Category Dreams

A few days ago I saw a FB promoted post by Fiverr, a website where all sorts of professionals offer their services for very reasonable rates.  This particular ad was an offer to make a cartoon rendition of an image for the low price of five bucks.  When you logged on to their site there was a bunch of people willing to do this, most of them in slightly different styles.  I picked a style I liked and submitted one of my White Sands selfie pics.

This morning, a couple days after I placed my order, I received notice my art project was done.  The cartoonized version of me may not be a perfect semblance but I still thought it was cool, worth the $5 I invested in it.

Despite the lack of storms and the dogs being back with Ali I had another rough night of sleep, waking up around 3AM and not falling back asleep for at least 90 minutes.

After I did fall back asleep I had a very realistic and disturbing dream where my mom had not actually died.  I was in a house with my brother and sister just sitting around.  All of a sudden the front door opens and my mom walks in with a big smile on her face.  Mom looked significantly younger for some reason, probably in her 50’s.  For several seconds I just stared at her in disbelief.  I asked myself in my dream if I was dreaming and the answer was no.

I said to mom, “How can this be?” as the tears rolled down my face as my siblings and I hugged her.  She said she had to fake her death although the reason for this was never clear to me in the dream.  I told mom I watched her take her last breath and I didn’t understand.  She just smiled.

The dream fast forwards.  I am walking with my mom and siblings in a neighborhood with sidewalks.  It is bright, sunny and hot.  We were walking for quite awhile to a destination I did not know.  I remember thinking it was weird that mom was willing to walk so far in the heat since I had such a hard time convincing her to just take a short walk in her community when she was alive.

After the long walk we arrived at some outdoor event that had bleachers full of people.  My mom, siblings and I walked up the steps to find a seat.  I went a couple rows ahead of them to try to find an open spot on the bleachers.  After scanning for a few seconds I found a suitable open section.  I turned around to tell mom I found a spot but she had disappeared, along with my siblings.  I thought that perhaps they had found seating elsewhere.  The dream ended with me still looking for them, without success.  When I woke up this morning my eyes felt like I had been crying in my sleep.

Yesterday was quite the mental fatiguing day.  Throughout the day there was more tension, concern and drama associated with the blowout I had Tuesday with the running club.  I fielded several phone calls from other board members expressing concern and looking for answers to the problems that were brought front and center.  Later in the afternoon I agreed to have a meeting after work with just the officers of the running club as opposed to the full board.

I spent a lot of time preparing a worksheet that outlined what went down, why it bothered me and what my proposals were to fix it moving forward.  I made multiple copies of it and planned to use it as a handout but I never did pass them around, instead I only used it sparingly for my own reference.  We didn’t really dig into the details of what lead to up to the blowout even though I had it fully documented.  In retrospect it wasn’t all that important anyway.  I think all parties involved felt badly about how things got out of control.

Anyway, after  about a half hour of discussion we came to a resolution that included some changes going forward which should address a lot of what has been going on that has been aggravating me.  I think everyone was happy with the outcome and the stormy waters have settled down.

I used an XL coffee before the meeting to give me artificial energy as I was feeling very tired from a poor nights sleep.  After the meeting I grabbed a single beer with the club VP where we talked more about mostly club related stuff.  I was glad that we got the conflict worked out and hopefully it will lead to a less bumpy road in the future.

By the time I got home I was exhausted.  Lucky for me, I still had to do do some server work for the office remotely before I could officially call it quits for the day.

Unfortunately my sleep last night was not as long as I hoped.  Around 4AM I woke up after an odd dream.  I had just come home and walked out the rear slider.  To my right I saw a guy that was in the process of digging a huge hole with a shovel.  The chickens were also running around loose.  The guy approaches me with a smile on his face but I have no idea who he is, why he is digging a hole in my yard and why the chickens are loose.  I angrily say to him “Who are you and why would you think it’s ok to dig a hole in my yard or let my chickens out??”  just as I said that, Sadie, who ran out with me took a couple quick steps towards the chickens.  As I reached out to stop her in my dream I reached out in real life, which woke me up.  Once that happened I was unable to fall back asleep so I got up around 4:30.

This weekend we have a Halloween Party we are going to Saturday night.  Cindy has gone all out in the costume creation department.  She has put an incredible amount of thought and work into our garb, especially mine.  She loves making costumes.  It should make for some interesting pictures for sure.

