Archives June 2014

So yesterday I developed an issue with one of my WordPress sites I host with IX webhosting.  When I would try to authenticate to the WordPress dashboard I would be presented with a 403 Forbidden error.  Sometimes a WordPress plug in can cause odd behavior like this so the first thing I did was rename the plug ins directory to eliminate that possibility.  It still threw a 403 error.  Oh well I guess I’ll have to call support.

Any long time blog reader of mine is aware of the many, many issues I have had with IX Webhosting over the years, there are too many to enumerate.  However one thing I actually did like was that their call center was located in Ohio and I could at least speak with somebody that has English as a primary language.  They also have an online chat but that is staffed by Romanians whose communication skills are less than stellar, so I prefer to call in when I have a problem.

So I call the number and am on hold for a very long time, at least 15 minutes.  The reward for my patience was the other line finally being picked up by somebody with a very strong Indian accent on a poor quality line.   Immediately I could feel my blood pressure elevate.  Don’t tell me that IX has outsourced their call center to India…

So as is almost always the case when dealing with an Indian phone representative, the conversation was peppered with lots of “What?”, “Say that again..”, and “Huh?”.  It was frustrating as hell.  The communication barrier and the guys obviously lower level of technical expertise resulted in my problem not being resolved.  I hung up in near disbelief.  After having a four day plus outage several months ago that cost their customers collectively hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime, they decide to ship phone support to India, something that is is universally seen as a hated practice for customers.  Indian help desks suck, plain and simple.

The move just piled onto the multitude of reasons I should have abandoned IX webhosting years ago.  The ONLY reason I have not bolted is because of the massive amount of work and time that will be required for me to re-home the NINE web sites I house there.  It will be horrible.  It needs to get done however, I can’t continue to reward horrible customer service with my dollars.  I guess I need to start doing some homework.

Cindy has been having some issues with her phone connecting to my in home wifi network.  I found something online about some compatibility issues with my D-link router which is at least 5-6 years old at this point.  I used it as a good reason to refresh my in home wifi network.  I purchased an ASUS RT-AC66U dual band router after reading a number of surprisingly good reviews.  I never bought an ASUS router nor knew they even produced them.  This is the first time I have ever used anything beside a Linksys or D-Link router in my house.

After screen shotting all of the configuration on my old router I shut it down and put the ASUS in place.  Getting the ASUS online had some hurdles to clear and bugs to squash but I had most of it done before we ate dinner.  I like the UI for router, it is easy to navigate and as powerful as you need it to be.  The wireless performance boost was noticeable.  The 54 megabit top speed of my old router is now tripled, Cindy’s laptop was showing a 150 mb wifi connection, sweet.

Tomorrow Cindy and I fly out for PA for my sisters wedding.  It is going to be a very quick hitting visit with our flight back leaving early Monday morning.  I believe it is the first time I am stepping foot in the greater Reading area in at least three years, wow.  The major to do besides the wedding is to see my brother’s new house.  Other than that I will be giving Cindy a whirlwind tour of the area that I used to call home.

Tonight I have to run the dogs back to Ali’s place so they can be picked up by dogsitter number two.  Ali does not return until Saturday sometime.  I then will head home to do a whirlwind packing job followed by hopefully reasonable bedtime since the flight rolls out at a ridiculously early 6AM.

Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls is so damn good.  Turn off the lights, turn up the volume and enjoy the non-stop demon face smashing.  I am at the end boss for the new expansion.  I tried to beat him once and got mauled.  I am only level 41 (top level is 70) so I need to do some research into what it’s going to take.

Last night we had our next door neighbor over to give her a crash course on Tuki care while we are away this weekend.  It’s a pretty simple yet important duty of course.  I am hoping once we get chickens she is agreeable to tending to them too.

Yesterday we had another incident at work where somebody that was not utilizing good web surfing practices contracted the Cryptolocker malware, encrypting thousands of files on both her local system and her connected network drive.  She infected her machine by clicking on a search result in Google that lead to a trap site.  The last time this occurred it was via a link in email.

Corrupted search engine results is a very effective way to trick less than savvy computer users into becoming malware victims.  Quite often the URL of the fake sites look legitimate, at least to the average web surfer.  I have heard and seen countless example firsthand of somebody infecting their machine via this route.

Since I had one go round with Cryptolocker I already had a plan of action ready to roll, using the most recent shadow copy back ups of the network data prior to the encryption.  The timing worked out pretty well since she infected her PC around 7:30 AM and a round of network shadow copies just occurred 30 minutes prior.  However, just like the last time, the local files on the user’s PC were trashed and there was no way we were paying a ransom to decrypt them. We could remove the malware from her system but that does not decrypt all of the local files affected. I view it as a little stinging reminder to this user to be more careful in the future and if they have files they deem important to save them on the network as they are instructed to do.

So we have had Cindy’s Miata on Craigslist for about 10 days with little success.  I got a couple calls and emails but nothing I would consider serious interest.  Yesterday Cindy took the Miata to work with For Sale signs in the window.  She parked it prominently in the post office parking lot.  This old school sale technique of putting a vehicle in a heavy traffic area yielded far better results than 10 days on CL.  I got 5 or 6 inquiries during the day with at least a couple of them seeming very interested.

Last night Cindy was contacted by another potential buyer. The ironic thing this was this is someone she talked to way before the Prius was even an idea in my head.  A couple months ago this kid saw Cindy’s Miata and said it was nice and that she should let him know if she was interested in selling it.   Well Cindy let the kid know the Miata was up for sale and he was interested, not for himself but for his best friend who was looking for his first car.

