Archives 2014

So last night was the monthly running club meeting.  I had told Cindy I would wait to eat dinner with her after the meeting so I was hoping the meeting would not run very long.  After all we are now in summer season which is the slow season for running events, there shouldn’t be much to talk about.  Yea, right.  The meeting ran two plus hours, not winding up until after 8PM.  As usual I emerged from the meeting with 6 or 7 things tossed onto my back to address/implement.  In recent months I have found my tolerance for addressing the seemingly endless requests to manage, invent, implement, promote, coordinate and solve wearing very thin.  I need something to recharge my motivational batteries.  When I look at the race calendar all I see is more and more work, so much that the light at the end of the tunnel is totally obliterated.  The reward to effort formula is totally out of whack.

So the news has been filled with coverage of the ISIS forces taking back major cities in Iraq.  There have been stories acting like the idea of Iraq falling back into the hands of militant extremists was a surprising, unforeseen event. Cut me a fcking break.  Anyone with minimal intelligence predicted eons ago that once we militarily withdrew from Iraq the country was going to fall back into disarray.  Chaos is the natural state of things in that part of the world, our involvement in Iraq had nothing to do with changing it, it was all about making money for military contractors and little else.  For the media to portray Iraq falling apart as some big unexpected tragedy is ridiculous.  We all knew this was the eventual outcome. Let it burn.

Doing recollections of trips like this at one sitting seems more and more daunting the older I become.  I’ll do the best I can muster, hopefully I don’t leave out anything too interesting.

Our flight out on Friday morning was an early one, scheduled to hit the sky before 7AM, meaning a 4:30AM alarm clock, yay.  We decided to just drive up there and park in long term parking, the last time I knew it was something like $8 a day.  Well it turns out it was $11 a day but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

We were flying Jet Blue which is probably the second best airline to fly behind Southwest.  They have no first class, electing to use the additional room to provide the best coach seating room around which of course I am a huge fan of with my long legs.  They also don’t charge you for your first piece of checked baggage, are generous with the free drinks/snacks, have a great on board entertainment system and have a very friendly staff.   This was the 3rd or 4th time I have used JetBlue, they are great. What wasn’t great is that JetBlue doesn’t have any direct Fort Myers to Philadelphia routes.  To get to PHL required us to go all the way up to Boston and then come back down via  short 45 minute flight. Oh well, it would be my first time in Boston at least, albeit confined to the walls of the Logan Airport.

The flight up to Boston went smoothly.  I passed the time reading a magazine and then playing Battle Heart on my phone. Mobile gaming is a great way to make long flights go by quickly.  We landed in pretty dreary weather.  The Logan Airport struck me as being pretty old looking but fine otherwise.  We got some bad news when looking at the outgoing flight board, the flight to Philadelphia was pushed back an additional hour or so, meaning our already 90 minute layover just got a lot longer. Cindy and I grabbed some DD coffee to help pass the time.  I also downloaded the original Plants vs Zombies onto my Galaxy Tab for more on plane time wasting. The delay in Boston made my original plan to stop and see Todd’s new house prior to the rehearsal dinner Friday night impossible, there just would not be any time to do it. The flight finally took off, it was so short that once we hit cruising altitude it felt like we almost immediately started our initial descent.  I only got a few levels of PvZ done.

We hopped off the plane, grabbed our luggage and then jumped on a shuttle bus to Enterprise whom we were renting a car from.  As we approached the office the bus driver called ahead to let the staff know how many customers were coming in.  When we got off the van their staff was out front waiting to personally greet each and every one of us and escort us to the front desk.  I was amazed.  Our clerk was a young girl that exuded friendliness and eagerness to serve.  After handling the paper work she walked us outside and gave us a choice of three vehicles. We chose a Camry, thinking it might get the best gas mileage.  Since I had a Camry Hybrid for a few years I already knew they were nice cars. Our clerk hopped in and started the car up for us, turned on the AC and then did a quick walk around.  She sent us on our way with a smile and a wave, concluding what was the best rental car customer service experience of my life.