Saturday morning the alarm clock fired off at 3:20 AM. It was the start of what felt like a 3 day weekend meat grinder.  I am almost glad to be back at work today so I can rest to some degree.

Saturday was the 5K I was timing.  Not only was I timing it, I was also bringing the equipment truck on site and making sure that stuff got where it needed to be.  The race had a huge surge in numbers the last several days, including over 100 people the day of the race.  Those situations are always stressful.  I had someone there that I am hopefully going to be teaching to be my timing back up in the future.  Trying to do that in the middle of a busy race day is not easy.

Timing the event, despite all of the last minute entries went well.  This was the first race where I tested a new feature that maps finishing results to a finish line video I shot with my GoPro.  I basically upload the video to YouTube, tell RunSignUp how long it is until the first finisher crosses and I’m done.  RSU will then automatically create a link for each runner that will jump ahead in the video to 5 seconds before they cross and play it back, pretty cool.

After the race I had to stick around to get everything loaded on the equipment truck as well.  By that time the sun was well into the sky, totally soaking my shirt with sweat.  I was quite relieved when I finally pulled out.

So while I was at the race Ali told me that she had Nicki at the 24 hour vet again for what she assumed was a bladder infection.  She also reminded me that I agreed to watch the dogs overnight because of some party she was having at her place.  I had totally forgotten about being asked about it.  So after attending to all of the post race work we went out to run some errands which included picking up the dogs.  I was concerned about how Nicki would be since she was given a shot of antibiotics and a shot of pain meds.  My concerns appeared well founded.

Nicki was not acting well.  As soon as we picked her up she kept trying to scratch at her eyes.  She also was obviously having problems seeing and seemed disoriented as a result.  Nicki has had lifelong issues with her ears and allergies.  In the past year or so she has started to go after her eyes as well.  She will just use her paw to rub them downward.

Ali had taken Nicki to a dog eye doctor.  She was told that spaniels (Nicki is part spaniel) have an issue where their eye lashes can curl under and irritate the eye.  At that time Ali was given just drops and some sort of lubrication ointment.  Well it hasn’t helped as much as you would hope as Nicki has continued to periodically rub her eyes.  Well all of the rubbing has now distorted the area around her eye.  She has actually managed to pull the skin around there down to the point where they are sagging badly.  It seemed on Saturday they were sagging so badly that she could not see at all.  The poor girl is not only almost totally deaf, now she can’t see.

While we were out I picked up supplies to do my first ever oil change on Cindy’s Prius.  It definitely needed to get done before we embark on our 4500-5000 mile road trip next week.  While I was at it I changed the air filter and wiper blades.  Of course I videoed everything as my auto maintenance video series has proven to be one of my most popular in my YouTube channel.  Here it is.

Saturday evening I was really worried about Nicki.  She was literally running into things because she couldn’t see.  She refused to eat as well.  I was worried enough that I called Ali in the middle of her party to fill her in.  The two shots that she was given were probably the cause of the lack of appetite but the vision problem was really scary.  I talked to Ali about options.  After an inappropriate and unexpected side bar argument, we decided to make an appointment with a vet that deals with dog eyelid issues. Cindy was Nicki’s personal nurse over the weekend, feeding her some chicken broth with a syringe, giving her medicine, as well as giving her a bath.

My primary goal on Sunday, thanks to Cindy taking on most of the regular chores herself, was to get some pressure washing done.  The pool area and sheds both had excessive amounts of the green scuzz that accompanies wet season.  I pulled the pressure washer out of the shed as well as the extensions that I use to blast the high sections of the pool cage.  I started to put the extension together and realized what I had was not right.  I had the tubes but it looked like I was missing one adapter.  I put together and took apart the extensions multiple times, thinking maybe this was just my memory failing me.  Nope, it would not work.

So then I assumed I was just missing a piece.  I triple checked both sheds looking for the magical part and came up empty , wtf???  I even called Cindy out to be my second set of eyes, I still came up empty.  I was quite annoyed to have to run out to Home Depot to get a part that I already knew I had somewhere.  Doing so also retarded my pressure washing schedule, making me start a good two hours later than I hoped originally. Oh the best part?  I later found the missing adapter on Monday, it was sitting on my workbench in the garage for reasons that escape me.

