Category Fixing Stuff

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.

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.

Last night Cindy was teaching a class so I used the time to start working on level 2 skills on the Ninebot One.  I am now fairly confident in my ability to handle basic control fundamentals in a more or less safe manner.  I can start, stop, and turn consistently.  However there are more advanced things to learn like riding backwards, jumping small objects, and simply getting on and off the wheel in a more controlled manner.  I practiced all three of these things to varying degrees in the driveway and as expected, going backwards was the least successful of the three.  I did manage to avoid any awful wipeouts, a testament to my ability to maintain balance, awkwardly, even in more demanding situations.  Take a look if you have 19 minutes to kill.

I had another mess of a day at work yesterday, still related to the larger mess from last week.  Before I rebuilt our main domain controller, I transferred all the FMSO roles to another DC that was a VM.  Yesterday the phone started ringing from people saying the time on their pc’s was off like 6 or 7 minutes.  A quick glance confirmed this.  Domain time is normally handled by the DC that holds the PDC Emulator role.

So I did some digging and found out that when you have a DC in a Hyper-V environment you need to disable the default behavior of a virtual machine to set it’s time based on the Hyper-V host.  I went a step further, transferring the PDC Emulator role back to the original domain controller which is a physical server.  I then ran the regedit command on both virtual DC’s to get them back in sync.

Even after this change I was chasing down rogue time problems during the day as a few servers did not want to grab the change until I forced them to do so.  I finally got everything back on the same page at the end.  Having varying system times on a Windows domain can cause all sorts of weird problems. I hope I can now move forward with getting our office fully moved over to Office 365.  I keep running into roadblocks that are making the progress on that goal very slow.

Somehow I managed to spend the vast majority of my weekend working on crap ranging from chores to race timing to remote office things.  I got some fun time in but found myself last night feeling like the two days were too task heavy.  Saturday I weeded the property and then followed up with the gas weed whacker, knocking down the growth accelerated by the unrelenting rain.

Late in the morning I thought I would be proactive and call DirecTV a day early to make sure my Sunday Ticket was working so I could watch the Eagles game the following day.  Because of the non-standard configuration I have where I JUST have the Sunday Ticket and no other programming package I have to call them each year after my account comes off the 6 month service suspension.  I have had this set up for close to 10 years and every year it is a pain in the ass to get it working.  This year set the bar to a new high of frustration.

So I call up and get a woman that sounds like she is from the US.  When I explain what I need she indicates I need to talk to tech support.  She said she would transfer me.  Within the first 3 seconds after being transferred I felt my blood pressure rising as I heard the very thick foreign accent on the other end.  Despite the headaches I have had in the past getting my service working, I always at least dealt with US based support staff.  Evidently part of ATT acquiring DirecTV last year was establishing some cheap foreign call centers, awesome move.

So I literally spent 60 minutes on the phone with a level 1 guy and then his supervisor, with me getting more frustrated by the minute as he kept putting me on hold since he had no idea what to do.  At one point I asked him if he was located in India.  He seemed a bit put off by my question and told me he was not Indian, he was located in the Phillipines.  Sorry, my bad, I still can hardly understand you.  I went through a maddening circus of reboots and being put on hold, despite me telling them that normal corrective actions would not work.

So at the end of the 60 minute circus the supervisor said he was going to transfer me to the Sunday Ticket department.  He had exhausted his ability to correct my problem.  He said please hold and I was promptly disconnected.  Of course I was beyond furious.  I called back ready to destroy whoever was unlucky enough to answer the phone.  The 18 minutes I had to wait for someone to pick up the phone the second time did nothing to help that anger.

So an english speaking woman answered.  I explained the hour plus I had just wasted with the Philippine help desk.  I asked her when Directv implemented foreign tech support centers.  She said it was part of the ATT acquisition.  She apologized for the run around and told me that in the future if I would be connected overseas I can request to be transferred to the US group, supposedly they have to honor that request.  I went through another very lengthy phone call with repeated long hold times.  At the end of it I still was getting 721 errors (not authorized) on the Sunday Ticket channels in the 700 channel range but I was getting channel 212, which she said indicates I was good to go.  She said the other channels should work on Sunday once the game content starts.  I was very skeptical of this and told her as much.  She reiterated it should work fine.  (it actually did work on Sunday)  By the time I hung up I had wasted two hours of my weekend on the phone with DirecTv, thanks!!

So as I was waiting on hold I was flipping through other menus on my satellite receiver, one of which was signal strength.  I noticed the average level was in the mid 70’s (out of 100) which is less than it used to be.  The satellite dish is on the west side of the house and unfortunately is aimed right through one of our oak trees.  Years ago I cut out a bunch of branches in the middle to give me a clearer view of the sky with the dish.  It appeared I needed to do so once again.

In the past I did this work with a pole saw which was a pain in the ass.  I decided to get up close and personal this time, grabbing a ladder and my battery powered reciprocating saw.  I used the ladder to just get me up into the main body of the tree, after that it was me just climbing around, reliving my childhood tree climbing days, something I used to do extensively.  An oak tree body is sort of a gnarled mess with lots of tiny, crisscrossing small branches.  It didn’t take long until one of them ripped open one of the brush burns on my knee, unknowingly sending a stream of blood down my leg.

I first cut away some of the small stuff to give me more room to stand and work without getting scraped/impaled.  I then started working on the large branches that were in the dish line of sight.  I had to be careful with the angles I cut, making sure they made the branches fall in a  way that would not clip the house roof or gutters.  A couple of the branches were sizeable, easily 10-12 feet long.  I diligently hacked away, doing my best to estimate the invisible beam the dish uses to grab signal.  By the time I was done there were over a half dozen large branches on the ground.  When I got down I walked over to the dish to take another look.  The center of the tree had been thinned out considerably.  I verified the success of the work inside, seeing the average signal strength had jumped up to the upper 80’s, good enough.

I then had to dispose of all of the discarded branches.  I pulled the tractor out of the shed and used it to drag the branches to the rear pit one at a time.  I would drive up to a branch, reach down with my hand and grab it, trying to wedge it against the side of the tractor body the best I could.  The branch dragging put my grip strength to the test as some created a lot of ground resistance as I pulled them along.   Eventually I got the mess cleaned up.  Between the nightmare phone calls and tree trimming I have put a lot of effort getting my 2016 Sunday Ticket up and running.  I hope the Eagles are worth it this year.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched Black Mass, a real life story of a Boston based crime group, the head of which is portrayed by Johnny Depp.  The movie gave a very brutal view into the organized crime scene and pulled no punches in depicting the violence involved.  It had a pretty well known cast that helped the level of the film.  Despite it’s very dark background, the movie was  a quality B+ flick in the end.

Sunday morning I once again had the 6AM alarm set so I could get out and run.  This time there was no bald eagle on the light tower to cheer me on but I still covered the four miles at a recent personal best pace of 8:52 per mile.  I again stuck with the shorter stride, faster cadence strategy and it again seemed to work for me.

