Archives April 2014

Last night after work I felt the need to get something productive done so I hopped on the tractor and mowed the grass.  Cindy was unhappy with me since she was planning to mow the grass on her day off tomorrow.  I assured her there was another acre or so of the back yard that can be mowed if she really is feeling the need tomorrow.

Last night was the 5th night the dogs have been over at the house, waiting for Ali’s living arrangements to get finalized.  Of course I love having the dogs over but they certainly put a dent in my sleep quality.  When they are with Ali they sleep in with no problems, often not getting out of bed until between 7 and 8AM.  For some reason when they get to the house their internal clocks appear to instantly flip.

Sadie is the instigator.  She gets up and starts making noise, wanting to be let outside so she can patrol the dark back yard.  Her activity wakes up Nicki who then starts with heavy breathing and whining.  This morning the routine started at 4:45 AM.  Sadie can also wake us up in the middle of the night simply by her breathing.  If for some reason she decides to sit up and go into panting mode the entire bed will bounce up and down. It’s fun.

So the NBA  dropped the hammer on Donald Sterling, the owner of the LA Clippers, for the taped conversation that came out where he instructed his girlfriend (he is married) that she should not be posing with black people in her Instagram photos.  Sterling was banned from the NBA for the rest of his filthy rich, racist, adulterous life.  In addition he was fined 2.5 million dollars, the maximum fine the NBA can levy but a pin prick to a billionaire like Sterling.

The outrage from his blatant racism has been severe as one could imagine.  The odd thing is that people are only outraged now.  Sterling actually has a long track record of discriminatory behavior, this is just the latest episode.  Obviously to be an owner in the NBA which is dominated by black athletes seems to be a position a man like this would not want to be in.  I guess the fact that these men pump money into his life boat sized wallet make up for the color of their skin. Scumbag.

So despite how much I despise a person like Sterling, whom in my mind is the poster child for what the majority of one percenters are made of, I think this gold digging woman is a piece of shit as well.  She has willingly been bought and paid for, receiving unbelievable gits and rewards in return for keeping company with the toad.  For her to record a private conversation and then utilize it to castrate the balls that have been putting golden bons bons in her mouth is a pure gold digging C move.  I wish nothing but bad things for her down the road.

Today is one of those days where I stare at the screen and try to find the motivation to dump some words on a page.

Last night when I got home the girls came out the front door to greet me.  I was concerned about Nicki since my neighbor said she threw up when she let them outside around lunch time.  Nicki seemed ok to me thankfully.  I speculated that she may have just sounded like she threw up.  Nicki has always had an issue when drinking water, it makes her sort of gag.  As she has gotten older, especially in the last year or two, the noise she makes does sound like she is puking her guts out. I can see how someone that isn’t used to it would think she was puking.

Last night I attended to a number of duties, the majority of them related to the race I am timing this upcoming weekend.  I had to load up the codes for the bib timing devices into the system, download race entries and prepare an email promoting the race.  I also did some work trying to set up my Logitech Harmony remote to incorporate my Blu-Ray player and HDMI splitter into it’s configuration.  I was mildly successful.

Yesterday I officially announced I was no longer going to be organizing and running the monthly fitness challenges on the Bar-barians forums, something I have been involved with for close to four years.

I have spent a lot of time, money and effort supporting the web presence for the group over the years.  In the last 6 months or so there has been some shake up in the Bar-barians that resulted in some of the guys I worked most closely with, leaving.

Since they have left the web site I worked on was scrapped and relaunched, sort of.  The new web site was under construction for 2-3 months and even now that it is “open” it is woefully incomplete.  One of the things missing is any link to the forums that I have continued to run which has contributed to a steep decline in the participation in the contests.

The drop off in participation coupled with my drop off in motivation to keep it going contributed to me pulling the plug on the contests, at least contests I am responsible for.  There is a part of me that feels guilty in doing this as my personality lends itself to trudging on with something out of feelings of responsibility even if that responsibility is not deservedly mine.

Running the challenges can be pretty time consuming.  Coming up with the ideas, watching all of the videos, updating the results and sending out the prizes adds up to a good chunk of personal resources.  Judging the attempts can be frustrating as sometimes there is blow back when I point out a problem.  I have had  to deal with various degrees of BS ranging from minor griping to outright personal attacks from people unhappy with my evaluation of their efforts, despite my attempts to always try to be supportive even when delivering criticism.

