So over the weekend I rotated the tires in the Prius, hoping it would help quiet down some road noise from a couple tires that were showing wear. Well instead the noise got even worse. I gave Cindy the green light to just get all four tires replaced. She called up the place we bought them from, Tires Plus. They were nice to deal with last time and gave Cindy a military discount. The guy said he would get us a partial credit since the Bridgestone Ecopias have a 65,000 mile warranty and we only put maybe 55,000 miles on them. It turned out that we wound up paying about $100 less than we did the first time so I was happy with that. Cindy said the Prius drives and sounds much better.
Bringing Elsa into the house has been a lot of fun but we are still trying to figure out some of her weird quirks. She still gets very nervous at times, getting scared of things that aren’t obvious. When it gets dark out she seems especially scared.
She rarely will stay out in the great room with us at night. She prefers to retreat to the office and hide under one of our desks. The odd thing is when Sadie is with us, who is always near by, Elsa wasn’t doing her nighttime hiding.
Lately in the morning she has been hesitant to go out first thing to pee. We don’t know if it’s the fog or the wet grass. Cindy hasn’t been able to convince her to go out alone. I have been coming out as well and going out in the yard in my underwear to entice her to venture into the grass to relieve herself.
As quiet and as timid as she can be, she also can be super energetic and funny. When she comes out of the bedroom in the morning she comes running up to the office to greet me, jumping around and licking my face. When she plays with the neighbors puppy she runs around like a maniac.
Getting to know her personality has been a little challenging but overall very cool. I can tell how happy it makes Cindy to have Elsa in the house which always make me happy by proxy. Of course I find it very endearing that her preferred sleep position at night is normally laying against or on me.
Yesterday was one of those text book miserable IT Mondays where something breaks over the weekend and your first task of the day is to fix it. Well this was a rather huge break, the database of our document imaging server became corrupted somehow on Friday evening, before any back ups had run of course.
I spent the first half of the day working with the vendor for the imaging system. It became apparent very quickly this guy really had no idea what to do. I was clinging to repairing the DB and bringing it back online to eliminate any data loss. When it was apparent this guy was just spinning his wheels I moved on to plan two, database restore from our back up appliance.
We had a full database back up from Tuesday night and a differential backup from Thursday so if all went as planned I could at least only lose one day of work. Well of course that plan didn’t work out either. For some reason, unknown to the back up vendor as well, the differential restore would fail at the end, leaving the DB stuck in a “Restoring” state. However the full back up from Tuesday restored fine. I went through at least a half dozen attempts of restoring the massive 90 gig DB until I had to make another command decision.
It was now 3pm. If I just restored Tuesdays back up the system would be back online and allow the clerks to process their daily work they have been sitting on. However I was then going to be losing three days of processing from last week. I decided it was more important to get the wheels turning again and restored Tuesdays back up.
The way this system works is once a document is pulled into the system it is converted to a pdf which is placed in a folder broken down logically by date. So any work from those three days was already sitting out there in pdf form, the problem is it no longer was linked to the database. The rather klutzy fix is to re-import these pdfs into the system manually, a pain in the ass but doable.
I stated the process with my asst net admin late in the day, staying until a little after 5:30. I did some more work from home last night and was into the office early this morning to continue the process. For an IT job, things are abnormally stable with my current environment compared to what I was used to in previous jobs. However days like yesterday were a reminder of the feet to the fire environment that can always be lurking around any corner.
I got busy with automotive work on Saturday morning. The first task was rotating the tires on the Prius. The front tires were getting pretty worn so I figured I would do a simple front to back rotate to hopefully buy me a little time before the tires have to be replaced. For years I have been frustrated that the air impact wrench I owned was not powerful enough to remove lugs from a wheel. However I was happy to discover my new 20V DeWalt impact driver was up to the task. It broke free the lugs with very little issue, quickly spinning them off into my hand.
The tire rotation was simple and the tread on the back tires was significantly better than the front. I had hoped the swap would result in less road noise from the tires. Instead the opposite happened, it’s actually louder now than it was before. Damn it.
After running to Rural King with Cindy and Elsa I got busy on the big project of the day, replacing the grill in the Tacoma. I had bought the TRD Pro style grill over a month ago and have been patiently awaiting it’s arrival which happened late last week. I just was not thrilled with the factory TRD Sport grill which makes me almost think of the shiny “grill” mouth appliances some celebrities wear.