Cindy told him that others were interested (true) and that some wanted to come look at it today (not so true).  This turned on the urgency light and the kid and his friend wanted to come over right away to check out the Miata.  Ok not how I expected my Monday night to go, but great!  Selling the Miata would mean clearing driveway real estate, giving Cindy a chunk of money to pay some stuff off and just be a big load off her back.

Unfortunately the two guys didn’t get there until daylight was just about depleted so it was tough to get a great look at the car although the potential buyers buddy had seen the car in broad daylight before.  We used the house floodlight, headlights and a couple of my lanterns used for races to provide lighting.  They went around the car and then Cindy and the kid went on a test drive.  I stayed back and tried to help the other kid fix a problem with his Acura he just bought 3 days ago.

The car was lowered, severely lowered with approximately an inch of ground clearance.  He said it’s so low that he can’t even drive it during a hard rain as any appreciable standing water would make it instantly hydroplane.  Why someone would want their vehicle that low is beyond me.  Well when he pulled in the driveway I heard a grinding metal sound.  The sound was from brackets used to hold up a plastic skid plate to protect the underside of the vehicle.  The kid just had an oil change and transmission fluid flush done on the Acura and evidently the place that did it neglected to properly reattach this skid plate.

He asked if I had any screws that he could use to temporarily hold the skid plate until he got home.  The couple I gave him didn’t work.  I laid down on the driveway and took a look.  The undercarriage of the vehicle was ridiculously close to the ground.  I don’t think even a golf ball could roll under it without getting stuck.   After surveying the very cramped workspace and seeing the hanging metal bracket I determined a series of zip ties would be the best way to get the metal off the ground.  I connected three of them together and was able to rig the bracket, hopefully good enough to get home.  While we were out there, he told me his buddy already has plans to trick out the Miata, part of which was making it sit even lower than it already does.

Cindy and the other kid went on a pretty long test drive, not pulling back in until I had finished up my Acura skid plate elevation project.  The only negative that was reported was the random check engine light which has been the case for as long as Cindy owned the car.  I told him I replaced the only O2 sensor on the car and the CEL hasn’t had any negative effect since Cindy owned the car.  Other than that he liked it.

There was a very quick and easy price negotiation where the kid offered us 300 bucks less than what the OBO sign listed.  The offer was still more than the bottom line number Cindy was willing to accept so she took the offer.  Going back and forth with two 18 year olds just didn’t seem necessary. They had cash in hand and were ready to roll.  I headed inside to fill out a bill of sale form.  After printing it out and having Cindy sign off on the title the kids were ready to head out.

As the Acura moved I still heard the metallic grind.  I told him to hold on and I took another peek underneath.  My zip ties were holding steady but a closer look revealed that much farther back there was another metal bracket dragging, in a spot unreachable unless the car was on a lift.  Doug said he would just baby it home and take care of it tomorrow.

Getting the Miata home was a risky proposition for the two 18 year olds since they had not brought a license plate with them and obviously I pulled Cindy’s plate.  If it was earlier in the evening perhaps we could have arranged for me to drive the car to the kids place with Cindy’s plate but it was already something like 9:30.  They did not seemed concerned about driving plateless but 18 year olds don’t get too concerned about many things.  They planned to have the Acura follow behind the Miata closely to hopefully hide it’s naked license plate area.  I felt a little uneasy as they drove off as technically until the title is officially transferred, Cindy is the owner.  The good thing was they didn’t have that far to drive.

Cindy was happy and sad at the same time as the Miata buzzed down 47th Ave for the last time.  She was very happy to get a decent amount of money for it but sad because despite it’s warts and shortcomings, which were plentiful, she had a lot of fun zipping around in the Miata in the year plus she owned it.  I didn’t feel as sentimental, despite my investing a lot of sweat equity in the car fixing numerous items.  I saw it as a money pit first with anything else being secondary.

Last night we finally finished season eight of 24.  Of course the ending was suspenseful, violent and not even loosely based on what any human being would/could do.  I now have seen all eight seasons thanks to the wonders of Netflix and Amazon Video and declare myself officially ready to digest the reboot of the franchise which is currently running on Fox.

On my way home from work on Friday I swung by Ali’s place and picked up the girls.  I am dog sitting them until Thursday this week as Ali is in Costa Rica.  When we got back to the house I let them out in the back yard.  Sadie returned to the door sporting a nasty limp.  I did not watch them while they were in the yard so I am not sure what she did.  We checked her paws extensively and didn’t find anything lodged which could be causing her pain.  I am wondering if the rabbit that has been hanging around was out in plain view, causing Sadie to instantly haul ass after it.  Perhaps she pulled something in the process.  She has been limping all weekend.

My Saturday was very, very busy.  Shortly after 8 am I started on yard manicuring.  Weed whacking, mowing and a couple other outdoor todo’s took me until 11:30 to knock out.  After eating lunch I loaded up the girls in the party van for a ride up to exit 131.  I was returning the PC I set up for my accountants.  I didn’t want to pollute their home with dog fur so I just left the girls in the van with the AC cranking while I was inside.

After setting up the PC it was back in the van for the return trip of 35 miles back to the house where I had a mental list of indoor chores awaiting me.  I cleaned the bathrooms, the kitchen counters, dusted, watered the indoor plants, did laundry, and was working on running club membership stuff when Cindy walked in the door after work.

During the day I got not one but two calls from a lady that we probably will be buying our chickens from.  Evidently she is quite anxious to get them relocated because she said she needed room for a new goat.  I told her that I couldn’t get hens until I got back from PA next week.  She wants me to pick them up asap.  The hens we should be getting are a breed named Buff Orpington.  They are supposed to be good egg layers and docile.  The woman said they don’t mind being held at all.