So anyway, once this month’s contest concludes that will be the end of it.  My involvement in the contests got me connected with literally hundreds of people in the bar community, many of which help to fuel my motivation, which I am eternally grateful for.  It’s been a good long run but just like everything in this world, things change.

I forgot to mention that Cindy utilized a second home grown resource in addition to the eggplant she prepared over the weekend.  She used our large supply of blackberries to make a blackberry crumble desert which we have been enjoying the last few days.  There is something very satisfying about eating what you grow yourself.

Ali is still in a holding pattern with the closing on her new house.  Hopefully today is the day, having the majority of your possessions in the back of the truck for days is not a very good feeling.

So I told Ali I would try to help her move on Saturday.  I was unsure how my ab pain would be by then.  Luckily the pain seems to now be present only if I press on the area above my belly button.  I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing.  Also the closing on the new place did not come through, meaning we would be doing a half move, from Ali’s apartment into the back of the moving truck, a less than ideal scenario for sure.  I also brought the dogs out to the house so they could stay there while Ali’s living arrangements are in limbo.

I picked up Ali so we could go grab the moving truck.  I told her I could drive it since I have long straight body truck experience.  The 17 foot U-haul truck wasn’t huge but hopefully big enough to get the job done.

When we got back none of the recruited help was there yet so Ali and I started moving the dozens of boxes down into the garage, making room for the big furniture items to get moved out.  Some of the additional people showed up so we got busy.  I wanted to get the sleeper sofa out of there first as it is probably the biggest and heaviest item there was to deal with. Once that was out of the way I figured it would be downhill.  Getting the sofa out was a challenge but successful.

The crew we had there worked diligently for maybe 90 minutes getting all of the furniture items out of the apartment and into the back of the truck.  Once they finished up everyone enjoyed the coffee, donuts and bagels Ali bought before they headed out.  There was still a lot of little items scattered about but that wasn’t the type of thing they could help much with so they headed out.

I could tell Ali was feeling burned out from the process so I tried to come up with a plan to get things to more manageable state.  First we totally cleaned out her office so she could sweep it out.  We then moved the bed pad and topping to the office so she could use it as crude sleeping quarters temporarily. We then cleaned out the master bedroom so that could get swept out as well.  We moved pretty much everything besides the clothes and shoes in her closet to the landing area by the steps.

Christy showed up and helped Ali sort and box up some of the remaining loose items.  My job was to take all of these completed boxes and storage containers and fit them into the truck Tetris style, trying to get as much in while keeping the load as stable as possible.  By the time the last box was in place the truck was pretty much filled floor to ceiling, front to back.  There are still things in the apartment that need to come out but it’s pretty minor compared to where we started.

The game plan now was to leave her stuff in the truck and as soon as the bank is ready to close on the new place, try to get her moved that evening.  The problem is there is no firm date for that to happen, quite annoying considering Ali was originally told her closing date would be 4/15.  I left her place around 2PM.  Ali was very thankful for my help.  It was a lot of work to be sure but I’ll be glad to see Ali established in her own place and don’t mind helping her get there.

Saturday evening I was quite beat as you can imagine.  Cindy and I stayed in.  She made a great dinner which included eggplant that came from the garden.  She is very good at improvising meals.  We watched Dallas Buyers Club Saturday night, the movie Matt McMconaughey won an Oscar for.  Wow his frail, gaunt appearance in the movie was very disturbing but lent credibility in his portrayal as a man with AIDS.  The movie was very well done and shined a light on the lunacy of medicine in the United States.  I’d give it a solid A.

Sunday morning, despite busting ass the day before, was designated to be a training brick.  Cindy and I headed to the waterpark to do a bike/swim brick.  We had done neither training discipline in quite a long time, 4-5 weeks at least.  The bike ride was difficult with the typical headwind when riding south but we maintained an average of 18.7 mph which isn’t bad at all.

I was worried that the swimming movement would aggravate my abdominal thing but I was able to get 1200 yards without feeling pain.  I was surprised I was able to keep my 400 yard segments under 9 minutes.  In fact I did a negative split for all three legs. (8:55, 8:40, 8:35) On the way home we grabbed some well deserved DD coffee as well as making a few other stops.  The girls greeted us like we had been gone for weeks of course.

My Sunday afternoon was mostly consumed by another Tacoma maintenance project. redoing the front brakes/rotors.  The brakes on the truck have been pulsating pretty badly for quite awhile.  I ordered the parts online from Autozone last week.  I went this route instead of simply going to the store to score two $25 AZ gift cards which I still have not located.

