Category Gaming

I figured I better gather the fragments of my memory before they are lost.  Friday was my first day of my impromptu 5 day staycation.  Cindy and I started it with a DD bike ride. It was the first time I was taking my freshly modified Trek 2.1 on the road.  Earlier in the week I added a stem extension and aero bars to enhance my riding position comfort.  Despite being a much better/lighter bike, the Trek has spent most of the last two years hanging upside down in my storage shed because it just was uncomfortable to ride.  Instead my 300 dollar Dawes bike was getting all of the road time. My alterations to the Trek had the effect I was hoping for.  It felt good on the road and the higher quality and lower weight of the bike felt noticeable. The 20 mile ride went by without incident.

After we got home I headed outside to get the weeding done while Cindy attended to the chickens and some other things.  After a quick dip in the pool we were ready to head out to Costco.  We wound up getting over $200 in groceries there which is some sort of record.  Hopefully we will be well stocked for awhile.  The grocery slice of my monthly expenditure pie chart in Quicken has been getting quite large lately.

Friday my new megaphone that I ordered for Green Machine Timing showed up.  It’s smaller than the others I have for the running club, only 40 watts max power, but that is part of it’s appeal, it’s easier to carry around.  However the biggest plus for me was it uses a rechargeable lithium battery pack that is encased inside of a built in charger.  The bigger megaphones use 8 C batteries that are a pain in the ass to maintain.  Plus the housing for the batteries is very imprecise so when you have the lid closed you may not get any sound until you jiggle things around.  It’s annoying.  I no longer will have that issue. Cindy and I used it to film a funny Periscope video that she posted on FB.

Friday night was a normal pizza night.  It felt great knowing I had another four days off remaining.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I were up early to go volunteer at the kids triathlon the local triathlete group puts on.   Cindy and my primary responsibility was in the bike transition area where we helped the kids ranging in age from 7-13 stage their bikes and help them as needed during transition.  I also brought my GoPro with to film the event.  I was frustrated that I missed a lot of the little kids with a malfunction early that I got figured out later on.  You can see the kids in action here.  By the time the event was over at 9:30 it felt sweltering hot.

During the afternoon the it became quite rainy and stayed that way for most of the day.  Cindy and I kept ourselves entertained indoors.  There were no movies that came out this week that interested us enough to spend movie theater money for.  Instead we just kept things simple and enjoyed a nice meal while watching my latest Netflix rental, Tracers.  The film was basically one long parkour video but I found it entertaining enough to give an average B rating to the flick.

Sunday we did our second DD ride in three days, something I don’t think I ever did before.  It also meant that in 8 days I rode a total of 70 miles, again new territory for me.  Cindy actually cracked the century mark for those same 8 days since she did an additional 30 mile ride during the week with a friend of hers.  I strapped the GoPro on to my right handlebar for the ride.  It gives an interesting perspective/visual when combined with a soundtrack and ample captioning to fight off the boredom.

After another pool bath we were back in the car to go pick up Nicki and Sadie.  After grabbing them we made a couple stops on the way home.  Sunday afternoon Cindy was quite busy cooking.  She recorded her efforts for her YouTube channel.  I did a lot of video editing, gaming (now have 7 level 100 WoW characters) and paid my bills.

One of the things I wanted to address was the failure email I got from my DD perks account saying the automatic reload of my coffee card failed.  When I logged into my account I saw that the credit card I had associated had the wrong expiration date.  Ok, no problem, I will go in and edit the credit card information.  Well after 10 minutes of futzing around I realized that there is absolutely no way to change the CC info.  Ok, I guess I will just delete the credit card and reenter it with the correct info.  Nope, it won’t let you do that either.  The ONLY way you fix this is with a phone call to them which I made on Monday.  The call required 20-25 minutes of wait time to speak to a person.  After explaining the issue the phone rep says it will take TWO DAYS to clear the card from the system.  I asked her in disbelief “Are you serious?”.  She said it is a limitation of their current set up for credit cards and they are looking to change things in the future.  It seems so odd because in many ways Dunkin Donuts seems very modern and tech savy in their business practices.  To have such a ridiculously inefficient set up to manage credit cards seems very odd.

