junk from the pool storage box that hasn’t seen use for years and probably never would have again.  The table by the dog door had a bunch of unneeded stuff on it as well, most of it wound up in the trash.

By the time I got everything back on the deck it was close to dark.  I barely had enough light to do a quick cleaning of the middle rail of the pool cage.  Certain sections of it were greenish. Hitting it quickly with some Simple Green and a towel cleaned them up enough that I will be able to postpone a pool cage pressure washing session for a little while.  By the time I was done I was working basically by the street light in the middle of the neighbors yard.

When I woke up this morning I looked out my bedroom window and liked what I saw.

Last night I had another random, odd dream.  I was back in the center of Gouglersville, the town I grew up right outside of.  The area around the fire house was filled with people sitting in chairs, it was way more people than Gouglersville has in population.  I have no idea what they were doing there.

My attention however turned towards the old Brightbill’s general store, the place where I bought countless packs of Topps baseball cards as a kid.  The building looked like someone took a hatchet to it, the front of it was cut at a 45 degree angle and it had no roof or second story anymore.  It was like it was turned into some sort of bastardized storage space.

Outside the remains of Brightbills were a number of people as well as someone in front of the stuff that was in the storage space who was calling out numbers.  I realized there was an auction going on.  I walked closer and looked at the items, they looked to be things the Brightbills collected over the years.

I obtained a bidder number and recall bidding on an item although I don’t remember what it was.  All I remember is I blew the first bidder out of the water, offering triple what the last bid was.  The dream ended just as the bidding ended.  I still have no idea what I won.

Speaking of sleep, I have had a weird thing going on for a week or more.  I keep waking up maybe an hour before my alarm goes off.  Sometimes I fall back asleep sometimes I don’t.  It has happened every night but a couple during this time period.  I think my sleep quality overall has been pretty poor recently.  By 8PM I am starting to fade.

So I left early from work once again yesterday because the painters were coming to finish the deck.  I had to laugh to myself when I got another text from the guy saying they were running late.  They got to the house maybe a half hour to 45 minutes before I did, they started somewhere around 2.  I was annoyed and concerned that they would not have time to finally finish.

When I got there Giovanni was hand painting the outer border of the deck, no paint was on the large areas yet.  The color that was down looked good at least.  The dogs, whom I picked up on the way home were quite vocal in their disapproval of the painters, barking at them out the slider.  Sadie was not at all happy that her dog door was blocked.

I attended to stuff inside as the work progressed.  Once the border was outlined they used a roller on a long pole to do the big areas.  It didn’t take them long at all to roll on the two coats even though they went through 4 gallons of paint.  They were finished up by 5.

I asked Giovanni how long until I could walk on it.  He said pretty much right away since the bright sun dried the paint very quickly.  When I ventured out on the deck after he left, barefoot, I discovered that was not totally true as I wound up with some wet paint on my feet.

I walked around the outside of the pool cage checking out the end result.  The color looked good and the patching and painting of the various cracks seems to have made them disappear.  Tonight I will take a closer look after work as I start to bring the stuff that has been sitting in the yard for a week back inside.

Although the frustration I had to deal with getting the deck painted were very annoying I am pleased with the end result which is the most important. You can all the pics from the project I took here.

Yesterday on the way to work I saw a dead German Shepherd on the side of the road.  Instantly I felt a wave of sadness come over me.  I hope whomever hit the dog has a huge serving of bad karma to feast on for a long, long time. Idiot…

So I have my Yamaha surround system pretty much set up the way I want it although the age of my TV makes certain things not possible.  I programmed my Harmony Remote to automatically incorporate the Yamaha receiver whenever anything tv related is going on with just one click.  When I change volume on the Harmony, it changes the volume on the surround sound.  This is the functionality I always wanted with my Bose Lifestyle but was unable to do so because of the RF style remote the system uses.

There is another feature of my Mitsubishi tv that annoys me, the way it handles AV inputs.  The tv boasts “smart sensing” of devices attached to the various HDMI and component connections.  If you connect something to a port it will detect it and ask you what kind of device it is.  Well for whatever reason it isn’t smart enough to detect the HDMI output from the Yamaha receiver which would allow me to navigate the AV menu system on the tv.