Getting chickens is going to mean I have to be more mindful of what is going on in the backyard.  One such example is my never ending battle against fire ants.  My number one weapon against these little bastards is Amdro, it’s the only thing I have found that at least helps stem the red fire ant tide.  Well Amdro is deadly to chickens if they eat enough of it.  Typically I would just walk the yard and dump Amdro with reckless abandon.  If I am going to use it in the future I will need to cover the area so the chickens can’t get to it.  I am envisioning a large upside down empty pot as a good way to do this.

On Saturday night Cindy and I decided to just stay home.  I was beat from my day of labor and Cindy was sweating her ass off in the sweltering heat delivering mail all day.  We had a Netflix DVD in house so we just chilled with the girls and watched it.  The movie was Out of the Furnace with Christian Bale, Ben Afflecks brother, Woody Harrelson and Forrest Whitaker.  It was a good movie but is guaranteed to not make you feel better about the world when it is over.  A lot of pretty horrible shit goes down.  Still, I appreciate dark movies and would give this one a B+ bordering on A-.

Cindy and I started off our Sunday with the 20 mile Dunkin Donuts ride, the first time either of us have done any open road biking in a loong time.  I was expecting to struggle but thanks to a more or less neutral wind both directions we actually  held a good speed, 20+ mph for a large portion of the ride.  For the entire ride as a whole we averaged 19mph.  I was soaked with sweat when we got home.  I cooled off with a dip in the pool which Sadie appreciated, despite having her laps around the pool limited by her limp.

I had one project I wanted to complete on Sunday, replacing the rear hatch switch on Cindy’s Prius. In 2007 Toyota evidently had an issue with the rubber used for these switches which cause them to turn into a sticky tar consistency, especially in warmer climates.  The prior owner combated this problem by sticking some duct tape over the slimy switch. I was looking for a little more permanent and cleaner solution so I ordered a new switch assembly and wire harness.

My search for a how to video for the process came up empty, making it a prime candidate for another entry in my growing automotive maintenance YouTube collection.  I did find some text directions on the procedure which seemed pretty straightforward.  The worst part of the switch replacement was cleaning up the black goopy hole where the old switch resided.  I used half of a bottle of Goo Gone and a dozen shop towels in the clean up procedure.   The new switch works great and no longer coats your hand in road tar.

I had to do a few boring things like more laundry and pay my bills on Sunday but I also spent a lot of time geeking out playing Diablo, trying to get my monk through the expansion content.  I love that Cindy actually encourages me to just play games sometimes as she appreciates the various types of hard work I am doing the rest of the time.  She was quite content baking/cooking in the kitchen as I killed thousands of demon spawn.

Sunday night we finally almost closed out the original run of 24.  We have exactly one episode left in season 8.  I have to say that even though I thought it was impossible, Jack has somehow managed to set the bar even higher in lunacy during this season.  He flips back and forth between the roles of patriot, super hero, lover and cold blooded killer so frequently and easily it makes my head spin.  Just trying to document everything that happens to the guy in a 24 hour period and just how silly and far fetched it is for any human being would ruin the 24 experience.  Just strap in and hold on, check your sense of reality at the door.

I am not sure how I forgot to include a recap of my doctors appointment on Wednesday afternoon in Thursdays blog entry.  I guess I’ll chalk it up to old age.  Anyway I went to our med clinic with two problems, a very red looking right eye and a right ear that felt plugged despite me hitting it with various ear wax remedies.  The eye problem was not resolved, all she could tell me was it was definitely not pinkeye due to the lack of discharge.  Her best guess was something possibly got in my eye during Sunday’s triathlon that was causing irritation. The eye was given a wait and see treatment plan, hit it with some drops and see if it gets better in a few days.

As far as the ear goes, she confirmed in about 2 seconds that it was plugged with wax, lovely. She called in the cute young girl assistant and told her to get the ear irrigation kit.  The kit is comprised of a spray bottle looking thing with a hose and nozzle attached.  Inside is a solution of 50/50 peroxide and warm water.  She then hands me a kidney bean looking container and tells me to press it against my head, below the wax packed ear.

She then inserts the nozzle in my ear and starts squeezing away.  I have a reflex anxiety reaction when I am inside a doctors office, it is very normal for me to leave an exam room with a very sweaty back.  Well having this solution blasted into my ear felt uncomfortable.  The pressure on my ear drum felt significant and somewhat disorienting.  It didn’t help that before the blasting started the doctor said I should let her know if I feel dizzy.  My perspiration engine seemed to ramp up to incredible levels.  I literally had drips of sweat rolling off my chest and my back felt like someone threw a gallon of water on me.

It did not take long for a huge clump of wax to come rolling out of my ear. As soon as it came out it felt like someone pulled a cork out of my ear shaped bottle. My hearing was suddenly much better. The girl that was administering the irrigation seemed impressed with herself for extracting so much wax.  She showed it to me almost like a proud parent.  I took a quick glance at it but looked away just as quick, joking I should take a picture of it to post on Facebook.  She actually thought I was serious and was holding the tray in position for an ear wax selfie.  I told her I’ll pass on the pic.

After the wax removal the doc pulled out her stethoscope to listed to my lungs both on my sweaty back and chest.  I hoped she didn’t notice that I felt like a fish.

I’m hoping to do more regular ear maintenance so I can avoid duplicating this experience anytime soon.

My trip home last night had three stops, Costco, Sam’s and then Publix.  I needed items from all three retailers to complete this week’s grocery needs.  I typically attend to groceries on a Friday, this week they were pushed a day earlier because I am picking up the dogs after work.  They will be staying out at the house for the next week while Ali is away on a trip to Costa Rica.  One of the things I bought was a big pack of boneless chicken breast to be added to their meals.  Cindy cooked it all last night resulting in two huge containers of boiled chicken to be kept in our already very full fridge.