The Camry was a very nice vehicle, a more refined version of what I already thought was a great car in 2007.  I brought along the recently purchased TomTom gps to route us to the hotel we were staying at.  Todd warned me that we could wind up driving through a massive storm that rolled through Reading, but somehow we managed to miss it,  only driving through some steady but manageable rain.  Our driving plan was not the most efficient gas or time wise.  We were going to the hotel in Lancaster which was west and south of Reading and then having to haul ass back in the opposite direction.  It was sort of like flying to Boston to get to Philadelphia.

The hotel we were staying at was old but quaint, looking like not a whole lot had been updated since it opened in the 60’s.  We didn’t have time to check much out as we quickly cleaned up, changed and got back in the car to get to the rehearsal dinner which started at 6.  I knew we were not going to get there on time.  I was surprised that we managed to get there by 6:15, beating my brother Todd and his girlfriend by a minute whom pulled in to the Canal Street parking lot after us.  Cindy had met my dad, step mom and brother Patrick before but that was it, everyone else was a new face to her.  Luckily Cindy is an outgoing personality and has no issue meeting and greeting new people, unlike me.

Canal Street Pub is an old Reading factory building.  I don’t recall ever visiting the place before when I lived in the greater Reading area although I heard of it many times.  The area it is located it rather scary looking as the building on the other side of the parking lot pictured shows.  As is the case with much of Reading, it’s a very old and dilapidated place.

We found the group inside, as expected we were the last to arrive.  I had never met any of Meghan’s husband to be Paul’s family.  His parents, especially his mom, was very outgoing and friendly.  We hung out, drank and ate appetizers for awhile.  I talked to a number of people but found myself hanging with Patrick the most.  I had been reading about his latest adventures on Facebook including spinning out his VW going 60mph on the PA Turnpike and his very bizarre extended stay in Turkey for his job.  Getting a firsthand account of his very interesting life was even better.

I used the the Coors Light on hand to help take the edge off the anxiety I normally feel in these large social situations.  We sat down for a great tasting dinner which was filled with lots of laughs and smiles.  Paul and Meg have always seemed like a truly in love couple and that perception was only strengthened at the dinner.  It was cool.

At the meal I talked to Todd about a plan to see his house.  He also had mentioned that his 6 or 7 year old computer was running like shit so that came up as a possible to do item while I was there.  I told him we could stop by during the day on Saturday since the wedding wasn’t until 4:30.  The plan was set in action.  By the time we went to bed Friday night we were approaching our 18th hour of being awake, sleep was welcomed.  Unfortunately that sleep wasn’t of high quality.  The bed itself felt comfortable enough, I didn’t wake up with an aching back or anything like that.  I did however have a very restless night of sleep, a theme that carried through the entire trip.  Each night it felt like I was waking up a lot, into the double digit amount of times.

After grabbing breakfast and some coffee at the thankfully near by Dunkin Donuts we headed towards the Reading area.  I wanted to show Cindy a few things on the way to my brother’s house.  The first stop was the Knauers area where my elementary school and the business my mom worked at for many years are located.  Cindy, who has been in Florida all of her life was really impressed by the rolling hills, mature trees, rural setting and non-development style old construction of my old stomping grounds.  It was about as different from Florida as you can get.

Our next stop was Gouglersville, one of the two centers of my existence as a child.  Colonial Hills bowling alley which was torn down years ago was the second.  We parked in the middle of the town, right in front of what used to be Brightbill’s General Store.  Cindy could hardly believe what looked to be a generic house was once the main retail establishment of the town.  Almost my entire baseball card collection as a kid came from the packs of cards I would buy from Brightbill’s.

Looking around the center of Gouglersville some things had changed but the view towards the north had not, the two churches that have sat on opposite sides of the street remain the same as they did from my earliest childhood recollections.  What was not anything like my childhood was my old house which was the next stop.

I grew up up in an OLD farm house.  If I am not mistaken, it was constructed back in the early 1900’s.  When my parents were still married they did some renovations to the place.  The kitchen was updated and the attic was finished and turned into a shared bedroom that Todd and I occupied.  When my dad and Teresa moved into the place in the late 80’s they did a very large renovation which touched nearly every room in the house AND included a large two story addition.  The end result was my childhood home being transformed into something far different than I experienced.