I had replaced the rotors on the Tacoma several years ago so I didn’t bother doing any refresh on how to do it, I figured it would come back to me, which it pretty much did, however it didn’t take long until I had my first issue.  The brake pads that AutoZone sent me were the wrong ones.  My Tacoma is the Pre-Runner variety which has upgraded brakes with different pads.  So I had to waste 90 minutes running to AutoZone to return what was sent to me and get the right type.

Doing the actual work wasn’t too bad.  I did take the pins that the brake pads slide on and throw them in the vice.  I used a paint stripper attachment in my drill to remove caked on gunk from the pins that was surely making the old pads get hung up, probably contributing to the old rotors getting warped.

While I had the hood up I did a partial brake fluid swap, sucking out the reservoir of the coffee colored brake fluid with a turkey baster and refilling it with fresh synthetic fluid.  I also replaced the air box for the second time in roughly a year.  The replacement air box I installed a year ago broke in exactly the same manner as the OEM box it replaced.  This time I bought the new airbox from AutoZone so I am hoping it holds up better than the first one which came from Ebay.

When I road tested the Tacoma the brakes felt smooth and strong, just as I hoped.  Feel free to spend 13 minutes of your life watching how I did it.

This morning I had a good report from my dentist.  Unlike the rest of my body, my teeth seem to be the one thing that has actually gotten better with age.

Last night was a busy one, I had a number of to do’s on the list.  I had to get the third new running club laptop set up now that I replaced the defective hard drive.  I also had to take the tv off the wall in the master bedroom so I could route another HDMI cable to be utilized by the new X1 box.  I was temporarily using the blu-ray hdmi cable to get by.   I had Cindy hold the tv upright on top of the dresser while I did the in-wall cable routing.

We handled other normal Thursday night chores like cleaning Tuki’s cage, laundry and watering the houseplants in short order.  Cindy also did her nightly blackberry harvest.  She has been harvesting every day to try to avoid what you see pictured, bird damage.

In the past I would only harvest berries during my once a week yard maintenance sweep.  The end result was many, many more berries wound up going to the birds than my freezer.  With Cindy harvesting daily we have collected 20-30 per day and have amassed quite a big bag full of them at this point.  The bush is showing no signs of slowing down either.  It seems the more we harvest the more it keeps producing.

The pain in my abdomen is still hanging around.  Last night I was doing some pressure tests to see where the pain is actually emanating from.  It seems to be above the belly button.  I am still hoping I am just experiencing an abdominal strain and not something more annoying like a hernia.

So I have gone through almost an entire work week with my new standing desk.  I have been utilizing the free Varidesk app to get me off my ass for 15 minutes every hour.  If you do the math it winds up being a total of 2 hours of standing time per day.  I have not had any issues doing computer tasks while standing, the position is surprisingly comfortable, at least for 15 minute segments.

The other aid I bought a few weeks to help my pc-centric job, the Gunnar glasses have not met the same sort of success.  For 2-3 weeks I was wearing them and my eyes felt definitively worse for it.  It almost felt like I was forcing my eyes to use readers even though they don’t require them.  After having bloodshot, tearing, painful eyes during those couple weeks I have gone Gunnar free.  Oh well.

This weekend I am helping Ali move to her new house (hopefully) for part of the day Saturday.  There has been some feet dragging at the mortgage company that may cause a problem.  Unfortunately Ali has already secured the truck and hands to help with the move so Saturday we will be moving furniture, however it may only be from her old place into the back of a straight body truck.

I have the parts I need to do a brake/rotor replacement on the Tacoma but that more than likely will be put off until some later time.  I’d like to get some endurance training in but I think the only things I could safely take on with my ab issue is biking or maybe swimming.

Last night I had a dream that LittleBeastM (real name Metin) showed up unannounced at my house.  LBM lives in the Netherlands and is famous in the calisthenics community for his hard core dedication to fitness, strength and healthy eating.   I remember first seeing videos of him doing all sorts of crazy hand balancing on the foot railing of his bed and thinking it was amazing.  He has an impressive mix of strength, balance and power.  He does a lot of movements that are normally reserved for the smaller, thinner, lighter calisthenic guys.

So not only did he show up at my door, he showed up with some large heavy rock.  The rock was utilized in the epic workout session we had in the backyard bar park.