The remove and install process had it’s fair share of hiccups but nothing a little patience could not over come. I may have spent a total of 45 minutes doing the work which is always extended by filming.
I am very happy with the end result. The front end now looks less more in line with the black accents found elsewhere on the truck. Cindy said the new look definitely is more male in appearance.
Saturday night we stayed in and watched The Legend of Tarzan. I found it interesting that the story line takes place after Tarzan had been reintroduced to civilization. I enjoyed the movie more than I expected to, enough to give it a B+ grade.
I once again drug myself out of bed to go run early Sunday morning. I could tell the cold that has been clinging on for going on 10 days was still a factor. My pace was about 25 seconds per mile off my recent best. Oh well, at least I got the miles in.
Katie and Daniel came over to ride wheels again mid-morning. We took them to the Naples Greenway which is a great spot to ride. They both really enjoyed it.
The Eagles game was predictably frustrating with the team doing just enough to lose.Cindy’s brother, fiance and son were over to help share in my misery. The loss continued a pretty damning streak. The last 18 or 19 games that the Eagles have entered the fourth quarter of a game behind, they have lost, every, single time. Talk about a lack of resiliency and execution. Until the Eagles rediscover a way to make plays when it matters most their fans are going to continue to feel the pain. Say what you will about the McNabb years, at least he was able to pull out some games at the end. So far this squad just comes unglued when the pressure is on.
Yesterday I had a different sort of work day that started and ended with riding my Msuper. I headed to the greenway after work and had a very pleasant roughly seven mile ride before sunlight was totally expired. I wore my gym clothes and actually felt a bit chilly as I tooled around. I was cold enough that I actually used the heated seat feature of the Tacoma for the first time ever on the way home.
This weekend I have some automotive work on my plate. I need to rotate the tires on the Prius to try to stretch a few more thousand miles out of them before they get replaced. I bought them shortly after we got the car. It seems nearly impossible that we already have put over 50,000 miles on them.
The other task is replacing the overly chrome grill on my Tacoma with the darker and cooler version found on the Tacoma TRD Pro. I have watched a few install videos for the grill, it looks like it takes some time but is not high on the difficulty scale. I actually ordered the grill over a month ago. It took this long to get it due to high demand. Evidently this is a popular swap out among Tacoma owners.
I am going to willingly subject myself to what is surely going to be a madhouse scene at Costco after work today. In addition to some grocery items I am hoping to score the few remaining Xmas gifts I need to cross off my list. I just remember to take deep breaths and remind myself it will all be ok.
I was sort of freaked out most of the afternoon yesterday from the news that I guy I knew from the gym for quite a few years dropped after doing a heavy set earlier in the week and died the following day. He had a brain aneurysm which surely could have been related to the strenuous activity he was doing at the time. He was 49. Nothing like having mortality thrust in front of your face to ruin your day. I can’t help but feel a little weird each time I am in the area of the gym where it all went down.
Yesterday I got an email from my credit union about how they contracted with a third party service to provide low cost credit/id monitoring services. Based on my recent problems first with my CC number being stolen and then someone attempting to open up an Amazon store card under my name, I decided $4 a month was well worth it.
The service will monitor not only your credit cards but also your SS number, email address, phone numbers, drivers license and more to see if they come up in places they shouldn’t. It didn’t take long for my email address to come up as being on the lists of several hacks including MySpace, Adobe, and a few others. Basically whatever password I used on these sites was now in the wild. When I checked my password vault I use, Lastpass.com, one of those passwords was still in use in some other sites so not only do I need to change those passwords but discontinue use of that particular password in the future. The service also found hits on my home and cell phone number and even gave me a report of all sexual predators in my area. It seems like a nice blanket of protection for a small amount of money. Yet another benefit of belonging to our credit union.
This morning I saw an email come in on one of my gmail accounts asking me to confirm my enrollment in “yespay”, which seems to be some Paypal like service. Of course I didn’t confirm it but it indicates some asshole is using that email address for bullshit activity. I “think” I am fine since I have Gmail set to let me know if someone logs on from an odd location.
