Last night my dad and I went to Pelican Larry’s to grab dinner. It seemed like there were a lot of people there for a Wednesday night but luckily since they have a ton of seating we had no problem. We sat at the bar and ate there. Our bartender was a young girl that seemed a bit distracted but bartending while taking food orders I guess lends itself to that. The couple beers and food I ordered went down easy.
Last night Dad and I watched a movie he recommended I rent from Netflix, The Lobster. It was definitely one of the strangest movies I ever saw. I told dad it seemed like it was one long Monty Python skit. My eyes closed a few times, making an already confusing experience, more so. I think this movie would be fantastic to watch if you were really drunk or high. Unfortunately I was neither so I can only give it a C.
Today was dad’s last full one in Naples. My step mom and Cindy were still down in Key West. The reports we got from last night were they were having a lot of fun so far. During the early morning I cleaned the coop and started to do more trouble shooting on the coop dvr. I had received a replacement for the dead unit, another likely casualty of the lightning strike last week. However when I hooked up the new unit, 3 of the 8 cameras were not working. Through some troubleshooting I determined it wasn’t the new dvr or the cables, the actual cameras had stopped working. Of course I assume this is more shrapnel from the power hit. Later in the day I was able to replace 2 of the 3 dead cameras with lower resolution models I had laying around. Yea the feed from them won’t be HD quality but they don’t really need to be.
I told dad we should go walk the dogs at North Collier Park, a place he had never visited. Dad was very impressed with how nice the place was. We had fun watching the collection of old retired RC sail boaters maneuver their ships around the lake as we started the walk. Most of the walk was on the elevated, mostly shaded boardwalk which was perfect for the dogs. We had a great couple miles.
After the park we headed to Pet Supermarket to grab some food and other stuff for the dogs. Maggie and Clara had fun exploring the store and observing the small animals they had for sale. We then made one final stop at Naples Cyclery. Dad was interested in looking at some hybrid bikes as he has some ideas about doing more biking back home which would be good. Dad isn’t all that mobile at this point so anything that gets him moving more is a good thing.
Later in the afternoon I headed out for a EUC ride. The nearly 7 mile ride was good but tough because of strong wind. It included a funny and unexpected political message when I rode past an intersection that somebody spray painted in large letters FCK TRUMP. It seemed like an odd place to express those feelings but it will certainly get the point across to any oncoming motorists.
Tonight we are going out to a farewell dinner. Cindy and Teresa pulled in less than an hour ago after a very fun two days in the Keys. It has been a relaxing visit. It’s a shame that geography dictates we don’t get together more often but when we do it always leaves positive memories.
Last night we again chilled at the house. I rented The Infiltrator starring Bryan Cranston. I am now of the belief that any movie he has a major role in will be a good film. Infiltrator proved my theory correct, unlike Logan’s Run, it was a quality flick from start to end. I think my dad actually liked it, a rare thing. I’d give it an A-.
Cindy and my step mom were up early and out the door around 7 for their quick two day visit to Key West. Cindy was toying with the idea of taking the Segways to cover a lot more ground with but decided against it. I got a text around lunch that they had arrived safely. I am sure they are having a lot of fun exploring.
I was out the door relatively early as well, meeting up with my timer buddy John to drop off my timing hardware that he will be using for a few events. I was happy to let him borrow it as it gives me a preview of the extra space in the house I will reclaim once all of the timing related stuff has been sold. On the way home I stopped at the county recycling center to drop off my AV equipment that was fried from the surge.
Dad and I decided it would be fun to take Maggie and Clara to the dog beach. On the way there we stopped at Tijuana Flats for lunch, enjoying it at their small outside seating area. I had not been to the dog beach in a couple years, I was surprised by how much the shoreline had changed since my last visit. The beach during low tide used to be relatively wide. It has almost become entirely consumed by mangrove growth. To get to the main beach area you have to walk through a narrow path in the middle of a mangrove clump. It’s sort of nuts.
The dogs wasted little time before heading into the water. Clara, who normally is not a fan of water had no problems getting wet, she was running around having a great time. Dad found a stick for Maggie that she retrieved time and time again as dad threw it into progressively deeper water, loving every second of it. There were a lot of people and dogs there, I was surprised that there were no real fights between the dogs. Everyone just got along.
Eventually we had to chill out with the stick throwing, Maggie would literally go until she dropped if you let her. We sat on the shore and chilled out for a little while and tried to get the dogs to drink some water which we were only mildly successful at. We packed up after maybe a little more than an hour at the beach, it was definitely long enough. The funniest moment of the trip came after we had just finished hosing down Maggie. Dad wasn’t paying close attention to her. In the span of a few seconds she managed to roll around in the sand, turning herself into a corn dog. We gave her a second hosing, making sure to keep her upright the second time around. I was quite glad we took dad’s Subaru instead of my truck as the inside of it resembles a wet sand box right about now.