This is the second time I had a dream about Metin showing up at my place, weird.

So last night Cindy and I worked on the unfun job of sticking 250+ timing chips onto the back of race bibs.  This is for the upcoming race two weekends away.  I am reusing left over stuff from other events to try to save the club some money.

The timing devices are almost the exact same width as the race bibs, meaning placement needs to be pretty precise which translates to tedious.  Typically when I use these type of bibs we buy them pre-made, where the tags are already stuck to the back of the bibs. I speculated with Cindy how this is done.  More than likely some Chinese worker is paid a nickel an hour to do nothing but slap these things on bibs.  It is not a job I would covet.

After getting all of the sticking done all of the bibs had to be passed over a reader to get the unique code for each chip.  Cindy was the code swiper.  I just supervised the laptop to make sure the reads remained sequential.  Luckily this busy work won’t be necessary as much in the future as I am hoping to have the club make a large purchase of ready to go race timing bibs that won’t require me to prep them first.

Cindy and I utilized X1 last night to digest this weeks MARVEL Agents of Shield.  I continue to be very pleased with everything X1 has thrown at me and the silky smooth way it allows the box in the bedroom to utilize the resources of the great room DVR.

My abs are still hurting me today although I have not taken an Advil/aspirin since yesterday at 11:30 so that is a step in a positive direction I suppose.

I have been a Tivo customer for a long time, since I had a DirecTV receiver with integrated Tivo back in 2000/2001.  Tivo was a revolutionary product when it came out, allowing customers to no longer be chained to their televisions based on a programming schedule.  Instead I could watch a show whenever it was convenient to me. On top of that watch it in 2/3 of the time since I can fast forward past commercials in a few seconds. The way Tivo would learn your viewing habits and make recommendations for other shows based on them was pretty cool as well. Being able to pause live tv was sweet.

The Tivo interface was always intuitive and user friendly, far ahead of the boxes that cable companies offered which were slow, clunky and ugly.  Over the years Tivo added features to keep up with the times, again being a ground breaker in many areas like allowing you to schedule recordings remotely from the web and be able to take recorded content from the Tivo and play it back on other devices.

I was very satisfied with my Tivo service for a long time.  At one point I had one in the main room and the bedroom.  Well over the last few years that satisfaction has been waning.  The decline started when I ejected Comcast out of my house for cable TV and switched to my OTA HD antenna for live tv.  Doing so cut down the amount of programming available to feed my Tivo dramatically.  Most of the time my box was sitting around less than 10% full.

The shift to streaming delivery of video was another big change that lessened the Tivo’s value to me.  I wound up using the Xbox 360 as much if not more than my Tivo to watch stuff.  Tivo did have it’s own set of apps to watch various online streaming content like Netflix, Amazon Video, etc… but I think they kind of suck.  The apps were slow and annoying.  I found the experience on the Xbox 360 apps to be much better. These factors plus the greatly improved Xfinity X1 hardware and software made paying $15 a month for Tivo service not make sense anymore.

They don’t let you cancel your service online, it requires a call so their “retention experts” can try to change your mind.  During the 15 minute call to Tivo I politely rejected various offers.  The guy even suggested that I should consider buying the lifetime subscription for the Tivo I am getting rid of to increase it’s resale value.  They put you on hold for like 5 minutes so they can “finalize” the cancellation.  Cut me a break, cancelling is probably one or two mouse click on their end.  Save the drama for your mama.

The call finally ended.  I have officially broken up with Tivo.

Last night I took the girls back to Ali’s place after another fun four day visit.  It’s always a bit sad for all parties involved since the girls seem to enjoy being at the house so much.

So last night as Cindy and I were watching Paranoia (B+ rating), I started to feel sharp pain in my abs.  My first thought was the pain was from my stomach.  I asked Cindy if there were any different spices in the food she made.  She said it was all stuff she has used before.  I wasn’t sure what was going on but it was pretty painful.  At the gym I had done some heavy deadlifts, after work I did a circuit that had me straining to get some push up reps out but I don’t recall any specific ab pain during either session.

Sleeping last night did not go well.  The pain in my abs woke me up several times.  Laying in certain positions was impossible.  When the alarm went off I had to struggle to get out of bed, certain angles would make me just wince.  I immediately took two Advil which took the edge off the pain enough that I could function.  The fact that Advil helped pretty much confirms that I just strained something in there.