Dog sitting during the week has become more complicated since the neighbor that used to let them out for me told me because of her poor health she didn’t want to be relied on any longer.  Ali has told me that the dogs, specifically Nicki now can be left home pretty much all day without having any accidents in the house.  For awhile Nicki couldn’t go more than 4-5 hours without having an issue.  So my plan is between Cindy leaving later than I do for work and me getting permission to leave work a little early, I can have the girls safely go nine hours in between bathroom breaks.

I have a lot of things to keep me busy this weekend.  The grass needs full attention and I have a number of other things outside of normal maintenance that can keep me as busy as I can tolerate.

So a couple weeks ago Cindy upgraded the firmware on her Galaxy S4 to version 4.4.2 which is known as “KitKat”.  The Android OS likes to attach odd names to different releases of their operating system.  Well since doing so she has been complaining about various things and a quick search online reveals she is far from alone in her complaints.  Evidently 4.4.2 is widely recognized as being a buggy release.  There are many reported issues but the one that has been really annoying Cindy was the bad response lag when interacting with the phone.

Unfortunately there is no simple way to flip back to the previous stable version of the firmware, the only methods I saw to do so involved rooting the phone, something I would not rather fck around with.  There was a reported “fix” for the lag issue, a factory reset.  A factory reset is just what it sounds like, it erases the phone and sets it back to the way it comes out of the box.

Now of course you don’t want to do this without backing up your stuff ahead of time.  Samsung provides a utility called Kies to perform this function.  I fired it up and did a full back up.  After getting the green light from Cindy to blow the phone away I did so.  After the wipe completed I reattached the phone to Kies and did a full restore which should bring the phone more or less to the point it was before minus a few minor tweaks.

After completing the restore I handed the phone to Cindy and had her check it out.  All of her apps were there, her emails, her pictures, etc….. great.  As she was digging around on the phone I heard her say “no…..”.  I asked what the NO was about?  She said she lost all of her old text messages.  I told her they were supposed to be part of the backup, in fact I remember the backup pausing for a long time as it was backing up the old messages, yet they were nowhere to be found.  Cindy was very distressed by this.

This morning I reattached her phone to Kies and was unable to see any of the messages as part of the back up, how nice.  Depending on how crucial these old messages are viewed to be by Cindy will dictate how much more effort I will put into seeing if I can come up with a resolution.  Needless to say I am not very happy with how Kies performs.  If I knew old messages were going to be in jeopardy we could have used the built in back up functionality in GoSMS Pro to back off stuff ahead of time.

So yesterday I posted one of my many random observations from the gym.  The gym is a great place to people watch. People do a lot of silly things while working out, there are literally millions video examples of this peppering the internet.  Hell, take a look at the president’s gym routine.  If I saw that going on at my gym I would probably post commentary on it as well.

When I post my observations I try to make sure they are descriptive but not personal.  I describe what I see, smell, or hear that strikes me as odd or funny but I don’t preempt it with names  like moron, dipshit, d-bag, etc… I am basically just the gym reporter.  I also have admitted multiple times that at one point or another, I have been guilty of the very things that I find funny today.  Most people that I notice simply do not know any better, however that does not mean it isn’t funny.

Well more than once I have had people take offense to my commentary, viewing it as mean spirited instead of the observational humor it is intended to be.  Unfortunately this is just part of having an opinion, pissing people off.  Sure I could follow the rainbows, puffy clouds and unicorn approach to Facebook posting as many people do, never post anything even mildly controversial, opinionated, deep, dark or negative but that would be pretty damn boring, at least for me.

My opinions and thoughts that I have posted on Facebook and my blog have raised more than a few eyebrows over the years.  I know I have pissed off many people and that’s ok.  It’s what having an opinion and personality is about.  Some people will get it/like it and some people won’t.  I don’t get angry with people if they disagree with me, I certainly spend enough time being disagreeable myself.

I am going on my 11th year of putting myself out there, if you choose to tune in or tune out, it’s all the same to me.

So yesterday I get a text from Cindy saying that when she opened the garage door to take in groceries from the car a bird once again flew inside.  Not just any bird, the same bird that we spent 20 minutes getting out the night before.  Why in the world this bird felt the need to come back in the garage when it was obviously freaked out from the prior day’s escapades is beyond me.  I told Cindy to just leave the garage door open in the hope the bird would be smarter this time and fly back out.  Evidently the bird is still pretty dumb.

When I pulled up the garage door was still open.  I did a quick visual scan for the bird and didn’t see it.  Cool, maybe he left?  Well when we hit the button to close the garage door the noise scared the bird, who was apparently quietly hanging in some corner.  It felt like groundhog day as Cindy and I made futile effort after futile effort to get the bird once again out of the garage.  I was finally successful using the fish net but in a different manner than the day before.

This time I was able to get the net on top of him as he sat on top of my volleyball bag.  I then used a towel to cap the opening of the net, pinning the bird safely inside.  This time I decided to release him far away from the front of the house, hoping he will take a hint.  I had a pointless one way discussion with the bird as I walked to the rear fence line, letting him know everything was ok but he needed to find somewhere else to hang out.  When I opened the net he immediately flew up onto one of the bushes growing in the fill pit and stayed there.  Hopefully he finally realizes my garage has a permanent no vacancy sign.

I then turned my focus to bringing my dead SSR back to life.  I had Cindy sit in the drivers seat while I pushed it out of the garage to get it in a better position to be jump started.  I pulled the Tacoma in front of it, hooked up the cables and then told Cindy to hop in the Toyota to increase the RPM’s to give me some juice.  I hopped in the SSR and turned the key which resulted in a couple weak half turns of the starter, not enough to bring the 6.0 L motor roaring to life.  I tried cleaning the battery terminals and adjusting the jumper cables, hoping to provide some additional current but I was still unsuccessful.  I at least was able to put the power windows up while connected to the Tacoma.