Monday morning Cindy and I took Nicki (and Sadie) to the vet.  I made an appointment for Nicki to have some large masses on her belly looked at further.  She has had them for awhile but they seem to be really growing and I wanted to get an updated opinion from the vet about them to see if he thought anything needed to be done at this point.  This was the same vet that did the eyelid surgery that drastically helped Nicki’s vision.

He agreed the lumps were getting pretty big but said that labs are prone to growing fatty masses as they age.  The general advice is if they are not causing the dog pain or discomfort the best course of action is to just let them be as the risk of surgery on an old dog could outweigh the benefit of removal.  I mentioned how Nicki’s bark has been sounding progressively weaker.  He said it is likely due to another old lab trait where the tissue that covers the larynx (forget medical term), becomes partially paralyzed.  The end result is difficulty in breathing.  (Nicki also pants all the time)

The vet did aspirate one of the masses to send it out for testing to be sure. (a $200 gotcha) However we basically just confirmed that Nicki is old and is having old dog issues.  I wish I could wave a wand and make it go away.  While we were there both dogs got their nails trimmed which was very needed.

When we got home I got a bug in my head to pressure wash the pool deck and cage.  I HATE this house maintenance chore but a glance at the pure green scuzz on some sections of the cage combined with my extra time off made it seem like I would be an idiot for not doing it now.  The end result was several hours shoulder/forearm burning labor as I directed the 3000 psi wand overhead with sometimes as much as an 9 foot extension hanging off of it.  It is miserable.  Doing it during the crushing heat of the afternoon added to the misery.

I wasn’t happy that at a few spots on the pool deck which we carefully prepped and double coated with pool deck stain lifted off under pressure.  It was in areas where the deck is especially smooth.  Maybe it needs to be roughed up a bit before we touch it up.  Anyway, the pool area looked tremendously better by the time I was done.  Hopefully it will be the holidays before I have to think about it again.

After I took the dogs back to Ali’s place Cindy and I chilled most of the night catching up on a backlog of dvr’d content.  For my final day of my staycation I have no major plans other than some type of workout and whatever other minor things come to mind.  We already had excitement this morning, the unwelcomed type.  There was a hawk no more than 25 feet away from the pond area the chickens were hanging under.  It was sitting in the palm tree.  It was oddly unafraid of me.  I was able to walk right up to the tree with my bb gun in hand without it moving.  I yelled at it to get lost but he only retreated a short distance away.  I then used my weapon to fire a few warning shots and again they were ineffective.  I kept walking and firing until the hawk was a 100 yards off in a tree behind the back fence line.

Yes it makes both Cindy and I nervous to have hawks scouting out the chickens.  The good thing is the property has a bunch of hiding spots for our birds and all of them are healthy, decent sized and fast.  Hopefully this and our continued warning shots makes the hawks realize there are easier targets elsewhere.

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.

Last night after work we had another running club related meeting, this time about our Thanksgiving race which may be the largest event of the year.  It feels like the planning for this years event has been slacking because last year, the first year of the event, we started early to mid-summer working on it.  As usual I emerged from the meeting with a list of to do’s.

Last night when I got home I again had an extended WoW session completing the second to last part of the end game raid, leaving only the final boss to go.  These encounters are total chaos, especially for me since I go into them with no prior knowledge of how the fights are supposed to go.  For the most part I just try to follow the lead of others, don’t stand in poop and  stay alive.  The boss fights can take a very long time,  the one last night was approaching 15 minutes.  The thing is if the group wipes (dies) before defeating the boss your reward is to go back and do it all over again from the beginning.  Two of the bosses were like that, taking two attempts to kill.

Having 25 players, especially 25 strangers trying to coordinate their efforts leads to conflict as you can imagine.  The more hardcore players that have already done these fights dozens of times have very little patience for those of us that have not.  When the group dies on a boss it instantly leads to waves of rage quitting, verbal chastising and other typical immature internet behavior.  However I am well versed in this behavior and for the most part ignore it unless it gets out of hand.