So my install window for my Xfinity X1 upgrade was from 3PM to 5PM.  I left work around 2PM to make sure I was home on time although I knew the odds of Comcast arriving at the front end of the install window was slim to none.  I am pretty sure I have NEVER had a Comcast tech arrive within their scheduled window.

So 4:45 arrives and nobody has shown up and nobody has called me to say they are running late.  I hop on a web chat session with someone from Comcast and ask if I can still expect someone to show up for my install.  I also asked the rep why installers are not instructed to use common courtesy and let customers know they are running late?  The rep apologized and said they put a note on my account.  They said the rep is on their way and should be calling me shortly.  I put little stock in that promise. As expected no one ever called but the installer truck finally pulled into the driveway somewhere around 5:35.

The beat up old Chevy truck had a magnetic sticker indicating the two people inside were not actually Comcast employees, they were authorized contractors, RWL communications.  The two installers were a black man and woman, it became clear very early the woman was the supervisor and the guy was a new hire trying to learn the ropes.

The woman didn’t offer any apologies for being late and just asked where the new boxes were going.  I found the  guy that was with her to be annoying pretty much immediately. As he was outside with the woman he was on his cell phone catching up with someone on a personal call.  His head that was shaved on the sides with an island of hair up top made an interesting style statement.

At first I was watching the woman work outside.  She cut out the perfectly good cable that was in the termination box along with the splitter that was used to separate the line for the internet versus TV.  She was instead combining it into one line which I thought was odd.  After getting bored watching her mess around outside I told them to knock on the door when they were ready to get into the attic where the coax lines for the house are terminated.

After what seemed like a very long time she was ready to move to the attic.  I told her I had taken the steps to label all of the incoming lines as well as the two lines that would be getting X1 service.    I figured the time needed in the attic would be minimal as all that should need to be done is disconnect two lines from one splitter and move it to a new splitter, a 5 minute task.  Wow was I wrong.  She was up in the attic for at least a half hour, probably closer to 45 minutes.

Evidently regardless of the condition of the cable ends, the installer is supposed to redo every connection they touch.  Plus she wound up redoing the two way split outside the house after realizing it was necessary after she undid it.  While I was inside waiting for her to get finished in the attic I heard a crash from the garage.  I head out, half expecting to see a leg hanging out through the ceiling drywall.  I see no holes but ask if everything is ok.  The annoying guy says everything is fine, just “one beam wasn’t as strong as she thought”, whatever the f that means.

Both of the installers seemed to be suffering from some sort of ailment/illness.  The guy was making all sorts of disgusting noises with his throat.  The woman seemed to be suffering from severe allergies and was sniffling and snorting non-stop.

While they were out there the annoying guy, whom got a whole lot more annoying later, asked me about the SSR.  He says “yea, how fast will that thing go?” .  I said “pretty fast, it has a Corvette motor in it”.  He comes back with “yea, but how fast will it go”.  I didn’t quite understand why the guy was so interested in a top end speed for the truck and I certainly wasn’t going to go hop on my computer to look up a SSR’s top speed.  I simply said “fast enough” and headed inside since I had no interest in continuing the conversation thread.

So finally they were ready to move inside with the X1 hardware.  I had already pulled out the Tivo so the X1 DVR could slide in it’s place.  The woman was working out in the great room, she gave the second box to the guy and tasked him with setting it up in the bedroom.  It was during this process that the guys lack of any technical background or skill was really apparent.  He had no clue what to do despite me showing him the coax cable, the HDMI cable and location of AC power.  The woman had to go in and walk him through it.

When the woman came back out in the great room she put the signal meter on the line.  She was perplexed that she showed zero signal.  I told her that made no sense since the line worked fine for HDTV via my antenna.  I went out to the garage and looked at the splitter.  Despite my efforts to clearly label the lines and my instructions to her pointing out exactly what had to be moved, she hooked up the wrong line.  I called her out and told her the wrong line was connected to the splitter.  Once she flipped it signal returned, imagine that.

The signal level was not at an optimal level so she decided to put a powered splitter in the attic.  I had to hunt down an extension cord she could use to tap into the plug adapter I have in the light bulb socket up there.  After installing the booster signal level was good and she returned to working on the DVR.

Sometime around then the guy asks if we have a guest bathroom he could use?  Hmm I guess the guy really has to pee, I directed him to the bathroom by the guest room.  Well as the minutes passed by and the bathroom door remained closed a horrible reality set in on me.  The installer was taking a massive dump in my bathroom.  In total he was in there 10-15 minutes, unbelievable.  When he exited he left the fan on, how nice of him.  I could not believe it.   I was hoping to make eye contact with Cindy when he came out so we could exchange disgusted eye rolls but she kept working in the kitchen.