Well when my dad sold the place prior to moving out to New Mexico, the new owner went to an entirely new level.  The new owner has made incredible upgrades to the place, far too many to list.  The most visible from the road was the large stand alone two car garage.  The property looked absolutely beautiful.  It’s very hard to believe it’s the same place I spent 16 or 17 years calling home.

Across the street from my old house was another farm that was a staple growing up.  I used to enjoy interacting with the sheep and donkey that lived there.  I even took care of the neighbor’s farm animals a couple times when they were out of town.  Well the front gate to the property is now wide open and the property appears overgrown and abandoned.  The old owner died years ago and I am not sure what happened to his two children.  The place is up for an estate sale auction in August.  Seeing the property in this condition pulled a bit at my inner sadness strings.

The owners of my my old house evidently have two large unrestrained dogs.  They announced our presence with barking.  Cindy was afraid of them advancing on us with unfriendly intentions.  I was more concerned about the dogs having the ability to walk onto the road where they could be hit, something that happened to one of my dad’s dogs in the past.  Regardless we used that as our cue to head out.  I did a U-turn in Dick’s old field and pulled away.  The next stop was Todd’s place although almost everywhere we went I was giving Cindy a Cliff Notes version of how that area tied into my past life as a Pennsylvanian.

Todd moved into this new place with his girlfriend several months ago.  His old place was really nice and large.  This new place upped the bar in both areas.   The place is located in a relatively new development very close to Green Valley Country Club, the pool we used to frequent most days in the summer growing up.  The house is huge and beautiful, with way more than enough room for the two of them them and their respective kids. (Todd and his girlfriend both have a daughter)  The inside of the place looked spotless (except for Todd’s office), like it was being set up for an open house.  I would not want to be the one responsible for cleaning it.

The landscaping and backyard were beautiful as well, complete with a nice sized pool and tons and tons of river rock which filled a huge area.  We hung outside for awhile and talked.  Despite just meeting the day before, Cindy and Todd’s girlfriend Mindy were talking a lot.

Attention was then turned to Todd’s computer issues.  His old laptop was a mess, obviously crippled by malware.  Trying to do anything on it took eons, the hard drive activity light was on non-stop, even when sitting at an empty desktop.  I told Todd because of the age of the computer it was hardly worth the time to try to eliminate all of the spyware.  I suggested he would be better served getting a new laptop and having me pull the important data across.  He agreed with my plan and we decided to do a quick run to Best Buy to grab some new hardware.  It was already closing in on noon so I knew that time was going to be an issue. While we were shopping for laptops Cindy and Mindy went out on their own, doing some shopping and picking us up lunch to eat at the house.

Picking out a laptop was not as quick of a process as I hoped.  After a lot of searching we finally landed on a 17 inch Sony system.  Of course we picked the model that they currently did not have in stock.  We opted for the smaller 15 inch Sony that was next to it.  It was one of those models that has a screen that flips 180 degrees to allow you to use the system as a Windows 8 tablet.  Todd was talking about using a laptop in the field for his work to increase his efficiency.  Something like this would help him do that.

So we grab the laptop, a copy of Office 2013 and a small thumb drive to help me move files.  We got back to the house and I got busy.  I had the new laptop up and connected to the internet quickly.  What I couldn’t do quickly was transfer files quickly between the old laptop and the new one.  The file transfer to the thumb drive was excruciatingly slow.  I wound up working on the system until almost 2:30 and still was only part of the way done.  We had to to get out of there to fly back to the hotel, shower, change and then get to the wedding slated to start at 4:30.

It was not much fun for Cindy getting ready under such a time crunch.  The wedding site was further away then I thought it was.  We pulled into the parking lot of the outdoor wedding location at 4:29.  Todd once again pulled in right after us.  I heard how he was literally driving 100 mph most of the way to get there from Mindy.  Thankfully the ceremony started a few minutes late so we didn’t miss anything.  The outdoor setting for the vows was beautiful and the weather, which had been pretty much terrible the prior 4-5 days was absolutely perfect with temps in the 70’s with low humidity.