I had a dermatologist appointment this morning, a semi-annual chore for me because of my basal cell skin cancer history. My check up went fine. I actually had like a half hour to kill when I got there. I spent it riding my Msuper around, a good way to start my day.
It’s going to be a long day. I awoke for unknown reasons about 2:30 AM. I unsuccessfully tried to will myself back to sleep for about an hour until I gave up and got out of bed. I plopped on the computer and spent two and a half hours in WoW, having a fun time tooling around my alternate virtual universe with a bunch of other nocturnal gamers.
Sadie should be going back to Ali’s sometime today which is going to be sad for Elsa. She really loves having Sadie around and I think Sadie feels the same way. It certainly has made Sadie’s visits much more entertaining.
While I was at the gym yesterday while I was on a treadmill I saw a commercial for some bank that was promoting a FANTASTIC deal for US veterans! They will allow you to refinance the full value of your existing home PLUS whatever balance you owe on it! The spot declares how awesome this could be, allowing you to pay off your credit cards, get a nice wad of cash while paying less per month! Of course they neglect to mention that any people that take advantage of this “deal” will be absolutely buried in their house in negative equity for the rest of their lives. What a nice way to thank our veterans!
Yesterday my buddy Joe made a suggestion after reading about the attempt for someone to open a credit card under my name. The actions I took put a flag on my account with the credit bureaus that SHOULD make banks take extra steps if anyone else would try to open credit in my name, however it is not guaranteed. In addition, this flag only exists for 3 months. Joe said he had a similar problem and instead placed a “freeze” on his account with the three credit bureaus.
A freeze is like putting a padlock on your credit. Nobody is allowed to extend credit in your name, period. The only way anything can happen is if I temporarily unfreeze it if I was applying for a loan or credit card. After that it goes back to being frozen. To be honest, with all of the ID theft in the world I am not sure why this is not the default status for all credit, frozen.
Depending on the state you live in, placing a freeze can be absolutely free. In some states, like Florida, it costs $10 per agency to enact the freeze. I am not sure why that varies state to state. So anyway, if you want to place a nice, high, Trump style wall around your personal credit I would recommend doing the same. I will include the links to freeze with each agency below.
So I watched Doug Pederson’s press conference following the Eagles dreadful loss to the Bengals. I have mentioned before that I really like the way Doug handles the press, even in obviously bad situations like this weekend. He does not stone wall reporters, he will try to answer honestly, even if that answer reflects somewhat negatively on himself or a player. He doesn’t try to be a big fluffy pillow like Andy Reid did who took blame for every aspect of the game, even if the Gatorade was mixed poorly. He isn’t the cocky, arrogant bastard that Chip Kelly was, accepting no blame as the house around him was burning to the ground, primarily because of his personnel decisions.
Doug is just a straight shooter. Despite what I think about the way the team has gone downhill recently and his role in all of that, I respect a guy that is not afraid to talk about the good and the bad, even if it is self deprecating. I think he is a good man and I hope somehow that translates into future success with the team. I just don’t think it is going to happen this year.
Ali’s trip got extended another day due to a flight delay meaning we get to keep Sadie an extra day. Elsa certainly won’t complain, she LOVES having Sadie around. I love watching them interact and play. Last night I was sitting on the love seat with Sadie next to me. Elsa decided she wanted to join the party. She jumped up and promptly laid on top of Sadie. It was very, very funny.
I have been burning up the online shopping highway recently, trying to get ALL of my shopping done in a very compressed period of time. At this point I should only have a couple people to buy for. I like it.
So my weekend got off to a very frustrating start on Friday. In the mail was a letter from Synchrony Bank regarding the Amazon store credit card I applied for. Uh, I didn’t apply for such a card. I have not applied for a new credit card in years. So considering I had someone go on a small spending spree with my Visa card a month or so ago I was on full suspicious mode.
My initial thoughts were maybe the letter itself is a hoax and an elaborate phishing scheme. The letter instructs you to call a number to complete the card application. Perhaps this was just to get people to hand over key information over the phone? I hopped on the internet and checked the phone number and verified it was indeed owned by Synchrony so I decided to give it a call.