I later found out she was disgusted as I was.  As soon as they left she was in there bleaching everything and pulling out all of the towels.  It just wasn’t cool.  I can only imagine what went on in there.

So once the X1 DVR was up the guy said he was going to do me a favor and program the X1 remote to control the TV.  He told me I should read off the possible codes for Mitsubishi TV’s to him.  Even though I didn’t need this functionality since I have the Harmony smart remote, I played along.  He acted like he was an experienced tech as he punched in the codes.

After entering one of the codes the screen went black but I immediately identified it as the X1 just doing some sort of update.  The TV itself didn’t actually turn off.  Mr Crap declared he found the code and the remote was now configured.  I told him the tv didn’t actually turn off but he assured me it was working.  Knowing I was going to be setting everything up myself anyway I let him think he actually accomplished something.  Fine dude, just get out of my house.

Both of the boxes finally finished registering and updating themselves on the Comcast network.  After a very brief “training” session from the woman they were finally done, not leaving the premises until after 7:30PM.  Obviously the install experience was not good.  They were late, slow and the guy dropped a deuce in my bathroom. However after playing with the X1 equipment for a little bit the sour taste in my mouth started to sweeten.

The X1 interface is very good, rivaling if not exceeding what I have come to expect from my Tivo.  It looks slick, it’s fast, intuitive and powerful.  Setting up programs to record on a season pass was actually easier than it was on my Tivo.  The integration of the bedroom X1 box with the main DVR is seamless.  A show that recorded last night on the DVR was immediately available on the bedroom X1 without any sort of configuration, it just works.

With X1 in the house my Xbox 360 will be needed much less for watching programming.  With the X1 I can either record or watch most programming easily using On Demand.  We used On Demand to watch Game of Thrones last night and it was a piece of cake.  I installed the Iphone app which allows my smartphone to be utilized as a remote control for the X1 box, including voice commands which I have yet to test.

X1 – A+, install experience – D

Saturday was one of those all work all day sessions that I hadn’t had in quite awhile.  The first task was weeding and then weedwhacking the property followed by some light mowing.  Since my mom and Cindy’s mom were coming over for Easter dinner on Sunday I wanted the grounds to look half decent.

I then headed to Lowe’s to get trees to replace the two I ripped out of the orchard.  I decided to get an orange and grapefruit tree as replacements.  Both of them actually had some fruit growing on them which was a plus.  I also snagged a couple blueberry bushes, some replacement border for the pond and a 4 way shephards hook to replace the bird feeder holder which had almost rusted through.

On my way home on Immokalee Road I saw something in the right most lane, intent on crossing the other 5 which were filled with heavy traffic, a snapper turtle.  I swung over, threw the four way flashers on but left the tail end of the Tacoma partially in the right lane to divert vehicles around the turtle.

I jumped out and picked him up, he was huge, heavy and ornery.  He was reaching up with his back legs and scratching my hands while he flailed his long neck around trying to chomp on me.  I got to the median, sat him down and pinned him in place while traffic on the other side of the road flew by.  He seemed to calm down a bit as I picked him back up to scurry across the other three lanes.

Once I was across I navigated down the very steep embankment bordering the canal, the destination he was seeking.  Doing this while holding the turtle in front of me was quite tricky, tricky enough that as I got to the last 3-4 feet I slipped and fell on my rear end.  As I did I lost my grip on the turtle.  He snapped at me as he dropped on the brush but then quickly scooted into the water.  Despite the turtle’s lousy disposition I felt better knowing that I saved him from a 95% chance of annihilation from some idiotic driver.

I was bummed when I got home and realized the wind in the bed of the truck apparently blew the branch that was housing grapefruits off the tree.  I tried to follow the planting instructions to a T, digging a hole twice the size of the container and lining the bottom of the hole with some good soil mixed with fertilizer.  I then backfilled the hole and created a small levy around the tree to help focus water distribution.  I plan to be diligent in maintenance of the new trees, hoping for similar results to the now fruiting avocado tree.