Tonight we plan to go to a nearby sports bar for dinner and to chill. I feel somewhat bad that there has been no extensive touring of southwest Florida during the visit but it seems like dad really is content getting more relaxing time over on the go sight seeing. He has been here enough that he has seen most of the typical tourist destinations in our immediate area. It’s all good with me as I can use some down time as well.
Yesterday morning while Cindy went to work we decided to load up the dogs and head down to the Naples greenway for a walk. The greenway was completed since my dad and step mom last visited so I thought they would like to see it. I brought my Ninebot One along to get some miles in while we were there.
Yesterday just happened to be one of the most pleasant mornings in the last 6 months with early morning temps just over the magical 60’s. By the time we got to the greenway it had warmed up but was still nice with lower humidity levels.
We probably logged over three miles in total, with me logging more since I was looping back and forth on the wheel. My step mom got some great pictures as we went as deep as the bridge that crosses the Gordon River. The black dogs were getting quite warm as the walk went longer. We brought along a large amount of water which we gave them regularly along the way along with breaks in the shade.
During the afternoon we hung around the house for the most part. I was tooling around the house getting a few things done. I discovered that the Xbox 360 that was hooked to my surge damaged tv apparently was the only thing to escape damage. I hooked it up to a monitor and found it to be fully functional.
Cindy had a gym class she was teaching in the evening. I decided to go with her to get some more Ninebot One riding in, my second ride of the day. Between the two rides I easily blew past the 200 mile mark on the bot, a big number.
Last night my step mom with some assist from my dad prepared a great dinner with vegetable pot pie, something I never had before. For desert she made a pumpkin cake that was really good as well. Cindy was very appreciative of having a home cooked meal made by someone else other than herself.
Last night we somehow wound up watching one of the strangest and possibly worst movies I have ever seen, Logan’s Run. Both my step mom and Cindy said they saw this movie back in the 70’s when it came out. They seemed to remember it being interesting. I wouldn’t dispute that it was interesting but it was far more ridiculous than interesting. The special effects were amazingly poor, even by 1976 standards from what I could tell. The plot made absolutely no sense to me and the acting was sub par, hindered further by the incredibly simplistic and cheesy dialogue.
Really the only positive thing I can say about the movie was it contained surprising and random nudity. Despite it’s stupidity, I found myself compelled to watch it to the very end just to see how it all worked out. Of course the ending was as dumb as everything else. If watching the movie accomplished anything, it is that I now can warn the world to not waste two hours of your life watching Logan’s Run, ever. It gets a rare yet well deserved F grade from me.
This morning we headed out the door relatively early to take Sadie back to Ali who had not left for work yet. My dad and step mom were happy to see Ali while they were here. Of course we brought their dogs with too so we had a total of four dogs running around Ali’s place which was funny to watch. They all played and got along right from the start. We hung out for a little while the dogs played and everyone caught up on the latest and greatest. As I sat there I felt good that despite some of the ups and downs Ali and I have gone through since we split, we still are able to have these sort of get togethers without it being that weird. It was a nice visit.
We went straight from there to Ave Maria, one of dad’s favorite places in our area which is a bit ironic since the Catholic fundamentals the town is based upon is the farthest thing from something dad would subscribe to. However he likes the small town, quiet atmosphere it provides which comes without religious price tags. He and my step mom spent most of the time there chilling at the coffee shop. I again had the wheel with to do some uni-wheel touring of the grounds. Once again it was a relaxing way to spend an hour or two.
Tomorrow morning Cindy and my step mom are pulling out for a quick two day visit to Key West, a place Teresa has never been to before. I am sure it will be a lot of fun for them. Dad, myself and the two dogs will find stuff to keep us busy or entertained for the next 48 hours although at this point we haven’t determined what those things will be.
I left work a little early to meet my dad and step mom since they were supposed to arrive mid to late afternoon. I actually got home shortly before they arrived, followed shortly after that by Cindy. I was first greeted my by their dogs, Maggie and Clara who both seemed to remember me. Once everyone was there I needed to come up with a game plan to go get the Prius, which had it’s wheel bearing replaced during the day. Once I got the Prius I wanted to go pick up Sadie.
Katie was also at the house and was heading out. I asked her if she could give me a ride to where she turns on Golden Gate Blvd, I could ride my EUC the remaining 5 or 6 miles. So that was the plan, I threw my wheel in her trunk and did my first ever riding on GG Blvd, all on the sidewalk. When I got down to Collier Blvd I was actually in the bike lane for around a mile which was a bit hairy with rush hour traffic but I survived. I arrived in one piece at Tuffy, threw the wheel in the trunk and went to pick up Sadie. I told her I had a very big surprise for her while we were driving.
When we got back it was funny seeing all three dogs reacclimate which didn’t take very long at all. They were happily running around the house. We spent the majority of the evening just hanging out. Dad, who did a poor job of bringing any Florida appropriate clothing (brought long pants only), made many, many comments about how hot and humid it was. Cindy made a great vegetable lasagna that we all enjoyed.