For the past three weeks I have been the first to show up at the track.  I had been always running in a clockwise direction.  Each week a group of walkers show up later and each time they decided to walk the opposite direction I was running which I found annoying.  I didn’t want to be running at people twice per lap.  So on Sunday I thought if you can’t beat em, join em, I ran counter clockwise.  Once again the group showed up and you guessed it, they decide to now walk around clockwise.  WTF …..

Later in the morning Cindy and I took out the Minipro and the Ninebot One.  We went to a new spot, the Naples Greenway, a beautiful walking/running/trail that was opened up in 2014.   It was the PERFECT spot to ride.  The wide walking paths were great for buzzing along on the Minipros.  We put in over 4 miles on the Minipro.  I then pulled out my EUC and rode another 5 miles while Cindy chilled and read a book.  It was quite the nice way to spend a couple hours in the morning.

We got home shortly before the kickoff for the Eagles game.  Like I said I was pleasantly surprised that the game came through on my receiver without a third call to DirecTv.  I really had no idea what to expect, despite the Eagles 4-0 preseason record.  The surprise trade of Sam Bradford and equally surprising naming of the rookie, Carson Wentz as the day one starter left a whole lot of things up in the air.

Well it didn’t take long for me to start feeling better about things.  Carson Wentz lead the Eagles down the field quickly for the first touchdown pass of his NFL career.  I immediately got a good feeling from the rookie QB.  Despite his lack of playing time in the NFL, I never got a deer in the headlights sense about him.  He seemed calm and in control.  It was also a breath of fresh air to see such a balanced running and passing attack from the Eagles, which resulted in monster time of possession dominance, something that NEVER happened under Chip Kelly courtesy of his hurry up offense.

The defense gave me a really good feeling as well.  Much like Wentz, they just seemed in control.  At no point, even when they were up by 19 points did I get the feeling the Browns had a chance to come back.  The D just seemed to do everything fundamentally well.  During the last decade whenever the Eagles were up by more than two touchdowns it was almost automatic that they would roll into a soft prevent, giving up yards and points by the bushel, not yesterday.

It was one of the best feeling opening day games I can recall in the last 15 years of Eagles football.  Of course this is tempered by the fact that the Browns are not a good football team but even so, the Eagles many. many times have found ways to lose to bad teams.  On Sunday they got ahead and then slammed the door, just like good teams often do.  Of course this doesn’t mean the team is going to excel over the course of the season but I will take it one game at a time.  Based on what I have seen from this one game, I am optimistic.

I usually like to wind down my weekends just relaxing or screwing off.  Instead I followed the Eagles game up with paying my bills followed by mowing the yard, finishing up just as the sun was setting towards the horizon.  When I started mowing I felt grumpy about having to end the weekend with yet another house chore.  By the time I was done my mood was elevated from watching the chickens following me around on the tractor, hoping to devour any bugs the freshly cut grass exposed.  Chickens are funny.

I am very lucky that my job normally does not have a lot of after hours work such as I was used to when I worked in IT up north.  Our environment is normally very, very stable and any fires that I have to put out are normally small in nature.  Well yesterday I had an all out inferno break out.

As I have mentioned here, I am working through the process of migrating our office from an on site Exchange server to Office 365.  I have had various road bumps along the way but have been able to work through them.  Well yesterday I was at point where I was trying to convert our user accounts to “mail enabled” accounts, which allows them to connect to both our own site Exchange server and the Office 365 server at the same time during the transition.  I followed the steps on the Office 365 site, exporting some info from Office 365 into a local csv file and then feeding that csv file to a powershell script on my Exchange server.

So I log onto my Exchange server and open an Exchange command prompt to run the script.  I fire it off and see a LOT of red text scrolling up the screen indicating certain commands were getting an error.  I didn’t think a lot about it, sometimes scripts will do that if it is trying to modify something that isn’t needed.  After the script ran I got sidetracked into something else when my phone rang fro the first time.  It was a user saying they couldn’t get into their email, weird.

So I hopped back onto my Exchange server since I already had it open to take a look.  When I refreshed the view, ALL of our user mailboxes were gone except four or five of them.   I swallowed hard, knowing somehow that script just trashed my Exchange environment.  My head raced as I quickly tried to come up with a plan of action.  It seemed to me that the script screwed with the Exchange active directory environment so I thought that if I restore my main domain controller with the prior night’s back up I would be able to erase the problem.

This set off a totally separate disaster.  In order to do an authoritative restore of AD you need to stop DS on other domain controllers.  Once I did that it crippled the network as there was no longer any authentication going on, breaking a number of apps.  I decided to bale on that idea as the restore was going slow.  I cancelled the DC restore and rebooted it.  My heart sank when the server did not come up.

Instead of booting the DC would just come to a screen saying the OS failed to start with a 0xc000007b error.  This set off hours of frustrating and time consuming trouble shooting which involved multiple restore attempts, each of which took at least an hour, only to have it fail.  I was on the phone working with our backup appliance vendor trying to determine why it was not working.  I knew I was in trouble when he basically said he had exhausted all of his ideas. By the end of the normal work day I was still heavily in the weeds.  The network was limping along since I brought the other DC’s online but there was absolutely no email access for anybody for the majority of the day.

So as I was working on the DC problem, in between failed restore attempts I was looking more at the Exchange server and it’s missing mailboxes.  I realized that the mailboxes were in the “disconnected state” which at first was sort of a relief since I could reconnect them manually.  However I did not realize at the time that not all of the missing mailboxes were there, I later realized almost 50 of them were still missing.

So I finally gave up on getting the domain controller back online.  I seized the FMSO roles and forced them to one of the other DC’s I have on the network.   I then blew away the original DC, reinstalled Windows 2012 and readded it to the domain as a new DC.  I then turned my attention fully on the email situation after grabbing a dinner that consisted of a large coffee and bagel from the Dunkin Donuts across the street.

So I figured that if I did a restore of the mailboxes from the prior night that should get me up and running.  I never had to restore Exchange on my Unitrends appliance.  My first couple attempts failed so I got on an online chat with a tech around 9PM.  He remoted into my machine and helped me get the restore going which of course involved a lot of waiting as it completes.  When the restore completed I remounted the mailbox database and refreshed my view, hoping to see all of my mailboxes intact.

You can imagine my feeling when I saw less mailboxes, dramatically less.  Instead of 56 mailboxes in a disconnected state, I had 7 now, meaning almost 100 mailboxes were gone.  The Unitrends tech again had no more answers, the back up restored correctly, the issue had to be something inside Exchange.  My brain was pretty much fried at this point.  The rollercoaster of fix and fail attempts was frustrating to say the least.  However I was in it for the long haul.  I broke it so I had to fix it.

So I did some more Google searching and found another Exchange powershell command that refreshes the database view “Clean-MailboxDatabase -Identity <database name>”  after running the command and refreshing my view in 2010 Exchange console I now had 105 mailboxes in the disconnected state.  I breathed my first sigh of relief in the last 12 hours.  I still had a lot of manual clicking and typing to do to reconnect each mailbox to the correct user account, one by one.  By the time I finished up it had rolled into Thursday morning.  I turned off the lights in my office around 12:15AM.

