Category Fixing Stuff

I took the new Tacoma to work yesterday,  Once again I had the GoPro mounted and used it to vlog whatever came to mind.  I was surprised when I totaled up the footage at the end of the day and saw it was over 20 minutes long.  In normal conversations I will typically tap out much quicker.  For some reason I am able to speak to a camera longer. I cover a variety of unrelated subjects you may or may not find interesting.  You can see the latest episode here.

Last night I was frustrated working on the new computers for my accountants.  I had advised them to buy two additional SSD drives that I would install to create a RAID 1 software array for redundancy.  Although I never used Windows to do RAID before (always used hardware), the process appeared to be pretty easy.

After attaching the second drive I tried to mirror the original drive to it.  Well Windows 10 would not allow the mirror to be created.   Without getting into a long technical explanation, basically the way HP has the original drive set up it won’t allow for a software mirror to be created.  So my option would be to blow away the factory Windows 10 install and start from scratch.  I don’t like that option.  I could still install the second drives which could be used for daily image back ups but it doesn’t offer the same redundancy as RAID 1. They could also return the drives but since I already opened one of them I don’t know how returnable they are.  I spent a LOT of time trying to make it work, unsuccessfully.

This weekend will busy as always.  Saturday morning I am taking the new computers to my accountants home to get them migrated.  I’d like to get the 99 Tacoma sale prep work done.  We also would like to get out to see the new Captain America movie.  I am also picking up Sadie on my way home tonight for a visit.

Mother’s day is a different sort of holiday for me since my mom passed away.  I hope to not focus on it and instead make sure Cindy has a great day.

So even though we had some torrential rain during the afternoon yesterday I wanted to take advantage of a small break in the precipitation to look at the ground on the old Tacoma.  The driveway was still wet so I already accepted my back was going to get wet.  When it started to rain rather heavily 10 minutes into the work the rest of me got equally wet.

So in order to find the ground I had to remove the two piece skid plate from beneath the engine compartment.  Of course these parts were quite dirty/oily and that dirt quickly spread to various parts of my upper body.  Once the plates were off it was easy to locate the negative ground, it was right next to the oil filter.  This seemed like a less than ideal place for it since filter changes always resulted in oil sort of coating that area.  As you would imagine there was a lot of sludge and grime on the grounding bolt.

I unbolted the ground and cleaned the bolt, the wire terminal, and the grounding point on the engine block with degreaser and wiped them off with shop towels.  Putting everything back together was a bit of a pain in the ass and made more annoying by the rain pelting the portion of my body hanging out from under the truck.  A quick turn of the key verified the truck still started.  I now feel I fulfilled my self put responsibility to make sure the issue is taken care of as much as I could.

I hopped in for an early shower to get the grime off.  After dinner I had a bunch of things going on simultaneously.  I received two new computers that are for my accountants that live in Fort Myers.  I am going to be installing the systems for them but wanted to do some prep work at home before I go to their home to do the migration.  They have been having big problems with one of their systems for the last few months which is terrible timing since it has been the heart of their busy tax season.  Somehow I need to find the time to get up there to swap out the systems soon.

Warning, tech talk  to follow. In addition I was doing remote work at the office, upgrading our internal instant message platform and upgrading the operating system on our main domain controller from Windows Server 2008R2 to Windows Server 2012R2.  I initiated the upgrade via a Teamviewer session to my workstation at work that in turn was connected to the server initially by a remote desktop session.  When I tried to start the upgrade it would not continue via RDP since it saw the console session as being active.  I had to disconnect and connect to the console via VNC and restarted the upgrade.

So during the upgrade I lost connectivity to the server since the upgrade requires a couple reboots.  I also was unable to connect via RDP. I was worried that the upgrade was stuck on a screen that required some sort of question to be answered.  I had one other way to connect, our multi-system keyboard monitor switch that is connected to the network.   I first tried using the APC application to view the screen but it would not connect.  I then tried to connect via browser.   It began to start to launch the Java viewing app but would not complete when Java security settings killed it.  The switch is probably at least 10 years old at this point so the java applet does not meet the minimum requirements modern day browsers require.  Even if I added the site to the security exception list in Java it would not allow it to run.  Mother F…

I am certainly far from a technical genius.  I don’t have an encyclopedic memory or a comprehensive understanding of all things IT.  What I do possess are good trouble shooting skills and resourcefulness.  So when I hit what at first seemed like a java dead end I came up with one more path to get to my goal.  I remembered I had Virtual PC with an XP mode virtual machine set up.  I found it and started it up.  It had not been fired up literally in years.  Once I got it up and running I opened the IE8 browser and tried to connect to the KVM switch.  It complained no version of Java was installed.

I then had to find an old version of java to install that did not have the same stringent security requirements modern java does.  After some searching, being careful to avoid the various trap web sites, I found a 3 year old version of java which I downloaded and installed onto my virtual XP machine.  After doing so I finally was able to successfully connect to my KVM switch over the network and gain access to the domain controller.   It took a long and twisting route to get there but I finally navigated the way.

For the first time this week I brought my new Tacoma to work.  I had the GoPro along which I used to shoot another vlog entry which I’ll post later tonight.  In the vlog’s I try to speak about subjects not necessarily in step with whatever my blog topic of the day is.  I don’t know how good/bad these videos are and to be honest it isn’t a big concern of mine.  It helps me work on my off the cuff speaking which without a doubt is a big weakness of mine so I will keep throwing them out there.

I downloaded the latest game from Blizzard, the company that has entertained me for over  two decades with games like Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. The latest title is called Overwatch and is a first person shooter, something new for Blizzard.  I used to be a HUGE FPS guy.  I cut my adult gaming teeth on games like Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, and Call of Duty on the PC.  I was never great at the games, my twitch reaction just was never quick enough to compete against high level players but I enjoyed the genre nonetheless.

Eventually that type of game faded from the forefront of my gaming tastes with World of Warcraft dominating most of my allocated gaming time the last 10 years or so.  Well Overwatch might be a reason for me to jump back into the FPS world.  Up until yesterday the game was in closed beta with access only being given to a limited pool of players.  They now have a brief open beta period where anyone can play for free till the retail game is released later this month.

A couple of the podcasts I listen to have hosts that have played extensively in the beta and they have been saying how fantastic the game was.  So although I was quite busy last night I took the time to download the game and play briefly through the tutorial.  The visuals and fluidity of the game are impressive as hell.  I didn’t have time to do more than scratch the surface otherwise, only playing through a brief tutorial.  I hope to get a chance to dig in deeper before the open beta expires so I can decide if I want to lay out 60 bucks for the final game.

So I had a big agenda already for the weekend, hoping to get a number of new Tacoma accessories installed as well as completing the garage reorganization.  When Cindy reported starting problems with the 99 Tacoma late in the week I asked her to watch the video I did regarding starter replacement back in 2012, asking her if it sounded like that.  Basically she turned the key a couple times and got clicks but then the truck started normally.  That was the same behavior I had when the starter died in 2012.

I thought I should be proactive and just replace the starter, hopefully for nothing since the Autozone starter I installed had a limited lifetime warranty.  I would feel badly if I sold the truck and then had the starter let the new owner sitting in the near future.  Some people may view that as a stupid thing to care about.  After going through what I did as a result, I may agree with them.

So I got out there bright and early Saturday morning, hoping to finish up in the driveway before the heat of the day rolled in.  I assumed removal of the starter would go pretty easily since I did it before.  Predictably I had some struggles.  I used a different technique to remove the top starter bolt this time.  It required less socket extensions but more patience as I could only turn the socket 90 degrees at a time.  With a little more effort than expected I dropped the starter out of the engine compartment.