The vow exchange ceremony was nice and quick.  In less than 15 minutes it was done and the celebration could start.  There were some of my dad’s old friends at the wedding, some of which I had not seen in literally 25-30 years.  It was quite strange to see somebody that just emerged from a 30 year time machine trip.  They sound the same but obviously look much different then what was in my minds eye, an awkward thing for me to digest.

The reception was held under a a large tent.  Meg and Paul were unconventional but in my opinion more sensible with their wedding planning.  They tried to keep costs under control while keeping things fun.  My step mom made the beautiful flower arrangements, the table decorations were hand made and the open bar was stocked with stuff that was bought off the shelf instead of paying an outrageous mark up for alcohol.   Dinner was a taco station with desert options of S’mores and/or root beer floats.  I found it to be pretty awesome to shun the drop your pants and bend over money trap most married couples find themselves entering when doing by the book wedding planning.

The abundant access to alcohol lead to lots of fun as you can imagine.  Dancing, laughing and smiles were non-stop as you looked around the reception.  Cindy and I stepped away briefly to take a look at a huge pack of horses located in a field down the hill. At first they were scared of Cindy and I.  After a few minutes they warmed up, a few even let Cindy pet them.  There were several baby horses mixed in that were especially cute.

I was on a pretty steady flow of Miller Lite.  Drinking that much beer meant a lot of need to hit a bathroom.  They had an odd arrangement where there was only one toilet flagged as being for men with two available to women.  This resulted in a decent size line for the mens room most of the evening.  I stood in the line a couple times but the rest of the time I either used a tree or ducked into one of the empty ladies rooms while Cindy stood guard. It was funny. My alcohol consumption reached sufficient levels that I allowed myself to be dragged onto the dance floor. I was out there dancing awkwardly for quite awhile.  Luckily everyone was as drunk or more so than I was so nobody noticed or cared. It was fun.

There were a lot of cool moments during the night with my dad supplying one of them.  He was pegged to give a speech.  He thought it would be funny if he deliberately placed a piece of toilet paper in his shoe and drug it behind him.  As he hobbled to the center of the dance floor some guy that was not in on the joke ran out to let dad know about the TP on his shoe. Later dad let him know it was on purpose.  Dad followed up with an off the cuff, deep, meaningful, speech that tied in one of Meghan’s favorite childhood books into a framework to navigate life by.  It was very well delivered and received tremendous applause from the entire crowd.  I was proud of him in that moment. Despite dad’s cantankerous, sarcastic and frustrating parts of his personality he also is insightful, emotional and intellectual.  It was nice to see all three of those positive traits on display in his speech.

Overall the reception was just one huge positive experience for all involved.  To me and surely everyone else at the ceremony, it is clear that Paul and Meg are one of those rare examples of just getting it right.  You can tell how connected they are to each other and for all the right reasons.  Hopefully this was the start of a long and happy life for the two of them as husband and wife.

Cindy of course drove us home due to my large consumption of Miller Lites.  We had some loose ideas about driving to Rehoboth Beach for the day on Sunday but dad invited us to breakfast in the hotel lobby on Sunday morning.  Since it was Father’s Day I certainly needed to accept the invitation.  The change of plans also meant I could throw out the possibility to Todd of my stopping by for the second time in as many days to conclude my computer migration work.

Cindy and I walked up the Dunkin Donuts that was 1/4 mile away before meeting up with my dad in the attached hotel restaurant.  The size of our breakfast group steadily grew.  Initially it was just myself, Cindy, my dad and my step mom.  Patrick and his girlfriend joined us next, followed by the newlyweds, the maid of honor and finally Paul’s parents.  We heard stories of how the partying continued at the hotel bar past 2AM, sheesh.