On Saturday morning I was outside early attending to a few things. Dad had asked me about any good oil change places nearby, their Outback was due for one. I told him I’ll just change it. We went to the nearby Autozone where I dumped my two containers of old oil and we bought the stuff for dad’s car. When we got back I wasted little time getting the Subaru up on ramps.
Of course I used the oil change as an opportunity to add to my already pretty extensive automotive section on my YouTube channel. Changing the oil on the Outback was not very difficult although turning the oil filter in/out was a bit challenging with the hot exhaust pipe surrounding it. I was done in less than 20 minutes. It was dad’s first ever appearance on YouTube.
Late morning we all piled into the Subaru to head to Rural King. Getting four people and three dogs in there was a bit of a challenge with all laps taken except mine as I was driving. The dogs had a lot of fun surveying the store. We needed a few supplies and dad wanted to pick up some shorts, realizing that jeans just were not going to be a comfortable way to spend the next week. On the way home from RK we had a nice lunch at Panera which allows dogs in their outdoor seating areas.
Later in the afternoon I got the itch to go get the grass mowed, the precipitation from Matthew had pretty much dried up and the grass was looking shaggy. As I was finishing up mowing the first of my four quadrants the tractor all of a sudden got VERY noisy. It was bad enough that I immediately stopped and got off to see what was going on. It was something related to the transmission drive. When I stepped on the brake the noise stopped, when I released it it sounded like something was ready to fly apart. I got back on and mowed a little bit more. Despite the noise, the tractor was cutting and moving ok so I said f it and finished up the mowing session, hoping it held together until I finished. It did.
I did some research afterward and found that defective idler pulleys were a common cause of this problem which makes sense. I ordered replacements online. I thought it was odd these pulleys were made of plastic. They hopefully will show up this week so I can get the tractor back in action before it is called upon for it’s next mowing duties.
Saturday night we decided to go see The Magnificent Seven at Silverspot. It was a movie that I would normally just rent but it was the consensus to be the best available option out right now. I am certainly not typically a western movie kind of guy. The theater was pretty full but with assigned seating it doesnt really matter. I thought the movie was entertaining and had a strong cast. I did not realize it was based on a prior movie that had Yule Brenner until after Cindy, my dad and Teresa told me afterward. Anyway, I thought it was a B+ flick.
On Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed with the alarm to get out and run. I was solo this time. I once again logged four miles in the humid early morning air. When I got back I wanted to remain productive so I pulled out the Tacoma and gave it a well needed bath. I was sort of stuck at home all morning because DirecTv was supposed to be sending out a tech to give me the new B band filter I needed. Their arrival window was 8-12. Of course the guy didn’t show up until the last 25 minutes of the window.
So it didn’t take me long to realize this guy was odd. He was eastern European with a heavy accent that was difficult to navigate. Before he walked in the door he had located my dish and was already telling me how the tree that is in front of it is a problem. I told him that actually all I need from him is a new b band filter. I tried to explainin to him the sequence of events leading up to now. He seemed to either not understand me or not care to listen. He was focused on the tree.
I became somewhat irritated and forceful, telling him the tree is not the problem as the old receiver was working just fine. I said all I needed was a new filter. He eventually relented and got a filter and hooked it up which allowed me to see the channels I could not see before. The only problem was when he went to the Sunday Ticket channels it said I was not authorized for them. The tech said I must not have the Sunday Ticket. I was really annoyed with this guy already. His lack of understanding, poor communication skills and an odor that was a mix of BO and cigarettes was just really aggravating me. I tried to calmly explain to him that I do have the Sunday Ticket and the new receiver just needs to be authorized for it.
So he pulls out his cell phone and calls in to Directv. Even though he tried to identify himself as a technician, the woman on the phone was acting like he was a customer because she couldn’t understand him either. Eventually he just handed me his cell phone I and worked with the woman to get my Sunday Ticket channels activated. I figured I was in the clear. I found the tech, who was out sitting in his vehicle. I told him it’s working now.
So instead of leaving he comes in and starts futzing with the remote control. He was trying to get it programmed to also control the tv which I didn’t need but fine, if he wants to do it… But then he was trying to get it to work with my surround sound and couldn’t get it to work. I told him more than once that I didn’t need that functionality and either didn’t hear me, didn’t understand me, or didn’t care. It was then that I got the definite feeling that this guy was just trying to intentionally waste time. I was not sure what the reason would be why he wouldn’t just pack up and head to his next call.
He then went out on the lanai and was talking on his phone to somebody for another 10 minutes or more. When he came back in he said he wanted to change the LNBs on my satellite dish (the receivers). I asked why since it was working. He just mumbled something about it should be done. I asked him how long it would take since the Eagles game was coming on in 20 minutes. He said 10 minutes so I said fine, go ahead.
He completes the unnecessary work and then comes back in to run another test on the receiver which shows it was getting no signal from the satellites at 103 degrees. He said unless he can verify signal on this satellite he cant close the call. I told him as long as I get the Sunday Ticket I don’t care. He said he then had no choice but to cancel the call which seemed odd. I said whatever and the guy finally left. It was a bizarre, unpleasant, and annoying experience. It annoyed me enough that I spent another 20 minutes on the phone later in the day waiting to get a hold of someone at Directv to tell them how bad the guy sucked.