Well if the TV doesn’t smart detect an input it won’t allow you to flip to it which is asinine.  So if I want to view the Yamaha menu on screen I have to “trick” the tv by temporarily plugging the HDMI cable from the surround system into one of the detected ports.  Of course if the tv was a few years newer this would be a moot issue because I could utilize ARC and HDMI device control where all my HDMI capable devices would go into the Yamaha box and everything to the tv would be fed from a single HDMI cable.

So once again yesterday I left work early because Rhinoshield was supposed to show up to paint the deck.  I have had a very frustrating experience with the company this time around.  I am dealing with someone else this time and he seems unable to to do what he says he is going to do which is something that I find very annoying.

It all started with the original appointment to give me an estimate when he didn’t show up (or call to tell me) because he had a “scheduling error”.  Once the work was scheduled it has been one miscommunication after another.  The latest was yesterday.  When I talked to the job lead on Friday, which was originally supposed to be THE day the work was supposed to be completed, I was told that Monday they would dedicate the whole day to working on my deck although they wouldn’t be there until noon so temps could be a little warmer.  Ok, fine.

So once again I left work early yesterday.  I didn’t get home until about 1:15, figuring I would be driving up to a crew of guys getting busy on the deck.  Instead I pulled into an empty driveway.  Grrrrr.  I texted Giovanni with a simple message ” I am here, you are not”   He responded that he was about 15 minutes away, yet another late arrival.

I was thinking how it was going to be tough for them to get it all done before dark.  Although I want the work completed, more importantly I want the work done well, which requires time.  Giovanni’s constant tardiness was creating road blocks to both of these things happening.

So as I was unloading the dishwasher I see his truck is in the driveway.  He walks around the side of the house with a phone to his ear.  I went around and saw he was by himself, wtf??  When he got off the phone I said “you are by yourself???”  He tells me that today he was just going to be repairing the cracks and sealing the deck.  He said it had to dry before they put on the two coats of paint.

I had a hard time disguising my aggravation.  I reminded him that on Friday he told me that they were going to dedicate all day Monday to working on the deck.  He said he had to wait till it got warmer and that he didn’t want to “rush it”.  He said they would be coming back Tuesday to do the actual painting.  This was the forth or fifth time during this process where what I was told by this guy was not the reality.  The time frame has been consistently sliding backwards.

So after delivering a healthy dose of stinkeye, I walked inside so Giovanni could get to work, by himself.  It took him maybe two and a half hours to do the work.  When he was done he again assured me they would be back tomorrow to do the actual painting.  I wish I could feel assured it will actually happen.  I HATE when people over promise and under deliver.

The only good thing was it seemed like the cracks were repaired well based on eyeballing out the window.  I certainly hope the final outcome is good to help wash away some of the bad taste in my mouth from the poor communication and execution of stated intentions up until this point.

I watched a LOT of TV yesterday, taking in a two hour Biggest Loser, a two hour Celebrity Apprentice AND this weeks Walking Dead.  Watching that much tube did a fine job of making me feel like a lazy piece of shit, despite running 13.1 miles the day before.  Damn, Walking Dead was awesome though.

I have not been feeling very upbeat recently.  Most of my time walking around the house has been pretty somber.  I feel myself getting mired in feelings of loneliness and melancholy much more.  Perhaps that is a sign that I am not doing a good enough job of keeping busy or doing things that are fun, something I really concentrated on early.

There have been so many twists and turns in my road the past year or so.  I’d really like to find a nice straight path of highway and just accelerate…

I picked up Patrick from the airport mid-day Friday for his surprise last minute trip to SW Fla.  I had seen Pat back in mid-January when I did my western Pa road trip to my dad’s place.  I picked him up in the SSR since Patrick had never been in the truck before.  I did a few hard and loud accelerations for fun.

On Friday evening I suggested to Pat we head down to Zookies for dinner, the place I hung out with my dad a couple times during his visit.  When dad and I went, the parking lot looked pretty full yet there was still a decent amount of tables available as well as space at the bar.

When Pat and I pulled in the parking lot looked quite full and this time the inside was packed as well.  There were probably 20 people waiting, there was not an open table or bar stool available.  Pat said he was fine with just eating at the bar as was I.  Eventually a single seat opened up in the one corner of the bar.  We grabbed it and then a second one came open maybe 15 minutes later.