I disconnected the jumper cables and retrieved my battery charger from the small shed.  I was hoping if I pump juice into the battery for a bit I may have a better result.  I set the charger at the higher 6 amp charge rate and went back inside to eat dinner.  After eating I headed back out and tried again with no jumper cables attached.  The motor turned over a bit more but not fast enough to start, damn it.  I reattached the charger with the plan to try one more time before bed.

Around 9:30 I headed back outside.  After removing the charger I reattached the jumper cables to the Tacoma.  I was hoping the combo of the time on the stand alone charger with an assist from the Tacoma would be enough to fire the SSR back up.  I got lucky, the SSR finally started up.  I figured I should take it on a short drive to dump more juice into the battery.  I dropped the top and took a short but enjoyable 12 or 13 mile spin east on Immokalee Road.  I couldn’t help but punch the SSR well above the speed limit for brief periods of time.

When I rolled back into the garage I turned the truck off and  back on to see if it would start.  It did but you could tell the battery was still weak.  I hooked the battery charger back up to the SSR and let it run all night at the lower 2 amp charge rate.  Before leaving for work today I tried the truck one more time.  This time the start sounded normal, hopefully the lifespan of the battery has not been cut short from being completely drained.  I showed Cindy how to tell if the truck is in the correct off position and how easy it is to accidentally leave it in the battery draining accessory detente.

For the past week or so I have had what I assumed to be ear wax issues in my right ear.  When I would take a shower and wash my ears the right one would immediately become water logged, like the opening is constricted.   The odd thing was when I would clean the ear I wasn’t really getting a significant amount of wax out of it.  I have used some ear wax removal drops and straight hydrogen peroxide to try to address the problem and had no success.  I am not getting much of anything out of the ear, despite it feeling constricted.

Well sometime on Monday I noticed my right eye was starting to get red.  Last night it was more red and sore to the touch.  This morning I woke up and it was even worse.  This eye pain/redness is something I have had happen before.  The first time it happened I went to the doctor and then the eye doctor with no official diagnosis given.  If I remember correctly I was just given some generic antibiotic drops and it eventually went away.  Since then when it happened again I just rode it out.

The additional wildcard is that I swam a 1/4 mile in the gulf on Sunday.  Despite wearing ear plugs, I am sure some of the nasty sea water found it’s way into my head.  With my life long history of ear infection issues, sea water is asking for trouble.  Part of what is going on could be tied into my swim. I’m not sure. I am going to stop by the free employee clinic this afternoon to have them take a look.  I am hoping two things occur, they can tell me if my right ear is indeed clogged by wax or not and hopefully give me some drops to wipe out whatever is making my right eye look like a pale cherry.

Last night when I pulled up to the house the garage door was open and Cindy was inside of it holding a mop upright, an odd thing.  When I got out she said the reason for the mop was to try to coax a bird out that had flown in the garage when she opened it.  I didn’t expect to be involved in an animal project last night but of course I was obligated to.  This bird was of decent size, about the same as a mockingbird.  It apparently was not very bright.  Despite the garage door being fully open, offering a 20 foot wide escape route, when we would coax the bird from the back wall it would fly on top of the retracted door and hang out there.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get the bird to simply fly out the door we started using additional tools including a towel, an empty plastic box and finally my big fish net from the shed.  No matter what the tool the result was the same, every time I would try to snag the bird he would simply fly to another part of the garage.  We even put the door down for a period of time hoping it would make it easier to capture the bird, that plan failed as well.

I was getting worried for the bird.  You could tell he was very scared and getting tired.  He had his beak open all the time, something birds do when overheated.  I stuck with the fish net.  I couldn’t get the bird to fly into it but I held it in front of him in a non-menacing way.  A few times he would step onto the frame of it for a couple seconds before flying off.  Finally, after somewhere around 15-20 minutes of attempts I got him to perch on the frame of the fish net while I very slowly lowered it and walked outside.  Ironically after all of that effort, once I got him safely outside he didn’t want to fly off the fish net immediately, he just sat there looking at me, probably due to exhaustion.  Finally he took off for a near by tree.  Another animal rescue mission was complete.

Cindy told me when she saw the bird she tried to put up the windows of the SSR up so the bird couldn’t go in it.  However when she turned the key it appeared to be dead.  I hopped in the truck and verified it was dead as a doornail.  The battery was just replaced last year so the odds of it being bad were slim.  My initial guess is when Cindy drove us home from the running club picnic on Memorial Day she  inadvertently left the ignition switch in the accessory position.  When I swapped out the ignition switch on the truck awhile back an unintended side effect was if you weren’t careful you are able to pull the key out of the ignition with it still being in the accessory detente.   It was raining last night so I didn’t bother to address it but tonight the plan will be to push the SSR out of the garage, jump it, and hope the battery is able to be revived via the alternator.

My brother-in-law who basically NEVER posts on Facebook was motivated to do so yesterday because of his own personal blowback from the Affordable Care Act.  His story followed what unfortunately is becoming a common narrative.  Since the ACA changes, his company, which by all accounts is doing fantastic financially, has told employees they are raising their portion of healthcare premiums drastically.  His current contribution of around $300 per month for his family of 4 could skyrocket to 1000 bucks a month.

I don’t think anyone that supports the concept of universal health care would see this as acceptable collateral damage.  However there are many facets to this situation.  The first thing I would question is just how honest my BIL’s company is in their accounting of the need to 100% pass increased health care costs entirely onto the back of their employees.  Like I said, from what he has told me, his company makes dump trucks full of money for what they do.  An unwillingness to split that pain more evenly with employees seems pretty shitty to me.