While I was waiting for the group to form to do the raid I was running around another area of the virtual world trying to work on some solo quests, minding my own business.  Unfortunately the area I was doing this in had a very large collection of opposing faction horde players.  On my server the horde to alliance faction ratio is terribly out of whack. There are many more of them than us so in most situations alliance characters such as myself are outnumbered.  On top of that, compared to serious players of the game, my character is a 98 pound weakling.

Well despite being no challenge for enemy horde players, they insisted on attacking and killing me literally dozens of time as I was trying to get stuff done.  Of course I tried to fight back best I could but having two or three well geared horde players on me at once meant I was dead in a matter of seconds.  Obviously this angers and frustrates me but I just rolled with it, trying to find more remote areas where I was not as easily spotted by these horde players that were so interested in unfair fights.  Even with those frustrations I am still enjoying traveling back into my virtual second home for awhile.  It’s a good disconnect from some of the stresses that roll up on me in my daily grind.

Speaking of grind, yesterday I had a huge serving of running club related things to attend to.  It looks like today I am going back for seconds, followed by our only mid-week, evening race of the year tomorrow.

So I finally got the paperwork for my mom’s estate through the courts last week.  I took the first step in liquidating her assets by executing a sell order on her Sherwin Williams stock that she acquired at her first post marriage job back in the 80’s.  Yesterday I went to a nearby Wells Fargo branch to see if I had everything I needed to gain control of her bank accounts.  Well I did and I didn’t.

The branch manager said I needed to establish a bank account for the estate along with a federal EIN number for the estate.  The funds could then be liquidated and moved into this estate account which I would have full control over.  According to the lawyer that handled the summary administration probate paperwork, this should not be necessary however in the big picture it may actually be better for me logistically.

If things went the way the lawyer said the bank would be cutting three equal checks to my brother, my sister and I which sounds ok until you figure in the accounting that needs to be done before things are really split.  Sorting out mom’s estate has involved me fronting a wad of cash and I also have to account for possible tax liabilities at the end of the year.  All that stuff needs to be accounted for before the split so having an estate account allows me to do it cleanly instead of checks going out only to have other checks written to come back to me.

Unfortunately all of this legwork has had to be done because mom never got around to putting my name on her bank accounts and giving me power of attorney, two things she talked about doing for years.  Navigating my way through the paperwork has been a learning process. I still have some more fog to get through before I am in the clear.

Although there have been many aspects of mom’s passing that invoke pain, tears, and sorrow, working on the estate financials has not been one of them.  This has been like a big tangled ball of string that I have been slowly untangling.  It becomes a tactical exercise, not an emotional one.  I feel obligated to get it handled as correctly, quickly and fairly for my siblings as possible.  Mom would want it no other way.

Last night when I got home I attended to the chickens.  Attending to the chickens means checking for eggs, scooping out any poop in their bedding and cleaning/refilling their food, water, and grit.  Last night I had a very close call.

When we first got the chickens they were very jumpy around us, if we got too close they would dash away.  Well those days are long gone.  We have firmly established in the chickens minds that we are their providers.  When I let them out of their coop they all mill about my feet expecting me to shower them with cracked corn goodness. It’s cute but it also can be dangerous.  The chickens will continue to place themselves under my feet even as I am walking.  You literally have to be looking down the entire time when they are nearby.  Both Cindy and I have had multiple episodes of almost stepping on them, they don’t move out of the way, even if your foot is on top of them.

Well last night I was carting the coop to a new location.  As I did I was trying to look around the end of it to find a good parking spot.  All of a sudden I again felt something under my foot just as I was ready to place it with my full weight on top.  I look down and see Wilma squatted down, mere milliseconds from me stepping on her.  Luckily I was able to stop and shoo her away.

Over the weekend we had another unintended close call. We had the chickens out roaming freely which means the dogs had to be indoors, contained.  Cindy came out of the patio door and Sadie shot out with her as she is accustomed to doing.  When I saw Sadie come out I freaked a bit and tried to move into position to intercept her if she headed for a chicken.  I was quite surprised she did nothing of the sort.  She just hung there and looked at them as I  directed her back inside.  I think Sadie actually realizes that the chickens are part of the inner circle as well and are “paws off”.

