Archives March 2014

So on Saturday it was very dreary with off and on rain.  I delayed my normal morning outdoor work so I could instead help Cindy do more work cleaning out her old apartment. We brought the girls with so they could hang out.  They both enjoyed chilling out on the third floor lanai.

Once again the massive pile of things that are her daughters remained untouched, scattered around her bedroom.  Seeing this aggravated both of us but we had plenty of other things to do, too much to spend time worrying about it. Cindy worked primarily on cleaning and sorting.  I worked on repairs/painting.

We grabbed some cheap “country white” paint at Wal-mart on our way there but it turned out it was too yellowish.  I wound up heading over to Lowe’s and bought some white “ceiling paint” figuring that would be a close match to generic apartment white.  It was a better match but not perfect.  I also had to repaint a door and some other stuff that wound up getting damaged during the past year.  The point of the work was to make the apartment presentable but not perfect.  I assume before it would be rented again the owner will more than likely have painters blow through there with spray guns and turn it all white again.

We spent several hours there.  By the time we left the apartment was pretty much cleaned out besides Cindy’s daughters bedroom and a line of items along the wall.  It finally felt like the finish line was in sight.

When I got back home mid-afternoon I headed outside to quickly handle the chores I put off from the morning.  We had made plans to go to dinner and then see Noah Saturday night, a movie I was indifferent on seeing but one Cindy wanted to check out.

When we headed out it was almost Noah-like weather conditions with a very uncharacteristic March strong thunderstorm with gusting wind, lightning, thunder and near blinding downpours.  The SSR remained safely in the garage and we instead took the trusty Tacoma ark out into the elements. We had an enjoyable dinner at Stir Crazy, bypassing the line at the door by utilizing bar seating which was fine by both of us.

The movie wasn’t bad.  With my very sparse religious background I knew little more of the story behind Noah outside of animals, the ark and a lot of rain.  The movie filled in a lot of white space although from what Cindy said, some of the depictions were not accurate translations according to Bible gurus.  The thing I came away with is Noah turned into a pretty ruthless prick eventually.

I thought the film was pretty slow at points but I would never describe myself as being officially bored.  The visuals of the end of the world by water were quite impressive visually although not very believable.  I would give the film a “fine to wait till Netflix” B.  I was surprised that Cindy was actually more negative about the movie, initially only giving it a high C rating that she later revised to B status.

On Sunday morning we planned to hit the apartment one more time to get the few items that were either getting donated, thrown out or relocated to the house.  Those plans got delayed when Cindy wrenched her back, badly.  With Cindy’s activity level you might think this happened doing some sort of athletic endeavor.  Nope, she was bent over at the fridge.

All of  a sudden she had a shooting pain in her back that immobilized her.  For several minutes she remained stationary hanging onto the fridge before I helped her get down on the floor.  It was sort of scary at first, she literally couldn’t move her right leg for quite awhile.  After a long period of time on the floor stretching and laying on the heating pad she was able to get up but her body had perma-lean to the right from whatever spasmed in her back.  She was able to walk slowly but anything requiring bending over was out of the question.

So we got a late start to the apartment, luckily there wasn’t much left to do.  With Cindy hurting I was the designated pack mule, shuttling things down to the party van.  It was a challenge  trying to load the van while leaving space in the back for the dogs in the bed.

After fully loading the van our next stop was my mom’s place.  On the way there a big mirror that was in the back shifted sides, bumping Sadie who was in one of the captain chairs in the rear.  Cindy turned around to move the mirror back.  Sadie saw this as an opportunity and squirmed her way onto the front seat and promptly laid across Cindy’s calves, pinning her in that position.  I had to wait for a spot to pull over so I could come over to lift Sadie so Cindy could escape.  It was pretty funny.

So I was dropping off my 32 inch Sony TV at my mom’s place to replace her ancient 19″ tube tv that was in her bedroom.  Mom was working but I figured time-wise we would catch her after she got out.  It turns out my recollection of her quit time was inaccurate.  I thought she worked till 2.  It turns out she didn’t get home till after 4.  When I realized my mistake we rolled out somewhere around 2:30.

After mom’s we stopped at Goodwill to drop off some of Cindy’s unneeded stuff and two full bags of clothing I filled earlier.  I had not done a good clothing evaluation in quite some time, it felt good to get rid of a bunch of stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day in years.

When we got back to the house we worked on unloading the van.  A couple things from Cindy’s place were nice additions to the decor of the house.  One of them was a big floor vase with 3 huge pieces of bamboo that went into the dining room.  The large mirror that shifted in the van went into the master bathroom above the tub.  It’s addition made the already large bathroom seem even bigger.