Pressure washing was miserable as it always is.  The pool cage is the worst part of it which is why I always do that part first.  By the time I am done my hands, forearms and shoulders are pretty much shot.  I pressure washed the cage, the pool deck, the pad with the water equipment, the large and small shed as well as Tuki’s cage.  During part of it the skies let loose, drenching me from head to toe.  I sought no shelter, I just kept blasting away in the rain, fck it.  In total I probably spent close to 5 hours doing nothing but pressure washing.  If I didn’t already have enough aggravation, the hose on the pressure washer sprung a leak.

I also had agreed to take a look at my neighbors laptop which was loaded down with tons of malware.  Throughout the day I was working on it, uninstalling shit and running various scans.  I finally got all of the junk off of it by Sunday night.  I also returned the dogs to Ali’s place on Sunday evening.

Sunday night we watched Two Guns, with Marky Mark and Denziel Washington.  I thought it was ok, I dozed off again during a part of it later on.  It’s a fine B rental, nothing great but not bad either.

So our Labor Day started with the 20 mile DD bike ride, something neither of us has taken on in quite awhile.  Because of Cindy’s injured foot we haven’t been pressing the envelope speed wise to minimize the stress on her foot.  Even so we averaged 18+ mph on the way there and 16-17 on the way back into a steady headwind.  I was glad we got out the door around 7AM to minimize the heat index numbers.

It poured out at the house for a good portion of the day, once again turning my property into a soggy mess.  We once again headed out to do some errands which included getting a new pressure washer hose and a few other things at Home Depot.  We also met up with my mom’s former landlord to drop off all of the keys I had as well as collect mom’s security deposit.  All details with her apartment should now be settled, at least that is one thing to cross off the list.

During the afternoon Cindy’s daughter and her boyfriend stopped out for a visit along with Tank, their high energy french bulldog.  As with his last visit, Tank was a maniac, pulling out almost every dog toy I had.  He just wants to play and play and play, it’s funny.  I also spent some time playing Call of Duty with Daniel.  He is quite adept at the console FPS genre while I am pretty much a stumbling noob.  Despite this, we actually managed to win some team deathmatch games.  I was consistently at the bottom of the scoreboard and Daniel was number 1 or 2.  I discovered the best way I could help the team was to simply die slower.  Daniel is also a big WOW player although he plays exclusively Arena and PvP , stuff that I rarely play and when I do I generally suck at as well.  It was fun to play with Daniel regardless.

I also did work yesterday creating a chicken care manual to be used by the guy that will be chicken sitting for us.  I also finally mapped out our intended trip route.  If all goes as planned we will take 11 days this time.  The trip is going to have two monster driving days of 800+ miles and a few others that are going to suck.  On the positive side the trip is allocating an over night stay in the Colorado Springs area as well as 3 days and two nights in Durango which will be awesome.

Here is what I came up with:

Day 1 – Naples to Nashville –(13.25) 864 Miles
Day 2 – Nashville to St Louis – (4:28) 310 miles – St Louis to Kansas City – (3:37) 249 miles
Day 3 – Kansas City to Colorado Springs – (8:15) 585 miles
Day 4 – Manitou Springs
Day 5 – Colorado Springs to Durango – (5:20) 313 miles
Day 6 – Durango
Day 7 – Durango
Day 8 – Durango to White Sands – (6:47) 437 miles – White Sands to El Paso – (1:29) 98 miles
Day 9 – El Paso to Beaumont – (11:25) 834 miles
Day 10 – Beaumont to Tallahassee – (8:54) 625 miles
Day 11 – Tallahassee to Naples – (6:07) 432 miles

This morning I picked up Nicki to go to the vet.  Ali said that when she went to the dog eye doctor they recommended we see a dermatologist that also deals with eyelid issues.  I thought this didn’t sound right but Alison assured me that the dermatologist also dealt with eyelids.  Her energy level and alertness seemed better today although she is still refusing food conventionally. (Ali syringed more into her on Monday)  She could once again see at least to some degree and Ali said she had not been going after her eyes as much on Monday which is good.

I picked Nicki up in mom’s Rav 4. Since I got the AC working I figured driving it now and then will be a good thing until I have the legal right to sell it.  I lifted Nicki up and let her ride in the rear cargo area.  The vet I was taking Nicki to was one that Ali has taken her to numerous times since they are a 24 hour business and Nicki seems to make a habit of having issues outside of normal business hours.