As we scanned the place it was wall to wall old people, next to Patrick, I may have been the youngest patron there.  We were after all there at prime old person feeding time, 6pm.  We had an older couple to our left that we had some conversation with.  We found out the husband was retired from Raytheon and was an electrical engineer as Pat is.

I noticed the wife had band aids on her one ear, I asked her if she had some skin cancer cut out since I am familiar with the signs.  She said she did indeed.

Pat and I were keeping the conversation alive with them when we ran into an awkward/uncomfortable moment.  The woman was describing something and came out with the phrase “n-word babies” (no I am not a fan of the term).  Instantly it was like a big wet awkward blanket was thrown on top of Patrick and I. He feels the same way I do about people that throw that word around as a normal part of their vernacular.  We sort of each gave each other a quick “did she really just say that” glance, and clammed up.

You could tell the woman picked up on the fact that her racist adjective did not sit well with either of us.  She tried to change the subject and restart the convo in another direction.  Pat and I kept most of our responses down to a few words from that point on.  I was relieved when they packed up and left.  Nothing will turn me off more to a person than if they pull back their veil and show me their inner racist. Well, animal cruelty is at the same level I suppose.

Pat and I had identical dinners, enjoying the Friday night special fish dinner.  We both opted for the much healthier blackened version instead of deep fried.   We also both imbibed  on the same draft beer, called Zookies Red.  The first few sips were a bit rough on my taste buds but after that it smoothed out enough that I had a total of three.

It seemed all in all, despite the unwelcomed racist bar conversation, Patrick enjoyed the Zookie’s experience.

I told Pat ahead of time I had a race to time Saturday morning.  I gave him the option to just sleep in as opposed to rolling out the door with me at 5:30 am.  He was fine with tagging along, Patrick is much like me in that he isn’t real comfortable just sitting around.

When we got on the race site it wasn’t long before our volunteer coordinator scooped Patrick up and put him to work which he didn’t mind.  First he got to work the timing chip hand out table and then he was out on the course being one of the traffic control volunteers.  My part of the race went smoothly, there weren’t any major timing snafus.

When we got home I had all of my post race crap to do.  I asked Pat if he ever saw Walking Dead before, he hadn’t.  Well I had a treat for him.  I fired the show up on the Xbox via Netflix.  We wound up spending a large part of the day watching WD episodes, they are so good I didn’t mind watching them again.

I had asked Pat if he minded helping me with ripping the remains of the palmetto bush out of the ground.  To most people this would seem like a ridiculous request, having family down to visit for a couple days and enlist them to do a home project.  And normally I would agree, but not with Pat, he likes to do stuff, even if the stuff is physical labor.  I am much the same way, I have pitched in with projects that my dad has multiple times during my visits to his various homes the past 6 or 7 years.

Thankfully, my neighbor had agreed to come over with his large tractor to assist in the removal process.  His tractor has a front shovel and a box blade in the back.  When he first hit the palmetto roots, they hardly budged.  I was worried that the tractor wasn’t going to be as much help as I hoped.  However my neighbor doesn’t give up easily and he also has a lot of tractor skills.

He used a lot of back and forth action as well as using the hydraulic lifting power of the bucket to rip the huge  root system out of the sandy soil.  The 4 wheel drive tractor was digging into the yard deeply, leaving huge ruts as the tires tried to get traction.

The bush was right near the fence line and one of the buried sprinkler lines.  As my neighbor was rocking the tractor back and forth he was getting close to both.  I had visions of the box blade ripping through the fence line or one of the huge rear tires snapping a pvc pipe.  Luckily neither situation occurred thanks to his tractor handling ability.

It took a long time but after close to an hour of tractor work my neighbor had the stumps torn out.  We loaded up the bucket with the remains and he drove the tractor back to the fill pit to dump them.  I thanked my neighbor for all the work and promised a case of beer for his efforts.

After he left Pat and I got out the hand tools to smooth out the area.  As we did we noticed some hard spots just below the soil.  Evidently there were a few rogue roots lurking under the surface.  Well there were actually quite a few subterranean roots.  Pat and I utilized a shovel and post bar to get them out.  It was tough as hell getting them to release their grip on the soil.  I could not imagine what I would have gone through if I tried to pull out the entire root system by hand.

I was a bit annoyed that during the digging process I tweaked my bad right knee while trying to drive a shovel into the ground with my foot.  I could feel some swelling in it Saturday night, not exactly what you want with a half marathon scheduled for the following day.