By the time I got home, showered and into bed it was approaching 1:30.  I had to get out the door as early as possible today in case more unexpected problems arose.  Luckily my phone has been pretty quiet all morning, meaning my crazy collection of fixes more or less worked.  It was one of those true tests of determination.  Being able to continue pushing forward through a forest of failure until you discover the path to success is a trait some people simply don’t possess.  It is one of the few good traits I have, I don’t give up easily.

So I called for repair of my leaking hose bib first thing yesterday.  I wound up calling Best Home Services, a company I used years ago to run an electric line for the pool heater.  They weren’t cheap back then but they did good work.

I was told their arrival window would be between 2-6pm.  I was pleasantly surprised when I got a call at 1:15 saying the tech was en route.  Someone arriving BEFORE their arrival window is as rare as a solar eclipse in SW Florida.  I got home a few minutes after the tech, named Shaine arrived.

I walked him over to the leaking fixture and explained to him the series of events.  When he looked at the leak he was pretty sure all he would need to do was put a new hose bib on.  He explained to me that bibs are normally sweated on (soldered) which I never knew.  I assumed it was threaded on.  It explained why I was unsuccessful when I tried to turn off the hose bib on the other side of the house a few weeks ago.  In retrospect I was lucky I didn’t crack that one.

I told him the amount of water inside seemed excessive for what looked to be a just steady drip.  When I showed him the sopping wet towels he was a bit surprised but still thought the bib was the culprit and not a crack in the pipe inside the wall.  He then gave me the estimate for the work which gave me an interesting choice.  He said to replace the hose bib would be $230 bucks but for $299 I could purchase a one year service contract which covers routine maintenance on your AC, electrical, and plumbing systems.  In addition it gets you 10% off repair work and waives the normal after hour and holiday premiums if I have a problem.  I did not call on Labor Day for that exact reason, I didn’t want to pay a premium for holiday work.  When he said he would replace the hose bib for free if I opted for the service contract it made the decision a no brainer.  The house is now 15 years old.  Throwing another $75 onto the bill for a year of free PM and savings on potential repairs was a good deal.

So Shaine got to work.  I did not watch the process of replacing the hose bib although I probably should have.  It would be good to add pipe sweating  to my bag of home repair tricks.  It didn’t take him very long.  When I went out to look at the repair I first thought he replaced the pipe and the bib as it was bright copper.  He said he just sanded down the pipe before soldering on the new bib.  The fitting and pipe looked bone dry which was encouraging.

Shaine said that he was very confident the problem was fixed but if there was any more water showing up after letting my mega fan run all night I should let them now.  I thanked him for his great service.  It was so nice to actually have a pleasant repair experience.  I could tell almost immediately that the leak had stopped.  The fan dried up the remaining water quickly and none flowed in to replace it which was a good feeling.  I let the fan run overnight just to be safe but tonight I should be able to put the room back together.  I was very glad I made the decision to not cut a hole in the drywall in the office.  It would have been just another unnecessary repair to make.

Last night I was under Katie’s truck, a 2005 Dodge Ram, after dark.  She had said it was driving weird and making some abnormal noises.  She had sent us a picture of the undercarriage.  It had what almost looked to be wet grass in a concentrated area.  I wanted to get a first hand look.  When I got under there with the flashlight I was even more confused.  The green substance was not grass, it was grease.  The fact that it was green is what confused me.  I later looked online I found that there is indeed green grease.  It is actually supposed to be a higher grade of grease compared to the black variety I was accustomed to.

The way it was on the undercarriage was weird, it almost looked like someone put the grease in a cake icing tube and squeezed, hard.  Through observation of the area that was coated and more research online it appears that the CV boot on that side has either a pinhole or small tear and centrifugal force while driving has expelled the grease.  The fact that it is making noise while driving means this has probably been the case for a little while.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the CV joint will need to be replaced.

We made a plan to have her drop off the truck at a garage she has used before, hoping they have a chance to look at it today.  We followed her in the Prius to make sure she made it to a Publix where she met up with her (ex) bf where he followed her to the garage.  She is using his car for now since he has a company truck to drive.

I am hoping one of the things we can talk Katie into is getting rid of the truck.  It is about as impractical of a vehicle as she could own right now.  It gets terrible gas mileage.  She said spent something insane like $600 in gas for it in the last month. For reference sake, we spent less than $400 to drive 6600 miles in the Prius last year on the road trip.

Her commute to work is even longer than mine and they used the Ram for a couple longer trips as well.  The thing is over 10 years old with about 115k on the odometer so repairs are going to be a more and more regular occurrence.  Plus the clear coat on the truck is starting to oxidize.  If she doesn’t dump it soon the exterior is going to really look like shit, making it harder to sell.  Katie said a few people had expressed interest in buying her truck.  Both Cindy and I told her she should take advantage of that interest.

I have felt very weak since I started the prednisone which I finished up last Friday.  At the gym my bench press numbers were the most anemic as I can recall in the last year.  After work I did some pull ups followed by another 20 minutes of rowing.  My pull up totals were 25% off my norm and after rowing I just felt wiped out in a pretty serious way.  When I weighed myself last night I was surprised to see I had lost 3-4 pounds, the opposite of what is supposed to happen on prednisone.  Weight gain is a common side effect.  Whatever is the ultimate cause, I hope the fog clears soon.

So I took off Thursday and Friday not only to give me a nice five day holiday weekend, it was also so I could drive Cindy up to the VA clinic on Thursday morning.  She was meeting a doctor to go over her MRI results from over a month ago.  Yes things move slowly at the VA.  Cindy had gotten a heads up that the woman she was meeting with was “not good” from a friend.

The doctor was probably in her 50’s and took good care of herself, looking fit and healthy for her age.  She started asking Cindy a number of questions about some of her symptoms.  When asked, Cindy would try to expand and give more detail about what has been going on.  Almost immediately the doctor took on a very impatient mindset, cutting Cindy off, just asking for numbers and dates.  Once again, similar to my recent experience, the doctor was being thrust into the role of a data entry clerk as she typed all of the info into the computer.

At times she took on an almost combative attitude, acting like everything was black and white when it comes to Cindy’s issues.  For example when Cindy said she had mercury poisoning, the doctor immediately insisted she didn’t.  When Cindy had her blood test for heavy metals it was at the very top end of normal range.  It was high enough that she got a call from our local health department to ensure her high levels weren’t from something environmental like a contaminated water supply.  So yes, technically Cindy’s number was not in the poisoned range but it was one tick away so obviously it wasn’t good.  Since Cindy stopped eating fish she got retested and the number had dropped significantly.

The doctor continued making proclamations about various things like her word was equivalent to Jesus.  “There is no such thing as medical marijuana” and “lifting weights is bad” were two that really stuck out to me.  Cindy was getting visibly upset from the attitude this doctor was taking towards her situation.  I was literally a few seconds away from making a scene and telling her it is inappropriate, unprofessional, and just plain wrong to not listen to her patient and instead cut her off repeatedly when trying to expand on symptoms.