For every story like this you can also find someone with the exact opposite experience where the ACA was a godsend and for the first time in their life allowed them medical coverage for a pre-existing condition that in the past insurance companies could slam the door in your face for.  Of course these stories get much less coverage than the people that are getting the shaft like my BIL, whom are normally going to be much more vocal in expressing their outrage. My BIL puts most of the blame on Obama and the “ignorant” people that voted for him for this situation.  He feels bitterness and anger that he is being asked to pay a ton more for his premiums so that “beggers” can get coverage that in many situations is government subsidized based on income level. Although I don’t agree with the sweeping generalizations he uses to describe people that benefit from ACA I can understand his frustration.

I find myself in an odd position with this.  Although I have always supported the idea that a universal health care system is a good thing overall in a modern society, I think what was passed into law here was far too much of a byproduct of insurance company lobbyists.  The ACA act is making insurance companies a TON of money.  When the plan was pitched, part of the logic was distributing the cost of insurance amongst more people should overall lower the cost of coverage since you have more wallets supporting the load.  Obviously that has not been the case per my brother in law’s and many more examples.  And of course who can forget the now infamous Obama quote “if you like your current insurance coverage, you can keep it”.

The other smoking gun in addition to insurance companies is the medical profession itself and it’s RIDICULOUS costs.  What we are charged for medical care/procedures is nothing short of rape, it’s insanity.  Last week at the running club picnic I was talking to a fellow board member that had to go to the emergency room after laying down his scooter on some loose gravel.  He had a bad cut on his leg that required stitches.  While he was there the doctors insisted on taking an MRI of his head and a second one of his body.  Dave is a handyman/contractor that has no health insurance.  His bill for a few hours in the ER, $13,000.  Yes that is not a misprint.  To say he was furious would be a massive understatement.

My point is the health care and insurance industry gets you from both ends, insurance companies charging higher rates, using the ACA  as a catch all reason (despite it making them a fortune), and the medical profession that can easily bankrupt the average individual if they spend more than a couple days in a hospital.  It’s a horrible, horrible mess. Add big pharm into this equation as well, they may be the most evil of the three after all.

Just like so many of our countries largest problems, the core reason behind all of this is corporate greed.  Having individual health care being infinite profit centers for big businesses means things will never really fundamentally change because the money doesn’t want it to.

We are f’d.

On my way home from work Friday I took a detour up to exit 131 on I-75.  I was stopping by to see my accountants, a husband/wife team that had a second home down here for 5 or 6 years but still lived primarily in Douglassville in dreary PA.  They are hopefully going to be able to relocate to Florida full time soon.  They have been doing my taxes for years and years.  I met them when I was still working for Entre Computers/Ameridata and was sent out to their home office on a service call.  We always got along well from day one and have maintained a very friendly relationship over the years.

The reason I was heading up there was to pick up an old computer of theirs which was not booting.  Thye were hoping I could at least get some important files off the old box and move them to a new PC they just bought.  They live in a huge beautiful house in one of the many large communities that dot the SW Florida area like freckles.  I had not seen Tom or Sue in a long time, not since I left Pennsylvania for good back in 2000, meaning 14 years had flown by.

I was wondering how it would be reentering the space of someone that hadn’t seen each other for nearly a decade and a half.  The answer was, just fine.  Sue was really amazed, she said I didn’t look any different then when she last saw me.   Of course I know there are lots of small differences in how I look now versus 14 years ago but it was nice to know that as a whole, the wheels haven’t totally fallen off.

I sat down and talked to them for quite awhile, before I knew it I had spent an hour chatting.  Cindy was making dinner so I told them I needed to get going.  I grabbed the two computers and told them I would see what sort of progress I could make on them this week.

On Saturday morning Cindy was outside helping me knock out a number of outdoor to do’s before Randall and his girlfriend were scheduled to show up mid-afternoon.  After handling those chores and doing a quick run to Lowe’s I had to put on my baker’s hat.  Monday was Lily’s birthday and we thought making my kick ass chocolate birthday cake would be a nice surprise.  I have made the cake enough now that it is pretty easy.  Cindy for once actually picked up a few pointers in the cake prep from me, especially when it comes to the icing preparation which is the most important part of the while thing.   Randall and Lily pulled up shortly after I finished mixing the icing and was letting it cool.

This was the first time I met Lily, whom Randall had been dating for several months.  Like Randall she is an avid biker and works only a couple miles away from where he does.  It didn’t take long to get a good vibe about her.

We gave her the brief tour of the property and then just hung out for a little bit.  Cindy and Randall still had to pick up their race packets for Sunday’s triathlon so we figured we would combine that trip with going out to dinner for efficiency sake.  While we are at packet pick up Randall and Cindy spent some time at two of the on site tables, one guy was giving a free neural analysis and the other guy was like a sports rehab guy that was giving free rock tape applications.

Rock tape or stuff like it was first seen in the summer olympics several years ago.  Supposedly, by taping certain areas of your body you can have gains in power, endurance while helping to avoid injury.

I watched the guy apply the tape over Randall’s left knee,  when he was done in sort of looked like an open patella knee brace.  Personally I am quite skeptical if this sort of product offers anything beyond a placebo affect but I can verify that I see it in use more and more often.  The stuff seems to really adhere strongly to the skin.  I would imagine after removing it a few times you may start shaving whatever area you are regularly applying it to.

After heading out we decided to do dinner at Carraba’s despite it being around 6PM on a Saturday night, a day and time that you would NEVER entertain stepping foot into the place during season unless you liked 2 hour waits.  Our gamble paid off, only sitting through a pretty brief 20 or 25 minute wait before our seating buzzer flashed red.

While we were enjoying our drinks at the bar, I took notice that even though we were well within the happy hour time period which goes until 7PM, we weren’t being served 2 for 1 draft beers, a long standing Carrabas tradition.  I figured it was just the latest in a long line of changes Carrabas has made in the last 10 years that have lessened my enjoyment of the place.