Installing the new starter went better.  After I tightened the bolts and reconnected the electrical stuff I leaned in the cab to do a test start, expecting it to be a mere formality.  Instead I was rewarded with a click.  WTF.  I turned again, hoping it was a weird anomaly.  Click, click, click…  How can this be, is it possible that Autozone sold me a DOA starter???  I was so pissed off as I imagined the hassle of having to pull the starter I just installed in order to get it checked.  I screamed a few obscenities into the wind as I walked back around to the front of the truck.

I double checked my connections and again tried the key, only to be greeted by more clicking.   I realized I had no choice but to remove my second starter of the day.  Luckily by this time I had become rather adept at it, I had the starter out in 10 minutes.  I loaded both starters AND my battery from the Tacoma into the new Tacoma in the remote chance the battery was bad as well.  The parts went into the bed.  I threw my seat cover over the driver seat since my clothes were covered with automotive fluid/dirt/grease/lubricants.

So as I pulled into Autozone I was not in a good mood.  The idea that they sold me a dead starter annoyed the piss out of me.  As I walked in from the lot my annoyance got ratcheted up a couple more clicks.  In front of the store was a pop up shelter with some kids and women that were obviously fundraising.  I was carrying the new starter in it’s box along with the old starter piled on top of it.  I was covered in dirt and surely had a sour look on my face.  Despite these obvious clues that I would not be a good solicitation target, one of the woman approaches me as I am approaching and tells me they are fundraising so some kids can go to judo camp.  I was amazed that this woman was so oblivious.   I had this immediate impulse to snap back with something like “are you blind, do I look like I am in a position to donate?”, but managed to submerge the impulse.  Instead I just gave her look of disbelief and disgust with a side order of head shaking.

So I plopped both starters on the counter and explained the situation.  The manager took both starters back to their tester.  He first hooked up the old starter.  After power was applied it fired up and passed the test.  Since the problem seemed intermittent I was not surprised.  However I expected the new starter to be dead as a door nail.  Instead the new starter fired right up as well, son of a …..

So I went into further detail about why I assumed the new starter was bad.  The manager said perhaps I have a grounding problem which he said I could check by using jumper cables to create a new temporary ground.  I told the manager I had my battery out in the truck as well.  I asked him if we could test it.  The judo woman was smart enough to not ask me for money again as I lugged the battery back in the door.  The guy slapped his tester on the battery and after 30 seconds or so showed me the result on the lcd screen, BAD BATTERY.

I was dumbfounded.  The behavior Cindy described just did not sound like a bad battery.  However the battery was around four years old which is about as long as they last in Florida conditions.  The idea that all of this bullshit and labor could have been avoided with a simple battery swap was frustrating.  I told the guy to get me a battery and that I would keep the new starter anyway. I turned in the old one to get my core charge refunded.  I returned home annoyed but relieved the solution to the problem was finally at hand.

By the time I got back Cindy had returned from the track meet she was coaching at.  I gave her the news that the starter replacement had not been going well.  I got busy installing the starter for the second time followed by installing my brand new battery.  This time I leaned into the cab and turned the key knowing it would start for sure.  CLICK.  You HAVE to be kidding me. I was in disbelief and angry.

So after verifying my connections I decided to test out the managers theory.  After disconnecting the negative battery lead I used the two black connections on my jumper cables, connecting one to the negative post on the battery and another to a grounding point on the engine. I turned the key and the truck roared to life.  Son of a bitch.  Could all of this bullshit really just be a flaky ground or bad battery cable?

I pulled out my Chilton’s manual and tried to find the battery ground location.  Unexplainably it did not seem to include that information.  I could not easily follow it visibly since it was encased in a wire loom that lead under the engine and out of view.  I then looked online for the ground location and again came up empty.  I walked back outside frustrated once again.

I decided to take a two step approach.  I took apart the negative battery terminal and cleaned it up best I could.  I also reconnected a secondary ground that was cut years ago that leads to the fender of the truck.  The combination of the two things finally seemed to do the trick, the truck fired up normally.  There is the very real possibility that I needlessly replaced the starter and the battery but at that point I didn’t care.  I’ll just add the items to the “features” list when I list the truck for sale.  The work that I hoped to have completed in 90 minutes instead wound up consuming the entire morning. If you want to see the video of the entire frustrating experience look here. I do have a sneaky suspicion that Tuffy may have knocked the ground loose during the water pump/timing belt install.  I may have to get under there one more time to check it out.

So after eating lunch I headed right back to the garage to start installing my new Tacoma accessories.  Despite my frustrating morning the Tacoma upgrades were on my mental checklist and needed to get done.  In total Cindy and I installed 5 upgrades including mud flaps, black out tailgate letters, console organizer, chrome tailpipe extension and nerf bars, which happened to show up as we were finishing the other upgrades.  I made a video for most of the stuff which is linked above.  The installation for all of it was pretty straight forward and simple but they really helped add some visual appeal to the truck.

Even though it was getting later in the afternoon I wanted to get the garage reorganization done or as close to done a s possible.  Cindy, who is an organization junkie was all on board.  I set up one of our folding tables in the garage and used it as a staging area.  We then began the lengthy process of removing EVERYTHING from the existing pegboard and piling it on the table in a haphazard manner.

As stuff was pulled off it was a good opportunity to throw out or curb items that were no longer of use.  Of course there were many things that fell into that category.  Once everything was removed we started the rebuild.  I was the one that did all of the pegboard population since that stuff is almost exclusively my domain.  Cindy worked a lot on organizing the endless surplus of screw, nuts, bolts, and washers that I had spread all over the place.  She also emptied out the area under my workbench.

It took a long time to get everything back in place.  We worked well into the evening but were driven by having the end in sight.  Cleaning up the garage was a long standing item on my winter project list.  Even though we are now far into spring it was exciting to have it finally nearing completion.

When we finally got the last thing put away we stood back to admire the fruit of our labor.  Not only did everything look better and have a spot, I had plenty of room for additional stuff, not that I am looking to fill in my pegboard space anytime soon.  Items I use frequently went in the workbench area, everything else got hung on the left in an orderly fashion.

After we were done we both felt beat up, really beat up.  All of the fighting with the truck in the morning backed up with a solid afternoon of nothing but additional work left me walking around with my ever more prevalent old man shuffle.  There wasn’t much on me that didn’t ache to some degree.  Cindy felt much the same.

I sometimes wonder what it is that drives me to fill many weekends with such an unbalanced work/relaxation formula.  I suppose it is a hereditary thing.  I just don’t feel at peace if my mental list for that time period remains incomplete.

On Saturday night we finally relaxed, watching Pawn Sacrifice, our most recent Netflix rental.  It was a movie about Bobby Fischer who I knew was a famous chess player but little else.  It seems he was equal parts genius and neurotic with a healthy dose of asshole thrown in there.  The movie was interesting enough for a solid B rating. I had no idea that later in life he lived in exile before he died in Iceland.  I guess brilliance comes with a price.

On Sunday I felt somewhat guilty for brushing off any endurance training, despite physically feeling not up to it.  I instead spent time getting the various video footage I shot the day before up on my YouTube channel.  Speaking of YouTube I hit a big milestone, gaining my 1000th subscriber to go along with my close to 900,000 channel views.   After I announced the milestone on Facebook, that number immediately decreased by a handful, dropping me back below the 4 digit mark.  I suspect some of my FB “friends” thought it would be funny to steal my thunder and unsubbed just to dick with me.  Luckily I picked up more subs to once again put me over the mark in the last 24 hours.

During the morning I also did some simple maintenance on the used Honda generator I got from my buddy John.  Instead of taking payment for the Immokalee race I timed for him he asked if I just wanted to keep the generator I borrowed since I needed one anyway.  I accepted his offer and figured it would be good to change the oil.  In addition to changing the oil I swapped out the air filter and spark plug.  None of the work was difficult but I took the time to document it anyway.  One thing I have found with YouTube videos is even procedures that may seem very simple to me can generate substantial views by others that don’t have my background.