It would be great if we could allow the chickens the mingle with the dogs.  We actually already allow Nicki to  be loose with the hens roaming since she is not able to catch them anymore.  We would love to give Sadie the same leeway but if she did snap and harm a chicken we would never forgive ourselves.  That being said we might do more dog/chicken integration where Sadie is on her extended leash so we still have control while allowing them to interact more.

Last night I was playing some WoW, trying to get through the final boss raid of the current expansion.  It’s something most people have done months ago.  I figured I should at least do it with one of 10 characters since the new expansion is coming out in November. I felt bad as I was playing as Cindy was cleaning up and doing laundry. She insisted that I keep playing, she actually likes when I take the time to game and relax.  It’s amazing.

Last night some friends of Cindy’s stopped by for some chicken training.  While we are on the road trip they are going to be taking care of the hens for us.  They brought their two daughters with, they found the chickens entertaining.  Chicken maintenance training is pretty simple, scoop the poop, swap out the water and food as needed, grab any eggs and move the chicken tractor location every day or two.  Even with it’s simplicity I have concerns leaving the chickens in someone else’s care for 10 days or more.  Even though they are farm animals, Cindy and I care for them like any other pets.  Their well being is important to us obviously.

As I was talking to Darwin, who does all sorts of handyman work and is about 20 years younger than I am, I discovered we had some common ground, video games. He is a HARD CORE Call of Duty player, a very popular first person shooter game.  When the original Call of Duty came out somewhere around 10 years ago I played a good amount of it on my computer with my friends, even participating in organized team matches with my “clan”.  I have played these type of games all the way back to their origination with Wolfenstein, Quake and UnReal.  Despite playing a lot I was never all that great at them, at my best I was only an average player.

Well Darwin plays Call of Duty on the PS3, a gaming console.  I really dislike playing first person shooters on a console, I feel much more comfortable using a keyboard and mouse as opposed to a gaming controller.  Well Darwin is the opposite, he hates playing on a computer but excels playing COD on his Playstation. We wound up having close to a 30 minute conversation about his glory in Call of Duty.

He is the leader of his COD clan and is literally one of the best players in the world.  He said there were currently 5 million ranked players in the game, as of Sunday night he was ranked 27th.  I don’t think you have to like or understand video games to realize how difficult that number is to reach. Of course there is a price to pay for this virtual accomplishment, he plays the game several hours a night.

He isn’t the typical high ranked COD player either, many of which are kids or even adults that don’t work for one reason or another and do nothing but gaming for most of their waking hours.  Darwin works sometimes 7 days a week, maintains their home and tends to their daughters all while maintaining his COD epic-ness.  I need to get the guy into playing some WoW. 😉

Darwin does a lot of general handyman work on the side as well so there is a good chance I could enlist his skills in the future on some project that I don’t feel like undertaking myself.

Last night was the first time the chickens were out in a thunderstorm, a pretty severe one at that.  When it started I walked out in the rain to make sure they were ok.  They were all hanging out under the main coop and seemed to be fine, despite the lightning and thunder crashing down.  The one thing that was not fine was their food dispenser which is close to the edge of the run area.  It was filled with water, turning the feed into mush.  Once the rain let up I pulled the feeder out and replaced it with a smaller feeder we have which I could keep more under the coop where it was less likely to get rained on. It also seemed like the chickens actually liked the rain, all three of them looked wet, like they must have went out to the end of the run to get rained on intentionally.  I know Tuki likes to give himself a bath in his water bowl at times so perhaps chickens actually like taking “showers” now and then?

So in addition to Craigslist, I listed my original chicken coop the other day on a Collier County online yard sale group on Facebook.  I figured the more free spots I can advertise it, the better.   So I placed the ad and in it included a link to the coop online where somebody could verify how much the thing costs new.