It was almost as though the doctor sensed she had gone too far and that both Cindy and I had enough.  She started to soften her tone the rest of the exam.  She did a physical exam on Cindy testing a few baselines and went over the results of her MRI.  The exam and MRI didn’t confirm any dire diagnosis which was a good thing.  The doctor had some blood drawn to rule out more things, one of which could be B12 deficiency related, a common thing for people that do not regularly consume meat.  There were some other possibilities brought up that again have much less dire consequences which is good as well.  We left the VA feeling better about things but both feeling a bit amazed at the attitude this woman brought to the table.

We got a TON of rain from the storm that later turned out to be Hurricane Hermoine.  The property had standing water everywhere.  The instant swamp conditions brought in tons of birds by the dozen, all hoping to feast on whatever was in the water.  At one point I bet we had 100 ibis in our yard.  The two hawks that seem to have taken up residence around our place were around nearly constantly.  They too enjoy hunting in the water.  The chickens joined the party, caring less about the rain, roaming the yard all day looking for fresh bugs.

My Tacoma was at the dealership on Thursday, getting it’s 5000 mile service.  While it was there I asked they perform a TSB that addresses shifting issues with the truck which would cause it clunk into gear when shifting from reverse to drive randomly.  By the time we got back from Cape Coral the truck was done so the timing worked out well.  On the drive home the shifting of the Tacoma definitely felt better than it did previously.

On Friday Cindy was gone a good portion of the day.  I got work done around the house and got miles logged on my Ninebot One.  I had set a loose goal to crack the 100 mile mark over the weekend.  Below you will see the footage from my rides on Thursday and Friday.

On Friday I also changed the oil and filter on my Tacoma.  Wait, didn’t I just have it at the dealer?  Why yes I did but the dealer does not change the oil until 10,000 miles believe it or not.  With the new synthetic lubricants and engine design, the old 3000 mile oil change interval is just not needed.  Even so, I did not want to wait to 10K to have it done.  You may recall I actually swapped the oil in the truck after the first 1000 miles.

This time I was doing the oil and filter which made the job a little more involved.  The new Tacomas use a cartridge type filter now for some reason.  Instead of just replacing the entire filter, you remove an outer canister and then just replace the filter element that is housed inside.  You also have two O-rings to swap out.  In addition, to reach the oil filter, the skid plate on the bottom of the truck has to be removed.  So although in almost every way, the 2016 Tacoma has been better than the 99 Tacoma, ease of oil changes is not one of those things.  Since it was my first time replacing one of these types of filters I ran into a few snags but all in all it wasn’t bad.

Saturday morning was once again chore heavy.  One of the things that wound up on the list was trying to “fix” the outside hose connection.  It had one of those quick fit connectors on it that I used years ago when I used to water the property by hand.  Over time it started to leak which made noise and wasted water.  The hose that was attached to it was not in good shape either so I figured I would replace it as well.

So I headed over there with my large slip joint pliers to break loose the fitting that was very rusty and had not been touched in many years.  At first it did not want to budge so I pulled harder.  It then budged but I also immediately saw a drip develop on the feed pipe that was exposed from the side of the wall.  I had some small concern but I figured it would either stop or was just from the threaded hose connector being a little loose.  Later in the day when I noticed it still had not stopped I went to the hardware store and bought some heavy duty PVC cement as well as self sealing silicon tape.  After turning off the water to the house I used the combination of the two around the exposed portion of the feed pipe.  At first I thought I got it fixed but later saw it still was dripping, just closer to the wall. Oh well, I guess I just will have to live with the drip for now. (more later)

I also did a quick evening grass mowing session, wanting to take advantage of the brief break in the rain that allowed most areas to dry to the point where the ground was soggy but not submerged.  During the day I also built a landing in front of the steps of the chicken coop out of patio blocks.  That area had become a muddy mess from the all of the rain combined with the foot traffic of Cindy and I in and out of the coop.  The blocks gave us a stable and dry surface to step onto before ascending the steps which was good.

Saturday night we watched Zoolander 2 at home.  Cindy wasn’t thrilled about the rental when she saw the envelope but she had to admit it was funny after taking it in.  If you saw the original Zoolander you already know it’s all about stupid/silly, over the top humor.  It had me laughing out loud repeatedly so it deserves a B+ in my book.

On Sunday morning I again drug myself out of bed with the alarm, despite being stiff and sore from my pretty laborious Saturday.  I was again running solo and I again started at the track with nobody else around until somebody flew in.  That somebody was a bald eagle that landed on one of the light towers as I was completing my second lap around the track.  He seemed to be watching me as I went round and round.  In my head I used the majestic bird as a reason I needed to keep going.  He stayed there for the rest of the four mile run, refusing to vacate even when a a couple of noisy quaker parrots were diving at him.  It was very cool to have an eagle on site.

For the second week in a row I surprised myself with the numbers on the GPS.  Last week my injuries had me somewhat limping, causing me to use a shorter stride.  I was amazed that my overall pace last week was better than when I was running normally.  This week I was less injured but again tried sticking with a shorter stride but faster foot cadence.  Again my numbers were surprising, averaging 9:00 miles for the run, a pace I have not maintained for a very long time.  Using a shorter stride actually is a good thing for someone with bad wheels like me.  It keeps my feet more under me when they hit the pavement, which causes less trauma to my knees than when I try to use a long, loping stride.  I guess I will stick with it and see how things progress.  Today I felt very minimal physical repercussions from the run.

Shortly after I got home Cindy and I headed out for a ride on the Minipros.  We covered 6 miles, the farthest Cindy has ever logged on her bot.  We also stopped in at the gym she has been working at where I got to meet the owner who seemed like a nice guy.  The gym is good looking and filled with brand new equipment.  Now all they need is to get the word out.

I brought the wheel with as well.  I had Cindy follow me on the Minipro as I rode the EUC to get some 3rd person perspective video, something I have very little of.  It was interesting to see my form from a distance.   For the most part I look like I know what I am doing.

I actually went out on the wheel a second time later in the afternoon.  I was getting close to my 100 mile goal.  By the time I finished the odometer on my Ninebot One read 98.5 miles.

This morning I woke up a bit frustrated.  It felt hard to believe that I was already on the last day of my mini-vacation.  It felt like I hadn’t gotten to relax as much as I had hoped, despite logging a lot of wheel time.  I started off with a 20 minute session on the Concept 2 rower.  It was the first time I got on the rower since we bought it from Bill.  I purchased a data logger card so Cindy and I will have running totals of just how many meters we pulled.  I tacked 4300 meters plus onto my total during the 20 minutes, a decent start.

Mid-morning I decided I wanted to head to Ave Maria with the wheel to cross the 100 mile mark.  The town is a perfect spot for PTV riding with wide sidewalks that lead all around the huge town area.  I put in about five and as half miles during the ride which put me well past the century mark overall.  It was a nice little accomplishment for me and something that a month or so ago was an impossibility.