So ironically I did not even need the Sunday Ticket to watch the Eagles/Lions game. It was being locally broadcast. The outcome of the game was disappointing with Ryan Matthews literally giving the game away with a crucial late game fumble. The officiating seemed to have a very heavy Detroit bias with multiple situations where questionable flags wiped out big plays for the Eagles. But whatever, the Eagles weren’t going to go undefeated and overall, I saw more positive than negative in the game so it isn’t worth ranting about. I still feel much better about the 2016 Eagles than I ever expected to.
Cindy and I rode our PTVs a little bit last night, running into a couple that Cindy knows from the gym which was ironic. When we got home we enjoyed some tofu sausage dogs with baked beans and sauerkraut, good stuff.
Of course we watched the debate and laughed and gasped our way through it. Seeing Donald come out in full deflection mode was funny as hell, using the term “locker room talk” repeatedly to explain his actions where he described some sex acts/situations that were very, um, unpresidential. As entertaining as the debate was, there is part of me that feels very sad that this is what American politics has now become where you literally have a three ring circus going on. It made me ill when Trump would repeatedly bring up Bernie Sanders name as if Sanders supporters would somehow think Trump was their best option. Anyone that knows Bernie knows Donald Trump is the last person he would want sitting in the White House.
Gladly there is only one debate to go. I can’t wait till this political nightmare is behind us so Americans can go back to doing what they do best, not knowing, not understanding, and not caring.
So I was pleasantly surprised that my replacement DirecTv receiver was at my door already yesterday. On the phone I was told it would be 2-5 business days, it got there in one. Gotta love under promising and over delivering. So last night I hooked up the new receiver which is a much newer model than what I had. I got everything connected and started going through the set up screens. When it tried to connect to the satellite service it would repeatedly fail. I backed up and ran the signal strength test. It showed straight zeroes across the board , wtf….
So after screwing around some more I finally decided to call DirecTV support. After verifying that my dish and switch type selections were correct he had me try to connect repeatedly and again had no more success than I did. He said maybe my dish was out of alignment but I assured it had not been touched. I did not tell him that I had a likely lightning strike however. The rep said the only thing he could do was schedule a tech to come out to check stuff out. Ok, fine. I scheduled a visit for Sunday, yes they work 7 days a week.
So after I hung up I still was not satisfied with the troubleshooting. Just for the hell of it, I decided to remove the “B-band convertor” that is inline between the satellite coax feed and the receiver. I reconnected the line to the receiver and tried to connect again. It worked. Evidently the convertor which is used to gain access to a number of HD channels was also damaged from the electrical surge.
So I called DirecTv back, hoping I could skip a service call and just have the convertor sent to me. We went through some more set up screens and verified that even though I was now talking to DirecTV satellites, I did not have access to all of the stuff I should because of the lack of this little grey box. The rep said the tech will have a replacement convertor if needed. Well it was obviously needed. I wound up staying out there until 10 getting the problem sorted out.
It looks like my new 70 inch tv is going to be the last thing to get replaced or fixed. I got a call from the service that does the repair. They said they had to order a main board for the TV and that was back ordered. They probably won’t even have the part for a week, meaning we will be limping along with a TV less than half the size of what is normally sitting there, oh well.
So last night there was some gusty winds and brief periods of rain but overall the effect of Matthew in our area was very minimal. We slept through the night without hearing any severe weather. I was glad to see when I woke up that the eye of the storm has stayed comfortably off shore to this point, keeping the worst case scenario off the table. From what I can tell the biggest problem as of now is large scale power loss but even that is much less severe than it could have been. Florida is not out of the woods yet as it will be scraping along the northeast coast during the day. If you look at the long term forecast there is a chance the damn thing could go out to sea, loop around and smack us again. Let’s hope that scenario doesn’t play out.
Dad, Teresa, Maggie and Clara should be arriving this afternoon for a weeklong visit. Of course we need to be very cautious with a yard full of chickens. Until we get a feel for any potential aggression level from their dogs towards the chickens they will be kept separated. If the chickens are free ranging in the yard the dogs will not be and if we have the dogs off leash the chickens will be inside the coop/run. Of course we hope everyone just gets along. I plan to have Sadie out for the weekend as well to add to the fun.
This will be the first time they will have visited my place without me having a large conversion available to shuttle both humans and dogs around the area. We will likely just have to do the dual car thing when animals are involved with wherever we wind up going. My step mom and Cindy are planning to go to Key West for a couple days next week which will be fun for them. Outside of that we have not made firm plans we will just go with the flow as we normally do.
Oh I forgot, we dropped off the Prius to get the passenger wheel bearing/hub replaced since the part I ordered on Amazon showed up yesterday. The repair took on a more urgent nature since Cindy and Teresa plan to take the Prius to Key West to maximize mpg.