I explained to the guy on the phone I got this letter for a credit card I did not apply for. He said he was sorry to let me know that whomever did apply for the card had some key information like my date of birth and social security number. He said that the application did trip some red flags which is why a letter was sent to my address as a secondary form of verification. Of course I found it extremely disconcerting that my SS number is out in the wild. The bank rep was very helpful, letting me know what to do next, call Trans Union and report the incident. What happens is when you report such an incident to a credit bureau they will report the fraud to the other agencies. A 90 day flag is then placed on your account that indicates no credit should be extended in your name without additional verification. Well that’s cool but what happens after 90 days? All the criminal has to be is patient and try again. The guy said if you file a police report you can get that flag placed on your account for 7 years. Yea it’s a pain in the ass to jump through that hoop but better than getting your id hijacked.
I thanked the bank rep and called Trans Union who apparently has outsourced their call center to India, awesome. I struggled through the conversation with the phone rep but at the end of it was assured the flag was now active on my account. For the foreseeable future I need to have my ears up and eyes wide open for ANYTHING suspicious in my financial world.
On Saturday I decided to resurrect my infamous to do list, a small hand written piece of paper that resides on the kitchen counter, laying out things I want to accomplish for the day. I rarely use this method anymore although it used to be a weekly ritual. It’s an effective way to get things done. Saturday’s list had six or seven items on it. Crossing them all off consumed the majority of the daylight hours, I finished up mid-afternoon.
Late afternoon I rewarded myself for my labor with an electric unicycle ride to the school. I decided to ride my Ninebot One which I have hardly touched since I got the bigger and faster Gotway Msuper. I just felt like mixing it up. The Ninebot which I probably put over 250 miles on felt a bit foreign at first, feeling small and nimble. Cindy drove over to the school with Sadie and Elsa to walk around for a bit while I was there. I hitched a ride back to the house with her when I was done. During the ride the total mileage on the 9B1 crossed the 300 mile mark. The last 30-40 or so miles have actually been ridden by Daniel, not me.
Saturday night we stayed home and watched Mechanic, Resurrection, a Jason Statham movie. Jason seems to play an almost identical role in every film he does which isn’t a bad thing. His movies usually have good action and excitement despite being very predictable. Unfortunately I fell asleep and missed the entire ending although Cindy filled in the blanks for me. I feel safe giving it a standard B rating.
So my months long streak of getting out for a run on the weekends ended on Sunday. My cold has continued to slowly ramp up with more runny nose and coughing fits. Although it hasn’t decimated my energy level based on the work I did on Saturday I definitely was not feeling great. I took Nyquil cold medicine Saturday night which knocked me out, I didn’t roll out of bed until 7:45, awaking in the Nyquil haze that feels odd. Oh well, I will start it back up next weekend and I actually hope to run at the gym during the week.
Katie and her boyfriend came over mid-morning for yet another EUC ride. We rode around the Heritage Bay development mostly. Both Katie and Daniel have become real EUC enthusiasts. Katie logged at least 5 miles on the slow training wheel without any major incidents which is very impressive.
I was home alone during the afternoon as Cindy went to her nephews birthday party. I didn’t go because of feeling lousy and my desire to catch the Eagles game. In retrospect the game was certainly not worth any sacrifice. The Eagles played like shit, again. It was the exact opposite of the first three games of the season where it appeared the team was hitting on all cylinders with solid play on both sides of the ball with very few mistakes. The team has now transformed into basically a bunch of bumbling idiots, unable to get out of their own way.
Carson Wentz had his worst game of the season, throwing three interceptions and could have literally had double that if the Bengal defenders held onto the ball. Surely the fault is not entirely his as his surrounding cast has gone into the shitter. But Carson has not performed well, making bad decisions and bad throws on a pretty routine basis. I still think he is the QB of the future but the future is considerably less bright than 6 weeks ago.
Doug Pederson who like the rest of team, surprised me early in the season, has now been performing more on par with my pre-season expectations. He just seems to have no answers to halt the steady downturn in performance by his players. Yesterday was a must win game if the team wanted to stay in the playoff hunt. Their response to that challenge was to come out and absolutely suck in every aspect of the game. The rest of the season will be interesting to see if the plummet continues or if the team decides to actually give a damn.