Later today Cindy was in the office and I heard her say “Uh, Shawn…” in a tone that never means anything good.  She said the floor by her desk, which sits along the same outside wall as the hose connection, was soaked.  I instantly knew the cause and went outside to rip off the silicon tape.  My first theory was the tape job funneled the dripping water backwards toward the hole in the wall which in turn pooled inside, soaking the rug.  However once we ran the carpet cleaner over the rug the amount of water it sucked out seemed like way too much to be caused by a small drip over two days of time.

We pulled Cindy’s desk away from the wall and I pulled the still soaked carpet up.  At first I had the small fan in our bedroom on the floor to help dry things up.  I then realized the monster fan that is used to inflate the GMT arch moved a ton more air so I brought it in and hooked it up.

I was struggling with a plan of action.  At first I was thinking about cutting a hole in the drywall more or less in the area where the hose is on the outside but didn’t.  Even if I did see the pipe, I was going to let a real plumber fix it so I would rather he make the cut, if necessary, instead of me.  I then climbed in the oven hot attic, hoping there may be some sort of shut off on the line so I could cut water to the hose without killing it for the rest of the house.  I was unsuccessful with finding one.

So my plan for now is to let this fan blow dry the shit out of that corner and only turn on the water to the house on an as needed basis to minimize the leak.  At first I thought the leak was just from the exposed portion of the hose pipe but with as much water as we saw I am worried that there is also a crack inside the wall.  Fixing it may involve knocking a hole in the outside wall, the drywall, or both.  Of course I feel frustrated that if I just left that hose fitting alone I would not have to be dealing with this shit.

The Eagles made a surprise move and traded Sam Bradford to the Vikings who lost their starter to a horrible knee injury.  The trade got the Eagles back some draft picks they gave away securing Carson Wentz.  I’m not sad to see Sam go.  He was mediocre at best last year and the hissy fit he threw when Wentz was drafted was a big turn off.  The move means we will see Wentz as the day one starter which is exciting in one way but disappointing in another as it likely means the fan base will be in for a rebuilding year more than likely.

Cindy’s daughter was over quite a bit this weekend.  There is the possibility she may be moving in for an interim basis as she tries to exit a relationship with her longtime boyfriend that has not been great for quite awhile.  Although it obviously changes our living arrangements considerably, if it gets Katie on a path that leads to more happiness down the road it will be worth it in the long run.  She is too young to have her options limited.

I figured a long 5 day weekend needed to be recapped now instead of later to conserve brain cells.  The main reason I took Thursday and Friday off was Cindy needed a ride to the Cape Coral VA hospital because she was having a MRI done.  She was going to take a valium to ease some of the anxiety the MRI process can cause so with me being there we could head home without first waiting for the valium to wear off.

I brought my Warcraft book and also had a Kindle version of Lenny Dykstra’s book I could read.  Instead I wound up playing Hearthstone the couple hours I was waiting while watching the Buzzr channel which is nothing but old game shows.  I forgot just how much I enjoyed shows like Match Game and Family Feud in my younger days.

Cindy emerged from her procedure intact and only a little fuzzy from the valium.  By the time we got home it was mid-afternoon.  Cindy was really tired and tried to nap.  I putzed around the house doing a few things, including removing the dealer emblem from the back of my Tacoma.

I designated Friday as the day to get the rain shelter built on the side of the house over the water equipment.  I have had most of the raw materials to do the project in the shed for a couple of weeks and I was ready to get it out of the way.  I got outside relatively early.  I had some grand delusion that I would have most of the shelter done before the heat of the day set in.  Yea, right.

It quickly became an all day affair with me laboring away in 90+ degree/ 90% humidity which is just pure misery.  Of course I had to go to Home Depot to grab some extra stuff I hadn’t anticipated which is nearly always the case with my home improvement projects.  At least it gave me a reason to take Sadie with.  Home Depot has quickly become one of her favorite places since we discovered it was dog friendly.

I was working on the shelter until almost 5PM and by the time clean up began my ass was dragging big time.  Despite drinking throughout the day I felt majorly dehydrated and exhausted.  Thanks to Cindy’s help I got the frame in place and stained.  The only thing that remained was attaching the roof panels but I needed some additional parts to make that happen so it was going to have to wait until Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.

Cindy had spent a good portion of Thursday evening and Friday working on her costume for Supercon.  She had decided late in the week she was going to go as Tracer, one of the heroes from Overwatch.  Of course the easiest thing to do when it comes to costumes is to simply buy one.  The problem with that is then you look just like everyone else that just bought one.

Cindy has always been good, very good actually at making costumes by hand.  She has an uncanny knack to just be able to take a bunch of raw materials and make very cool costumes out of it.  She uses a similar process in costume making as I do with home projects, start with a general idea and tweak it as you go.

She was stressing out late Friday, not thinking she was going to be able to get t all done.  She actually did not get it all done Friday, she did the finishing work Saturday morning, right up until the time we were heading out for Florida Supercon in Miami.  I opted to not do any special costume, declaring my Under Armour Spiderman shirt as festive enough.

We took the Prius across state opting for gas savings over the more comfortable cruising the 2016 Tacoma offers.  The drive went relatively smooth until we ran into some pretty serious traffic coming into Miami which is normal.  Our plan was to park in a garage that was in between our hotel and the convention center, both within walking distance.  The walk to Supercon was a few blocks which didn’t feel great in the heat and humidity.  We could tell we were getting close as we saw more and more people in costume going the same direction.

Cindy had planned for us to go to Supercon for a bit and then go back to the hotel for her to do her costume, hair and make up in the afternoon.  Once we saw so many people already dressed up and the long security line we realized it may have been better for us to be in full costume from the start instead of having to come, go and come back again.  It was our first time at an event like this so we had much to learn.

Like I mentioned the security line to get in was very long but luckily they had a lot of staff there so the line moved quick.  The time went quickly since everywhere you turned there was someone in an interesting or funny costume to look at.  It didn’t take long till I regretted not doing any sort of more formal costume.

I had never been inside the Miami Convention Center before.  I was impressed at how big it was.  Once we got inside the main show floor it was just wall to wall exhibits and people.  It was a nerd’s fantasy without a doubt.  We met up with our friend Kim and her two kids who also were over from Naples, we spent a good chunk of our time at the con with them.

Walking around was just amazing with one amazing visual after another.  It sort of reminded me of how I feel when I go to Vegas but in a different way.  If you wanted to, you could easily spend a few paychecks on merchandise.  They had anything and everything you could imagine.  Luckily I am not much of a collector so I didn’t buy anything.

You could also easily spend a small fortune if you were interested in getting an autograph or a photo with the diverse cast of B and C list celebrities that were there.  It seemed like the absolute minimum you would spend to get anyone’s autograph was $25 and another $10 if you wanted to throw a picture of you with the person as well.  The whole thing was a bit of a turn off to me although you were allowed to at least walk up and say hi to any of them without opening up your wallet.

They had two levels of celebrities there.  The upper tier was against one of the walls where each person had a roped off waiting area.  The not so famous people were plopped behind normal tables where you could just walk up to them.  I thought it was funny that even though this was “Supercon”, the array of celebrities were definitely not just from the super hero/comic book realm.  There were WWE Wrestlers and even cast members of Sesame Street signing autographs.