On my way home I stopped at Sam’s Club to pick up a new Blu-ray player along with a few other things. I hadn’t really given much thought about the oncoming hurricane when I planned the stop. When I pulled into the parking lot, I did. Despite the impact of Matthew in our area likely not being much worse than some of the torrential storms we get during the summer, the lines at the gas pump were long. The parking lot was also much fuller than you would expect for a Wednesday night. When I stepped inside almost every shopping cart had at least one case of water in it. I also noticed that most of the shelf space for generators was empty, only a couple remained.
I guess I shouldn’t feel annoyed about these people, being prepared is a good thing in the big picture. For all of my adult life I have found the mode people click into when these sort of events are forecast, whether they are snowstorms up north or tropical storms down here to be much the same, panic. I don’t find panic to be a useful state of mind and people that are prone to easily panic get under my skin. So anyway I got my stuff, checked myself out and left the store in an orderly manner.
When I got home I realized I have yet another piece of electronics that appears to be dead, the security dvr in the coop. I’m not sure if the problem is storm related or just because of the harsh environmental conditions it is subjected to inside the coop which is very warm and dusty. I need to pull it out of there to determine exactly what is wrong with it. The good news is it should still be under warranty.
Shortly before 7 I decided to jump on the wheel for a ride. The sun had already begun to set so it wasn’t a great time to venture out but I just felt like it. I went out Immokalee Road and then turned right onto 45th street on the other side of the road which I never had ventured down before. The street was sparsely populated and I had a few incidents where I heard something of considerable size shuffling in the woods by the road which made me a little nervous. When I got to the end of the street I turned around and saw there were some very stormy clouds rolling in. On my way back I dealt with some rain and gusty wind that tested my balance. By the time I got back Cindy had gotten back from teaching her gym class. She figured I was on my wheel but didn’t know where I was, something she is never a fan of.
Of course the news down here is nothing but Hurricane Matthew that now seems assured to have a major impact on Florida’s east coast. It is predicted to hug the coastline at category four strength which is scary stuff. When Wilma hit our area in 2005 it was a category three and that felt like end of days for a period of time. By this time tomorrow the center of the storm will be north of us on the other side of the state. It’s going to be touch and go the next 24 hours, I hope all of my east coast Florida friends batten down the hatches as needed. The sun will come out tomorrow, or Saturday.
So I left work early to meet the Comcast repair guy at home. Once again to their credit, by utilizing the Comcast account app I was able to get an arrival window that was within 15 minutes of being accurate. The Haitian repair tech didn’t seem to be in a great mood from the start. When I opened the attic crawl space he wasn’t happy it was so hot. When he saw the way the original installers handled the wiring he was really unhappy. He was complaining nearly non-stop about how lazy they were and how they don’t do things as they are supposed to.
Eventually he settled down. He determined that what I suspected was the case, the powered splitter in the attic was defective. In addition to replacing the splitter he also changed the wiring around to whatever the proper configuration is supposed to be. In total he was there for less than an hour. It was nice to have cable tv up and running although we could have survived with streaming content indefinitely.
So I did some more investigation of my AV equipment after the guy left. As I feared, EVERYTHING that was connected to the tv via HDMI was f’d up. That list includes the blu-ray player, the satellite receiver, the Xbox 360, an HDMI hub, the X1 DVR and the tv itself. I was able to get a free replacement DirecTV satellite receiver without even picking up the phone, able to complete the transaction via online chat session. The satellite box was actually unplugged from power at the time of the incident but got smoked anyway via the HDMI cable. The blu-ray will come out of my pocket. The Phillips unit that I had hooked up was sort of shitty anyway so it doesn’t break my heart to replace it. The 360 has not been used this year so I just ripped it all out with no plans to replace it. My days of console gaming are pretty far behind me at this point.
Cindy had to grab some groceries. She came up with a good idea where I would go with her out to the Ave Maria Publix where I could ride my Ninebot while she shopped. I had a good time putting more than four and a half miles on the wheel around the town/campus. I explored areas I had never seen before. As usual I got a large amount of head turns and confused looks from bystanders that never saw a person riding an electric unicycle before.
On the ride home from the grocery store Cindy commented on the unusual amount of road noise coming from what appeared to be the front passenger side of the car. I had noticed the noise for the last few days. I had actually taken a look at that tire to see if it was abnormally worn or if it had something stuck in it that could possibly make the noise. The tire looked fine. My next idea was the wheel bearing was going bad, something that would make sense considering the Prius is rapidly closing in on 200,000 miles.
When I got home I looked online and saw front wheel bearings going bad on a Prius are not an unusual thing. I also watched a video of a home mechanic outlining the replacement procedure. It is in my wheel house of capability except that the bearing/hub assembly needs to be pressed on/off in some cases which would require a garage anyway. I would feel better having an actual mechanic doing the work. I called the garage I have used for some other repairs. They said I could buy the part and they would do the work for about $200 which isn’t bad. I did a somewhat risky move, buying the part online this morning, gambling that my diagnosis is correct.