Earlier I had picked up the dogs and brought them out to the house to hang with me and Uncle Patrick.  They had fun hanging outside while we worked.  Ali came out later to pick them up and downed some pre-half marathon pizza with Pat and I.

So for the second day in a row Pat and I rolled out of bed super early.  As predicted, the temps were cold, in the upper 40’s.  We got up to the race site around 6 about an hour early.  Patrick, despite running in much cold weather in his native Pittsburgh, was quite cold, just like me.  When he runs up north he has a lot more clothing on than he had on Sunday morning.

After getting our numbers which I thought were kind of interesting, 696 for me and 878 for Patrick, we headed back to the truck to hang out.  We saw some of my GCR buddies there and I introduced Pat to them although he met a number of them helping out at the race we did on Saturday.

About 20 or 25 minutes from the race start Pat and I did a couple laps around the parking lot to try to loosen up a bit.  Even Pat’s parking lot warm up pace was tough for me to maintain without considerable effort.  With about 10 minutes to go we merged into the river of humanity that was heading towards the start line.

The PA system they had at the start line was woefully underpowered.  Despite being only about 10-12 people away from the start line, I could hear nothing.  I didn’t even notice someone was singing the national anthem until the last verse.  After some more talking by someone I could not hear, an air horn started the race.  At least we could hear that.  I wished Patrick good luck as we took off, knowing he would soon be well out of my sight.

I stripped down to shorts and my long sleeve Under Armour cold gear top to run.  Although it was cold, at least the rain that was in the forecast never developed.  That would have been pretty damn miserable.

Early on I tried to keep my pace decent but I was very conscious of having a lot of miles in front of me.  Since in my training the most I ran was 10 miles I was even more worried about bonking if I went too hard too fast.  Early on in the race there is a lot of changing of the human scenery.  I was passing a lot of people and a lot of people were passing me as runners got established in their pace groups.

After about a mile or so the deep chill I was feeling had subsided as my internal furnace was now cranking away.  I checked my pace occasionally as I went along, for the most part it was around 8:30 which would easily put me below my goal of beating last years time of 1:55:17.

I took a little different approach to the water stops this year.  In other races I never would allow myself to stop for even a split second to drink, I always tried to awkwardly continue to run slowly while drinking.  More often than not that results in my choking and getting very little of the water into my body.  This time I decided that getting hydration was worth the 5 second pause it required.

I knew overall my pace during the first half of the run was pretty strong however I was surprised when I saw my half way split was 56 minutes flat.  This was nearly three minutes faster than I did the first half of the race last year.  If I could maintain that pace I would finish in 1:52 which would be incredible (for me).

Well shortly after the halfway split you get to tackle the toughest part of the race, the back and forth trek over a long, high bridge.   The bridge was not fun.  The optimism I felt after the halfway split was soon replaced with frustration of the painful and slow climb over the bridge.  I saw Patrick pass me as I was heading out (he was coming in) and yelled whatever supportive words I could between my gasps for breath.  That bridge sucks.

So as I finally hit the last downhill on the bridge I knew this was the grind time.  I had roughly 5 long, flat and straight miles to go till the finish.  Shortly after the bridge I felt a bit of a second wind, inspired that the most physically difficult portion of the run was behind me. However now I had the most mentally grueling portion staring me in the face.

The past two years I did this race I had managed to latch on to a couple of fast women to help pace me during this part of the run.  This year I never managed to find that pacer and it definitely put me at a disadvantage.  Last year it seemed like by the time we hit the second half of the race I was hardly passed at all, I did almost all of the passing.

This year it was much different.  I was passed, a lot, during the last 5 miles and I didn’t like it one bit.  It made me feel slow and frustrated.  I glanced at my GPS periodically and most times it showed a pace right around 9 which wasn’t going to get me home ahead of last years time.

With about 3 miles to go I was at about 1:25, I knew I needed to go if I wanted to cover the last 3.1 miles in less than 30 minutes.  I was now in no man’s land, farther than any training run I did.

I used every trick I could think of to take my mind off the physical discomfort.  I got my pace down to the high 8’s but still felt like I needed to go harder if I was going to beat the clock.  The last mile seemed to go on forever as we looped around the Edison Mall parking lot.  My legs didn’t feel like they could move any faster so I just tried to make my stride longer taking advantage of my very long legs.