I had a negative impression the second I stepped in the door.  There were two clerks behind the desk and no customers in front of them.  Both the man and the woman were looking at their computer screens.  I said hello, which was returned by the woman without glancing my way.  I told them I was there for a 9 am appointment.  The guy said in an annoyed tone “We will be with you in a minute”.  I mean what the fck, you are a clerk, your job is to wait on customers, there are two of you and no customers at the desk and you give me attitude?  Needless to say it got the visit off on the wrong foot.

Actually the bad experience started the day before when I talked to whom I assume is the same guy on the phone about setting up the appointment.  Even though this was supposed to be a consult about Nicki’s eyes, he said that she needed to fast the night before.  I didn’t follow the logic and asked why if this was just a consult.  He said in the now familiar annoyed tone “because that is our procedure”.

I again was annoyed when I was given a two page questionnaire to fill out about Nicki’s history.  Like I said she has been there many times, why I am filling out a form like she is a first timer?  The form was also asking questions that Ali would be much better suited to answer so I was taking ballpark guesses for some of it.  By the time I was lead back to an exam room my mood was not good.

So the dermatologist comes in and I start explaining what Ali told me.  The dog eye doctor said that her eyelashes could be rubbing against her eyes and causing irritation, they said that we should see you.  The dermatologist stops me and looks confused.  She said she has nothing to do with eyelid surgery. WTF.  Evidently what the eye doctor meant was she recommended looking into the allergy side of things next.  I sighed out loud.  The dermatologist said that all the itching and scratching could just be allergic reactions.  She did a swab of Nicki’s ears and eyes.  She mentioned very quickly it would be “180 to check them out under the microscope”  Great.

So while she was out looking at stuff I made a call to the place that Cindy recommended that does eyelid procedures on dogs.  I talked to the doctor and he was very nice on the phone.  Unlike the place I was sitting at, I immediately got a very good first impression from this guy.  I made an appointment for Nicki to see him tomorrow at 9.

After making the appointment I was more annoyed I was sitting in the exam room.  When the dermatologist came back in she started to outline her recommended treatment plan.  She basically wanted to do a 3 month diet change where Nicki would be fed nothing but kangaroo or rabbit meat dog food that of course is only available through vets.  The purpose of this is to eliminate food allergies as a cause.  For environmental allergies she was recommending some expensive medication that supposedly does more than the Benadryl we give her.  This time I stopped her.  I told her that Nicki has had extensive allergy testing done and we actually had her on a hypoallergenic vet food for quite awhile.  The dermatologist said “if it wasn’t kangaroo or rabbit it means nothing to me”  She was obviously not happy that I wasn’t wagging my tail at her very expensive and difficult to enact treatment plan .

With all of the meds Nicki has been on, the idea of doing another complete 3 month reboot just did not sound feasible to me.  I told her that I was not going to agree to any sort of treatment plan until I talked to my ex-wife about it since she is the primary care giver for the dogs.  Again I could see the dermatologists expression stiffen, I’m sure she thought I was an idiot for not accepting her recommendation as gospel.  They did give me some stuff to help both Nicki’s eyes and ears short term.

When I was at the counter to check out the guy that was annoyed to greet me was much happier to swipe my credit card for $380.  When I looked at the itemized bill I wanted to throw up.  Each swab costs $60 a pop and I paid $115 for the privilege of talking to a specialist.  Thankfully the pet insurance that Ali and I pay for should reimburse a good portion of the expense but that doesn’t make those charges any more legitimate in my eyes.  I left the vet with no desire to ever return there.

I drove Nicki all the way back to Ali’s place and dropped her off before reversing direction and driving all the way back to town.  Was it an efficient use of time, money or gas? Nope.  I am hoping the office visit tomorrow proves to be more worthwhile for Nicki.

This latest unexpected bill added to my already existing concern about the dollars and sense for our upcoming road trip.  If we were not taking the Prius I would have already cancelled it.  The only thing allowing it to go forward is the 66% savings in gas we should reap this time around.   My budget book has some red ink in it for the first time in a long time, not exactly ideal when you are shoving off cross country.   Since I have been fronting all of the expenses for my mom’s estate up until this point it has put an unexpected dent in my bottom line.  Of course I can move some numbers around to make it all work in the end but without a doubt frugality will be one aspect of the trip which will be of high importance.

Did I mention that I had a dream last week where I was speaking to my mom?  I was speaking to her in a post death scenario, she knew she had died and we were talking about various things.  Unfortunately I don’t recall any substantial detail other than it occurred.