On Sunday night we watched my latest Netflix rental, Machete Kills (Again).  I loved the original Machete, it was just plain dumb fun, a movie so silly violent that it makes fun of itself.  Well I found the sequel even more entertaining, a rarity nowadays.  The ways that Machete finds to eliminate bad guys is just hilarious.  Evidently other well known actors like being in on the joke as the cast had a lot of big names like Jessica Alba, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, Cuba Gooding Jr, Charlie Sheen, and even Lady Gaga.

I laughed out loud a ton.  I am giving this an A believe it or not.   The good news is it looks like Machete 3 is in the works.

This was interesting enough that I don’t want to wait until Monday.  Desean Jackson, the pompous, showboating, inconsistent punk of a wide receiver was cut today by the Eagles.  The move came as a big surprise.

The reports the Eagles were looking to trade him that have popped up in the last week or so were surprising enough, to cut him outright is pretty shocking since statistically he was pretty good last year.

The report I saw at the gym mentioned something about gang affiliations that Jackson has.  I had never heard this before but based on his attitude it isn’t all that surprising.  Apparently whatever was discovered was serious enough that the Eagles were willing to part ways with Desean, getting nothing in return.

My dislike of Desean Jackson is well documented in the blog.  Sure he is fast and has made some big plays but he also is wildly inconsistent with one good game typically being sandwiched between two or three where he absolutely disappeared.  His taunting, showboating attitude drove me insane.  He is sort of a present day Terrel Owens.

I can’t tell you how many times I screamed at the tv when he would run backwards, losing yardage, trying to elude defenders.  He was successful in doing so very infrequently.  With Chip Kelly’s offense I have absolutely no concern with filling Jackson’s shoes. I have a feeling we will all be saying “Desean Who?” sooner rather then later.

Adios, idiot.

So we are approaching the expiration of the lease on Cindy’s apartment.  Despite our efforts thus far there was still a number of large items in the apartment that needed to be addressed.  After a rather hectic and stressful work day I picked up the dogs to take them to the house, fed them and headed back out in the truck for a late night moving session.

When I entered the apartment my blood pressure immediately rose.  A large portion of the loose items that remain in the apartment are Cindy’s daughters.  Despite numerous requests from Cindy, her daughter apparently did no further clean up beyond what occurred when Cindy and I moved stuff last weekend.  So as has been the case for most of this process, that left Cindy and I to do everything.  I was extremely annoyed but used that annoyance to fuel feats of super mover strength.

Thanks to the hand truck I brought along I was able to get a sofa and other large furniture items down 2 long flights of stairs solo.  My inner anger acted like an invisible weight belt allowing my body to endure positions and stresses that no orthopedist would encourage.

In total we loaded up the Tacoma three times, utilizing ratcheting straps to keep the piled furniture intact as we traveled back and forth to the storage place under the cover of darkness.  The last trip to the storage place was extra dramatic.  The sign at the entrance said the place closed at 10PM.  I assumed this to mean that the keypad that grants access stops working at that time.  Well we pulled out with the last load at 9:47 PM, giving me 13 minutes to get to the keypad.  Despite having a large saki bar and headboard in the back of the Tacoma I dropped the pedal to the metal.  I whipped into the entrance at 9:58, close call.

Originally Cindy was concerned the 5x10x8 storage space she rented would be too small.  I assured her you can cram a lot of stuff into 50 square feet as I have had storage space myself a couple times before.  The key to doing so is putting items that normally sit horizontally in the vertical position.  By using this technique we easily got everything into the space with a ton of room to back fill with boxes and other items if need be.  Cindy felt relieved to have all of the large items finally out of her apartment.  I was too.

We didn’t get back to the house until close till 11.  It was a long day and night.

Can someone explain to me exactly how we can’t figure out where the Malaysian airliner is?  I mean really, between radar, transponders and the satellites that circle the earth keeping pretty much every square inch under surveillance, how can we still be unsure of where the damn plane is? There is also a big subplot to this as the plane apparently changed directions and flew a massive distance the wrong way.  There had to be some sort of foul play involved however I would be surprised if the general public is ever privy to exactly what happened.

That agenda for my weekend is a bit fuzzy.  It depends on what remains to be done to get Cindy’s place completely vacated.  One solid item is a trip to the movies to watch Noah Saturday night.  Other than enjoying the company of the dogs, the rest of the weekend is going to be a play it by ear deal.

Oh, my free Keurig showed up yesterday, a speedy 3 days after I made the call.  You just gotta ask.

Just too much going on.