I asked the bartender if they stopped the 2 for 1 deal.  He said that instead of doing 2 for 1, they now just charge half price on draft beers during happy hour.  Randall paid for the bar bill so I didn’t run the numbers to verify this.  I can tell you that the glasses they serve you draft beer in are at least a third smaller than they used to be.  The tall but very small diameter glasses are just the latest subtle change to pad the bottom line. The menu at Carrabas seemed to change a lot, they added a ton of new things.  It looked like they almost doubled the amount of entree choices.  I guess that is at least one thing to nudge the needle back in a positive direction.

We didn’t stay up very late on Saturday night due to the triathlon the next morning.  I got the van loaded up with as much as I could Saturday night so we could just jump in and roll by 4:45 am the next morning.  The van had Randall’s bike and accessories and the running club’s PA system, speaker stand and bull horn to be used at the race.

The 4:15 alarm was not welcomed but I did somehow wake up on my own a minute or two before it actually went off.  I had my customary Pop Tart breakfast and then followed up with my customary bathroom to trip to make sure the tank is empty.  This is one of the parts of being a race participant that I really dislike.  I fear the idea of being in the middle of a race and having some sort of bathroom emergency pop up.  I ALWAYS make sure to get things nailed down before leaving the house.  Sure, once I get on site I will need to take a leak once or twice but I absolutely do NOT want to have to deal with anything else once I walk out the door of my house.

Well despite attending to this need at home, shortly after getting on site I felt this need reenter my body.  I was not happy.  I can only attribute this to the additional anxiety of participating in my first event in over a year, even though my role only required a little over 10 minutes of total work.  Thankfully this race is based out of a hotel so I didn’t have to resort to port-o-potties but I still was very unhappy that my digestive system was giving me additional overhead to deal with.

As I was a couple miles from the hotel I had something else flash into my head that gave me additional distress.  Even though I remembered to bring the portable PA system and speaker stand which was to be used to start the race, I forgot to grab the Ziploc bag I have in one of the crates which includes the accessories for the set up, most importantly the microphone.  Without a mic the system was a paperweight.

I did not immediately panic, I though that I could utilize the mic from the large PA system that the club uses for the award ceremonies.  Shortly after getting on site I went down to the beach to grab the mic, hoping to be able to cover up my lack of planning.  When I got down there I saw the speakers and main box for the system but no cables used to connect it all together, rendering this system useless as well.

I immediately contacted the race director and several people in the club that dropped the PA system off for use.  The initial info I got was the cables and mic were left with the system in the conference room where early packet pick up was held.  I fast walked up to the hotel and walked around the area looking under tables to see if the red and black bag containing the cables was left behind.  The search came up empty.  I was starting to get very worried.  Imagine if we had no cables for either PA system, shit.

I made another call to the race director and described what the bag looked like.  A light bulb went on.  She said she had the bag, it was in her hotel room.  Evidently it was given to her because nobody knew what was inside of it.  Whew, crisis averted.  I met up with her and grabbed the bag, taking it down to the finish line.  I dumped the stuff on the table, interested in grabbing the mic to run it up to the start line.  As soon as I did the hope fo covering up my mistake vanished.  The connector the mic for the big sound system is not compatible with what my portable rig uses, damn it!  That meant for the start of the waves we were going to have to use the less powerful bull horn I brought along.  I was pissed at myself for not bringing all the stuff I needed.

So all that was left was to wait for the race to start.  Relay teams were in wave 2, starting two minutes after the first wave.  Cindy was nervous as she always is before every race.  She was worried she would let us down if she didn’t run fast enough.  I assured her no matter what time she ran it didn’t matter, we weren’t there to establish any world records.  After she took off running I returned the worthless portable PA system to the van before heading to the transition area to meet up with Randall.

They have very specific rules when it comes to handing off the timing device between team members during each transition.  There is a box on the ground defined by tape where the next leg of the team must stand.  The chip hand off has to happen inside that box.  We spotted Cindy come running into the area right around the 25 minute mark (24:35 official time).  She was exhausted, almost to the point of delirium.  Randall unstrapped the timing strap from her leg, slapped it on his and then grabbed his bike and was off.  Both Cindy and I expected Randall to make short work of the less than 10 mile bike course which he did, averaging close to 21 mph for the ride.

I had positioned myself in the chip hand off area a few minutes ahead of Randall’s return.  I had stripped down to my tri suit bottoms, had my ear plugs in, sneakers on and my goggles up on my forehead.  I elected to wear sneakers to make my roughly 1/4 mile run to the beach faster since it goes over a large section of hard surfaces and road.  After getting to the beach I could quickly strip the sneakers and head into the water.

Randall came steaming back into the transition area, threw his bike on the rack and came over to me so I could grab the chip.  I affixed the strap to my right leg and was off and running.  Since I got to skip the first two events I had an unfair advantage over the other participants I was passing on the way to the beach.  I was moving pretty quickly for me, enough that I was breathing heavy when I finally hit the sand.  After quickly removing my sneakers and pulling my goggles down I was into the water.

Even though the water wasn’t very deep for quite awhile, I didn’t waste much time before getting horizontal and swimming since you can always swim through water faster than you can trudge through it.  I modified my normally very deep stroke depth so I wasn’t hitting the bottom.  It didn’t take long till my first bump in the road came up.  My left goggle evidently did not have a good seal and filled up with salt water, enveloping my eye in a constant stinging misery.  I determined that although it was uncomfortable, it wasn’t worth my stopping and losing time to correct it.  I kept stroking.