Before very long I had some interest but the offer submitted via a Facebook private message was super low ball, $150.  I responded back to the guy, pointing out that he was asking for a 66% discount on a brand new item that I already assembled.  I told him I would be willing to let him have it for 200.

The guy responds back that he can buy the coop brand new for $266 from Amazon with free shipping.  I knew this was not the case but I asked him to send a link showing this to me.  The link he sends is of a totally different and much smaller coop, wtf, is he blind?  I then send him the link to the correct coop on Amazon, along with the $455 price tag.  That was the end of our PM exchange, I assumed he was just trying to throw the bullshit number out as a negotiation tool.I had an even more ridiculous number of $100 thrown at me which I ignored.

So later last night I see this same guy posted on the public thread for my ad AGAIN that my coop only cost $266 brand new, despite my clearly illustrating to him earlier that it was not.  Obviously this guy was now just being a troll.  I again corrected him, publicly this time.  I found the episode quite annoying.  I have a couple potential leads on the coop but as of now it still is taking up a parking space in the garage next to the SSR.

DISCLAIMER: Video game paragraph for those of you that have an allergic reaction to gaming talk. Last night I finished the single player portion of the Diablo expansion, Reaper of Souls, taking down Malfael after 5 or 6 attempts.  I used a very unrefined and random strategy to survive the fight which takes close to 10 minutes to complete.  Basically I ran around the room away from him (playing my monk) whenever he was doing stuff that looked painful (most of the time).  I would only engage him for a few seconds at a time and I tried to only do so when I was close to some health pots to keep me alive.  When he went down it was cool and opened up additional game modes that I can use to raise the level of my monk and all of my other characters quickly.

Cindy joined me for a short cooperative Diablo session later.  She likes playing but all of the mouse clicking the game requires is tough on her hands which are beat up from too many years working for the post office.  She is part of my two person Diablo clan, named Team Z.  Ok game talk over.

My buddy Lou sent me a video of him demolishing logs with a new 17 pound mega maul that I sent up to him.  Lou busted up his sledgehammer a couple weeks ago splitting firewood.  I told him he should get a maul, which is a combo of a sledgehammer and an axe.  He agreed but before he could buy one himself I had already ordered the biggest, heaviest and meanest one I could find on Amazon for him. The thing is all steel and looks like it could split almost anything.  I regularly tap Lou’s videos for inspiration, a mega maul was only a small token of my appreciation.  If you want to see him exploding some logs with it, click below.

Yesterday the chicken coop showed up at my front door in two boxes.  Since we don’t have chickens yet I wasn’t in a rush to get it put together ASAP.  Actually I am thinking we should wait to get the chickens until we return from our trip to PA in mid-June.  It may be a bit much to get chickens and then immediately ask one of our neighbors to look after them while we are out of town.  I would feel better if they had some more time to get acclimated to life in the back yard first.

I recently started playing the expansion to Diablo 3, named Reaper of Souls.  Blizzard somehow managed to make an incredibly polished and immersive game even more so.  The game manages to be simple yet complex at the same time.  Almost everything in the game is handled via left clicking the mouse, movement, fighting, picking up items, is all accomplished the same way.  Despite the simple controls, the game has a multitude of ways you can control how your character plays by mixing and matching a vast array of abilities.

The graphics, sound, animation and music in the game are some of the best I have ever seen.  The game makes you feel powerful, taking out a room full of  undead monstrosities with relative ease.  It’s just a fun, fun game.  I highly recommend it.

Facebook can be an interesting, funny, and fun place to hang out.  It also can be annoying, frustrating and downright stupid as well, just as often.  I don’t do a good job maintaining my “friends” on there as I should.  Facebook has a number of tools to allow you to filter out people you find annoying or distasteful.  These tools allow you to basically “unfriend” someone without actually actually doing it.  For some reason unfriending someone in Facebook is seen as a mean act where in reality it is just being honest, “I find you annoying and having you as a friend in Facebook does neither of us any good whatsoever so I am releasing you from these bonds”.  Makes sense to me. Anyway using stuff like UNFOLLOW or MAKE ACQUAINTANCE, you can enjoy the benefits of un-friending without the hurt feelings.