Last night was a good mix of activities.  When I got home I did an indoor Ray’s Way lite circuit (5 circuits of dips, pull ups and push ups).  I installed one of Cindy’s upgraded shower fixtures in the guest bathroom and then slapped a set of aero bars on the bike she has on the indoor trainer. I then threw a load of laundry in, made dinner and then hopped on the computer where I ripped the video from the second aerial video session I did at the Beach Bum.  I wound up my evening with a short session of WoW.  It felt like my Tuesday night was in balance.

Tomorrow on my way home I am picking up the girls for another extended visit as Ali is heading up to PA for the weekend.  It should crank up the fun level this weekend.

If it seems like I am having a hard time coming up with much to talk about today that’s because I am.

Oh, I did discover an awesome new cartoon series from a group at filmcow.com.  The Marshmallow People are simply awesome.

So as I mentioned yesterday, over the weekend I was screwing around with Cindy’s Keurig which was not drawing any water out of the reservoir.  I got it to pull water but once it did it started leaking water underneath the brewer during each brew cycle.  I had read that if you call Keurig and report a problem like this out of warranty they will give you a price break on getting a new machine, so that is what I did.

I called them up and described the issue.  I did not have exact purchase date info so I told them it was received as a gift in December 2012.  Well evidently when you state the item was a gift they are much more lax with requiring proof of purchase.  The nice woman on the phone said the machine just was inside the 15 month warranty period (I thought it was only a year), she would send me a brand new replacement, for free, wow.

I had no expectations of getting a new machine when I picked up the phone.  It was yet another of my personal countless examples of , “if you don’t ask, you never will know”.  Of course Cindy was quite happy to hear the outcome of the call as well since she was just about ready to pull the trigger on buying a new Keurig.

One of my FB buddies posted a video clip of two guys discussing how Ronald Reagan (whom I voted for) was the grandfather of the “us versus them” mentality where “us” were white Americans and them were the minorities that were using our tax dollars to collect government entitlements undeservedly.  This is the backbone of the anti-government movement which is still very prevalent today, which is charged with two primary tenants, LOWER TAXES and LESS SPENDING (on entitlements).

The point of this video discussion was pointing out that this is actually a brilliant strategy devised by those in the upper echelons of society.  By getting the masses to focus on “us vs them” it has allowed tremendous tax cuts to come online the last 35 years that started with of course, Ronald Reagan.

It is not a coincidence that the income inequality chart started a dramatic upward charge at the same point in history.  Yes everyone likes a tax cut but the reality is the trend that was started by Reagan 30+ ytears ago has been the driving force behind the historic income concentration at the top of our economic scale.

Yes out of control government spending and reckless taxation are indeed problems that always need to be addressed. However the fact that a MASSIVE portion of the population is blind to the danger of the country’s wealth being ultra-concentrated at the top is amazing.  Repeatedly history has shown us what happens when this occurs yet through careful manipulation, the wool is once again being pulled over our eyes.

One of my politically conservative FB friends grabbed the video link and reposted it, describing it as one of the most ridiculous things he had seen.  He seemed to think that the point of the video was that all corporations are evil and the video was little more than an attempt to further that image. He continued by explaining that corporations provide the jobs and pay the taxes that help government function.

Instead of getting into a round and round discussion about it I would simply ask what logical conclusion should be drawn when historic corporate profit margins and stock market records are co-existing at the same time as an overall consensus of a poor economy and lackluster job market?  Something stinks.

It was quite the laborious weekend.  Friday night I was at work until around 7PM for the first stages of a hardware refresh in our office.  Roughly 25 systems were being replaced.  The only reason I left at 7 was because I had to head home to do prep for the race I was timing Saturday.

So my day of labor on Saturday started at 4:45 AM.  This race we used to chip time for years, this was the first time we did not.  The reason is the race is entirely run on the beach.  Subjecting the timing equipment, computers and timing chips to the elements of the beach is never a good thing.  Instead this was timed as a fun run where we have a timing clock at the finish line and people just take a glance as they cross. Chip timing it always seemed like a waste since the distance for the course is not accurate and the terrain makes for times dramatically slower than a runner would normally register anyway.

I used the extra time to put the Phantom up for some more aerial video.  I got one of the video files processed and have one to go.

Flying at the beach was a bit more challenging but the Phantom’s amazing stability was able to compensate for the gusty conditions.

I got off site a little before 9AM and headed directly into the office to resume work on the hardware refresh.  The crew that remained Friday night did a good job getting all of the new systems physically in place, we now mostly had to do a lot of configuration and testing.  It took about 10 and a half hours till we finally had things to a point I declared as good enough.  I knew there would be lots of minor tweaking to still be done on Monday but nothing that would prevent clerks from taking care of customers.