We took the new Tacoma for it’s first Rural King run.  We got to admire the result of our accessory installs the day before.  We both commented on just how much we love the new truck both inside and out.  After picking up several items we returned home for what we hoped would be an afternoon sans-labor.

I did my weekly bill paying/budget balancing session.  That was an opportunity to shine a light on all of the spending that has been going on since the sale of the SSR. Of course I knew it was all going on but seeing the cold hard numbers helped me apply a gentle tap on the mental spending brake so I can catch my breath a little.  Sure there are more big ticket items on the list but none of it is anything that can’t wait for a bit.

Later in the afternoon I just could not help myself and began another small project.  I had a wire shelf that was displaced from the garage during the reorganization project that was sitting in the back yard.  It was one of those strong industrial models so I wanted to put it to use.  I wound up ripping out a less useful, smaller wood shelf in the large shed and sticking the wire shelf in there.  In order to make it work I also had to cut in half some wall mounted shelving in there.  The end result was more usable storage space that worked better.

My work set off an unintended chain reaction when I asked Cindy if she wanted the old wood shelf for anything.  If she didn’t I was going to curb it.  She said she wanted to try to possibly do something with it.  I carried it over and stuck it in the corner of the smaller shed that Cindy had already spent extensive time reorganizing.  She then went on another mission, shuffling things around yet again to work with the shelf in there.  She wound up working in the shed until around 7.

She worked so late that I offered to take her out to dinner so she wouldn’t have to tack on food prep to her list as well.  We went to Pelican Larry’s that is in a relatively new shopping center I never frequented before.  It was a very nice place and worthy of our future patronage.  My grouper basket was quite tasty.

When we got back home later we were both in the office.  I was watching Casey Neistat videos on YouTube.  All of a sudden I saw movement by the office window.  At first I though it was just the sprinklers turning on.  I then focused on the window and realized I could not have been more wrong.  There was a large raccoon on the outside ledge looking in at me.  On the ground next to it was a smaller one looking at me as well.  When I told Cindy to look she couldn’t believe it.

When I turned on the porch light to take a peek out front they had taken off.  A little later I saw the motion detector in the chicken run had tripped.  I walked out there as well just to make sure the raccoons were not trying to harass the hens, despite there being multiple levels of defense in place.  I once again saw nothing but both Cindy and I felt a bit unsettled knowing these chicken predators were once again freely roaming the grounds.

So earlier in the week Ali contacted me about some weird shit on her computer.  When she turned on the screen she saw a message from Teamviewer, the software I use to remotely access her computer when needed.  It was the normal dialogue box that is displayed once a remote control session is terminated.  I would not remote control her computer without letting her know so she asked if I had been in there recently.  I told her I had not.  I used the same remote control to get into her computer and run a couple different scans on it which found only minor issues. When I checked the local Teamviewer connection logs the last connection I saw prior to my own was back in 2014.  I left it with her to let me know if anything else weird happens.  Well yesterday morning it was more than weird, it was a full scale freak out.

Ali sent me a screenshot of a program called “WebBrowserPassView” that was left open on her computer along with another Teamviewer session termination dialogue.  This program had every website username and password that Ali ever had the browser save in a huge comprehensive list. As you would expect Ali was freaked out and so was I to be honest.  Apparently the Teamviewer connection the other day wasn’t some sort of fluke, somehow ill intending cyber criminals had managed to gain access to the connection.  In the recent connection list for Teamviewer were two names that were unknown, “Appelman2” and “Balint Tahi”.

I told Ali of course the first thing that had to be done was changing passwords on any site connected with her finances in any way.  I started to try to determine how the fck this could happen.  I had Teamviewer configured for unattended remote access but only via my account.  I started to worry that somehow the hackers had my Teamviewer credentials which seemed unlikely but I immediately changed my password.  I also saw that Ali was running Teamviewer 9, which is two full versions behind current so I upgraded that as well.  I ran TDSSKILLER which is a program used to detect trojans/root kits.  It’s scan came up clean in both normal and safe mode scans. I had Ali create her own Teamviewer account and had her log on using that instead of my account to further isolate her from the possibility it was related to my account info.  Finally I configured Teamviewer so it only runs on demand instead of round the clock.

The incident was eye opening on several levels.  My blind trust in Teamviewer security was obviously shaken.  In the future I won’t just accept the “Start with Windows” default choice.  I also had no idea that web site passwords stored in the browser were so ridiculously easy to retrieve.  I would obviously advise anybody that uses the built in password functionality of browsers to reconsider and use something else to store their passwords.  Personally I have used Lastpass.com for a number of years. It has been great and is much more secure since the password information is encrypted.

Ali is overdue for a new computer anyway so she is going to get a new one and I will help her migrate to it.  I feel partly responsible since I am the one that hooked her system up with Teamviewer in the first place.

This has been the oddest winter weather I have ever experienced since moving to Florida.  At first it was like there was no winter at all with highs near 90 degrees for extended periods of time.  Recently we have been having summer-like storms as well including the storm last weekend that cancelled the half marathon. Last Friday’s storm was bad enough that it actually placed standing water on our property, something that has NEVER happened in January.  Usually this is the the heart of the dry season where the time between precipitation is measured in weeks or even months. On Saturday we had extreme amounts of wind as a cold front blew through with some gusts topping 50 mph.

Of course our weather didn’t hold a candle to the massive snowstorm that pounded the northeast.  I saw pictures from my old stomping grounds in PA with snow 2 1/2 feet deep with drifts much, much higher.  I was also shocked at the pictures of many of the Jersey/Delaware shore areas I used to vacation in under water from terrible flooding. Despite the bad weather we have been experiencing locally, pictures from the NE this weekend make me feel quite glad to be 1200 miles south.

We picked up Sadie for a weekend visit after an errand run that included stops at Home Depot, Rural King, and Pet Supermarket.  While we were at Rural King we saw they got a new shipment of baby chicks.  I joked around with Cindy about picking up a couple Sicilian Buttercup chicks that looked particularly cute.  We could accommodate a couple more birds if we had to but I hate to mess what seems to be a pretty good balance with our chicken family now.  I also think we are forgetting just how much maintenance the chicks required while they were in the house.

When we got home I decided to finally rip into the Tacoma which has been sitting in the driveway all week.  I had my new set of plugs and wires that I ordered on Amazon.  The winds had not only continued but intensified at that point.  My tools and supplies were blowing around everywhere.  The hat I was wearing got thrown in the garage after it blew off my head four times.

The first step was to gap the 6 new plugs.  Since the Tacoma uses dual electrode style plugs gapping them takes twice as long as normal.  I then got under the hood and got busy.  My plan was to do one wire and the two corresponding plugs as a set to make sure I don’t get any coil/wire connections screwed up.

Normally any automotive project I do I will film as they are some of my most viewed entries on my YouTube channel.  Unfortunately with the amount of wind going on I knew it would be pointless as either you wouldn’t be able to hear me or the camera would get trashed from blowing over.

The plugs on the passenger side are easy to get to.  Once you remove the intake rubber tube there is nothing in your way. The driver side is much more annoying because the intake plenum looms above the plugs.  I ran into various problems with the driver side plug/wire removal.  I had to use my long extensions with a swivel attachment to get on the plugs.  Plug six, in the right rear of the engine compartment was especially tough to get swapped out for a couple reasons.

I had mentioned last week the entire reason I went down the plug/wire path to address my cylinder 4 misfire was I discovered the terminal in that wire was falling apart.  Well when I pulled the wire for cylinder 6 once again the insulating boot stayed down in the hole, requiring another tedious fishing session with my hooked small wire so I could pull it out.  I am really disappointed with the quality of these Duralast wires that I bought from Autozone,  I installed them maybe three years ago.  To have two of the three wires fall apart already was very aggravating.  I have used Duralast parts for many other repairs and have had good luck.  I won’t be getting their plug wires ever again, that is for sure.