I have had people that show up on my FB feed that almost always post things that I find annoying and/or stupid.  For a long, long time I tolerated this annoyance and just scrolled by quickly as I shook my head in disapproval while thinking “what the fck is wrong with you…” in my mind.  Well yesterday I unfollowed some of these people, permanently freeing my wall from this pollution.  It was like picking up a bright shiny penny off the sidewalk.

I have always been intrigued that I have gone through my adult life with good vision.  The reason is both of my parents have poor vision and have worn glasses most of their lives.  My sister also has bad vision.  Somehow my brother Todd and I wound up with a decent set of eyes.

As I was in my late 30’s I started getting the predictions from those older than I am, “Just wait till you hit 40!  Your eyes will go to shit.”  Well 40 came and went without my noticing any significant change in my ability to see.  Somewhere around 2-3 years ago that started to change.

My job, which puts me in front of two computer screens for the better part of 40 hours a week, obviously requires non-stop focus on items that are relatively close to my face, roughly two feet with my desk layout.  My vision at my job has remained rock steady, I have no problems reading, close.

However what has started to happen is I struggle reading/focusing on things that are further away.  Reading small text on the bedroom tv that is 10-12 feet away is a challenge.  The most difficult thing for me to read are LED’s at a distance.  If I try to look at the clock on the microwave from more than short distance away it all fuzzes into a green blur.

I HATE to admit to any age related degradation taking hold of my body so I have just dealt with it.

Well yesterday I took a small step to hopefully address the issue, buying a pair of Gunnar glasses.  Many geeks have known about these glasses for awhile, I just heard about them a few days ago, despite being a pretty big geek myself. These are glasses that are designed for people that sit behind video screens for significant portions of a day.

The description for the glasses is full of neato buzz words like, “i-AMP lens technology”, which is designed to help prevent DEF (Digital Eye Fatigue) and CVS (Computer Vision Syndrome).  They also are tinted yellow which blocks “harmful blue light”.

Sure I love tech so tech computer glasses sound cool to me but the only reason to buy them is if they work.  As I looked through the large amounts of Amazon reviews on the glasses the overwhelming opinion on Gunnars is, they work.

I read many accounts of people suffering from tired eyes, eyestrain and headaches prior to getting their Gunnars.  The glasses in most cases significantly improved the problem.  The glasses focus the digital images and also offer slight magnification.

Well this is all well and good but I can still see my monitors just fine and I don’t have any noticeable issues with eyestrain.  However the reason I decided to try a set were a few reviews that talked of similar problems to mine where distance vision was suffering after looking at screens all day.  These people found Gunnars helped that condition as well.

I used my Amazon spiff points to pay for the majority of the cost of the glasses so I had little to lose by giving them a shot.  If they help me read the microwave better down the road, cool.  If they just ramp up my level of  geekiness that is fine as well.  Maybe they will make me at least look intelligent.

Somehow I have managed to find my way back to playing some WoW in recent weeks.  Not only am I playing, I am enjoying playing the game, an accomplishment for a nearly 10 year old game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I had a weird dream last night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Saturday was pretty jam packed.  I first headed outside to work the normal outdoors maintenance which was sorely needed since the last two weekends race logistics and/or Randall housing kept me from my normal rounds.  The garden was pretty messy.  I spent time removing things that were killed or severely damaged from the cold few days we had the last couple weeks.  I walked around and picked up a lot of yard shrapnel and then made my rounds with the weed whacker, something that hasn’t been done in weeks.

I then moved inside where I cleaned and did additional prep for the party.  It just felt like there was tons to do even though in the back of my mind I realized I had most of the day Sunday to prep as well if needed. I just hate procrastinating.

One of the big things I needed to get knocked out on Saturday was making my chocolate birthday cake, as it was promised as one of the features of the SB party.  I once again filmed the cake creation process, this time being much more concise in documenting it.  The entire video is less than 5 minutes.  I think this cake turned out the best of any attempts I have done.  The cake itself was super moist and the icing turned out just about perfect in flavor and texture.