Cindy and I watched some of the VP debate last night. There was a lot of interrupting of each other, not only by the two candidates but also by the attractive female moderator who was trying very hard to keep the candidates in line and on topic. Despite her attempts, most of what I saw was the two men stepping all over each other. Of course I thought Tim Kaine came off better with Mike Pence repeatedly not directly answering most questions presented to him and trying to redirect away from any questions asking him to defend various Trump statements and actions. I doubt the VP debate ever makes up a voter’s mind on their ultimate decision but I guess it’s a necessary evil.
So the east coast of Florida is now moving into full fledged panic mode with the prospect of Hurricane Matthew swinging right by the coastline. You would think that staying just off the coast would be a good thing but that allows the eye of the storm to stay over it’s power source, warm water which is not a good thing. Our area is right outside the edge of the danger zone although we certainly will see considerable effects from the storm. Even a slight shift to the west could make the impact to Florida much, much worse. I am not the panicking type so I will be monitoring the storm but not obsessing over it. I do have some east cost friends that I of course hope come out of the storm with minimal impact.
Yesterday was a first for me as the office held it’s first in service day, closing all of our offices to have a day long employee meeting. The meeting was held at the same place we hold the tax certificate sale, the school administration building. Just for the heck of it I threw my Ninebot in the truck in the off chance I got a chance to ride it, surprisingly, I did. I rode during the morning break and at lunch I rode it a couple miles to the nearby Panera since the office had no meat free lunch options available to us. As you can imagine I got some confused looks as I walked in Panera carrying my orange wheel, leaning it on my booth.
So the meeting had a number of speakers, all of which would have been more interesting if they were allocated shorter periods of time. As it was planned, the sessions just seemed to drag on, way beyond the attention span of most of the employees in attendance, including me. There were a few things I cherry picked from the sessions that I found interesting.
One of the speakers taught a session on ethics. Part of the discussion was citing two interesting experiments that demonstrated just how much like lemmings human beings can become when skillfully manipulated, something political strategists are masters at. In the first experiment there were seven subjects. Six of them were planted, the seventh was the test subject. All seven people were shown two sets of flash cards with lines of varying length. Each line was labeled A, B, or C. A second flash card was then shown with a single line that matched one of the lines on the first flash card. The subjects then simply had to say what line was on the second flash card, A, B, or C. The difference in line length was substantial so there was no doubt in which line was on the second card.
The subjects were seated in such a way that the six planted subjects were always asked their answer first, the test subject was always last to answer. They did a total of 24 rounds of testing. For the first 12 rounds the six planted subjects gave the correct answer and of course the test subject did as well. However for the last 12 rounds the six planted subjects all gave an incorrect answer. The test was to see if the number 7 subject would go along with the group, even though they were obviously giving the wrong answer. Believe it or not, on average, nearly 40% of the test subjects went along with the group, giving the obvious incorrect answer for the last 12 rounds solely because the previous six planted subjects did.
He also showed some funny videos demonstrating the same behavior. In one of them, an unknowing person was joined in an elevator by three plants. The three plants faced the back of the elevator. The test subject in multiple cases would turn around and face backwards as well, even though it made no sense to do so.
In a recent video, it showed a waiting room full of people at a doctors office. There were about a dozen plants and one unknowing woman, sitting there, waiting. At random intervals a bell would sound which would trigger the dozen plants to stand up briefly and sit back down. The first two cycles the woman remained seated, looking around with confusion as to why this behavior was occurring. However the third time the bell rang she got up and sat down just like the rest of the room. To make things more interesting they slowly removed the dozen people in the room until it was just this woman. She continued to get up and sit down by the bell, even though she was now alone.
The second experiment was even more disturbing. In this situation there were three people involved, two plants and one test subject. There was a man in a lab coat that directed the test. The other plant was in the next room where he could be heard but not seen. The test subject, who was paid a small amount of money to be a participant in the experiment was put in front of a device with a number of switches. The subject was told that this test was to see how negative reinforcement affected memory performance.
The guy in the other room was given a series of word associations and was then asked to repeat back one of them. If the answer was incorrect, the test subject was instructed to flip one of the levers on the device in front of him which supposedly delivered a shock of increasing severity to the man in the other room. Each switch increased the shock level by 15 volts, all the way up to 450 volts. Of course the device was fake but the test subject did not know this.
So as the plant answered questions wrong the test subject was instructed to shock him. As the imaginary shock levels got higher the plant would react more and more strongly, eventually screaming in agony at the higher levels. If the test subject objected to administering the shocks the guy in the lab coat would tell them in varying levels of authority to continue, starting at the lowest level with “Please continue” and ending with “The experiment requires that you continue”. Of course the test subjects were not required to administer the shocks and could have left at any time, they already received their small amount of pay. After performing this test with 500 individuals an incredible 65% of them continued to shock the planted “victim”, despite his screams of pain, all the way up to the maximum of 450 volts. Oh by the way, the test subjects were also told that the person they were shocking had some degree of a heart condition ahead of time.