As the finish line and clock came into focus I saw it had just crossed 1:54.  I pushed the pedal down as far as I could and “sprinted” to the finish, crossing the line right around 1:54:45, around 30 seconds faster than last year. Whew.  As I leaned down my head to receive my finishing medal  I came within an inch or two of inadvertently using the Hooters girl’s bosom as a pillow.  My balance was shaky.

I was thoroughly exhausted.  I went over to a nearby temporary fence and leaned on it, trying to catch my breath.  Patrick found me as I was gasping for air.  I asked him how he did.  He killed it, running a lightning fast 1:33, wow.

I quickly made my way to the stands to grab a bottle of Gatorade and a couple bagels, I felt like I needed to eat something asap.  Pat had finished long enough ago that he had moved on to the complimentary beer and even tried some of the free wings.

We had a funny moment when we headed over to the finish line to see if we would catch Ali finishing.  All of a sudden we hear the PA announcer call out “Patrick Duffey from Pittsburgh” , we were like, what the f?  We wondered if there was some sort of timing device mix up where someone else got Pat’s bib?  Then a few seconds later, the PA announcer says in a confused voice, “Patrick Duffey, again?”

Then it hit me.  We were standing about 15-20 feet away from the timing mats used for the calling of names.  Normally that is far enough away to not be read, but for whatever reason, Pat’s timing device must have had a longer than normal reading range and was getting picked up.  We stepped out of the area. 🙂

We actually missed Ali’s finish, she had come across around the 2:08 mark, shortly before we headed over there.  We caught up to her and others in the running club group to hang out.  We saw in the results that Pat was like the 50th overall person to finish, wow.  Later I went back up to check the results, I thought that Pat might have placed in his age group.

According to what I could determine, he looked to have gotten 3rd place, quite the accomplishment.  I told Pat the news and said I wasn’t 100% sure but based on what I saw, he would be getting up on the stage.

It turned out he did indeed net 3rd.  Ali and I cheered for him as he got his award of a stuffed Hooters Owl and a cool inscribed glass beer stein with his 3rd place accomplishment.   Although Pat isn’t one to admit it, I could tell he was proud that he placed as was I of him.

After getting his reward we said our goodbyes to the group and headed out.  Pat’s flight back was mid-afternoon so we didn’t have much time to spare.

As I reflect on my race I am proud that I beat last year’s time by 30 seconds but I was a bit frustrated by how I got there.  Last year I ran a negative split, running the second half of the course faster than the first.  This year I ran the first half significantly faster than the last.  I could look at several things as the reason for the second half issues like not having a running partner to keep me on point or perhaps the 8 or 9 extra pounds of body weight I am carrying around this year compared to last.

In the end the goal, was to improve my time, which I did.  You can’t ever argue with setting a PR, at 45.

Ali hitched a ride with us back to her place.  She gave Pat a quick tour of her apartment which he thought was very nice.  He then helped us walk the dogs a bit around the lake.  Despite Ali and my marital status it didn’t really affect the interaction between anyone which was cool.  Pat gave Ali a hug and the dogs a goodbye pat on the head.

By the time we got back to the house Pat had time to shower, eat lunch and take in one more WD episode before we shoved out in the SSR to the airport.  I thanked Pat for coming down and again congratulated him on his race result.  I told him he was always welcome to visit.  He’s such a good kid.

Sunday night I watched my first dvd utilizing my new Yamaha surround system.  It sounded great, too bad the movie I was watching was not, Men in Black 3.  I heard from many sources the movie was bad, the latest of which was Pat.  Despite the warnings I threw it in my Xbox.  The movie was just dumb.  I found myself totally uninterested in what was going on.  I had no issues pausing it repeatedly to attend to household chores.  It is time to let that franchise die. I’d give it a solid C.

I am pleased how I came out of the half marathon physically.  I am walking without a limp although of course I can feel a degree of soreness and stiffness in my right knee.  It’s a way better aftermath than the Tough Mudder that left me with an immobile right leg for several days.

Today the pool deck is finally supposed to be painted.  Friday was scuttled due to the rain earlier in the week putting the painters behind schedule.  I am hoping the payoff will be worth the wait.

So my Yamaha speakers showed up yesterday.  I wasted no time getting busy in getting them hooked up.  The first order of business was pulling down the Bose cube speakers which was easy.  I was worried that the mounting holes that were already in place would not line up with the new universal speaker brackets I bought, luckily they did.  The only thing I had to do was carve out a little drywall to allow the speaker wire to sit underneath the new brackets.