I also had an issue with my spark plug sockets.  I had two 5/8″ sockets, one from my big socket set and an Autozone socket.  I had different problems with each.  The one socket had a loose rubber boot that is used to keep the plug in place as you stick it back in the hole.  The end result was after I would get done torquing the plug back in the socket would come back up sans rubber boot, it was stuck on the plug terminal.  So I had to jam the socket back on, back out the plug and try again.  The Autozone socket had a maddening precise fit, making it very difficult to get the spark plug securely inserted.  In total between the two socket issues I bet I wasted another 20 minutes of futzing around.

So finally I had all six plugs and three wire sets replaced.  I hopped back in the truck and turned the key, hoping to hear the engine roar to life.  Instead it fired up for a split second and then shut down.  I was not happy.  I jumped out and did a quick survey under the hood, hoping I just forgot to reconnect something.  Luckily I quickly spotted a coil connector on cylinder 5 that I forgot to snap back in.  After clicking it together the truck fired back up and sounded normal.

Now last week during my testing the truck also sounded normal briefly until I got it out on the road so I knew I was not in the clear yet.   I took the truck east on Immokalee Road and was encouraged that I did not feel the chugging engine the truck had when the misfire was present.  In total I did a 10 mile test and the Tacoma passed with flying colors.  I drove it a few more times over the weekend and to work today without a problem so I feel confident declaring the issue as fixed.  I feel very fortunate that the simpler solution fixed the problem this time.  Replacing fuel injectors would have been a much, much larger pain in the ass.

On Saturday night we decided to stay home and plow through the remainder of the Making a Murderer.  If you are looking for a happy ending out of this documentary, look elsewhere.  The story is such a bizarre collection of situations all cross contaminating the other.  The theme of the documentary is basically how Steven and his nephew Brendan are unjustly in prison for a crime they did not commit, largely in part to shady activity by the local police department.  Although Steven’s guilt or innocence is a bit foggy, it is crystal clear that Brendan had nothing to do with the crime, yet he is in prison until the year 2048 at the earliest.

My friend Cheryl found this well thought out explanation that does a good job of unwinding the various evidence and points the finger in a direction not really touched on in the documentary.  After you watch the series, read this explanation.  It makes a lot of sense and connects a lot of dots.

We woke up Sunday morning to some cold for Florida temperatures in the upper 40’s.  We decided to go out and do a short run, something I have note done for at least a couple of months for a myriad of reasons.  Our goal was a simple two miles around the middle school track.  I really like running in colder temperatures, I just feel better.  Cindy does not, the cold air can make her lungs feel like they are closing up.

Despite the cold Cindy was actually the pace setter, I constantly was a stride or two behind her, working to keep up.  I was surprised when Cindy said we averaged right around 9 minute mile pace, 30-45 seconds per mile faster than what we were carrying for a normal pace for most of our runs in 2015.  Of course it was only two miles of running but still it felt like a minor accomplishment.

I added two more pieces of tech to the chicken coop on Sunday.  The first thing was adding a Ring doorbell to the front of the run.  It allows us to take advantage of the coop based wi-fi network to monitor back yard motion and do two way communication if one of us is in the house and the other in the yard.  Is it overkill? Yes.

The other addition was another WeMo smart outlet that is used to control the LED light in the coop.  The light is used at dusk to provide light in the coop so the hens can get themselves situated on their perch.  Since the chickens like to push their bedtime right until the edge of darkness, without light in the coop they would be nearly blind in there.

With the WeMo switch I now have the light on a precisely controlled time cycle that is controlled by my phone.  I can use the phone to also turn the light on and off whenever I chose from anywhere I have internet service.  Plus the coolest thing of all is we can control the light with our voice via the Amazon Echo.  A simple, “Alexa, turn on/off the coop” gets the job done.

Early Sunday afternoon I was debating if I wanted to tackle the rear brakes on the Tacoma.  I really hate taking on an automotive project on a Sunday.  I decided to be productive in another way, hopping on the tractor (after jump starting it with the Tacoma), and mowed the front and back yard.  Nearly a month of no mowing with ample precipitation had left areas looking somewhat ratty.  A couple hours later things were looking much more uniform.

I got to catch a good amount of the Patriots/Broncos game.  It was what you would hope out of a conference championship.  Although I was pulling for the Broncos for Peyton Manning’s sake, there was no denying just how great Tom Brady and Gronkowski are.  Brady got hit CONSTANTLY the entire game yet somehow managed to convert on a do or die 4th down situation twice to put the Patriots in the position to tie the game with time running out.  Only a deflected pass on the two point attempt halted the epic comeback attempt.  It was a hell of a game.  The Panthers/Cardinals game was a different story with Carolina winning in a blow out.  The Carolina offense versus the Denver defense should make for an interesting Super Bowl.

This week I begin my final week of preparations as the running club timer.  To have the finish line so close is intoxicating.  To have it all wind up with the race Ali started in Nicki’s honor seems fitting as well.  By this time next week this chapter in my life will be written and I can move on to whatever comes next.

My work week yesterday had a near disastrous start when one of our main servers had a severe hardware problem.  The server uses a hard drive array to provide protection against drive failure.  In was configured to use a scheme called RAID 5 which means a drive can fail without losing any data.  You are able to swap in a new drive on the fly without so much as a hiccup.

Well this server was showing that TWO drives had failed, the odds of which are very, very slim. In that scenario there is no easy recovery option with RAID 5.  My recovery plan would involve replacing both bad drives, reinstalling the operating system to a base level and the restoring the server via our backup appliance which would take hours and cause a big problem for users on the network that rely on the server heavily.

Well I wasn’t willing to give up on the “failed” drives just yet.  I did a combination of things that wound up allowing me to get one of the two drives that was failed working again.  Once I got that far I could swap in a replacement drive and rebuild it.  Once that rebuild completed I pulled the second drive that was marked bad and let it rebuild as well.  When all the rebuilding was done I added one additional drive in the remaining open slot and assigned it as a “hot spare”, meaning in the future if a drive failure occurs this drive will automatically be fired up to take it’s place.

I felt quite fortunate to be able to get the server back up without all of the hassle and time required for a full server restore.

This morning I dropped Sadie off after her four day stay.  Cindy really liked having her around during the day to keep her company since Sadie is a bit more interactive and expressive than Tuki or the chickens.  It’s always sad dropping her back off but she will back again before we know it.

My moms birthday was yesterday.  I didn’t make mention or note of it publicly.  At some point I feel like I just don’t want to keep giving myself reasons to grieve.

Cindy and I got up a few minutes before 4AM for Saturday’s race.  Cindy wanted to transform us into zombies since it was Halloween.  She did a pretty incredible job for only 5-10 minutes of work.  My 25 year + old Grateful Dead concert shirt was the perfect accessory for the look.

When we got on site we had to get our bearings since this was a first year race.  There were several issues like power that was supposed to be run for us not being there and the onsite bathrooms being locked until 20 minutes before race time that were annoying but outside my realm of responsibility.

This race was unique because the start and finish line were at the same spot.  I timed the race with the same set of mats using one file for the start and another for the finish.  It worked out well from my perspective.

My timer buddy John and his family were at the race which was cool.  It’s not often that I get to talk timing with someone who actually knows how much of a pain in the ass it is.  He had let me borrow one of his timing clocks for the CC meets we did so I had it with to return to him.

My timing went fine with no hardware failures, the only errors coming from the human variety with runners switching bibs.  The awkward interactions I anticipated were not as prevalent as I expected which was good.  There were a couple people I could tell were off put by my decision to leave the team but for the most part it was business as usual which is fine by me.

I had a few brief conversations with some board members and although noone is happy about me leaving, they understand the reasons behind it. It felt weird in a good way knowing this was the first and last time I would be timing the event.  It seems surreal that in three months I will be able to abandon 4AM alarms and all of the work/stress that precedes each and every race day.