On Sunday I would have loved to have a day to chill but there was another front that required work.  Although Cindy has been moved in with me for a couple weeks her apartment is not cleaned out by any means.  Her daughter still had a ton of stuff there and has not been very diligent with addressing it.

Well she was available yesterday so Cindy and I wanted to not waste that opportunity.  We worked mid-morning till late afternoon getting stuff moved around.  We made some major headway, getting the majority of the bedroom furniture out and some other items relocated as well.

Unfortunately there is still a lot of things, mostly small things like housewares/clothes to be pulled out of there.  The remaining large furniture items are going to wind up going into a yet to be secured storage facility.  By the time we got back to the house on Sunday I was beat….

One of the things Cindy brought back from her apartment was an old Keurig machine that she said stopped working.  I tesed it out and saw it would not pull water from the reservoir.  I pulled the bottom off and looked around but didn’t see any obvious reasons for this.  I then followed some steps I found online to prime the machine.  After doing this I was able to get it to pull water through the Keurig and dispense it in the cup as it should.

Unfortunately there is an additional problem.   I noticed as I was dispensing hot water into the coffee cup a puddle of water was slowly growing from underneath the base.  Each time I went through a brew cycle the puddle swelled in size.  I noticed on the bottom of the Keurig a small rusty spot, presumably because this problem has been going on for awhile.

A quick search online revealed this is a pretty common issue and is not one that they suggest you try to fix.  So the new plan is to call Keurig and see if they will at least give us a deal on a replacement as I heard they will do.

Sunday night Cindy and I finally got to relax and watch a movie.  Unfortunately it was a movie that was not very relaxing, The Counselor.  It had a very strong cast and was directed by Ridley Scott so I expected a quality film.  It was a quality film, it just wasn’t one that would make you feel very good about life.  Don’t expect to come away from The Counselor with a spring in your step and a big smile on your face.  It’s dark, brutal and in your face.  More than likely you will not be very satisfied with the final outcome.  The end result did not seem proportionate to the crime.  B+

Since I realized I have poor ROM in my left elbow the other day I have been asking a bunch of people to do the elbow test.  Simply try to touch the your right shoulder with your right hand and vice versa.  When I try to do this with my left arm something in my left elbow throws up a road block.

I am curious how long this lack of mobility has been the case.  Is it some thing I only developed as another symptom of old age recently or has it been this way all my life?  I can’t recall ever trying to this simple movement prior to this past Wednesday.

Regardless of how or when this came to be it explains some issues I have doing certain things, the most recent example is a muscle up.  As you are going through the transition portion of a muscle up your elbows normally will need to be fully retracted.  Since my left elbow does not bend as much as the right it throws the whole movement out of balance.  If you watch my reps slowly you will see my right arm gets into the proper position while the left side drags behind, causing the movement to get all sorts of messy.

I am not sure how successful I can be restoring full flexion to my left arm.  For now I am just going to try to pull my wrist towards my shoulder as part of my stretching routines to see if I can break down whatever adhesions are holding it back.

The next 48 hours for me are going to be quite filled.  I have to work late tonight at the office, go home to pack up the truck for a race tomorrow, time the race tomorrow morning and then head directly back to the office to continue working.  It is going to be a whole lot of suck.

I have become a big adopter of SSD “hard drives”.  The IO performance increase they offer is pretty incredible versus a conventional platter hard drive.  I have now installed a total of 5 of them, including the one I did last night.  Last night’s install was the most risky as I installed it in my Windows 2008R2 home server which serves my home network and houses my email.

The server has been slow for a long time, I figured a SSD drive would be a good way to give it a shot in the arm.  However I was also nervous installing a SSD drive in a server environment since drive activity is quite high and the system is on 24/7.  I opted for a Samsung 840 Pro SSD drive which offers some of the best reliability out there.  Plus I LOVE the Samsung data migration utility that makes moving to a SSD drive extremely easy.

I took a few steps before starting the transfer like shutting down all MS Exchange services and any other services not needed to keep the OS running.  After that I connected the new SSD externally via USB and started the transfer process.  Once it completed all that remained was to crack the case and mount the SSD in the old HDD tray using some velcro.   The system booted up in less than 15 seconds, it was pretty amazing.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I fired up email on my computer and saw incoming mail start to flow, mission accomplished.  If you don’t have a SSD drive in your computer you really should consider getting one.