Ironically the one autograph we actually paid for was for Emilio Delgado from Sesame Street.   He was extremely friendly and down to earth.  He seemed to be a genuinely nice man.  It was amazing that the guy has been on Sesame Street  his entire adult life.  I clearly recall watching him on the show as a kid helping me learn my abc’s and 123’s.

The most interesting celebrity sighting for me was Henry Winkler, aka. The Fonz from Happy Days, one of my favorite shows growing up.  Henry looked about as far away from his famous character as you could imagine.  He is old, overweight and was wearing plaid pants with a pink untucked oxford.  I don’t think Henry has ever come out as being openly gay for whatever reason but it seemed pretty obvious to me that is the case.  He was nice enough to come out and greet people waiting in line and allowing people to take his picture without paying for it.

Cindy had a funny conversation with Bruce Boxleitner who she evidently met randomly when she was in high school.  Cindy thought he was the bomb and evidently gave him a flower way back when.  Cindy got red in the face as she told the story and Bruce laughed out loud as she told it.  It was pretty funny.  He is old now too.

So we decided it was time for Cindy to put her costume on.  We walked first to the parking garage to grab our stuff and then a few more blocks to get to our hotel.  It was admittedly a pain in the ass to walk there and we had to take a detour into a back alley due to construction that made Cindy nervous.

During check in I found it annoying that even though our room was supposed to be “paid in full” already, they tack on another 20 buck resort fee.  WTF, since when does PAID IN FULL not mean paid in full.  Our reward for the resort fee was two vouchers, one for a complimentary drink that we never used and another for the continental breakfast, yippee.

The room was nothing spectacular but fine for our needs.  While I laid on the bed and chilled out Cindy began the long process of doing her hair and make up for her Tracer costume.  Even though she estimated earlier it would take her 30 minutes to get ready I knew it would take much longer based on experience.  It wound up taking close to 3 times that. We thought it would be interesting to have the GoPro rolling to document the transformation.  I took the 75-80 minutes of video and condensed it down to around 14 minutes through the magic of editing.  Check it out if you have time.

The combo of the make up and outfit really made for a convincing visual.  The fact that we saw no other Tracer’s earlier made me think Cindy was going to get a lot of picture requests.  My prediction turned out to be very true.  To get back to the convention center we decided to dip our toe into the world of Uber, something we never tried before.  We figured walking 6 or 7 blocks with Cindy in full make up and costume would have sort of sucked.  Plus we were handed a card at the center to get an Uber ride for free so it made sense.

Being an Uber virgin I had no idea just how efficient it was.  After installing the app and requesting a ride we literally had a car waiting for us outside in a couple minutes.  We didn’t expect it to be quite so fast and had to haul ass downstairs to the lobby.  Just as we were walking out my phone rang with a call from the driver letting us know she was there, wow.  Now one of the big perks you hear about Uber is you don’t tip.  Even though I knew that, old habits die hard and I pulled the few singles I had in my wallet and gave it to the driver.  I was amazed at just how smooth, efficient and clean the service is. It was so impressive that I suggested to Cindy she should look into doing part time Uber back home.  Her personality and schedule would be a great fit for it.

So once we got to the convention center it took absolutely no time until the fruit of Cindy’s labor became apparent with people asking to take their picture with her.  Her costume was pretty damn spectacular.  We didn’t keep official count but I estimate she had no fewer than 50-75 people that asked to take their picture with her.  There were some other people dressed up as Overwatch characters that made for some good photo ops as well.

I was mostly a passive part of the experience and was happy to be so.  This was Cindy in her element, with a smile and happy words to share with anyone that wanted a picture.  She said her face literally hurt from smiling so much by the end of the night.  It was pretty crazy but in a good way.

We had an unfortunate incident during the afternoon when they evacuated the building.  Evidently a smoke alarm was tripped from something other than a fire. It did give us a chance for Cindy to get a funny picture with a guy dressed as one of the crazy guys from Mad Max.  We were only outside for maybe 15 minutes before the all clear was sounded and were allowed back inside.

Cindy posed for a 3d rendering of herself that was set up.  They basically take your picture from something like 40 cameras simultaneously and can stitch it into a 3d model that you actually have produced into a statue.  Cindy got the GIF version of it for free.

A short young girl approached Cindy and asked if she could take her picture as she was apparently a Tracer/Overwatch fan.  Cindy quickly realized it was Briana Hildebrand who was in Deadpool.  She was one of the celebrities at the show.  We thought it was kind of awesome she asked to take a pic of Cindy.

We spent the majority of the rest of the afternoon and evening just walking around and taking everything in between picture requests of Cindy.  It was just fun and the entire building was filled with a very positive energy.

The only formal thing we did was attend the costume contest (that Cindy should have entered)  It was not as much fun as I had hoped.  The theater was packed and I was seated next to a guy that had a definite creepy vibe.  He was easily in his 50’s but had his Nintendo 3DS in hand and was playing some stupid looking game that seemed targeted at 5 year olds for a good portion of the show.  He also seemed to clap the loudest for the costume contest participants dressed as or played by young girls.  I felt an repeated urge to deliver a sharp blow with my left elbow to his nose.

The contest was too long, running over two hours.  The majority of the participants were dressed as characters from games, shows, or comics that Cindy and I had no familiarity with.  Plus we were too far away from the stage to get a great view of anything.  I had a much better time checking out the costumes as we walked around the con.

By the time we got out of the costume show it was late, after 9:30.  The main exhibit area was closed at that point but we went upstairs were the video games were set up to hang out a little bit with the diehards before heading out.  We met so many great people during the Supercon that it actually made me eager to experience it again.  Like I said, just seeing Cindy so happy was worth the price of admission to me. We said goodbye to Kim and her kids before hailing yet another Uber to get us back to the hotel.  We were exhausted but glad we made the effort to get there.  It was something neither of us experienced before.

On Sunday morning we headed out after our decent continental breakfast. We hailed our third Uber in two days to run us back to the parking garage instead of us lugging the stuff.  I felt a bit lazy doing it this time but it had rained earlier and we didn’t want to get caught in the rain again while hauling our stuff.  After fueling up with some DD coffee we headed back across Alligator Alley towards home.  The drive was without incident.  Our Sunday once we got home was filled with mostly chores associated with returning from vacation, even short ones.  We always have anxiety about the chickens well being when we aren’t home.  I also worked on getting the long video of Cindy’s Tracer transformation ripped which took quite awhile.

Sunday night we watched my latest Netflix dvd, Creed, a movie we wanted to see in the theater.  I thought it was good but was curious why it wasn’t called Rocky 6.  Sure Stallone isn’t the fighter in this movie but I think the film totally revolved around him.  I thought he did a really good job and I liked the movie overall, regardless of how improbable the outcomes were. A-

This morning I knew I had the rain shelter project foremost on my plate.  Once again I hoped to be able to knock it out early and again I ran into complications that made that not happen.  I underestimated the amount of roofing screws I would need to attach the panels and had to go back to Home Depot for the third time during my extended weekend to get what I needed.  I finally got the project finished up around lunch time and had a nice hard downpour to test it with later in the afternoon.  Just as I hoped, the shelter kept the equipment dry.  When the sun came back out I verified the temperature under there felt a ton more bearable than when the bare sun is beating on you.