It was funny going into Dunkin Donuts in our zombie make up.  As you can imagine it merited more than few glances and smiles.

When we got home post race work took us up until lunch time.  After eating we both headed out into the heat of the day to get outdoor chores done.  We were joined out there once again by the sandhill cranes that are becoming more and more trusting of us.  We have gotten within 10-15 feet of them although the key is to act like you aren’t paying attention to them.

After finishing up the weeding and other stuff I decided to hop on the tractor and mow the back of the property.  I decided to go a step further and mow some of the property beyond the fence line which literally may only get done once or twice a year.  The lack of frequency means the area is almost jungle-like as I was mowing down grass that was three feet high or more at spots.  Mowing these spots is extremely time consuming.  Not only do you have to go at a snail’s pace, you have to mow each spot repeatedly, a minimum of two to three times until it is all knocked down to ground level.  Thank goodness I don’t suffer from allergies like I once did, there were bushels of organic material thrown into the air.  The mowing is a precursor to another horrible yard maintenance task that we have to do shortly, the annual tree trimming extravaganza.

Halloween night Cindy and I were both beat from the combo of getting up early to time the race combined with the work around the house.  We decided to skip going to the movies and instead watched our current Netflix rental, The Gambler, with Marky Mark.   The character he plays is not likable at all, a degenerate gambler that comes from a family of entitlement.  He plays the role well but this character was so unlikable overall that it pulled down my opinion of the movie to a B.

Sunday night Cindy and I finished watching Boogie Nights, another MM film which I never saw believe it or not.  The 70’s time period and copious porn simulation in the movie of course made for good entertainment but by the end things got pretty dark and depressing.  I’d still give it a B+ overall.

Oh, we kept our streak of zero trick or treaters for the last decade alive Saturday night.  Not a single soul appeared at the door.

The time change over the weekend allowed us a welcomed and needed extra hour of sleep on Sunday.  We decided to get out and do the same four mile run we did last week.  My expectation was it would feel slightly more comfortable than the week before since that is the natural course of things.  When we pulled into the park we saw cones and people running with race bibs on, evidently there was a race going on as well at that time.

We started out running against the direction the racers were going, seeing some familiar faces along the way.  We were surprised by the amount of people walking the “race” even though it was only a 5K distance.  Running among the racers had an undesired side effect of me running faster than I normally would during the first two mile lap.  By the time we started the second loop I was already feeling miserable.  The faster pace to that point combined with the annoyingly warm and humid weather considering it was November 1st was doing a number on me.

Lap two was pure drudgery, I had to declare it as a NTZ (no talk zone) about half way through it.  When I declare NTZ that means I would prefer Cindy did not speak but if she does she can expect no verbal response or acknowledgement from me.  When I am in the midst of feeling that shitty I just don’t want to communicate.  When the end of the second lap drew close I accelerated only slightly, I just had nothing in the tank.  I was very, very glad to be done.

After a DD stop we headed to Home Depot and Rural King, a near weekly occurrence.  We loaded up on a number of things including an electric pressure washer.  Regular blog readers know of my years of pressure washing hell with my gas powered pressure washer.  This electric model is much lighter and about the half the pressure of the gas washer.  We bought it so Cindy can easily use it for routine cleaning without the hassle of the gas washer and less chance of damaging surfaces with 3000 PSI.

We also bought stuff to provide some lighting in the chicken coop.  The chickens have been waiting till the very edge of darkness until putting themselves to bed.  As a result when they go into the coop it is very dark and they are unable to see well enough to get themselves situated on the perch.  Cindy and I have been going out and placing the stragglers which isn’t a good long term solution.  The plan is using a timer and an LED bulb to keep the inside of the coop lit shortly after dusk to the birds can get to bed normally.

When we got back home we went out before lunch and installed/deployed/spread the various things we purchased.  During the afternoon I had mostly indoor things to attend to, including paying my bills.  Later in the afternoon I spent close to a half hour just sitting in the yard watching the chickens and the cranes in the backyard.   It was peaceful.

While we filmed a video Sunday targeted to let people know where their eggs come from there was this funny moment caught on tape when Pumpkin decided she didn’t want to sit on Cindy’s lap.

I had a a few different times over the weekend where I was thinking about Nicki, picturing her walking around the pool deck or sleeping in one of her beds only a couple weeks ago.  The thoughts brought instant moisture to my eyes as I redirected my mind to some other subject.

Cindy emerged from the operating room quickly on Thursday, around 9:30.  She did so in an extremely silly and loopy manner thanks to the propethol they used to sedate her for the procedure.  The doctor said they removed another large chunk of ingrown nail and then burned the area with acid as opposed to using a suture.  Despite the work only being done on her toenail, Cindy’s entire foot was wrapped all the way to the ankle.

While they got her ready to check out I was sent downstairs to get the supplies they prescribed to her including antibiotics, pain meds and bandages, lots and lots of bandages.  It was so much stuff that it filled a large shopping bag.  Just like the rest of the VA hospital the pharmacy area was big, modern and efficient.  They wheeled Cindy out as required and we loaded her into the Prius.

Once we got home I had to be vigilant in trying to make Cindy take it easy.  Despite just having surgery she wanted to do work around the house.  I had to basically strap her down to let me go out and clean the chicken coop and run.  She did rest some during the day but not as much as I think she should have.

During the afternoon I made a run to the local AutoZone store.  I was picking up front brake rotors and pads for Cindy’s daughters 2010 Mustang.  She said the brakes felt bad with pedal pulsation which means at a minimum the rotors are warped.  I have replaced the front brakes on three or four different vehicles at this point.  After watching a video briefly on YouTube it looked like doing the same on a Mustang should not be a big deal.  I figured I could knock it out Friday morning.

So before Katie showed up Friday morning I got the weeding done in the yard and prepared the garage for active work.  I pulled out all the tools I imagined I would need including my video camera.  Amateur auto mechanic videos are among the most popular on my YouTube channel.   Katie showed up around nine and I got started wrenching before 10 am.  The front brake pads were worn but not horribly so.  I started with the passenger side.  I didn’t see anything that would necessarily have caused the rotors to warp. However that changed when I got to the driver side.

When I pulled the caliper pins on that side I immediately noticed one of them was dry and sticking.  They are supposed to slide easily back and forth allowing the brake pads to move against and off the rotors.  I was pretty sure I identified why the pedal was pulsating.  The sticking bolt could cause the pad pressure to stay on the rotor even when not braking which would heat/warp it.  Cleaning the pin and applying caliper grease solved that problem.

After putting everything back together I took the car out for a road test.  The brake pedal pulsation was gone but the stopping power still didn’t seem as good as it should be.  I decided since I have all the tools out I should just replace the rear brake pads as well.  The Stang has rear disc brakes, something I never worked on before but I assumed it would be no different than doing the front brakes.  I jumped in the SSR and headed back to AutoZone for the second time in as many days.

I pulled a back wheel and got busy on what I thought would be a 30 minute pad swap.  When I popped out the old pads I saw it was a very good thing I decided to replace them.  There was a small fraction of an inch of braking material left.  No wonder the car wasn’t stopping well.  Things went fine until I got to the part of the procedure where you need to compress the caliper piston.    You compress the piston to make room to get around the new brake pads which will always be thicker than the worn pads you pull out.

The way I have always done this with front brakes is to use a C clamp and an old brake pad to push the piston in.  It is normally quite easy.  Well for some reason the rear piston would not retract.  At first I thought it was just stiff as I tried multiple times with  the C clamp at different positions.  It would not budge.  I then thought that possibly the rear caliper was defective which lead my mind down annoying scenarios where I would have to replace the entire caliper which was an area I was not comfortable with.