Installing the new speakers wasn’t hard, it just took some time.  I had to drill two new holes for one of the surround speakers as the old ones were pulling loose.

So now I had the speakers in place I had to work on getting the wires attached to the new receiver.  I had bought a digital optical audio cable to connect the receiver to the tv.  I was pissed when I discovered that my tv uses the older, coax digital audio connection, meaning another trip back to the store.

The Bose utilized a single coax style connector that incorporates both the positive and negative speaker wires.  To connect the wires to the Yamaha I had to cut the end, split/strip the wires and connect them to the + and – connections for each speaker.  Again, not hard, just a bit tedious.

  So I finally had everything hooked up.  I held my breath and hit the power button, hoping I would hear something out of the speakers.  At first, I didn’t.  I had the radio tuned to a station with poor reception.  Evidently once signal level drops below a certain level, the receiver just mutes it.  I flipped to another station and the system sprung to life, filling the space with sound.

I spent the next half hour playing with the system, trying different audio sources.  The system sounded great.  I loved being able to control everything from my phone.

I have a lot of tweaking to do yet but it can’t begin until I get the correct digital audio cable to connect the tv to the Yamaha.  My end goal is to program my Harmony remote to seamlessly incorporate flipping on the surround sound system whenever the tv is turned on.

If you want to see all of the pictures from the install go here.

While I was in the middle of the AV install I got a call from my younger brother Patrick.  He had been loosely talking about coming down to run the half marathon with me on Sunday but because of his work schedule he was unsure if he could make it happen.  I sort of assumed he wouldn’t.

Well yesterday he emailed me saying that he thought he would indeed be able to come.  He snagged a last minute flight on Priceline and will be flying in at noon today and then right back out Sunday afternoon, a few hours after the race.  It will be a brief but busy visit since I am timing a 5K tomorrow.

The deck painting has once again been rescheduled, this time for Monday.  They are behind because of the rainy weather.

My goal for the half marathon is very simple, improve.

So I took Wednesday off from work because I was scheduled to have the pool deck painted.  I woke up with my normal 5:30 alarm because I had stuff to do, most importantly pull everything off the pool deck.  Certain items were difficult to get outside with one set of hands, especially the 4 person table that sits in the covered portion of the lanai.

I planned to put my time at home to good work.  I figured while the deck was being worked on I could change the oil in the party van and the Tacoma since both were long overdue.  I also had someone coming to PM the AC system, something I had not had done since it was installed a year and a half ago.

The painters showed up first and got to work on the deck, cleaning and pressure washing it.  They covered the pool itself in plastic to minimize what got into the water.

The AC guys showed up maybe a half hour later.  I showed them where everything was and they got to work.  At one point I had a total of 6 guys working around the property.  It was a weird feeling.  That feeling was short lived.

Giovanni, the painting lead, said they finished up cleaning the deck and would be back in a day or two to do the actual painting.  I told him I thought it was going to all be done in one day.  He said the deck has to thoroughly dry first, plus the weather forecast for Wednesday had a decent chance of rain. (it did actually rain a little later)  Ok, I guess I misunderstood the process.  So the current plan is for them to come back Friday to resume the work.

The AC guys were quite thorough in their PM which I appreciated.  They said the system looked great which I was happy to hear.  They rolled out, so I quickly went from a staff of 6 to a staff of zero.

I got to work changing the oil on the two vehicles.  In the span of an hour I had both of them done and things cleaned up.

I figured I should use the unexpected free time to get some things done. The theme was get things done that normally wouldnt get done.  I dumped my two full used oil containers at Wal-mart and while I was there grabbed some AV cables to connect my new Yamaha AV receiver.  I just realized I hadn’t mentioned it in the blog yet.

I used my Amazon spiff points to buy a new AV receiver to replace my 12 year old Bose Lifestyle 20 system.  When the house was built, the Bose surround system was one of the crown jewels, I thought I was really putting in a nice system.  Over the years it lost a lot of luster in my eyes.  It broke once and required a lengthy repair process.  It still works now but the LCD display no longer does so operation of the head unit is based on feel alone.

