Archives 2013

I left work mid-afternoon on Wednesday to head over to the running store where packet pick up for the Thanksgiving race was going on.  I wanted to get a head start on the mountain of entry forms that I knew would be waiting for me.  I am glad I did.  I processed a huge stack of paper while I was there. When I got home I had another long list of manual changes to be made to accommodate the last minute online entries that came to the store to get their race packet as well.  Between all of that data work and the normal equipment prep I had to do I was still doing race activities as 10PM drew near, later than I would prefer.

To make matters worse I developed some sort of gastrointestinal issue Wednesday night that had me visiting the bathroom multiple times.  I couldn’t believe the incredibly poor timing.  It was the last thing I needed to deal with the night before the largest race I ever timed.  When I woke up the next morning at 3AM the fun persisted.  Before leaving the house at 4AM I was back in the bathroom another three times.  I was feeling lethargic and wiped out from the incidents. I had nightmare scenarios running through my head where the race would be ready to start and I would be stuck in some port-a-potty.  Thank goodness I was empty enough that I was able to get through the event without having to assume the seated position.

I had extra equipment for the race including an extra timing box and additional signage. I wound up having to take the party van to get all of it in one vehicle.  As I expected we were the first ones on the race site, pulling onto 5th Ave somewhere around 4:40 although others from our dedicated race crew showed up only a few minutes later.  After dropping off my timing equipment at the start and finish lines I headed to the registration area where we had to set up for the 2500 plus people that were going to be descending on the park shortly.

We split apart the registration lines more so than normal to accommodate the huge numbers.  For the most part the plan seemed to work well.  We were fortunate that somewhere around 2/3 of the pre-registered people picked up their race packets early.  The pre-race scene was loosely organized chaos which is pretty much all you can ask for.

The pre-race scene was also COLD. I was freezing my ass off despite wearing a t-shirt, long sleeve t-shirt, sweatshirt and a pair of jeans.  The temps right around 50 felt like arctic conditions to my thoroughly Florida acclimated body.

Getting the starting line mats across the street was quite the challenge with 4000 feet walking towards/across them at the same time.  Thankfully some people helped steer the mass of humanity around me so I could get them down without being trampled.

The race started and the massive pack of runners/walkers slowly moved forward as they squeezed to go over the 10 meter wide starting mats.  I had to wait at the start line a good 3 minutes for all of the bodies to cross over.  This, along with the location of the finish line some 4 blocks away was problematic.

I had to haul ass to the finish line with a laptop in my arms.  Since this was only a 5K race I had precious little time to get the finish line up and running.  This situation was made worse by the fact that there were some VERY fast runners in the event.  The winner covered the 5K in a blistering 15:39.  I got the finish line totally up with about 2-3 minutes to spare, it was a little close for comfort.

Cindy had a unique part in the race, she was the mascot, complete with a turkey costume.  It is a role she was clearly destined to play, she did a great job interacting with the race participants, and especially the kids, in a way that added a lot of fun to the event.

I had some challenges to overcome with timing the race.  At one point when around 2000 people had already crossed the finish line my software that interacts with the timing boxes stopped responding.  I had to kill the processes and quickly recover the missing times through alternate methods.  I also had another weird issue where I only had start times for a portion of the runners which I corrected later at home.

All in all the race went well.  We had some detail items that were not handled as they should have been but part of that was related to the huge and unexpected sure of participation.  The race exceeded all of our expectations.  It was almost 11 pm by the time Cindy and I got back to the house.  After unloading the van we had to jump immediately into Thanksgiving prep.  By the time Cindy’s daughter and my mom pulled in the driveway we were still in the midst of it all.  Cindy’s mom showed up maybe 45 minutes later.

This was the first time my mom had met Cindy’s mom and daughter but it was not a big deal, everyone seemed to get along just fine.  Cindy had prepared an amazing assortment of food complimented by mom’s stellar pineapple casserole dish which is fantastic.  Everyone enjoyed the meal. It was the largest number of people I have had around the dining room table (5 including me) in quite a long time.