In total I bet I futzed around trying to compress that piston for close to an hour, getting continually more frustrated as each minute passed by.  I finally decided to take an additional step in trouble shooting.  I put the wheel back on the driver side and jacked up the opposite side of the car and pulled the wheel.  I then pulled the pads and caliper and again tried to compress the piston with the C clamp.  Again, it would not budge.  I then realized this was likely not a caliper problem  but a knowledge problem on my part.  I was missing something.  I went inside to my computer to do a search on rear caliper problems.

In less than 30 seconds I saw that many rear calipers require to be turned in and can not be pressed in.  This has something to do with the dual function rear brakes share being used for conventional braking and the emergency brake.  When I looked at the rear pistons I noticed they appeared different with two slots in them which I thought nothing of until I got on the computer.  Those slots are what are used to rotate the caliper using a special tool.  I realized I was going to have to make ANOTHER AutoZone trip to complete the job, something I was not happy about in the least.

I picked up a small ratchet attachment that looked like a dice cube.  Each of the 6 sides had a different configuration which worked with different styles of brakes. Once I got back home I slapped the cube on the ratchet and got busy.  Turning in the caliper required a considerable amount of strength as you had to apply major inward pressure while rotating the caliper clockwise.  The little nubs on the cube easily popped out of the slots on the piston if you did not keep it pressed very hard against it.  Finally after a lot of grunting, pressing and twisting I had the caliper fully retracted into the body.  After doing so I was able to finally proceed with the pad replacement which went ok.

So after putting everything back together I took the car out for another test drive.  It did not feel right, the pedal was too soft.  I knew why.  When I was originally fcking with the first rear caliper piston one of the things I tried was opening the bleeder screw, thinking it would relieve whatever pressure I was feeling.  (it didn’t)  I assumed that by doing so I sucked some air into the system.  At this point I had spent hours on the brake work and was very frustrated.  Obviously I needed to get it right despite my desire to jut call it quits for the day.  I hoped I could reach the bleeder screw with the wheel on but a quick glance confirmed I would need to jack the car up and pull the wheel AGAIN.

Once I got the car back up in the air I called Cindy out to help me with the bleeding process.  As I opened the bleeder screw with a tube attached I had her slowly apply brake pedal pressure.  As she did I instantly saw air bubbles filling the tube at first but it quickly turned to all fluid which is what I hoped.  If I wanted to be super thorough or had a hydraulic lift in my garage I would have pulled all four wheels and bled them.  I was hoping that bleeding the only caliper that was opened up would be sufficient.  A quick road test confirmed it was, the brakes felt firm and strong, finally.

I did not finish cleaning up and going back inside until around 6:30 PM. If I did the same job today, knowing about the pitfalls I fell into I could do the same work in probably a third of the time.  Cindy told Katie the car was done so she brought back the Tacoma which we let her borrow for the day.  She was very thankful for my efforts and equally happy Cindy and I gave the car a much needed quick cleaning both on the interior and exterior.

Friday night I really felt like I earned my pizza and Mexican Coke.  We enjoyed it while watching Chappie, my latest Netflix rental.  I really wanted to see this movie in the theater when it was out.  I was surprised when I saw it didn’t do great at the box office.  I was more surprised after watching it, I thought the movie was very good although it was odd seeing a mullet wearing Hugh Jackman play the bad guy.   I’d give the film a strong A- rating.

On Saturday I got up and outside early, starting weed whacking the grass shortly after 8AM.  I wanted to get the labor out of the way early if possible.  Cindy and I then headed out to grab even more sand for the chicken run as well as some more bags of rubber mulch to fill in various areas the chickens have been kicking out.  After spreading both after returning home my only other project for the day involved cutting up some plastic cutting boards to be used as a top shelf on the chickens perch.  Cindy had some thinner plastic up there but it was too flexible, allowing it to bend down and deposit poop along the wall.  Our hope is using cutting boards in that spot till make it more rigid and easier to clean.  I cut them on my portable table saw.

Over the weekend one of the things I did in between projects was upgrading both my computer and Cindy’s to Windows 10.  I was surprised just how smoothly the process went, I really had no issues at all.  The new OS combines the best features of Windows 7 and 8.  So far I am very happy with the upgrade and am still digging into some of the new features like Cortana and the Edge web browser. The system boot up and shut down speed seems even faster as well.  Thank goodness someone at Microsoft realized people actually like the Start Menu.  Taking it away was like forcing people to steer a car with their feet.

On Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the latest Mission Impossible movie.  I have liked every Mission Impossible film.  Hell I have enjoyed pretty much any movie Tom Cruise ever does.  The latest MI kept the streak alive.  It combined smart action, suspense, and story telling.  I have no problem giving it an A- rating all day long.

On Sunday morning Cindy was not able to consider biking with her toe surgery but I had hopes of getting out on the road.  When I looked out the window the skies looked gray and menacing so I scrapped the idea, despite knowing I would probably regret it.  If I don’t get some sort of significant exercise in over a weekend I feel like a bum.  Late in the morning I tried to fill that void by going in the bar park and doing four rounds of short circuit involving push ups, hanging knee raises, and pull ups.  I was surprised how low energy, uninspired and weak I felt during the mini-workout.  It shows on film.

The vast majority of my Sunday was spent geeking out in WoW, another thing that can bring on feelings of guilt.  Sure I had done significant amounts of work the prior 3 days but all it takes is one day filled with primarily screwing off to erase that in my mind and make me feel lazy.

Late in the day Cindy and I sat down to map out a day by day tentative schedule for the road trip.  It includes two days for both Yellowstone Park and Vegas.  Both destinations could easily demand more time but we have to work it in with 6100 miles of travel by road.  The way things are mapped now we would have 12 nights and 13 days of travel which allows us exactly one day of slack if something comes up.  My goal is to spend no more than we did last year on the road trip.  I’m not sure if that is possible or not since there are a couple extra days and more feature destinations this time around.

Excessive is how I would describe several aspects of my Thanksgiving 4 day weekend.  Let me see how much detail I can pull out of my cranium.

Wednesday night was just crazy.  I went straight to the running store after leaving work early where packet pick up for the race was going on.  There was a huge stack of paper entries waiting for me to key into the system as well as endless emails on my phone notifying me of each online sign up.

When I got home I knew I was going to have to do some creative data entry.  I ordered 3000 bibs for this race, a number I thought was overly generous since last year we had around 2250 people in the 5K event.  Well when I got done putting everyone in I had 2992 people signed up for the 5k race, leaving me no extra bibs basically for walk up entries.

Luckily I had about 150 bibs left over from last years race.  I had to do a lot of tweaking of some numbers and moving blocks of people around to make it all work but finally a little after 9pm I had the data side of things straightened out.

I was utilizing the recently repaired van for hauling the equipment because I had more with me than normal plus we were picking up the dogs on the way home since Ali was flying up to PA immediately after the race.  I had a tough time falling asleep as mental checklist after mental checklist was dancing through my brain, trying to make sure I had everything covered.

Even though the alarm went off at an awful 3:30 AM I was up and out of bed with no delay, I felt like the countdown timer had started as soon as my eyes opened.  Cindy and I were in downtown Naples well before 5AM unloading equipment.  The temps were on the chilly side in the low 50’s but not as bad as last year where it was downright cold.

So early on things were going smoothly.  We had gotten there early enough that we had everything set up and ready to go well in advance of the huge crowd of 3000+ people.  However when it was 6:45 AM and there still weren’t that many people on site it became a problem.  It was almost like knowing a tsunami wave was coming.

Well the wave hit and it hit hard.  All of a sudden there was a sea of people converging on the registration area.  Ali was having endless paper applications apps thrown at her which I tried to assist on as much as possible.  The line of people to pick up their race packets all of a sudden became close to a 100 people deep at one time.  We had a problem.

When these race day situations pop up it’s all about how you react to them.  Well we didn’t handle this situation as well as it should have been, the pre-registered line just was not moving like it should have.  Things were so backed up that we actually delayed the start of the race by 12 minutes.