Last night after work I came home to a property that was thoroughly drenched with standing bodies of water all over the place.  It must have poured out at the house during the day and it was still raining lightly when I arrived.  Of course my first concern was for the chickens.  I was pretty sure I had them in a spot that normally does not submerge in conditions below hurricane level but I wasn’t positive.  When I glanced in the backyard the coop and run were out of the flood zone.

After doing my normal evening coop relocation, food/water refresh and chicken treat distribution I wanted to see if I could manage to squeeze out 20 pull ups on my very wet pull up bar.  Spoiler alert, I didn’t quite make it.

On Wednesday to satisfy Jeremy I taped and posted some of my squats and deadlifts at the gym. As I always do, I turned on monetization of the video so it can contribute to my Google AdSense empire.  Later in the day I received an email from YouTube saying monetization was disabled on the video because of a music copyright claim.  Evidently during some of the footage, “Birthday” by Katy Perry was playing in the background.  YT has automated bots that “listen” to uploaded videos for commercial music to preemptively save them from being hassled by music companies I guess.

Personally I think it’s rather stupid that a few seconds of a song being played in a video is grounds for a copyright claim but that is the YouTube world we live in.  I’m in the process of applying a different royalty free music track to the clip so the pennies can once again start accumulating when it’s viewed.  After all a video with a skinny guy awkwardly squatting and deadlifting is sure to go viral.

So for a long time I was somewhat proud that I had good vision.  When I was younger it was noteworthy because both my dad and my mom have been lifelong glasses wearers with poor vision.  My sister Torrin inherited their poor vision.  Somehow Todd and myself got a couple sets of decent eyeballs inserted into our heads. Once I rolled past 40 years of age and still had no vision issues I again felt like I was beating the odds. I heard so many people say their once good eyes took a dramatic turn for the worse after four decades on the planet.  Well  for around the last 3-4 years my luck has been running out.

I guess in a way I am still somewhat lucky as it is my distance vision that is failing instead of the near field which I use every day at work for 8+ hours a day staring at two LCD screens.  If I try to read numbers or letters that are not in my immediate vicinity it is really a struggle.  If those numbers or letters happen to be glowing LED’s it’s nearly impossible.  Last night I was looking at the LED clock on the stove from about 15 feet away, it was a green mess.  I slowly walked towards it.  Once  I got about 6 feet away and fog cleared and I was able to read the numbers clearly.

You may recall I bought some Gunnar glasses awhile back, hoping their claims of helping to reduce distance viewing issues for full time IT workers were legit.  I wore them for roughly a month and had a bad experience, my eyes were constantly being red, watering and physically aching after extended Gunnar usage.  It was bad enough that I just gave them away to Jeremy. I have no plans to really do anything about it as the problem is not affecting my functionality other than raising my “I’m old” frustration level while I am trying to read a sign down the aisle.

This weekend is my last before another trip to PA for a race timer conference.  The multiple ponds around the property right now could throw a wrench in any grass maintenance plans.  I am back on dog sitting duty starting on Sunday as well.

I had a very odd dream last night.  I was in my bathroom sitting on the porcelain throne taking care of business.  All of a sudden Dustin Hoffman walks in, naked and turns on the shower.  After being stunned for a few moments I ask him what the hell he was doing??  He had the shower on full blast and had the shower curtain 3/4 of the way open so water was shooting all over the floor.  He then asks me if I mind if he poops in the shower.  My shock mutates into disgust.  Keep in mind I am sitting on the toilet during this whole exchange.  “No! No you can not poop in my shower! What the fck is wrong with you?”  Dustin says the only way he can move his bowels is if he is standing in the shower.  Thankfully the dream ended there.

So this weekend I have some more modifications planned for the chicken housing arrangements.  Having the chickens out of their coop last weekend made it clear how much they like being able to freely scratch the ground.  Both their main coop and extended run area have 2×4 welded wire on the bottom of them for protection from potential predators that have the ability to dig.  Unfortunately the wire also makes it impossible for the chickens to do any real scratching.

Originally I suggested to Cindy that I totally remove the wire floor from the extended run and instead we could put pieces of fencing around the outside of run to accomplish the same goal.  Cindy pointed out that could be a bit of a pain in the ass, moving the pieces of fencing every time I moved the coop, although doable.  She suggested that instead I could cut out just a section of the floor inside the run, giving the chickens a 12-18 inch strip of bare ground to scratch away on.  The perimeter barrier of fencing should be enough to still discourage any excavating animals.   Plus since the entire back yard is already surrounded by 4 feet high small opening fencing, the odds of anything even getting close to the coop is further lessened.  I think the chickens will be quite happy with the change.