Everyone hung out for awhile after the meal which was nice.   They all rolled out around the same time mid-afternoon.  After they did I spent a lot of time digging into race related work that I didn’t get to attend to before everyone showed up. With my GI issues and 3AM alarm that morning I was sure my day at some point would include a nap however somehow that time just did not present itself.  By the time bedtime hit I was thoroughly and completely exhausted.

On Friday I made it a goal to enjoy myself.  I needed a day to recover from the large amounts of race related stress and anxiety that had been my shadow for the prior week.  I had a number of errands to run and I took the SSR out to do them.  The weather was glorious for top down driving.  I checked out a handful of retail outlets just to say I mildly participated in Black Friday.  By the time I walked in the doors mid-morning the hoopla had long since died since so many places now start the madness Thanksgiving evening.

When I got back to the house I attended to a number of home chores, trying to thin the load for the weekend since I wanted to get the Xmas decorations in place on Saturday.

On Saturday morning I got up early to do the club run, it was the first running I had done since the Tough Mudder, believe it or not.  I did 10k at a 9 minute mile pace, plenty for me since I am far from tip top endurance training shape.  I physically felt ok after the run but the rest of the weekend I suffered from swelling in my always troublesome right knee.

This year I put more effort into the outdoor Xmas lights.  In recent years I really didn’t feel like putting much effort into the process, simply wrapping the two front palms and stringing the rest of the lights unimaginatively along the front fence line.   This year I added the other four cabbage palms in the front yard to the lighted category, something I last did when the trees were much shorter.  I barely had enough LED lights to do all of it.

In addition I had my cool multi-color LED snowman head stakes AND a 7 foot INFLATABLE snowman that was anchored to the large oak tree in the yard.  I need to take some more pictures of everything but here is a pretty one that Cindy took.  When paired up with the fake Xmas tree in the dining room window, I am pretty pleased with the state of my 2013 Xmas decorations.

On Saturday night we saw Homefront, a flick whose screenplay was written by Sylvester Stallone and whose cast included the likes of Jason Statham, James Franco, Winonna Ryder and Kate Bosworth.  I figured the combination should make for a decent movie. Well I couldn’t really tell you.

I knew I was sleepy going into the movie but thought I would be ok.  Instead I wound up dozing off repeatedly, so much so I had to ask Cindy if the movie was good or not although I had already formed a “not” opinion based on what I did see.  She confirmed the movie was not great, only garnishing a C or C+ rating.  It would be a middle of the road Netflix rental, I don’t recommend seeing it in a theater.

My Sunday was very laid back.  We had ideas of doing a bike ride but it was very foggy, cool and damp outside so we shelved it.  Instead I spent a good portion of morning working on the computer on several different projects.  I fired up the Eagles game and was witness to almost a carbon copy of last weeks game.  Once again the Eagles built up a sizable second half lead (24-7), and once again they had to struggle to hold on at the end, winning the game 24-21.

I should be glad that the Eagles are at least winning these games instead of focusing on how they are collapsing at the end of them.  I guess I am just preparing myself for the ultimate collapse which I know is inevitable. My fantasy team kicked some major ass, currently sitting at 150 points with Marshawn Lynch yet to play tonight.

Last night we watch Last Stand which I think was the first movie Arnold did after he left the governors office.  The movie was an odd and at times disturbing mix of humor and unnecessary gore.  It was mildly entertaining and I never get tired of watching Arnold beat up bad guys, even well into his 60’s.  I’d give it a B.

Nicki and Sadie have been enjoying their time out at the house.  Nicki especially seems to be having fun.  She has been more playful and active  than I can remember her being in quite a long time.

I still am not sleeping well.  It’s going on two weeks now.

I am preparing myself for the next 24 hours where I am going to be stretched, tugged, and pulled in every direction possible in connection with tomorrows monster Thanksgiving race.  My goal is to endure it without breaking a sweat.

After the race is behind me the rest of my 4 day weekend should be considerably more fun.  Mom, Cindy, Cindy’s daughter and Cindy’s mom are going to be at the house for Thanksgiving.  I may venture out Black Friday to join the shopaholics and sometime this weekend I hope to get the Xmas decoration up as well.

Sorry, that’s all I have time to spill.