These two experiments give a disturbing look at just how easy it is to manipulate a person’s behavior and thought patterns. If you don’t think this sort of manipulation is being used on the American populace on a daily basis you may as well just stand up and sit down right now. I just heard the bell.
Last night I had a very aggravating evening. Apparently during an extremely bad afternoon storm with severe lightning some of my AV equipment got taken out, most notably my nearly brand new 70 inch 4K TV. The Xfinity X1 DVR appeared to be the source and was killed as well as it had no signs of life other than the sound of a fan inside. The TV had it’s red power LED on but would not turn on at all by any means. My initial theory is the surge came in via the coax cable, taking out the DVR and the TV via the HDMI cable. I was somewhat surprised that if this was the case, why my internet cable modem, tv, and X1 box in the bedroom would appear to be unscathed.
Well I had to take action quickly. I first contacted Comcast. After a lengthy on the phone verification that the box was dead, they said I could simply exchange the X1 box for a new one. When I looked at my watch I saw it was 6:25. When I looked online I saw the local Xfinity center was open till 7. I calculated if I hauled ass I could get there with 5-10 minutes to spare.
I had never been to this Xfinity location. The last time I went to a Comcast store it was a shitty, small, overcrowded space in a strip mall. When I parked in the lot last night I did a double take, unsure if I was at a Comcast place. It almost looked like an Apple store inside, complete with a friendly person signing you in at the front counter. There were only three customers in the store at the time so it only took a couple minutes till I was helped. I explained the situation, she said no problem and handed me a new DVR, complete with a voice controlled remote, something I was trying to score for quite awhile.
I couldn’t believe how pleasant of an experience the exchange was. I have never been shy of criticizing Comcast in the past for their generally shitty customer service and overpriced services. However I have to give credit where credit is due. That new facility is awesome and the exchange experience was great.
I had hope of getting home and at least having one of my two issues corrected. However when I plugged in the new DVR I still could not get the tv service back online, the box threw an error that indicated it still had some sort of line problem. I even connected the new DVR to the bedroom connection just to see if it made a difference, it didn’t. I had to call Xfinity back and had a decent interaction with the phone rep although I had to wait over 10 minutes to speak to them. I now have a tech scheduled to come out today to try to get my tv service up and running again. My diagnosis has now shifted. I suspect that the powered splitter in the attic was another casualty of the surge , the fact that the cable modem does not use this splitter reinforces my theory. I guess I will find out how good of a guess it was this afternoon.
As far as the tv goes, I placed an online warranty service request. I have no idea how that will all shake out or how long it will take. In the meantime I have the much smaller tv from the guest bedroom in there. It looks disgustingly underwhelming in the huge AV nook.
So even though the race I was timing was quite small with less than 100 runners, it still brought me near normal amounts of anxiety. On Friday I left early from work to drop off packet pick up items and then Cindy and I went back before 7 to grab stuff. While we were there we helped the race director, a friend of ours from the running club, do some additional prep for the race that included hanging up a number of inspirational religious banners along the course. The race was being held at a Roman Catholic church.
This was the first and last time the new Tacoma was pressed into duty as a race transport vehicle. It’s larger dimensions made getting all of the gear inside less challenging than it had been in the past. Although the 4AM alarm was unwelcome, I shot out of bed almost immediately, ready to get my last timing gig in the rear view mirror.
The church was relatively close to us which was convenient. As soon as we arrived on site we worked on getting the finish line arch up and running. I felt badly that the erection of the arch knocked down an amazing spider web that was built overnight. One of it’s attachment lines to a far away tree literally was over 30 feet long.
The race was scheduled to start early at 7:05 AM. Even so, by 6AM all of our stuff was set up and ready to roll. Once again I had extra time to help the race director with other stuff like placing signage on the course. Cindy manned the registration computer but there were only a handful of people that signed up on Saturday.
The start of the race was very simple for me since it was not a chip start, meaning all I had to bring with me was a stopwatch and a clipboard. After a brief prayer the runners and walkers were off. The course was a little confusing as it snaked around the church grounds. It included multiple loops and a separate course for walkers that used some of the runners path as well. Luckily there were plenty of marshals out there telling people where to go.
As the first runner crossed a little after the 22 minute mark I held my breath for a second just as I normally do until I confirmed his name and time flashed on the screen as it is supposed to. Even though I do plenty of checks ahead of time, until a runner crosses, I never fully feel at ease. The first and last runner came through just fine. I had absolutely zero issues for the event. I can’t imagine a race going much more smoothly.
Katie showed up towards the end of the race with coffee in hand which was nice. She also helped us tear down the finish line. As we packed away the equipment for what should be the final time I felt some small sense of both sadness but a much larger feeling of relief. Although my race timing accomplishments have been a source of pride for me over the years, at this point in my life the price I pay in anxiety and stress just is not worth it. I’m sure It will eventually fade into the background as just one of those other things I used to do.