Tomorrow my 4th of July weekend starts somewhere around 3:30 AM so I can get to the race site bright and early.  The early 7AM start time, large number of race day sign ups, large distance between the start/finish lines and a participant field of close to 1000 runners makes this race challenging on several levels.  This is the first year we are using timing devices integrated with the race bib for this event which should help expedite logistics both before and after the race.

Once the race is out of the way I have a glorious four and a half days of time off ahead of me.  Other than normal chores, a Tarpons game Saturday night and a trip to the movie theater the rest of the weekend will be about doing whatever I damn feel like doing.

I had an odd dream last night that I only remember bits and pieces of.  I know at one point Cindy was calling lazy for some reason and at another point a 60 foot maple tree was delivered to my door.  I had forgotten I ordered it at Christmas.

Yesterday I missed my lunchtime gym session due to being out at one of our remote branches.  I wanted to make sure I got some type of workout in.  Thanks to the time change last weekend I am once again able to enjoy ample amounts of daylight after work.  I decided to put it to use out in the barpark.  I was able to finish up a 5 circuit Ray’s Way workout before Cindy got home which added up to 50 pull ups, 75 dips and 100 push ups. When Cindy got there she used the back yard as a track, putting in a fast pace 2+ mile run before doing some work on the bars as well.

Last night we watched the finale of True Detective, the HBO show that crashed HBOGO on Sunday since so many people were tuning in.  It was really a well written and acted show. The finale was appropriately suspenseful and tense.  I’m not sure if they are going to do multiple seasons of the show with each season getting a fresh set of cast members or not.  Having Woody and Matt on a show is a chemistry that is going to be hard to match moving forward.  Great show, watch it if you haven’t.

Last night in bed we were watching another suspenseful show, 24. (somewhere in season 6)  During one very loud scene where shit was blowing up we were startled by a crash in the bathroom.  The clock I had on the wall had fallen off courtesy of the vibrations of the subwoofer that is on the other side of the wall, talk about realistic sound….  Unfortunately the clock, which I happened to be fond of, broke on impact with the tile floor. Thanks a lot Jack.

Last night I recall having several odd dreams but I only remember sparse details of one of them.  I was suddenly transported back to PA present day.  I was driving down the street at night behind the outfield of the high school baseball field, near the intermediate school.  More than half of the houses still had their Christmas lights on their house and lit up.  I recall saying out loud “What the fck? It’s March.” End of dream.

Last night had a nice combo of activities that I find enjoyable.  I wanted to do the bar dip version of this month’s BB challenge but I wanted to do it from a different perspective, overhead.   To do so I mounted my new GoPro on the Phantom.

To mount the camera I actually used the waterproof mount that came with the camera, the mount that comes with the Phantom is actually a little big for the Hero 3+ which is smaller than the Hero 3.

I also utilized my moon gel.  I put one piece under the foot that attached to the bottom of the quadracopter and then another under the camera inside the waterproof mount.  The combo seemed to work very well, there was very minimal distortion in the video.  I still need to balance the props, the audio from the flight make the props sound quite “buzzy”.

So anyway, I figured with the very wide field of view the GoPro has and the ability of the Phantom to more or less hover in place without pilot input, I should be able to film my attempt from above.  Mounting the GoPro in the waterproof case actually resulted in the cam being upside down.  Luckily the GoPro has the ability to flip video on the fly just by telling it that UP is the other direction.

So I got the copter in the air and positioned it so it looked like the GoPro was more or less pointed at the pull up bar.  I set the transmitter on the table and got to work.  The copter drifted around slightly due to wind but with the wide angle lens it didn’t matter.  I think it turned out quite well, I will surely dig deeper into this video recording method in the future.  Here is the finished product.

After the challenge was over I flew around some more, capturing some more cool aerial footage.  I am having ideas float around in my head of some future uses of my flying aerial rig that could be pretty cool.

My enjoyable night was rounded out with some gaming time playing both WoW (dinged 90 with my second toon) and Hearthstone (kicked some ass with my Warlock & Hunter).  It felt good to have a  night of doing nothing except what I want to do instead of things I have to do.

I had a weird dream last night.

I was back at the house I grew up at in Gouglersville.  I was walking down the road near the bottom of the hill with my dad.  We had Sadie along.  Dad had her on a long extend-a-leash.  The creek that runs along the road was much bigger than I remember, looking more like a small river.