The scene at the start line was pretty insane.  There was a massive lake of humanity extending hundreds of feet behind the timing mats as well as hundreds more people on either side street.  Trying to funnel this many people into  roughly 25 feet of start line is not easy.  I had to stand as a human barricade in front of my timing equipment to prevent it from being run over.

In the middle of the the start a bad situation developed.  One of the start mats got kicked which folded up it’s lead edge.  Within seconds this fold increased as people repeatedly hit it with their feet, it looked like a half rolled burrito and was a major tripping hazard.  I really can’t believe nobody went down.  When the crowd thinned just a bit I dashed into the oncoming bodies and tried to flatten the mat out.  The one bystander watching saw my attempt and afterward told me I was risking my life doing so.

So I had another issue to deal with.  There were so many people in the race it literally took 5 minutes till they all cleared the start.  However I knew there were also some VERY fast people in the event, fast enough to complete the 5K distance in close to 15 minutes.  I decided to leave the start line up and running as I ran down to the finish line to get it up.  After setting up the finish I ran back to the start line which was a couple blocks away to collect the time file.  By the time I returned to the finish line the top runners already had crossed the lines, I hoped I would see their times on my monitor screen. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw they were.

Cindy was a very integral part of the event as she reprised her role as race mascot, complete with her turkey costume.  It’s a role she was made to do, she absolutely loved interacting with people in a goofy and friendly way.  Her contribution really added extra smiles for many, many people at the event.

For my part, I thought timing the race was going well.  I had two timing boxes running at the finish line to ensure I had reliable reads, one of them being the timing box I just bought.  The first issue I had wasn’t a data related problem, it was a physical one.  One of the mats with the used system I bought had a small tear towards the back end of it.  Well after thousands of feet running across it this small tear developed into a large tear which I did not even see until a spectator pointed it out to me.

My first attempt at remediation was to fold the mat under at the tear location however it was unsuccessful.  After a woman actually tripped on the mat and fell I ripped it off the course and disconnected it from the timing box.  At first I thought maybe the torn area could be repaired but closer inspection revealed the mat was just worn out.  The areas that weren’t ripped looked thin enough that they could tear easily  as well.  I guess I will be buying at least one new mat soon.

So once the physical issue was resolved some data issues started to pop up.  With this many people I already expected some issues related to the human error that invariably occurs when dealing with these numbers.  The first few problems I encountered were exactly that, somebody was wearing the wrong bib or got their bib swapped with somebody else.  However I then started getting more worrisome issues.

I had people coming up reporting the didn’t see their name on the results I posted on site.  I looked them up and they had a chip start time, when they crossed the mats at the beginning of the race but no time when they ran across the mats at the finish.  My first thought was maybe their race bib chip malfunctioned which is rare but can happen occasionally.  My concern increased when I took the bibs of a couple of these problem finishers and ran them across the finish line, they read just fine.

After the race the scale of this scenario became clear, there were over 200 people that I had a start time for but no finish time.  That’s just great.  To have this scenario with two timing boxes up and running seemed nearly impossible.  When I started with my corrections I did notice a pattern, it seemed the period of time where all of the failures took place was during the very busy finish segment where there were a non-stop flow of people crossing the mats simultaneously.  My assumption was that for whatever reason, the high volume was causing reads to be dropped.  I have reached out to several sources, including the manufacturer of the timing equipment looking for answers.

Other than my personal timing related issues the rest of the event went well. I saw lots and lots of smiles that helped to counteract my personal fatigue.  I do think that the number of people that were in the event were problematic and if the club wants to continue to allow the event to continue with an uncapped participant level there will have to be several logistical/equipment changes made to better accommodate these numbers.

After the race we had to reload the van in a way that allowed for a small section of unused fold down bed space for the dogs to utilize.  I’m not quite sure how but we managed to get everybody in there.  When I think about getting rid of the party van I rarely think about these situations.  I literally would not have been able to get all of the stuff, dogs, and us into any other vehicle outside of a large van.

When we got home Cindy and I both had a ton to do.  Cindy’s family was coming over for Thanksgiving dinner so she had lots of prep to do.  My mountain of work was all post race related which included posting results, fixing results, updating the club web site and working on processing the finish line video I collected.

We were both buried in work right up until people started showing up.  In total we had 8 people over for the meal, the most I have had under roof for a Thanksgiving dinner in my house ever.  We had a large selection of good food to choose from.  Cindy’s two nephews that were over were big fans of the chickens.  It looked quite funny watching the chickens follow them around the yard.  I think everyone had a good time.

When the last person left the second quarter of the Eagles/Cowboys game was starting up.  I had so many other things to be concerned with on Thanksgiving that the Eagles playing on Thanksgiving was a minor side show.  With that being said I was still thrilled with the end result.  To have the Eagles lay a beating on the Cowboys, in Dallas, in front of a national Thanksgiving audience was a perfect way to wind down the day.

On Black Friday Cindy had to work which left me alone to toil as I saw fit.  I did do some minor Xmas shopping at Sam’s while I was buying other grocery items but the majority of my day was consumed just doing more work.

I wanted to get the majority of the house chores done so our weekend could be relatively work free (lol to that), because I wanted to get the Xmas lights/decorations up on Saturday.  I also took the time to replace the driver side mirror I broke earlier in the week like a moron.  Of course I had to make a video out of it.

On Saturday before tending to the lights we had a weird shopping trip at Home Depot.  We were there to pick up some other items but out of the blue I pulled Cindy back to the cabinets area.  The idea had popped into my head about setting up a corner floor cabinet in the unused corner of the kitchen, between the dog eating platforms.

I was surprised when I saw a corner floor cabinet with a lazy susan inside of it could be had for around 200 bucks with the 15% discount HD was running currently.  When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was very into it as the idea of additional counter and storage space in the kitchen was something she talked about in the past.  I completed the impulse buy with no clear plan of how it was going to all work, just a general confidence I would figure something out.

Getting the cabinet into the side door was very difficult, requiring me to remove  one of the rear captains chairs and awkwardly wrangle the piece into the van with an assist from a Home Depot employee.  Evidently sometime during this process I hurt my left shoulder, an injury that appears to have grown in severity over the last couple days.

When we got the cabinet in the house the wheels were spinning in my head as Cindy and I worked on setting up both the exterior and interior Xmas decorations.  As is often the case with my projects, they are organic and mutate as ideas develop.

Cindy and I talked about what to use as a counter top for the cabinet, I said possibly we could find a small piece of granite similar to what the rest of the kitchen is surfaced with.  There was potentially high costs associated with that option.  Yes it would be ideal to have the counter for the corner match but I am not OCD enough to care that much.

We then talked about the idea of adding a second cabinet on the right, utilizing still available wall space.  The idea quickly transformed into reality as we made out second trip to Home Depot of the day.  We were confused at first.  The corner cabinet was only 16 inches wide but all of the regular floor cabinets were 24″ wide.  When we looked a t a cabinet planning flyer we discovered that the corner pieces are designed to have an 8″ gap from the wall when mated to other cabinets, why that is I am not sure.

Cindy and I decided for the top we would take a shot out of making it out of some hard wood stained a dark color.  We found some nice looking poplar boards that seemed really cheap, we saw 10 foot long, 10-12 inch wide boards with a price tag of less than $6, what a deal!  Well when we got to check out our board pricing ignorance was revealed, the price was the PER FOOT price for the wood.  The wood that I thought was only costing us $20 instead wound up costing well over $100.

When we got back we pushed and piled stuff into their estimated position and liked what we saw.  When finished we thought it would be a great addition, now we just had to figure out how to get there.

On Saturday night we took a break from the cabinet project obstacle to watch The Purge sequel.  I went into the flick assuming it would not be as good of a film as the original which wasn’t fantastic but interesting.  The idea of a 12 hour annual period of government endorsed lawlessness is an intriguing concept for sure.