Cindy and I went to see I Frankenstein Saturday night.  The movie was dead smack in the middle for me.  It was fine but would have been equally fine viewing at home and definitely was not worth the premium to see it in 3D.  It gets a B.

So Sunday morning Cindy and I tossed around the idea of doing a DD bike ride however it was really foggy early on so we scrapped the idea in favor of getting a head start on party prep.  Cindy had planned on a nice varied selection of food items so her primary job was food prep although she had really put a lot of planning into other elements of the party as well.  Most of my contribution was technical and logistical, move that, set up this, etc…

One of the ideas I had was to set up a second tv on the pool deck so people could enjoy the game outdoors if seating got to be a pain indoors.  I had bought a cheap portable antenna to pull in the signal from the Ft Myers tower.  I set the tv up, attached the antenna and had a crystal clear HD picture.    Too bad it turned out that not a single person watched the game outside, instead the game was broadcast outdoors for whatever gnats were hanging around.  Part of my Sunday also included hopping on the tractor and quickly mowing the yard to compliment the weed whacking I performed the day before.

I had to do some work on a server at work from home Sunday.  At least it was supposed to be from home.  Unfortunately something went wrong with my remote control session and I had no choice but to haul ass into work to fix it and then haul ass back out to the house to help in the final prep.

While I was in the shower Randall had shown up, fresh off his first ever half marathon in Miami that morning. (grats dude)  It was VERY hot for early February, not a good day to run at all.  I was glad to see he survived it, that is all you are really trying to do your first time.

So surprisingly people did actual start showing up around 5 to take advantage of my backyard playground. Before we long we had 10 people+ outside taking turns on the slackline, flipping tires, and messing around on my pull up bars.  It was a fun way to start the event. I was the only one to successfully traverse the line the entire distance, twice, just saying. 😉

So the party then moved indoors and the drinking began in earnest.  I had planned for people bringing a lot of their own beer in addition to the 4 cases I bought.  I turned the utility sink into an auxiliary cooler by cleaning it up, lining it with a trash bag and dumping in a bag of ice.  It worked out pretty well.

With people bringing their own  adult beverages we just had a ridiculous amount of alcohol on hand, enough to fulfill the drinking needs of a group four times the size of what we had.  We were over provisioned for food as well but not to quite the same degree thank goodness.

So the game started and the fun ramped up.  Most of the room was pulling for the Broncos, my buddy Sean was really the only person really pulling for the Seahawks, and in a very demonstrative manner at that.  He was so into it that I grabbed my ancient number 55 Brian Bosworth Seahawks jersey that I bought for some odd reason two decades ago, and gave it to him. I even personalized the jersey with his name.

The game was surprising in many ways, starting with the Seahawks scoring a safety on the very first play of the game.  If someone would have picked SAFETY as the first type of score on the betting board they would have cleaned up.  The Seahawks absolutely demolished the Broncos from start to finish.  The number one defense versus number one offense match up was a clear beat down, something like the 2nd or third biggest blow out in Super Bowl (no I am not going to say the Big Game, fcking ridiculous) history.

I thought the commercials this year were very strong although because of the noise in the room I had a hard time hearing some of them from time to time.  I won’t bother reviewing them, my general opinion follows most others in what were the best.  There was some very creative and funny advertising genius on display for sure.

A group of people had to head out around halftime for various reasons but there was still a strong core group that lasted to the end of the game. Despite our encouragement for others to take food/drink with them, for the most part we wound up keeping enough food/beer to feed a small army.

All in all I think the party was a huge success, everyone appeared to have a lot of fun which is all you hope for when hosting something like this.  Heaping amounts of credit needs to go on Cindy’s back.  She really did a hell of a job making sure people were taken care of. After everyone left it was just Randall, Cindy and I.  Randall took Monday off so he could just crash at my place.  We stayed up for awhile trying to get as much cleaned up as possible.  There was quite a bit as you can imagine.

This morning I woke up not really feeling hung over at all, just tired.  Although I drank probably a six pack at the party or a little more, I shut it down pretty early instead of drinking right up to the bell which probably helped.