Sadie, as she often does, was far ahead exploring.  She headed down the slope that lead into the creek/river and started wading in.  Before I knew it she was a good 15 feet from shore with my dad still holding the leash.  I yell to my dad, “You shouldn’t let her go in there, there are sharks!”  “I know, I know” my dad said in his mildly dismissive tone.  Dad is never one to take much heed to potential danger, confident that he will always somehow fall outside the odds.

Well as soon as my dad gets done speaking I see two large shadows moving quickly in the water which was no more than knee deep.  As my eyes focused I saw it was not one but TWO sharks and big ones at that, 7-8 feet long at least.  I scream at my dad, who was now in the creek/river himself as Sadie pulled along,  about the sharks.  He says he sees them and starts “running” as fast as you can in knee high water, pulling Sadie back behind him.

As Dad is hauling ass towards the bank the sharks pass directly in front of him, I was sure he was going to either step on them or trip over them.  He somehow avoids them and makes it to shore, however he momentarily forgets that Sadie is still in the water.  I run towards him and yell, “GO, GO, GO” meaning he needed to pull Sadie out the rest of the way.

My eyes widened as Sadie was moving towards land, both sharks had swung around and were hauling ass straight towards her, like twin torpedoes.  As Sadie came out of the water the sharks shot out of the water, missing her barely before they both roll back into the river/creek.

Sadie had no idea anything was wrong at all, standing there with her typical dog smile after she shook off the water.  End of dream.

So yesterday I had my first firsthand experience with a Cryptolocker infection.  An end user clicked on an email attachment she shouldn’t have and unknowingly kicked off a silent, evil, background process that encrypted thousands of files both on her local pc AND on network drives where she had write access.  Once all of the files were encrypted the user was presented with a pop up window informing her all of her files were now locked and if she wanted them unlocked she had 72 hours to pay a ransom.

The ransom is paid via either a wire transfer or bitcoins, both of which allow the cyberthugs to remain untraceable.

I had read stories regarding Cryptolocker and places that had no choice but to pay the ransom since they had no back ups available.  Infections are growing by the day.

Luckily I have implemented a couple layers of back ups on the file server.  First we have the nightly back up to a tape library, however using that would mean potentially an entire day of work could be lost on any of the affected files.  Instead I used the shadow copy feature I have enabled on these network shares.  I had one that ran at noon yesterday, cutting down on the amount of lost work, especially since most of the updating of these files occurs at the start of a business day.

The person that triggered the infection did lose all of the documents stored on the local PC as those were not backed up.  Luckily, anything important was stored on the network as it should be.

Now don’t think that having shadow copies (prior versions) turned on will necessarily save you from Cryptolocker.  One of the first things it does is delete all prior versions of files on the PC it is launched on.  Luckily it can not do this to network drives.  Having an external back up drive might not save you either, as depending on how the files are stored there, they could be encrypted as well.

So all in all I spent 4 or 5 hours repairing the damage and making some changes to reduce or vulnerability to end user ignorance in the future.  This sort of attack makes options like remote cloud back up very appealing.

Last night I had a bizarre dream.  I was in my office at home and all of a sudden a red Ferrari came spinning up onto the grass in front of the window.  He did a big donut and then parked in his driveway.  He was my new neighbor.  Of course this pissed me off but he had done it before so I just let it go and continued working.

Well all of a sudden I start hearing what sounds like heavy artillery fire.  The walls and windows of my house are shaking with every shot.  The neighbor who was short, thin and bald, a real seedy looking type, was cackling like mad as he was firing towards the palm trees in my yard.  His three equally seedy friends were with him, cheering on his artillery assault on my yard.

Well I went ape shit and tore out the door.  They had turned around and were firing in the other direction by the time I got outside.  In between shots I yell at him to get his attention.  As I am about 20 yards away he spins around, drops to the ground in sniper position and fires a couple warning shots that fly by my side.  Instinctively I drop to the ground, trying to become a smaller target.

As I am laying there I yell “What the fck are you doing!?”  He stops firing and stands up, I stand up as well.  Despite just being fired at with heavy artillery my anger again boiled to the top.  I say “Two things”, as I hold up two fingers as a visual exclamation point.  “Don’t do donuts in my yard…”  Before I could continue the guy walks up to me menacingly with his 3 cronies following closely.