I then ripped out the rotting wood log border that surrounds the small pond.  The stuff I replaced it with was cheap plastic fencing that sort of looks like black metal.  I am not thrilled with how it looks but it will do as a stop gap until I can redo the pond area permanently.  I then put the 4 way shepherd hook in the ground.  I used the post hole digger and a level while doing the install.  I used the same technique with the others in the ground and they have remained rock solid and straight for many years despite thousands of birds hanging off them.

The one two way bird feeder holder has had the top of the post rusting away for over a year.  It was to the point where only one corner was intact, the other 3 were open air due to rusting away.  I found it ironic this morning when I saw the top finally snapped off, exactly one day after I got it’s replacement in place.

I attended to backfilling more armadillo holes however this time after I finished I sprayed the spots and the entire front fence line with the armadillo repellent .  The stuff had a smell that was not unpleasant to my nose but evidently is disgusting to armadillos.  As of this morning I have not seen any fresh excavations.

I was outside most of the day, not coming back inside until 4PM.  Once I was inside I had another mental list to attend to.  One of those was mapping out the coax connections in the attic in preparation for my Comcast Xfinity X1 installation this afternoon.  I labeled my antenna, cable and satellite incoming lines as well as the outgoing coax that goes to the great room and master bedroom which will be getting the X1 equipment.

I then started to work on setting up the new laptops I bought for race timing for the club.  I bought 3 of them.  Unfortunately I could only get two of them set up since one of the laptops apparently shipped with a bad hard drive.  I was pleasantly surprised that tech support for Lenovo Thinkpads is handled out of Atlanta instead of India or even worse, China.

I took this pic of the girls snoozing by the front door.  When I sent it to Cindy she immediately noticed that their legs almost formed a perfect heart.  It added additional cuteness to the pic.

On Saturday night Cindy and I went see Transcendence, the new movie with Johnny Depp regarding the merging of human consciousness and super computer AI.  Unfortunately I was a bit tired again going into the movie although I don’t recall my eyelids closing.  Being a computer guy I found it interesting seeing the improbable but none the less intriguing interpretation of where technology is heading. I’d rate the movie somewhere between a B+ and A-.

Sunday morning Cindy and I originally were talking about doing a bike ride.  Because of time constraints we instead decided to head to the nearby track to get 3 miles in.  I have done zero endurance training since my week long illness.  I didn’t expect running to feel pleasant, it didn’t.  Despite running quite a slow pace for two of the three miles, I never felt comfortable.  The 3 miles felt more like double that.  Oh well, it’s a start.

After getting back from running Cindy headed out to go to church with her mom and daughter.  I stayed home to get more things done around the house in prep for company.  I did have a few spare minutes to make some signs for the dogs, a Happy Easter sign for Nicki and a special sign for Sadie.

Mom came over mid-afternoon straight from work.  The girls, especially Nicki were very excited to see her.  She just wanted to be by my mom’s side non-stop.   It was the first time mom was at the house since Xmas so she got to see the additions that Cindy brought with her as well as the new foam gel king size mattress in the guest room.

Cindy’s mom showed up a little after 5.  She brought deviled eggs, a bean casserole and a coconut cake to go along with the already long list of food Cindy was making.  We sat down for a very delicious meal at the rarely used dining room table.  After the meal Cindy’s mom hung around for awhile before heading out right before sunset.  It was nice having her out to visit.

Both mom and I were super tired after the big meal.  My energy level was further drained from the morning run, busy day and two BLP’s I downed prior to eating.  We headed back to bed barely after the clock hit 9PM.

So on Friday my Varidesk Pro showed up.  I wasted no time rearranging my desk to accommodate it’s rather large 3′ by 2′ footprint.  The first impression I got of the Varidesk was it is well built.  It felt very solid and the platform mechanism is very easy to adjust to whatever height is comfortable.

I was also surprised how comfortable it was to work on the PC in the standing position.  The only issue I have is the stand my dual monitors are on is too low when I am standing.  A set of fully articulating monitor mounts may be next to allow me to keep the monitors at eye level regardless of my body position.

I like the free app that Varidesk provides.  It reminds you stand up for 15 out of every 60 minutes and is fully customizable.  I find the 45/15 split so far a good one for me.

If you are looking to break out of typical office worker sit all day doldrums I highly recommend the Varidesk to serve that purpose.  I wouldn’t mind having one for home as well, unfortunately the layout of my home desk won’t accommodate it.

Today I am leaving work early to meet the Comast installer tasked with installing X1 goodness into my home AV network.  I am crossing my fingers everything goes smoothly, a rarity in any experience that involves Comacast.