I had a feeling my dad, whom always winds up paying for most everything when it comes to family get togethers, would try to pay for everyone’s breakfast buffet. I managed to pay the check for everyone at the table  (besides Pauls parents who came later) on the down low on the way back from the bathroom.  If there is a meal you want to pick up a check for a large table, it’s breakfast.  The bill was reasonable even with putting food in nine mouths.

After a nice meal we all said our goodbyes.  My dad was driving Patrick and his girlfriend back to Pittsburgh.  Pat had to get right back into his globe hopping job, flying out for Japan on Monday.  We saw them as we walked out to the rental car. Dad, Patrick and I posed for one last picture.

So our Sunday plan was now to do some more local sight seeing before heading back to Todd’s place.  I thought it would be cool to take Cindy up to see one of Berks County’s oddest but most famous tourist attractions, the Pagoda.  For some reason right around the turn of the 20th century somebody decided it would be cool to put an authentic looking Asian pagoda at the top of Mount Penn.  It was to be part of a resort area which no longer exists today.

I have of course visited the Pagoda many times over my life and had it’s glowing red outline be a staple of many nighttime views of the Reading area.  However I never did as extensive or as informative of a visit as I did this time around.  The drive to the Pagoda was interesting for Cindy.  She found the old architecture in Reading to be very beautiful and the twisting drive up Duryea Drive to be equally so.  When we got up there it was about 11:45 , 15 minutes before the inside of the Pagoda opens up.

We decided to waste some time walking a nearby trail that leads down the mountain.  We only wandered less than a half mile away but it was far enough that it allowed us to get a totally different perspective while taking in the sights and sounds of a Pennsylvania forest.  When we returned the doors were open for business.

Now I have been inside the Pagoda before but I don’t recall ever being in anything besides the gift shop on the main floor.  I think the times I was inside the upper floors were closed for one reason or another, probably construction related.  Speaking of construction, there has been a lot of it required to keep the Pagoda in good condition well past it’s 100th birthday.  The building has undergone major renovations several times during it’s lifetime.

The upper floors were open for visitors so Cindy and I were certainly going to take advantage of it.  The smell of sauerkraut for the hot dogs filled the inside of the building all the way into the upper floors.  One each floor as you ascended there were a number of framed post cards that outlined the history of the Pagoda which I found very interesting.  I was most intrigued by the fact that around World War 2 the Pagoda was shut down and it’s lights shut off to prevent it from being an easy ground marking point for potential enemy air raids.  There was also an outcry from the local community to tear the Japanese inspired structure down since Japan at the time was our mortal enemy. I’m glad calmer heads prevailed.

Cindy and I climbed to the 6th floor which has an Asian bell hung from the middle of it.  It was cool getting an even higher perspective of the greater Reading area.  Back down at the gift shop which was staffed by a very sweet old lady lady, Cindy perused the large amount of Pagoda themed merchandise.  We walked away with a Pagoda jigsaw puzzle for our neighbor who was tending Tuki, some postcards and a pagoda shaped cookie cutter which Cindy will put to good use.

On our way down from the pagoda I went a different direction, letting Cindy see more of the very old Reading architecture.  On the way to Todd’s place we stopped for lunch at another longtime Berks country tradition, V&S sandwiches. Cindy and I both enjoyed a slice of their square Sicilian pizza, something I had not had in forever.  We enjoyed it while looking out the front window of the totally renovated building which is nothing like the original tiny sandwich shop that once stood there.

While we were eating Todd texted, asking me if I wanted to stop and get two things he was going to need for the new laptop, an external dvd drive since it didn’t have one and a new external HDD for back up since his old one appeared to be dead.  It made sense for me to get them since I knew what to grab.  So after swinging by Best Buy, Cindy and I arrived back at Todd’s place.  I felt bad that Cindy had to hang out while I did the work but she was ok splitting her time between my niece Caroline, their dog Katie, Mindy and just hanging out in general.

I set up Todd’s new PC with Start Menu 8 from IOBit so he could still utilize the Windows 8 environment in a Windows 7 manner primarily.  I also reinstalled the main software he uses and then performed the painfully slow copying of data files and pictures from the old, slower than shit laptop, to the new one.  When I was copying files off the old system I was getting miserable transfer rates of 2mb-5mb a second.  When I dumped the files to the new laptop via the fast USB 3.0 port I was getting 50mb plus for most of the time.