Well Cindy and I both were surprised that we thought the sequel was actually slightly better than the original.  There weren’t any big name actors in the sequel but I found it to be able to stand on it’s own feet without them based on story and action.  It gets a solid B+ from me.

So Sunday morning we were out the door very early.  I had determined that in order to cut the boards as they needed, I had to use a table saw, my circular saw would not give a straight enough rip.  A table saw would have been a good thing for various projects I have done in the past so I saw this as a good excuse to finally get one.  Of course the cheaper Skillsaw unit I had targeted was sold out at Lowes, I wound up getting Kobalt saw which was more money but had the nice feature of folding up for storage.

Once we got home of course the first job was putting the saw together which took a little longer than I hoped but was pretty straightforward.  The majority of the rest of the day was consumed with the kitchen corner project.

I left Cindy mostly in charge of getting the top laid out and stained after I cut the boards to size.  At first I concentrated on getting the base cabinets attached to each other and set in place.  My goal was to not make the cabinets locked in place permanently.  I screwed them together but don’t plan to attach them to the wall.  Their size and weight should keep them in place but if for some reason we need to move/change something about them it is doable. The inconsistent kitchen floor made using a shim under the back corner necessary to eliminate wobble.

As far as attaching the boards together that would make the top the ideas there changed several times.  Cindy originally thought gluing the boards together would work.  I did not, assuming the one inch thick boards simply did not have enough glue-able surface area to be strong enough.  After putting our heads together we decided to utilize bottom support pieces screwed across the joints to hold everything together.  This presented it’s own challenges.

I did not have wood screws that were short/small enough.  I went to the near by hardware store but the smallest I could get were 1 and 5/8″ long.  If I drove it through the support piece fully the point of the screw would pop out the top of the surface which obviously is not good.  I came up with an unconventional solution to the problem.

I got my washer collection and put three of them onto each wood screw, effectively shortening the screw by around a 1/4″ or so.  I carefully secured close to 10 supports on the bottom of countertop using this method.  When we flipped it over it felt relatively secure.

However after we cleaned up, leaving the top outside to dry I realized I had created another issue.  The clearance on the top of the corner cabinet was just deep enough for the bracing boards I was using.  However the screw offset exceeded that clearance, not allowing the top to sit flush on the cabinets. Great.

The day had many on the fly solutions to problems, some of them actually worked like my attaching a series of 2×4 pieces to create an axillary support for the smaller board that was on the wall side of the counter top.

We wrapped up the day of labor very tired and slightly frustrated but both still optimistic that the final outcome will be a great addition to the kitchen workspace.  My current plan is to spend my lunch hour getting some thin plywood to use as bracing and team that up with shorter wood screws that won’t need spacers.

The reason I am willing to use my lunch hour to do this instead of going to the gym is my shoulder.  I awoke this morning with pretty severe pain doing most left arm movements.  I seriously could not imagine much exercise I could do at the gym that wouldn’t hurt so I figured I may as well get more kitchen corner project materials.  Of course the costs for the project have grown beyond my original expectations but that is pretty much always the case.

If you want to see the pictures from the project take a look here – https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153376100572841.1073741879.504877840&type=1&l=0afe926580

Thank goodness I had Cindy to help me shoulder the load throughout the weekend, it was a tough four days.

So yesterday I get a text from Cindy saying that when she opened the garage door to take in groceries from the car a bird once again flew inside.  Not just any bird, the same bird that we spent 20 minutes getting out the night before.  Why in the world this bird felt the need to come back in the garage when it was obviously freaked out from the prior day’s escapades is beyond me.  I told Cindy to just leave the garage door open in the hope the bird would be smarter this time and fly back out.  Evidently the bird is still pretty dumb.

When I pulled up the garage door was still open.  I did a quick visual scan for the bird and didn’t see it.  Cool, maybe he left?  Well when we hit the button to close the garage door the noise scared the bird, who was apparently quietly hanging in some corner.  It felt like groundhog day as Cindy and I made futile effort after futile effort to get the bird once again out of the garage.  I was finally successful using the fish net but in a different manner than the day before.

This time I was able to get the net on top of him as he sat on top of my volleyball bag.  I then used a towel to cap the opening of the net, pinning the bird safely inside.  This time I decided to release him far away from the front of the house, hoping he will take a hint.  I had a pointless one way discussion with the bird as I walked to the rear fence line, letting him know everything was ok but he needed to find somewhere else to hang out.  When I opened the net he immediately flew up onto one of the bushes growing in the fill pit and stayed there.  Hopefully he finally realizes my garage has a permanent no vacancy sign.

I then turned my focus to bringing my dead SSR back to life.  I had Cindy sit in the drivers seat while I pushed it out of the garage to get it in a better position to be jump started.  I pulled the Tacoma in front of it, hooked up the cables and then told Cindy to hop in the Toyota to increase the RPM’s to give me some juice.  I hopped in the SSR and turned the key which resulted in a couple weak half turns of the starter, not enough to bring the 6.0 L motor roaring to life.  I tried cleaning the battery terminals and adjusting the jumper cables, hoping to provide some additional current but I was still unsuccessful.  I at least was able to put the power windows up while connected to the Tacoma.

I disconnected the jumper cables and retrieved my battery charger from the small shed.  I was hoping if I pump juice into the battery for a bit I may have a better result.  I set the charger at the higher 6 amp charge rate and went back inside to eat dinner.  After eating I headed back out and tried again with no jumper cables attached.  The motor turned over a bit more but not fast enough to start, damn it.  I reattached the charger with the plan to try one more time before bed.

Around 9:30 I headed back outside.  After removing the charger I reattached the jumper cables to the Tacoma.  I was hoping the combo of the time on the stand alone charger with an assist from the Tacoma would be enough to fire the SSR back up.  I got lucky, the SSR finally started up.  I figured I should take it on a short drive to dump more juice into the battery.  I dropped the top and took a short but enjoyable 12 or 13 mile spin east on Immokalee Road.  I couldn’t help but punch the SSR well above the speed limit for brief periods of time.

When I rolled back into the garage I turned the truck off and  back on to see if it would start.  It did but you could tell the battery was still weak.  I hooked the battery charger back up to the SSR and let it run all night at the lower 2 amp charge rate.  Before leaving for work today I tried the truck one more time.  This time the start sounded normal, hopefully the lifespan of the battery has not been cut short from being completely drained.  I showed Cindy how to tell if the truck is in the correct off position and how easy it is to accidentally leave it in the battery draining accessory detente.

For the past week or so I have had what I assumed to be ear wax issues in my right ear.  When I would take a shower and wash my ears the right one would immediately become water logged, like the opening is constricted.   The odd thing was when I would clean the ear I wasn’t really getting a significant amount of wax out of it.  I have used some ear wax removal drops and straight hydrogen peroxide to try to address the problem and had no success.  I am not getting much of anything out of the ear, despite it feeling constricted.

Well sometime on Monday I noticed my right eye was starting to get red.  Last night it was more red and sore to the touch.  This morning I woke up and it was even worse.  This eye pain/redness is something I have had happen before.  The first time it happened I went to the doctor and then the eye doctor with no official diagnosis given.  If I remember correctly I was just given some generic antibiotic drops and it eventually went away.  Since then when it happened again I just rode it out.

The additional wildcard is that I swam a 1/4 mile in the gulf on Sunday.  Despite wearing ear plugs, I am sure some of the nasty sea water found it’s way into my head.  With my life long history of ear infection issues, sea water is asking for trouble.  Part of what is going on could be tied into my swim. I’m not sure. I am going to stop by the free employee clinic this afternoon to have them take a look.  I am hoping two things occur, they can tell me if my right ear is indeed clogged by wax or not and hopefully give me some drops to wipe out whatever is making my right eye look like a pale cherry.