If you would like to see the rain shelter install process chopped down to a 24 minute time capsule, look below.

I also had a small side repair that was annoying me.  The pool filter has had a small leak for quite awhile.  In an attempt to stop it I bought a new lock ring and O ring for it.  When I installed both I was rewarded with a leak that was worse than before.  I then got some O ring lubricant, hoping that would stop the leak.  It slowed it down somewhat but it was still dripping.  I decided I would attach the top of the canister filter with it turned about 90 degrees from it’s normal front facing orientation.  That simple change addressed the drip.  Water no longer was running down the side.  It’s an unexpected simple fix but a fix is a fix in my book.

The rest of my day has been consumed with editing the rain shelter video you see above as well as writing this blog entry which has been fueled by three Miller Lites.  Yea sure I wish I had a couple more days where I had less to do but that always seems to be the case.  It was the first time in close to a decade that my 4th of July didn’t start off with timing a very hectic, hot, and humid 5K for the running club.  I can’t say I missed the experience even a little bit.

Friday I was really hoping to not have the after hours work take a lot of after hours time since it was only a small office that was being worked on.  Unfortunately we once again ran into a problem that stretched things out longer than it should have,  I wound up not getting out of there until after 7.

On Saturday morning I was outside shortly after 8am with the weed whacker in hand.  The yard had not been whacked in at least 3 weeks and was looking shaggy.  With the return of more regular rain I am going to have to get out there more often.  The heat and humidity knob has been turned back into the uncomfortable area where it will likely stay until October, yay. After whacking I jumped in the pool for a splashy splash session for Sadie which she greatly appreciated.

We then headed out for errands including a stop at Rural King and Sam’s.  At Rural King we say the running club equipment manager Bill.  It was the first time I saw him since I timed my last race.  Bill might be the hardest working human being I know.  Even though I don’t miss most aspects of timing events for the running club, being able to work with guys like Bill is one of the things I do miss.

We hit Sam’s on the way back.  With the sale of the Tacoma I was now seriously looking to pull the trigger on a replacement 4K tv.  During the week I was doing research and had established if I wanted to continue my upward growth of screen real estate I was going to have to pay in the neighborhood of $3400-$3500 which would be the most I ever paid for a set although when you adjust for inflation it might be in the same ball park as my 61 inch Sony projection set we bought when the house was new.

That was a lot of money for a tv but I had almost mentally committed myself to that just being the way it was, like I had no choice in the matter.  I had a 73 inch screen now so I HAD to go bigger.  Well Sam’s didn’t have a lot of 75 inch models but we did see a 70 inch LG 4K set that we looked at.  The picture looked sweet, even if it was 3 inches shorter diagonally.  We have had a LG set in the bedroom for over a couple years and have been very happy with it.  However the thing that really got my wheels turning was the price differential.  The LG was an $1800 set, almost half the price of a 75 inch Samsung or Sony (Samsung doesnt appear to make 4K 70 inch sets).  To pay $1700 for an extra 5 inches of screen area jolted me out of my MUST HAVE BIGGER trance.  I did not act at that point but it planted a seed.

We also went to the jewelry counter.  Cindy and I had been talking loosely about marriage for a long time and as a result Cindy has been looking at rings here and there.  One of the places she has been looking is at Sam’s who actually has a pretty substantial jewelry section, much bigger than Costco.  Randomly Cindy had sent me pictures of various rings she saw there she liked over the last couple months. We had even looked at rings online at places like Amazon but the idea of buying a ring sight unseen seemed risky.

Now my initial reaction when she told me she was looking at rings at Sam’s was negative.  I assumed they were not good rings as though they were a Wal-mart item even though Sam’s sells a lot more high end, high quality stuff.  Well when Cindy showed me the rings in person the stigma faded.  Not only were they good looking rings, they were certified diamonds and I could add an extended seven year warranty for a very reasonable price.  The buying power of a warehouse chain results in better pricing of all things, including jewelry.

Cindy showed me several she had liked.  Of course she wanted a beautiful ring but it was most important to her it was comfortable.  After putting on 4-5 rings she liked we finally agreed on one.  We took an unconventional but practical approach and just bought the ring on the spot.  Cindy did say that she wouldn’t wear the ring until I asked her in a more conventional manner.  So the ring remained in it’s box and bag on the drive home despite Cindy’s excitement to wear it.  I told her repeatedly she can just wear it but she was adamant that I needed to propose officially which I guess I could understand.  After two previous marriages my sense of formality about the process was not a priority for me.

When we got home I did some more quick research and thinking about my TV options.  I quick search on Amazon showed the LG set I saw at Sam’s had a 4+ stars rating which I put a lot of weight into.  Costco has the same set which would mean I would get a free 2nd year of warranty coverage but I would have to pay for it with my Costco American Express card instead of my Amazon Rewards Visa that I wanted to pay with for points.  Although I wouldn’t get a free year of warranty coverage Sam’s has very inexpensive extended warranties, I could tack on five years of coverage for a crazy cheap 99 bucks.  As comparison a place like Best Buy or HH Gregg will charge you 400 bucks or more for equivalent coverage.

So I made a decision I was going to just go with the LG set.  The savings versus size loss equation was just too heavy on the savings side.  I told Cindy I wanted to go back to Sam’s and get it.  We piled back in the Tacoma and headed out.  I brought the GoPro with and mounted it in the Tacoma, I told Cindy I wanted to vlog about the tv purchase.  Unbeknownst to her I also had the ring in the center console.

My plan was to officially propose to her on the way. Now most people would think this was a dumb idea but we aren’t most people.  Cindy actually had joked about the idea on the drive home earlier.   Her joke was about to become our reality.  So we started talking about the new tv purchase along with other random topics, none of which had to do with the ring.  I then finally made an awkward transition into the proposal as I was driving 55mph+ on Immokalee Road.

Despite us talking about it earlier Cindy seemed surprised by my actions.  The proposal was definitely the farthest thing from textbook as you could imagine since I made sure my eyes stayed on the road most of the time.  However I think somehow the sentiment and genuine feelings still were evident despite the unconventional delivery method.   Despite the lack of secrecy regarding the ring Cindy was still very excited and happy to be able to wear it officially.

It’s funny how the whole thing sort of organically happened.  I did not go into the weekend with any specific thoughts or plans about buying rings or getting engaged.  The circumstances just seemed to align themselves.  We have more or less lived as a married couple for more than a couple years so making it official just wasn’t as stressful as you would normally think.

So now the tv purchase took on a more celebratory aura.  We wasted no time grabbing a flat bed and loading the big LG set onto it as well as one of the extended warranty cardboard placeholders.  Checking out with my wallet being an extra $1500 heavier felt satisfying.  I was glad I reexamined my tv priorities.  The enormous box actually fit cleanly on it’s side in between the wheel wells of the Tacoma.  I think the bed of the truck is slightly larger than what I was accustomed to in the 99 as well.