On the way home last night I picked up the dogs for another extended visit as Ali is heading up to PA for Easter.  As soon as I got in the door Nicki was acting like she was hungry for supper.  Since the cortisone shot her appetite has really spiked.  Both of the girls were happy to be out at the homestead and happy when Cindy pulled in the driveway.  Cindy rolls around and plays with them more than I do.

I missed my lunchtime gym visit so I got in a quick mini-workout consisting of 5 sets of pull ups and push ups.

So here I am a week after returning to work since my week long GI ailment.  I feel better but not “normal”.  Specifically things in the bathroom are still not as they were before this mess began.  I never got any sort of feedback from the doctor office from the various labs that were sent out, including the test involving one of the grossest experiences of my life.  I left a message today to try to get an update.

This weekend promises to be a busy one.  I would like to get two healthy fruit trees to replace the two unhealthy ones I pulled.  I may get some other stuff to for other outside renovations.  A trip to the movies is planned for Saturday night and some sort of endurance training needs to go down on Sunday. I still need to find the time and motivation to replace the front disc brakes on the Tacoma.  It won’t happen this weekend.

Sunday also just happens to be Easter.  Mom is going to come out after work (yes she has to work on Easter) to enjoy what is sure to be a delicious meal prepared by Cindy.  It will be an opportunity for mom to see the dogs and see the house since Cindy moved in, including the vastly upgraded guest room amenities.

Last night after work I felt the need to be productive.  I fulfilled that need by heading out to the orchard to do some tree removal.  The orchard is one of the first things we added to the landscape after building the house.  It never has lived up to expectations with several of the trees looking ratty, unhealthy and remaining very unfruitful in their yields.   I have allowed them to continue on for literally a decade like this due to equal parts apathy and sentimentality.

Well I decided a few days ago it was time to finally do something about it.  I drug my shovel, rake and post bar into the orchard and ripped out the tangerine and key lime trees both of which have done next nothing for several years.  Removing the key lime was pretty easy, it’s roots were not that big.  The tangerine, despite it’s ill/stumpy appearance above ground, had a large set of roots lurking underneath which took some prying to get at.

There is at least one other tree in the orchard that I have my eye on for removal but it actually appears to have some fruit on it, granting it a stay of execution.  My hope is to plant two new trees and do a better job tending to their care so they can grow and prosper.

Yesterday in the mail I got a promo for Comcast’s X1 home service.  X1 is the new modern spin Comcast has put on their cable TV service.  It includes all new equipment that actually has a modern and user friendly interface compared to the shit they used to put out there.  It allows you to do many of the things that Tivo’s can.

Speaking of Tivo, the reason I even took the time to look more seriously at the X1 is my Tivo Premiere has been starting to act flaky, more than likely the hard drive is starting to go bad.  If it goes that means I would either be spending the time/money on a new hard drive or a new Tivo box.  I have been less and less thrilled with what Tivo does for me for the money.  Since I only have OTA antenna programming feeding into it, there is very little on there.  I have been a looong time Tivo customer, dating back to when I had a DirecTv/Tivo receiver, some 10 years ago.

So anyway after looking at what the X1 system was I looked at the packages.  Right now I am paying 80 a month for 25mb internet service and the shitty digital tv package which I don’t even use (non-HD).  For roughly another 40 a month I could move to 50mb internet service, an X1 HD DVR for the main room, an X1 secondary HD box for the bedroom, 160 channels AND free HBO for 2 years.  I then factored in the $15 a month I would no longer be paying to Tivo, meaning my monthly bump would be more like 25 bucks. When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was all on board, she misses having some of her favorite channels like HGTV available.

So I said f it and pulled the trigger, completing the upgrade arrangements with a roughly 10 minute phone call.  I also managed to get the installation charge of 40 bucks waived for the tech which is supposed to show up Monday afternoon.

To be honest, deciding to give Comcast more of my hard earned dollars isn’t something I thought would ever happen after I threw up my HD antenna some 4 years ago.  I am still apprehensive about it and if I didn’t have Cindy here helping me split living expenses I doubt I would have upgraded.  Still I am sort of excited for both the 100% faster internet speed and the features the X1 system will give me.  It should up the geek/tech factor in the house another few degrees.

I plan to still be utilizing my OTA feed for the other coax runs in the house like the guest bedroom.  I will need to be an active participant when the installer arrives to help him navigate the considerable coax runs and splitters that converge in the attic crawl space.