He says” You know why I did the donuts, because of the bucket you threw in my yard!”  I had absolutely no idea what he was referring to. “What the fck are you talking about? What bucket?” I responded, holding my ground.  Just as I was about to cover my second point, which was firing heavy artillery at my yard was unacceptable, I woke up.

This weekend will feature half marathon packet stuffing, a trip to the movies and some sort of endurance training.  The slack line will also be strung up for further adventures in balance and patience training.

Most people have various job aspirations as they grow up and I was no different.  I have had a number of different jobs throughout my lifetime and aspired to be many more.  I recall at various times in my childhood thinking I would have liked to be an astronomer, a meteorologist, video game tester/designer, a teacher, a professional baseball player, and many more vocations.

My actual list of jobs since I entered the workforce has been equally diverse although significantly more mundane.  In order they go like this, K-mart stockman, firewood cutter/splitter/stacker, meat cutter at Weis Markets, Hyundai car salesman, directory advertising inside sales for Donnelly Directory, truck driver/loader for Goodwill, pc tech/network engineer for Entre-Ameridata-GE Capital (multiple buyouts), and finally the last dozen years down here as the network admin for a local county government office.  There are also a few brief stints in there where my dad was my pseudo-employer as I did odd jobs for him to make money until I figured out what the F I was going to do next.

For the most part, my job history has been a steady upward curve where one job was better than the previous.  The only exception was when I left the sales field for a brief dip back in the hard labor pool while I went to tech school at night.

I have held my current job for over a dozen years, the longest tenure I have had with any employer in my lifetime.  The job is secure, has good insurance, lots of holidays, stable hours and low stress levels.  Despite these qualities in my employment that many would find quite desirable, that doesn’t mean I still don’t have other vocational aspirations.

Even as I approach 46 years old, I still think about other possible avenues I could take in the future which would amplify my happiness inventory while allowing me to earn a living that still enables me to live comfortably.

How cool would it be to a full time YouTube content producer?  There’s a few lucky individuals that live entirely (some quite handsomely) doing nothing but throwing themselves out there via various social media outlets.   Doing something that allowed me to put my health and fitness interest to work would be another cool path to travel.  How about moving out west and being a full time race timer, a job that would blend my sports/IT background.  Utilizing my unpolished, but decent writing skills to make a buck would be interesting as well.

If I did something like win lotto, where money is no longer a main concern, I would still want to work to remain productive.  Working with animals in some capacity would be awesome or anything where I get to enjoy the great outdoors on a regular basis without breaking my back in the process.

The point is, no matter how old you are I think it is always important to have aspirations, to not shut your eyes to other opportunities.  Everyone’s life typically has many forks in the road.  It certainly is less complicated to just keep the wheel pointed straight ahead.  The problem is the view never changes.

So today marks my last day of in home training.  I have enjoyed my week quite a bit, not starting until 10 AM and having no commute are both things I definitely could get used to.

Yesterday I had another good lunchtime workout, completing two of three versions of the BB forum challenge, here and here.  I got some flying time in as well.

The girls had a nice day with me although Nicki with her grexxing for no apparent reason was driving me a bit nuts.  I decided it just basically means “I want attention”.

Last night Ali didn’t pick up the dogs until 9:30.  I filled my night with some chores, some tv, washing the Tacoma and some more running club related work.

I had a weird dream last night.  It started in a warehouse looking area of Sovereign Bank, where I used to work for a couple years back in PA.  I was talking to Brad a friend (that I have fallen out of touch with) whom I worked with there.  There was a table stacked high with computer power supplies.  Brad told me if I wanted extra money I could tear down the power supplies into parts to be recycled.

Sure that is easy, brainless work, plus Brad said he could allocate 500 hours of paid time for me to do nothing but rip apart power supplies.  Sweet, easy money.

So I grab a power supply and take it over to a mostly clear table and start ripping it apart.  I look up and somehow I am now in Brad’s living room, albeit still with the table with a half open power supply.  Brad is sitting in his recliner and on his big screen tv was the Eagles / Redskins game.  It was just starting the 3rd quarter and the Birds were ahead, 24-14.  I said to Brad, “Holy shit I can’t believe I forgot the game was on!”  Brad just smiled and took another sip of his beer.  End of dream.

This weekend I need to get around to doing the oil change on the Tacoma that I postponed due to heat exhaustion the week before.  I also might get out to see Elysium, looks like my kind of film.

Can you whistle with your fingers?  I can not even after watching this video.