The beehive of race related activity started in earnest yesterday.  I sent out an email to all registered participants for the Thanksgiving race and immediately started getting inundated with emails from people with questions, many of which the answers to were in the email they were responding to.  It’s frustrating and annoying, but as the main communication outlet for the race I did my best to just take a deep breath and answer the questions quickly and politely, without a hint of sarcasm.

After work I had to stop at the running store to drop off the supplies for the two days of early packet pick up at the store.  That included unpacking and boxing up 2000 race timing bibs.  I had one more stop on the way home, I wound up not getting home until almost 7 pm.  I had more race stuff to do on the computer and again more to do this morning before work.  This process will be rinse and repeat for the next three days.

I forgot to mention how utterly annoyed I was on Friday. It seemed like my day was filled with wall to wall annoyances both at work and elsewhere. I seemed like I was dealing with non-stop incompetence/stupidity from the gun.

Once I was out on the road to go home I had two stops, Sam’s Club and Publix.  At Sam’s I got to deal with a maddening horde of people at the gas pump followed by more aggravation inside.

At Publix it was a pure madhouse with people getting their Thanksgiving supplies.  I tried to keep my calm as I patiently waited for clueless person after clueless person blocking aisles by putting their cart on one side while standing on the other, looking for something.  I almost lost my calm when I was emerging from an aisle and suddenly out of the corner of my eye saw an unrestrained child sprinting across the store from my left.

I stopped abruptly and pulled the cart back. The father was a good 10 feet behind the child, doing nothing to prevent his kid from side swiping someone else. As he came up to me he said “Oh, sorry…” I said “yea…” in a tone with a facial expression that clearly meant “you are a dipshit”.

Despite the aggravation I was feeling, I threw a dollar in the Salvation Army bucket on the way out. Of course once I was in the truck I had a 25 car quagmire waiting to get out of the f’ing shopping center.  Just one of those days I suppose.

My Saturday morning started very early this week, the 3:30 alarm drug my body out of bed unwillingly.  The race I was timing was all the way down in Marco, making the extra time necessary.  This race has always been a bit of a thorn in the side to put on.  The long drive of course is never fun but also this race is staffed mostly with volunteers from the Marco organization that are not familiar with the ins and outs of a race.

The course logistics are troublesome as well with the registration area being several blocks from the race start/finish.  This makes processing any problems with the results very difficult. Despite these challenges, the event went relatively well.  The race also had a healthy amount of growth compared to last year, gaining an additional 80 participants.

The run itself is a tough one, back and forth over the steep bridge that connects Marco Island to the mainland.  Cindy did the race and did well, getting third place in her age group.

When we got back to the house, after doing post race duties I still had chores to do of course. One of them was tending to the freshly planted garden.  Everything that was planted is doing well except for a pepper plant that looks to be meeting an early demise.  We even were able to use some of the romaine and red lettuce in salads over the weekend.

During my yard work I felt a nasty sting on my left shin. It felt more severe than a fire ant bite, more in line with the wasp sting I took to my face a few weeks back.  Instinctively I swatted at the spot but did not see anything.

Over the weekend the area swelled up and was tender.  Cindy looked at it and saw two fang marks.  We are theorizing some sort of spider got me.  Hopefully it isn’t one the brown recluse spiders that hang around my place.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the new Hunger Games movie.  I never read any of the books but enjoyed the first movie so seeing number two was a no-brainer.  The theater was actually kind of full, the fullest I can remember a Coconut Pointe movie being for me.  Sure it was still easy to find a good seat but I bet the place was over half full.

The movie was good.  The reason I knew it was good was the clock.  When the movie ended I felt like there should be more to go, it felt like the movie was short.  Well when I looked at my watch when we left it was 9:45, meaning the movie was a good 2:30 minutes long.  For a movie that long to feel short means it is pretty damn good.  I’d give it an A.  I am looking forward to seeing the next installment. If you want to see my 6 second Vine recap, go here. (spoiler alert)

Cindy and I scuttled plans to go for a bike ride Sunday morning.  She was feeling some side effects from her race and I assured her my chore plans for the day would give me enough exercise.  The main target was pressure washing the sheds.  However before doing that I had a smaller chore to do, for my neighbor.