The game was so bad that I spent some of the second half performing a modification to my Tacoma. A YouTube viewer of my channel informed me of a mod many owners have been doing to their AC drain outlet to prevent possible future problems. In what seems a dumb design choice by Toyota, the drain tube for AC condensation is right above the frame. Some owners have reported this constant flow of water has started to cause some surface rust on their frame welds. The mod involves attaching a longer hose to the outlet so the water drips out below the frame instead of above it.
I purchased some heater hose, hose clamps and zip ties to complete the work. I wound up spending more time doing the work than I expected, trying to get the additional hose routed and oriented in such a way to not impede drainage of the line. Of course I documented the process on video, take a look below if you feel like.
Sadie and Elsa have had so much fun playing over the weekend. It’s great that they get along. Elsa in general has seemed less skittish and fearful while Sadie is there. I am not sure why that is but hopefully it carries over after Sadie goes home tomorrow.
I have been thinking for awhile about splitting my YouTube channel up a bit, specifically spinning off all of the electric unicycle videos into their own all EUC all the time home. Yesterday I started that process creating a YouTube “brand page” named EUC Army, a title I came up with for a video a few weeks ago. I am in the process of getting the 50 + EUC videos uploaded, labeled and tagged to the channel as I type.
Although I plan to have nothing but EUC themed videos on the channel, that doesn’t mean they also will not be on my main channel that has 1.3 million views and counting. Having a video on multiple channels is one way to help build YT revenue streams faster which is my ultimate goal. If you would like to help me get a head start on building the channel go here and take two seconds to subscribe!
So last night I got more sleep but still not as much as I would prefer. Sadie started making noise between 4-5 AM. Cindy was nice enough to get up and let her out but I couldn’t fall back asleep. The congestion in my head just made it impossible.
Sadie has had a weight problem for a long time, easily weighing 20 pounds more than what would be a healthy weight. I have noticed that recently she appears to be on a pretty noticeable upward climb in her proportions. Of course the same reason human beings gain weight apply to her as well, too many calories and not enough exercise. Unfortunately ever since Sadie became a part time resident of the house she doesn’t have the same opportunities to exercise as she did before.
Of course the weight is unhealthy for her. With the addition of the neighbors puppy Shadow and Elsa the weight results in injury as Sadie often comes up limping when she tries to sprint around wildly with all of that extra weight on her frame. We are going to try to do whatever we can while we have her to help her drop a few pounds. We discovered these freeze dried liver treats that dogs love but are very low calorie. Inserting those into the equation instead of processed, traditional dog treats which are basically McDonalds for dogs, is a good step forward.
This weekend I have mostly small things to attend to around the house. It would be nice if I got a head start on some Xmas shopping, I always feel better getting that done sooner rather than later. Hopefully my illness does not progress further during the next two days.
Last night we finally got around to hanging decorations on our new Christmas tree which had been set up since Friday. The tree looks sharp for sure. We still have to get mom’s old tree set up in the great room which should complete the decorating for 2016.
Last night I had a miserable night of sleep. I fell asleep early, tired from whatever form of illness I am dealing with. I wound up waking up suddenly about 11pm having to take a leak. Afterward I was absolutely unable to fall back asleep, I rolled around for close to two hours before I said fck it and got out of bed. I plopped myself in front of the computer and fired up WoW. The last time I was playing WoW at 1:30 in the morning was probably close to a decade ago.
That time of night is actually prime playing time for a lot of WoW players, there were more people online than I am used to from my normal 8-10 gaming hours. Despite my eyes feeling like they were burning into my skull, I had some fun playing in the dead of night. I don’t think it is sort of habit I want to be forming if I wish to maintain my sanity but I’ll try to treat the side effects of the sleepless night with extra caffeine today.
I strained something in my right elbow yesterday at the gym doing rep 7 of a planned 8 rep set. There was a strong younger guy on the bench next to me so instead of stopping as soon as the pain hit I grimaced through rep 8 which was stupid, and surely put the icing on the cake. Doing any sort of pushing movement with the arm is not going to be a pleasant experience until it heals up.
Bringing Elsa into the house has been a lot of fun but we are still trying to figure out some of her weird quirks. She still gets very nervous at times, getting scared of things that aren’t obvious. When it gets dark out she seems especially scared.