Cindy had to go to work so I went home and unloaded the truck myself. After I was done I headed outside for a grueling yard work session that started with weeding the property in the morning followed by extensive weed whacking in the afternoon during the heat of the day. To follow up with all the backyard mowing I did, I whacked the entire fence line, both sides of it, in addition to the normal stuff around the house. It was a two hour sweatfest that had me refilling the trimmer head spool three times.
By the time I was done I felt obliterated. The combo of getting up early and timing the race with hard, hard labor left me again walking in my now familiar zombie like gait. Despite feeling wiped out I took Cindy out to dinner at PF Changs to celebrate the end of our race timing career. Although it is one of Cindy’s favorite places we had not been there in a very long time. We enjoyed our food although we brought a lot of it home with us, including a massive slab of chocolate cake that was big enough to feed a family of four.
Despite feeling so shitty Saturday night I still set the alarm for Sunday morning to get my ass out to run. For the second week in a row Cindy joined me. We logged the most mileage in recent history, doing just under four and a half miles. I can’t tell you how forward I am looking towards running in something less than 95% humidity.
After getting back and showering we headed back out to ride the PTVs, get coffee and do a run to Home Depot for a few items. Once again I rode my electric unicycle while Cindy rode her Segway Minipro. At this point there is nowhere she can go on the Minipro that I can’t handle on my unicycle. I had an annoying moment when an SUV looked like he was going to stop for us and then didn’t, causing me to lay down the Ninebot unexpectedly. Of course the asshole had a Trump sticker on the back of the vehicle.
We did our Halloween decorating later in the day and I finally got some time to play some WoW, the first of the weekend. Sunday night we watched All the Way, the movie about LBJ, played by Bryan Cranston. I thought Cranston did an excellent job portraying LBJ. I found the film interesting and educational. I honestly had very minimal knowledge of exactly what LBJ accomplished while in office. I was surprised to see it was quite significant. It was a solid B+ film for sure.
So Cindy was teaching a class last night, meaning supper was going to be later than normal. When I considered that along with the fact that Dunkin Donuts was running a promotion for 66 cent medium coffee’s to celebrate 66 years of business, I figured I would alter my route to pick up a cheap cup of coffee to help control my appetite. Well it didn’t take very long for me to regret that decision, a lot.
I decided I would hit the DD at the corner of Livingston Road and Pine Ridge. As I got within about a 1/4 mile to the light, traffic in the lane was already grinding to a halt. The light for that direction of traffic is already stupidly short considering the volume of vehicles but this was far worse than normal. I saw two light cycles come and go with hardly any movement but I was too far away to see what the deal was. As I got closer a much clearer explanation was before me, assholes.
Pine Ridge connects to the interstate which is about a mile to the east of where I was. For some reason traffic on Pine Ridge was backed up all the way to us. So what I witnessed was the opposing traffic that was turning left onto Pine Ridge blocking the intersection. You had people inserting themselves into the intersection even though the traffic ahead of them was at a dead stop. So when the light for our direction turned green, nobody could move because the turning assholes were blocking the road. It was maddening and infuriating as I despise people on the road with this degree of cluelessness. Of course the lemming mentality kicked in. When one idiot turned into the clogged intersection, two or three more followed suit.
I probably spent at least 15 minutes trying to get through the intersection. When I did finally get there I still had to swing around one more asshole that was still sticking out into the intersection. This person received a loud and long horn applause from me, recognizing their effort. The delay there snowballed as I was now in the middle of the worst rush hour traffic. When I hit Immokalee Road I got encased in wall to wall traffic that was absolutely miserable, again filled with inconsiderate assholes, cutting off, blocking, and annoying at every opportunity they are given. The 66 cent coffee resulted in an additional 45 minutes of travel time. I won’t be doing that again.
When I finally got home I again mounted the tractor for more mowing. On Wednesday night I mowed the grass inside the fence. Last night I wanted to tackle the grass on the outside perimeter of the fence. That grass was even higher than what I faced the night before, four feet plus in some sections. To mow it down required multiple passes with the tractor along with me holding open the chute guard to allow the cut grass to fly out at high velocity. I would mow a 10 foot section, back up that same 10 feet and then pull forward again. I rinsed a repeated down the entire fence line. The experience has me considering getting one of those brush mowers that are designed to knock down this sort of crap.
When I got inside I pulled out everything I should need for Saturday’s race so I can in turn pack it in the truck tonight. Tonight on my way home I will be dropping off race stuff at the church where they are doing packet pick up and then swinging back there at 7 to pick it up. Saturday will start with my the last 4AM alarm to get on site by 5. I can hardly wait, for it to be all over.
I told dad we should go walk the dogs at North Collier Park, a place he had never visited. Dad was very impressed with how nice the place was. We had fun watching the collection of old retired RC sail boaters maneuver their ships around the lake as we started the walk. Most of the walk was on the elevated, mostly shaded boardwalk which was perfect for the dogs. We had a great couple miles.