The large collection of water equipment they have apparently is doing a poor job of keeping their well water in good shape.  In an effort to combat that, they have been letting the equipment do a recharge every single night. (not recommended)  Basically when you recharge the equipment it back flushes the white rock filtration substance with brine (salt water).  This process expels tons of waste water which is dumped elsewhere via a drain hose. Well the hose for the system is buried for the most part, except for the end of it which is positioned about 15 feet from my fence line.  The nightly recharges and all the water they dump has turned the corner of my fence into a perennial swamp land for the last few months.

Of course this annoyed me.  Not only did it look like shit, the wet ground has the potential of rotting out the fence posts prematurely which be a major pain in the ass for me.  Finally a couple weeks ago I said something to the husband, telling him they need to reroute that drain line so it doesn’t impact my property.  I even went so far as to give him a big coil of 1/2″ pvc pipe I had left over from when I extended my drain line last year.  I told him all he would need to do is install a coupler to connect the existing line to the new one.

A few days later I saw there was some connector on the line but it was short lived.  It was a press/friction connector that did not hold up to the water pressure, a day or two later it came apart and my corner was again soppy.  I saw the neighbor, she said  she was the one that tried to install the connector. (husband isn’t very handy) I figured I might as well just fix it myself since it impacts me and is an easy fix.

I bought some band clamps and a connector.  The connector I bought actually was a bit small.  I wound up repurposing the one in my drain line.  I’ll just buy myself another.  Connecting the lines together was a bit of a muddy job but not difficult otherwise.  I look forward to having a dry corner.

I then moved onto pressure washing.  For some reason I had the idea in my head that I could pressure wash both sheds in a couple of hours.  I am not sure where I that idea came from.  Instead I spent between 4 and 5 hours out there blasting away.  I was having some pressure washer issues that slowed things down.  The washer would simply shut off periodically without apparent reason.  When I would start it back up it would run fine again, until it shut off again.  In total I probably restarted the damn thing 20 times.  I am going to get some fuel system cleaner to run through it.

I also consumed some time pressure washing a few other items like the exterior of the pool cage, the shed ramps, garden hardware, pavers and more.  The items I cleaned looked tons better.  I emerged from the project soaked from head to toe and covered with mud splatter, hot. The dogs were out at the house on Sunday as well.  It was overcast and on the cool side most of the day so they really enjoyed just hanging outside in the yard.

Sunday night we watched The Amazing Burt Wonderstone.  The movie was funny enough, entertaining enough and short enough to earn a solid B rating.  Worth a Netflix rental but not $20 to see in a theater.

This week is going to be a blur until the Thanksgiving race is done.  There are so many ducks lined up.  Each and everyone has to be a hit and I probably have the most bullets of anyone in this game.  I hope I don’t miss.

Last night I was supposed to be receiving entry information from the race organizer for the 5K I am timing tomorrow.  She was taking registrations on site during early packet pick up yesterday.  I needed those entries to create an updated list for her to use today.  Well that email never came which meant I had to scramble around this morning to try to get everything squared away.  It is just the start of the race related stress I will be dining on for the next week.

Other than timing the race tomorrow the weekend will be pretty standard with chores and getting out to see the next Hunger Games movie Saturday night.

Not much else is floating in my head at the moment other than I am still not sleeping right.  It’s been probably around 10 straight days of waking up before the alarm clock.

So in response to my lack of real world testing of my Dufisthenics Android app, Charlie was nice enough to install it on his Droid phone and verified it worked properly.  Jeremy later conceded and installed it as well.  I hate relying on others to do things for me so I took the additional step of ordering a cheap, but surprisingly capable Android tablet off Amazon.  With my Amazon CC spiff points the out of pocket cost for me was exactly zero dollars. (including free 2 day shipping)

Although the primary reason for the purchase is to be able to test the Android side of my apps, the tablet will be used for other recreational needs as well for sure.

Today marks the start of a very busy week with a race to time on Saturday morning that rolls right into the massive Thanksgiving race next week.  I will be quite glad when Black Friday rolls around.

I still am not sleeping well.  Each morning, no matter what time I go to bed, early or late, I am waking up on my own well before the alarm goes off.  Once I wake up I just roll around restlessly and eventually drag myself out of bed feeling more or less like shit.