I also set up Todd’s printers, configured a Dropbox account for him and set up his new back up drive.  In total I think I spent another 3 hours or so completing the work.  Sure it wasn’t the way I thought a good chunk of the weekend would be consumed but at the same time I was happy to be able to help Todd out of his technical conundrum.  We headed out somewhere around 5pm for our hotel in Lancaster.

On our way back I was on a quest to find a a slice of Wixon’s wet bottom shoo fly pie for Cindy.  We stopped at a Giant, and two convenience stores searching for them and struck out.  A kind man in Giant said he remembers seeing shoo fly at Weis Markets.  After getting sent on a bit of a wild goose chase by the GPS we did indeed find shoo fly pie although it wasn’t Wixons, rather something made by the bakery at Weis.  Oh well it’s better than nothing.

We decided to walk to our dinner destination, Friendly’s, which was in the same shopping center as Dunkin Donuts.  Friendly’s is another place that I have not frequented since moving to Florida so I thought it would be fun.  Cindy had never set foot inside of a Friendly’s in her lifetime.  I think almost all Friendly’s are identical inside, this location looked exactly the same as every other one I ever been in with wall to wall booths and old fashioned/tacky decorations.  It is safe to say the powers that be at the Friendly’s corporate offices have never felt the need to do a refresh of their brand image in the last 30 years. Cindy and I had decent meals but skipped the normally customary famous Friendly’s ice cream for desert since we had two small shoo fly pies waiting for us in the hotel room.

Cindy was not all that impressed by the Weis pie.  It was much thicker, dry and crumbier than what you get from Wixons.  I thought it was not bad but felt bad I couldn’t find the real deal to share with Cindy.  I probably should have looked in the Reading area.  I know I used to be able to always get Wixons pie at Redners.

Monday morning we had a 4:30 alarm set for our trip back to Fort Myers.  Our flight was scheduled to depart at 8:40 but with the wildcard of morning traffic we wanted to be out the door by 5AM or so.  We hit our goal more or less and after hitting the nearby Dunkin Donuts one last time, hit the road.  The drive to the airport went smoothly, only hitting minimal traffic.  On the way there I texted my buddy Scott who happens to be a DJ on Y-102, the most popular radio station in the Reading area.  I told him I was on my way to the airport and had Y-102 on the radio.  Scott told me when he went on the air a little after six  he would give me a shout out.  As promised, he did deliver a nice mention of me which Cindy thought was cool.

When we dropped off the Camry I was a little nervous.  The car had the sport package which includes additional ground effects body panels including a low front spoiler.  The driveway to Todd’s house contains a very steep angle which caused the front spoiler to drag a bit upon pulling into and out of their driveway. I noticed afterwards some scrape marks on the underside of the spoiler.  I hoped the Enterprise guy checking in would not notice them.  If he did I already had a speech in my head where I would declare my innocence and that those scrapes had to be there already.  Luckily I didn’t need the song and dance.

Our trip back to Fort Myers was pretty uneventful.  There were no major delays this time and I spent most of my time in air working on completing adventure mode in PvZ.  I got the 15% low battery warning in the middle of the final boss fight so I had to shut down.  (I completed it later last night at home after charging the tablet a bit.)  On the way home we had to stop at Target to pick up a couple items, it was quite nice to finally walk back into the house.

Last night there were a number of things to do but we still found time to watch the Game of Thrones finale amidst a raging thunderstorm that was glitching power for quite awhile.  It looks like rainy season has arrived in our area with a bang.  I could tell by looking at the yard that it rained hard enough to cause some major standing water for a period of time.

The trip was the first time Cindy and I flew anywhere together.  As expected we made for fine travel partners.  If you can drive across country in a van for 2 weeks, a plane ride is nothing.  Cindy had a smile and hug for pretty much everyone she met and had no problem fitting right in.   We seem to do well in each other’s space.

Here is a link to all of the pictures from the trip.

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.