Of course when I got home I dug straight into tv set up.  Cindy helped me set the 73 inch Mitsubishi in the dining room and place the slightly smaller LG set in it’s place.  Despite it’s reduced dimensions it fit the entertainment nook well, I only had maybe an inch or so extra space on either side.  Setting up the set went fine until it came time to connect it to my Yamaha surround sound.  I first tried to do so with a spare optical audio cable I had sitting around for awhile.  When I couldn’t get that to work I tried using the ARC HDMI port and had limited success.

The most straightforward way was to use the optical audio cable.  The cable I had did not seem to fit well on either the tv or Yamaha side.  I wondered if the cable was just bad so I headed back out one final time to grab a new optical cable at Wal-mart.  When I got it home I realized the only thing wrong with the old cable was my stupidity.  The optical cables have a small protective boot on either end.  I was trying to insert the cable with that boot still in place.  Once I pulled the boots off the cable snapped in place perfectly and sound started flowing from the speakers, sigh….

We watched a movie on the new set Saturday night and the picture looked great.  The movie was called Knock Knock, starring Keanu Reeves sporting quite the dad bod.  It was one of the more bizarre movies I have seen recently and had me laughing out loud during some scenes that I think were supposed to be dramatic.  Keanu meets up with two chicks that take crazy to an entirely new level.  If you like your movies to have you saying “What the fck?” a lot, be sure to rent it.  Overall I can only give it a B rating but really, on pure entertainment it could be rated higher.

On Sunday morning Cindy and I wanted to beat the now increasingly oppressive heat by getting out for our run earlier.  We left the house around 7:15.  We put in another 5k+ at the nearby track.  The pace according to Cindy’s gps was 15 seconds a mile slower than last week but it didn’t feel that way, perhaps from the heat.

When we got back I made arrangements to take Sadie back to Ali’s later in the morning with the 73 inch Mitsubishi in tow.  I had asked Ali awhile back that if/when I got around to getting a new TV if she wanted the 73 incher.  She said sure since her 48 inch or so LCD tv is really not big enough for the room she has.  They sit a good 15 feet away from the tv location.

So the Tacoma got it’s first real world use as we loaded the large tv into the bed and I secured it with my ratchet straps.  We covered it with the mylar looking bag the new tv came in.  In addition I had the empty chlorine jugs in the bed which needed to be refilled.  The new rubber bed mat really is awesome, eliminating the ice rink sliding that goes on if stuff is just on the composite plastic bed.

Ali’s boyfriend helped me carefully carry the tv into her place.  Set up had a couple hiccups but nothing serious.  The 73 inch of screen fit that space so much better and made viewing from across the room much, much easier.  Ali and her boyfriend thanked us for the tv.  I was happy that it would be repurposed and continue to entertain them for the foreseeable future.  It has been a great set for me.

Before heading home we made stops at Costco and Dick’s Sporting Goods.  At Costco we scored two sets of seat covers that wrapped the seat instead of just laying on top of them.  I had seen them when I shopped earlier in the week.  In normal Costco fashion, the check out experience was backlogged and miserable.

At Dick’s we picked up an olympic style curl bar that Cindy intends to use for a lot more than curling.  It’s shorter length makes it much more practical in her small “shed gym” she has laid out.

On Sunday afternoon I undertook my monitor repair project.  My hope was to somehow take parts out of a damaged monitor I bought on Ebay for 50 bucks to get my just out of warranty monitor working again.  I had never dug into a monitor before so I figured if nothing else it would be a learning experience. It was.

I was surprised just how little was inside the monitor as far as circuit boards go.  I first tried swapping out the small circuit board that power and video connections connect to.  When that made no difference the surgery became much more expansive.

If you want the full play by play feel free to watch the video I shot during the process.  In the end I basically pulled the cracked screen out of the Ebay monitor and inserted the uncracked screen from my monitor in it’s place.  The way I got to that point was a twisting path of confusion but all I know is it works.  My Frankensteined monitor works well. The only flaw is the top right corner has a bright spot that I hardly even notice since I assigned it as my secondary screen.

Sunday night we had our last regular season Tarpons game to attend.  Cindy thought it would be appropriate to make the official social media declaration about the proposal then since it all started there when Cindy went with me to a Tarpons game more than 3 years ago.  We took a selfie in our empty section of the arena to celebrate.

The game was yet another boring blow out as every home game has been this year with the Tarpons winning 70-6.  There will be at least one home play off game although the disorganized league doesn’t really know who they will play at this point.  All I hope is we get to see at least one competitive game this year.

Last night I was doing more tweaking after I got home.  During the day I had ordered an iHome smart outlet based on a recommendation from my buddy Joe.  I pulled the new WeMo switch I was trying to get to work with the coop door and brought it inside.  I reconfigured it to work with the fan we have in the bedroom for white noise.  “Alexa, turn on the fan” is now a thing.

I also did some more work on the old computer I got from my accountant, getting it ready to give to Ali.  I set up the system in the hobby room, connecting it to the 27 inch monitor I have on the top shelf.  It actually wasn’t a bad arrangement, as long as I was standing up and used the top of the tower as a mouse pad.

So all of the feedback I have given about the new Tacoma has been overwhelmingly positive.  Cindy and I both love the truck however there is one shortcoming that really makes no sense to me.  The TRD and above models include the smart key system which uses rfid proximity tech to allow you to simply walk up to a door and have it unlock without having to press an unlock button on your remote.  It isn’t new tech, my old 2007 Camry Hybrid and our 2007 Prius both have it.  It also allows you to lock the door by simply pressing a button on the door handle.  It’s very convenient.

So I was excited that my new Tacoma had the same tech.  With my 99 I still have been old schooling it, inserting the key into the lock to open the door.  I was confused when I realized Toyota only installed the tech on the driver side door in the 2016 Tacoma.  I am unable to understand the reasoning behind this since my nearly decade old Toyotas had it on both doors.  Is it a cost saving measure?  Is there some sort of technical challenge doing this on a truck?  I doubt it, I think it was just a dumb oversight.

I know in the way I use a vehicle quite often I first go to the passenger side to load up whatever stuff I may be lugging with me.  When I have the Prius it doesn’t matter how full my hands are, I can just reach for the passenger door and it unlocks the vehicle.  With the Tacoma I have to try to fish the remote out of the pocket to accomplish the same thing.  Sure it is a very minor thing but still makes no sense to me why they would do it this way. Oh well.

I forgot to mention the other night I had a bizarre dream.  It was almost like I was back in my Weis Market meat cutter days. I was processing chicken but they were not normal cleaned and gutted chickens, they were small and intact, almost like chicks that were a month or two old.  They were in a cardboard box packed with ice.

So I pulled some out and was ready to start the cleaning process.  All of a sudden I started to see movement, the chickens were alive!  They slowly opened their eyes and started to move more.  Although I don’t recall the details of how it came to be the next part  of the dream was me at home with once frozen chicks grown into full size chickens roaming the yard, happy as chickens can be.  I assume I quit the job.