I really hate swimming in open water, I hate swimming in open water with a bunch of people even more.  Throughout the swim I was dealing with bumping into people, people bumping into me and getting cut off several times.  I never really felt comfortable during the swim.  My pace was steady but not fast by any means.  Entering the water after running at a brisk pace seemed to put me at an oxygen deficit that I never really recovered from.  Plus swimming in a lap pool where you are pushing off the opposing wall every 30 seconds or so does not prepare you for open water swimming where it’s one long slog with nothing to push off of.  The 1/4 mile C in the gulf water felt like double that in a pool.

Coming back in I tried to swim as much as I could before emerging from the water to jog in the final few yards.  As soon as I stood up I felt disoriented and unbalanced, almost falling to my right side.  I caught myself and trudged up the beach and across the blue timing finish mats, sucking major wind.  I felt like I worked harder than I should have to considering I was only in the water for less than 10 minutes. Randall, Cindy and Lily all cheered my arrival from the water and joined me in collecting our race finisher medals.  I didn’t talk much until my breathing had slowed down after chugging about a half bottle of water.

I glanced at the race clock seeing it was 1:06 something when I finished, meaning our finish time was somewhere less than 1:05 because of our delayed wave start.  1:05 was the goal Randall, Cindy and I threw out there loosely before the race so to beat that was cool.  After emerging from the water I wanted to quickly exit the throng of people gathered around the finish chute, talking to herds of people is something I just don’t do well.  Cindy and I grabbed our stuff from transition while Randall and Lily snagged some food.  We returned and set up a blanket on the lawn to hang out.

In the more open setting I exchanged race stories with many of my friends from our local athletic community.  I almost felt dishonest claiming myself as a real race participant having only done the short swim.  The results for this race have always been slow to be posted, this year was the worst example of that to date.  It took forever for team results to start being posted and when they finally were it was only the cumulative time that was posted.  We managed to place 4th in the the mixed gender team division, meaning we actually received an award, which were being handed out to the top 5 in each category.  However even though we knew our finish place, the awards ceremony did not start until much, much later.  By this time it was hot and humid as hell, the main courtyard had no shade.  We retreated to a perimeter area to wait under some palm trees.

Evidently there were some scoring errors/omissions that were rather big, affecting the awards.  Being a timer myself I have had my feet to the fire like this so I did sympathize, however that sympathy eventually ran out when I just got sick and tired of waiting.  When the awards did finally start, they went at a pace that was too slow considering how many needed to be handed out.  To put the icing on the cake the team divisions awards were the last to be handed out.

The three of us went up to receive our awards, something I don’t know that any of us expected to receive before the day started.  The awards and the finisher medals that were handed out were not very impressive at all, especially considering the entry fee cost for the event.  Everyone, no matter 1st place or 5th got an identical frame with what looked to be a two sided post card in the center of it that just has the race name and logo.  There was nothing to designate it’s significance.  The finisher medal was tiny and noticeably smaller/cheaper than the events prior years medals.  As someone who is involved with putting on races, these sort of shortcuts stand out like a sore thumb to me.  Since this is a for profit race, these are clear moves to pad the bottom line.

Because of the turtle slow results/awards we did not get off site until shortly before noon, pretty insane for a race that started at 7:30 AM.  We piled in the van, glad to get out of the sun.  The Dunkin Donuts coffee we picked up on the way home felt good going down and helped soothe my inner rumblings about waiting around for 3 hours.

When we got back to the house everyone was anxious to hop in the shower before eating lunch to wash off the sweat, sand, and in my case, salt water off of them.  Cindy made us all a nice lunch that we enjoyed while catching one of the endless home improvement shows on HGTV.  After eating it didn’t take long for the early wake up call to mix in with the digesting food to bring on some extreme drowsiness.  Cindy and I retired for a nap, Randall and Lily followed suit.  We all didn’t emerge from the bedrooms until after 5pm.

I began looking online for the full event results to be posted.  They were nowhere to be found.  Even the cumulative times that we saw on site were not posted.  Again, my race timing background and efforts to make times available online nearly instantly make this sort of delay really annoying.  The results didn’t become available until early this morning.  If you want to see our team results you can look here.

Last night we all just relaxed except Cindy who was slaving in the kitchen making shrimp risotto.  We enjoyed it while watching my latest Netflix rental, Wolf of Wall Street.  I had heard a lot of things about this movie ahead of time, mostly bad.  The negative commentary however was focused on the sex, nudity, and the incredible amount of times the F word is used in the film.  I actually went into the movie thinking I wouldn’t come away with an overall positive view of the film.  Well I was very wrong.

Yes the movie had a ton of graphic sex scenes and adult language but for whatever reason it all seemed totally appropriate.  Supposedly the film is based on a true life story.  I have to assume a ton of artistic license was taken, I can hardly believe that any human being could live a life of excess to this degree.  If it is more or less true all I can say is wow.  I thought the acting in the movie was nothing short of brilliant.  Even though it was VERY long,  I had no issues with it.  If anything it could have kept on going. It was just the type of film that kept your attention non-stop.  If you are a bible thumping,  nudity hating, thin lipped prude, don’t even think about renting this movie for a second, you may go straight to hell.  Everyone else, A rating, see it.

After the movie I watched the end of the 3rd period of the Blackhawks – LA Kings game.  Lily is from Chicago and a big sports fan.  I retired to bed when the game was 4/4 at the end of regulation.  Unfortunately for her the Kings won the game in OT, advancing to the Stanley Cup finals.

I was up and out this morning before Randall and Lily got up.  Cindy is still off today so they are hanging out a bit until heading back eastward.  It was nice meeting Randall’s new girl, we loosely threw around plans for them to return for us to do some type of team arrangement for the Marco Island triathlon in the fall.

I have a busy week ahead which will be wrapped up with my picking up the dogs for another extended visit while Ali is in Costa Rica.