I also found the radio frequency remote really annoying. Specifically, the fact that it wouldn’t allow the surround system to integrate with my Logitech Harmony remote.  If I wanted surround sound I had to perform additional steps that were a pain in the ass and required me to use two remotes instead of one.  As a result, over the years the surround sound system wasn’t used nearly as much as I hoped it would be because it was inconvenient.

So anyway, I bought a Yamaha system to replace it.  I had read that it was possible to connect it to the Bose speakers as long as you utilized the Bose huge, suitcase size amp as well.  Well it turns out that is possible with newer Bose systems but not with my ancient equipment.  So, I then hopped back on Amazon and bought an inexpensive but highly rated 5.1 Yamaha surround speaker set.

Despite not having speakers to hook it to, I installed the receiver the other night.  It is pretty awesome.  It is network connected which allows it to do cool things like play music off my home NAS and be completely controlled by an app on my Iphone.  I think once I get it all tweaked out it will be fantastic.  I just hope I can mount the new speakers without much fuss.

Ok so anyway, back to Wednesday.  After Wal-mart I did another thing I just never seem to get around to, getting a new beach parking pass for the Tacoma.  This years sticker is a big ugly red one that can be seen from 50 yards away.

My big project of the day was kind of a strange one.  I drove down to the Naples on the Run to buy, put together and set up a desk for behind the counter.  Carl, who runs the store had been given an old chest of drawers that he was awkwardly using as a computer desk.  I had told him he needed a desk and volunteered to set it up for him, so that’s what I did.

After taking some measurements of the space I had available, I headed across the street to an Office Depot and found a desk that would work.  It was a Sauder unit so that meant assembly required, lots of assembly.  In total I probably spent over three hours until I had the new desk in place.  It looked much better and afforded Carl a spot to comfortably work on his laptop.  He thanked me for all the work.  I like Carl and didn’t mind helping him out.

By the time I got home it was after 6.  I was looking forward to watching this weeks Walking Dead when I received three emails with a ton of attachments.  Evidently the woman in charge of the race that goes down Saturday had a large sponsor want to sign up a bunch of their employees.  The way they did this was 100% on paper, having their employees fill out forms and then scan them to PDF files.  It was a LOT of registrations, somewhere around 70.

I was quite annoyed as this was the least efficient way to handle the situation.  Normally if a company is going to sign up a bunch of people, the company pays and then we give the company a code they can give to employees to sign up online for free.

So instead I got to spend close to two hours manually entering paper registrations which were filled with incomplete information and bad handwriting.  I was not pleased.

This morning I had my six month dermatologist appointment.  Everything checked out, no burning/cutting/scraping required in the immediate future.

I knew it had been longer than normal since I changed the oil on the Tacoma but I didn’t realize just how long.  I looked at my maintenance log and saw the last time I changed the oil on the truck was in mid-August at 142,000 miles and change.  I am currently well north of 151,000 miles.

Holy shit.  I have never let any vehicle of mine go 9000 miles between oil changes, typically 5k is the upper limit. The van also hasn’t had it’s oil changed since the western PA road trip so it is overdue as well.  The plan is for me to change the oil on both vehicles tomorrow during the day while I am home for pool deck painting project.

Staying in the auto maintenance field, I think I have decided to take a crack at replacing my valve cover gaskets on my Tacoma.  The valve covers on my truck have been leaking for years and are probably the prime reason my alternator failed last year.

I remember getting a quote for replacing them a long time ago and it was ridiculous, something like $500 supposedly because of all the labor involved. F that.

Well for whatever reason, yesterday I got to looking into what is involved to replace the gaskets.  With my IAC and spark plug/wire adventures I already had a decent amount of experience ripping into the engine a bit.

I found this video on youtube that did a good job of outlining what is involved to do the repair.  It has a LOT of stuff that has to come off to get to the gaskets but nothing that is outside of the range of a hack mechanic like myself.  It seems the most important thing will be organizing the parts/bolts that are removed so you make sure they go back in where they belong.

The video author said an experienced mechanic can do the job in about an hour.  He estimated a novice could do it in two, which means it will probably take me 3-4 based on my track record.

The parts only add up to $35, I’ll deal with a couple hours of greasy frustration to save $475.

The guy that made the video had 357,000 miles on his 3.4L engine.  Wow.  Although the exterior of my truck looks like shit from years in the blazing Florida sun, inside and mechanically it is holding up pretty well.