When Randall got up I fired up Season 2 of The Walking Dead video game.  I had bought the game a couple weeks ago but hadn’t tried playing it yet.  I bought it on the bedroom Xbox so I had to download it to the great room Xbox before I could play.

So I fire up the game and start playing.  After maybe 20 minutes of play I zig when I should have zagged and die.  No problem, the game does auto saves along the way so if you die you can jump back in close to that point.  Well on the death screen there is a prompt to hit the A button to continue.  I hit it, nothing, oh, maybe it’s doing something in the back ground. I wait some more and hit it again, nothing.  What the fck??

Ok well it appeared obvious the game was hung.  I assumed it was just a glitch so I exited the game and figured I would be back to my last save point.  Wrong.  I launched the game and was transported back to square one, well that is annoying as shit.  I handed the controller over to Randall so he could go through it the second time.  I wrote it off to the Xbox just fcking up.

So Randall does well and gets well past the point where I died before he bites the dust.  He put in at least a half hour of time in.  Again I am presented with hit A to continue screen and again it does nothing.  What the fck??????????!!!!!!  I had no option but to again exit the game and again we lost all progress, we now had put well over an hour into the damn game and our reward was to start over again.

Well before I got on the hamster wheel on more time I decided to check online to see if this annoying problem was isolated to me or not.  The answer was not.  Evidently the problem is the end result of Microsoft’s stupid licensing restrictions.  Basically, because I bought the game on my other Xbox, it wasn’t allowing me to save the game on another one.

This behavior is annoying enough as is.  To me, if I bought a game I should be able to download and play it on any Xbox I own.  But even if you set that belief aside, allowing me to install the game on another console with no warning of any sort alerting me to the fact that I will wind up wasting tons of time if I ever die, is ridiculous.

I did find a “fix” for the behavior.  Basically you do a license transfer of your downloaded content from one Xbox to another however this is a one way trip.  Now I can no longer play the game on my bedroom Xbox and Microsoft only allows you to do a license transfer once every 4 months.  This sort of restrictive use policy is bullshit in my opinion.  If I bought a hard disc copy of the game I could load and play it on either system without issue.  Just because I buy a copy of a game that is digital only format doesn’t mean that ability should be removed.

After Randall left I still had a number of to do’s.  I ran out to get supplies to change the oil in the SSR, Tacoma and Cindy’s Miata.  All three vehicles were overdue for an oil change.  Cindy’s won’t get done till this weekend but I knocked out the SSR and Tacoma this afternoon.  I also swapped out the air filters in both vehicles.

Overall things went well before I received a dirty oil facial while working on the Tacoma.  The truck was parked in the same direction as the wind was blowing rather strongly.  Once I removed the oil drain plug the stream of warm, dirty oil was immediately misdirected out of the oil catch pan and all over the driveway and my upper body.  It was a mess.

I had some ideas of installing the auxiliary trans cooler I bought for the Tacoma but I decided my time would be better spent putting the rest of the party hangover items away.  I repacked the unused beer in the boxes it came in.  I had a full case of Michelob Ultra and nearly full cases of Coors, Bud Light and Miller Lite when I was done.  During the afternoon I was able to give  away half of my beer surplus, donating the Coors to my neighbor next door and the Mich Ultra to my other neighbor across the street.  They both appreciated my Super Bowl party surplus.

About 4PM I finally had the house more or less back to the way it was prior to the party.

During the afternoon, the sandhill cranes that up until this point had been seen exclusively in my neighbors yard, decided to come check out things on the other side of the fence.  These birds are incredibly loud when they communicate, the loudest bird I ever heard first hand.  Today the were quiet as they walked around the yard.  I hope they decide to hang out more, they are a beautiful and awesome addition to the various wildlife that hangs out around the house.  Now if they only would scare off armadillos….

Tomorrow my normal routine returns although physically I don’t know if I am quite ready for it.  The combo of squatting and deadlifting followed by a day of ass to grass squat holds has really laid me out.  Even today, some 4 days later I have some very acute soreness from it in my legs.  Getting old isn’t for sissies.