Last night Cindy and I headed for the fair.  It was quite warm yesterday but past experience made me throw on a long sleeve t-shirt, I always seem to wind up being cold at the fair.  Well I was glad I donned the long sleeves, as soon as the sun went down the temps felt like they dropped like a rock. This was Cindy’s first time fair visit, being a decade+ fair veteran I was happy to show her the ropes.

The first thing we checked out was the jousting show.  The show was intentionally very cheesy with a bunch of guys doing fake accents but entertaining nonetheless.

We were both hungry afterward so we started our fair food experience by splitting an arepa and a basket of maduros (plaintains).  The arepa was awesome, the maduros didn’t do much for me.

We then headed for the animal exhibits.  We really took our time looking at and interacting with them.  Some of the chickens were for sale, as cheap as $10.  Cindy said we should get a chicken.  I told her she was welcome to get one if she was the one to take care of it.  I am not interested in chicken maintenance.  She had similar ideas when we saw the cute rabbits but I squashed that be relaying stories of how Sadie killed a baby bunny years ago.

We then headed over to the larger farm animals, the goats, sheep, pigs and cows.  Cindy immediately was drawn to a cow that was laying down.  She was surprised that it seemed quite open to being rubbed/petted.  She sat down there with it for a long time.

I was interacting the most with a relatively small pig, about the same size as Sadie.  He looked like he was really sick of being stuck in the pen and was jamming his nose out the crack in the gate.

I knelt down and started rubbing his snout and side of his face. He seemed to like it.  I stood up to walk away and he stuck his nose into the grid of the gate and tried to lift it with his head, like he was saying “don’t go…”

Well of course this broke my heart and I went back to him and rubbed him some more.   Cindy suggested a pet pig would be awesome too.

As we walked around the pig area we saw tons of them sleeping back to back, an indication of how they like to be near each other as it offers them comfort and assurance.  Personality and intelligence-wise pigs are right there with dogs.  One of them was laying in a pose I see Sadie do all the time with her chin down in between her two outstretched paws.

As has been the case for a long time, seeing these animals was bittersweet.  I love interacting with them but feel very sad that the majority of them will wind up being on somebody’s dinner plate.  I just can’t imagine looking into the face of an innocent animal and pulling the trigger. I just don’t have it in me to view them as a thing instead of just another being sharing the planet that has feelings and emotion.

Cindy and I also went into two other animal areas, one was the petting zoo and another housed more exotic animals including lemurs, kangaroo, a small tiger and more.  Again Cindy was not shy about interacting with the animals.

She was particularly fond of some Scottish cattle.  They seemed to love to have their necks rubbed.  Both of them leaned against the fence so Cindy could scratch them.  It was very cute.

We wandered upon a female escape artist act, she went by the name Lady Houdini.  She did the famous water cell escape trick.  Her husband, who was also the announcer claims she is the only person in the world doing the escape in full view instead of being only partially viewable behind a curtain that is pulled open and shut during the stunt.

In total she had to release somewhere around 6 locks to get out of the water filled tube.   Seeing the trick in plain view made the technique used to escape crystal clear, she pulled a pin from her hair to pick the handcuffs and various locks.  However it did not really minimize the tension and anxiety since it still took a LONG time for her to get them all undone.

Being able to remain calm and steady while holding your breath that long was pretty impressive.  I didn’t look at my watch but I would estimate she was underwater for over two minutes getting herself free.   When she popped out the top it was pretty exciting, an impressive act for a county fair if you ask me.

Cindy and I grabbed some more fair food before heading out, a not so great “vegetarian pita” from some barbeque stand and a chocolate dipped vanilla cone, both of which we split.   It was getting colder and I had to finish up my SSD migration so we headed out.  We didn’t even bother wandering into the carnie filled ride area.

We both had a good time, fairs are fun.  All of the pictures I took can be seen here.

Last night was a running club board meeting.  It ran a little long and got a little more heated than necessary at points.  As usual I came out of it with a to do list to accomplish.

The post meeting South Street get together did not go down.  Instead I wound up meeting up with Cindy who was having dinner with friends at the bar inside of Whole Food Markets.  I had eaten at Subway before the meeting so I just sat there, chatted and drank a beer.

This morning I had my follow up appointment with our employee health clinic.  When I had my physical a couple weeks ago my BP was on the high side (145/85).  I attributed to downing a big cup of coffee and the anxiety associated with doctor office visits.  My PA wanted to be cautious and gave me a portable BP machine to check my pressure over a two week period.

So I have been checking my pressure twice a day and as expected the numbers are better, hovering around 120/80.  I returned the machine today and got the green light to continue muddling my way around the planet.

Tonight Cindy and I may attend the County Fair, yeehaw!

I wonder where that Malaysian plane is….