I can’t believe I forgot to relay the most interesting part of my day yesterday.  I was on my way to the running club meeting.  I was on a 6 lane road (three lanes per side) and passed a guy riding an ordinary looking mountain bike.  I didn’t notice the bike as much as how this moron was riding it.

He was wearing headphones, and was riding with no hands on the handlebars, relying on forward momentum to steer for him.  Ok I have seen this before. In fact, I have even ridden with no hands for brief periods of time just to see if I could do it.  Of course I would never entertain doing so with 6 lanes of rush hour of traffic in the vicinity.

These items already made the guy a certifiable dumb ass in my book.  However apparently he was interested in raising the bar.  The reason he had no hands on the handlebars was because he had both hands on his smartphone.  He was feverishly texting away, looking at the phone, with no hands on the handlebars and headphones on, with 6 lanes of traffic next to him.

I turned my head and just gazed in disbelief at just how incredibly moronic this visual was.  I continued to monitor the stupidity in the rear view mirror and then it happened, he dumped the bike.  I laughed out loud when I saw it.  He managed to land on his feet but the bike crashed into the curb.

Perhaps this young man will use his crash as a learning tool and no longer bicycle while listening to music and texting with no hands on the handlebars.  Who am I kidding….

Last night was the running club board meeting.  The meeting seemed to suffer from an overabundance of verbosity.  I got a lot of doodle time in.

After the meeting we headed over to South Street and had the required amounts of fun and good times.  Tuesday was karaoke night.  There were some REALLY poor singers there however the most interesting thing was when after 10 pm two “adult” songs were sung.  One was performed by a young woman, it was a dirty version of the Little Mermaid song, which was mildly disturbing.  The second song was equally dirty if not slightly more so.  The few beers I had made me laugh out loud at both of them, despite my confusion about why I was hearing it.

Congrats to Trey Radel, a congressman based out of SW Florida.  He has the dubious honor of being the first US Congressman to be arrested on drug charges since 1982.  Apparently in addition to being a self admitted alcoholic, he also has a liking for cocaine.  He got arrested trying to buy some from an undercover agent at the end of October.

Nowadays it seems much more fashionable for congress members to be rocked by sex scandals.  Getting shamed with a drug bust is very old school.  Way to represent!

I actually got a Dufisthenics app published on Google Play yesterday.  The “real” app I am trying to get published via conduit.com is nowhere to be seen at this point.  I started the submission process for it last week.  Yet, by submitting my Dufisthenics app manually on Google Play I was able to get it out there in less than a day.  Manually trying to publish an app on Apple’s developer platform unfortunately is not so simple.

I had asked Jeremy to install my Dufisthenics app since he has an Android phone.  However, in typical Jeremy fashion he decided to be difficult about it and refused to do so.  Instead I now am wrangling with an Android simulator to see if I can successfully launch the app.

Over the weekend I was talking to my dad.  He mentioned to me that my blog would not load for him.  I told him I would check on it, which I did when I got home.  The blog loaded normally so I wrote it off as just some sort of glitch.

Well yesterday I got multiple reports that the blog was not loading for people, however yet again, when I went there, everything looked fine.  I tried to load the blog on my phone and finally saw the same behavior, just an empty screen with nothing on it and no errors, great.

So I tried a number of things to see if I could remedy the issue.  All of them were unsuccessful.  Finally I was able to get the lights turned back on by disabling all of my WordPress plugins.  I then re-enabled the bare minimum amount of plug ins I needed to and the site was still alive.

WordPress is an awesome web publishing platform but it can be a bit flaky at times due to plug ins treating each other poorly.  I still am not sure why the blog loaded just fine for me from work and home while being dead for everyone else.

Last night involved a BB challenge attempt and creating my third Vine compilation video.  I am now up into the mid-80’s in total Vine videos. I am actually picking up random followers in Vine world, despite being about two decades outside of the primary Vine viewing audience.

Last night was another night of restless sleep, something that has been going on since last week sometime.  I haven’t been able to put my finger on any particular cause.  I am just restless and wake up every morning before the alarm clock goes off, well before it goes off.  It doesn’t make for bright and cheery days.