Category Home Improvements

I picked up the dogs on the way home from work in the van for their second extended visit in as many weeks.  Nicki had some sort of urinary tract infection this past week so her meal plan will include a large anti-biotic pill twice a day.  Ali has been throwing the pill down Nicki’s throat to make sure she gets it.  I don’t seem to have much luck with that  approach.  Instead I jammed the big pill inside an equally big piece of chicken.  My alternative method was successful as she gobbled it down without incident.

Last night I was on the tractor for the third day in a row.  Once again we had a day without precipitation, something that is very, very rare during wet season.  I figured I had little choice but to get out there and mow the front yard.

I was very generous with my application of bug spray, even so, I was getting attacked pretty vigorously as I drove through areas that were underwater a couple days prior.  I felt like I was constantly swatting and smacking, sometimes at spots that didn’t even have a mosquito actively sucking blood.  It was quite annoying.

I didn’t get done until after 8.  When I took the girls out in the backyard to do their business the attacks were even worse, my calves felt like they were receiving insect acupuncture, the joys of swamp living.

Wow, did you see the video of the Spanish commuter train crashing?  For whatever reason the train was going double the recommended speed limit for that turn.  Is it possible that 80 people lost their lives because the train operator simply had a lead foot and got off on pushing the limits?  It looked absolutely awful.

It looks like a bunch of the people that were killed burned to death while trapped in the mangled wreckage.  What a horrible way to die….

Today I see they have arrested the train operator on criminal charges.  If his need for speed is the only cause for this tragedy I can only hope he never sees the light of day again.

This weekend I have some pruning and trimming that needs to get done around the house.  I might be pulling out the pressure washer to blast the grass encrusted mower deck before putting my new set of blades on it.  I should take it on the pool deck and hit the pool cage as well but it’s too early in wet season, it will just get green again.  I’ll wait another month or two before blasting away out there.

I will probably get out to see the new Wolverine movie this weekend, I am looking forward to it.

I have laid out a plan of action towards the possibility of getting a DJI Phantom.  The first step is seeing if I can get my old battery packs to take a charge to get my flying wing back up in the air.

If I am successful  and feel adequate amounts of enjoyment from doing so, my first purchase might be a much smaller, much less expensive quad copter which is powerful, light, yet durable.  I read that it’s a great set of training wheels for a Phantom.

They say it is actually more difficult to fly than a Phantom so if you can fly this reliably, the big league copter will actually be a step back on the difficulty scale.

Of course the biggest thing I need to determine is if I have the time, energy to relaunch my RC hobby.  The good thing is I still have a lot of the various accessories/tools that are needed to support the hobby so the $$ required is not as severe as it normally would be.

If you are interested in seeing the video documenting the Miata O2 sensor replacement, your wait is over.

After work last night I got home and was happy to see that Nicki was able to hold her urine this time.  We do this routine where I walk around the house making sure there are no “surprises” as Nicki follows me.  When we get back to the last spot, the master bathroom, without seeing any problem areas I throw my hands up and say “good girl!”.  Nicki wags her tail in pride and I reward her with a treat.

I quickly made the dogs supper which again Nicki immediately scarfed down, not leaving a single morsel.  I then hopped in the SSR to head back toward town for the running club meeting.  I figured if I was in a rush the SSR would be the vehicle to take.

As I was cruising down the highway, after a 0-100mph on ramp approach, a large bug smashed the windshield.  Without thinking I flipped on the windshield washer, despite going 85 mph and having the top down.  Well I got an unplanned washer fluid shower as the wind pressure pushed the fluid off the glass and into the passenger compartment. Dumb ass.

The running club meeting was a long one as there were three guests, two that were pitching new races and one talking about their existing race.  We didn’t get out of there until after 8.  As predicted I bypassed any South Street action although I think nobody wound up going anyway.

It feels like there are a number of maintenance chores around the house that I have been neglecting.  The garage and pool deck could use a Dirt Dog session. (if it still works after it’s latest dip in the pool)  The pool cage is starting to take on that lovely green tint that means it is time to pull out the pressure washer.  Parts of the back yard are starting to look like a wheat field from high grass.

I also am going to have to do something about my pool filter.  The hairline crack in the top lid that I tried to fix with PVC cement started leaking again, worse than before.  At first I thought I would have to replace the entire filter and gasped when I saw it could cost me close to $500 to do so.  Luckily more searching revealed I can just buy the top part of it where the crack is for less than $100, evidently this must be a common failure.  Even better I can get it via Amazon with free Prime shipping.  🙂

So Thursday was the club’s big holiday 5K, our biggest 5K of the year.  I knew it was going to be a mad house so I wanted to get on site extra early, not that it did me much good.  I was on site about 4:25 am but the equipment truck didn’t get there until closer to 5.  I made the use of my alone time dropping off my timing/registration equipment at their respective locations since the registration area, the start and finish line were in three different spots, each several hundred yards apart.

The night before I had sent out an email asking the board members to try to get there as early as possible and they answered the call.  We had many more bodies on site at 5AM than normal, we put them to good use.  We got the registration area up and ready to receive the roughly 1000 participants that were going to be converging shortly. As expected the parking lot became a beehive of humanity.

Ali and I were swamped with people signing up that morning, we had something like 120 entries to type in before the race.  Ali finished up the data entry as I hurried to the start line.  The starting line crowd extended down the street close to 100 yards, it was quite the scene.

Timing the race had a potentially big bump in the road.  While I was running the finish line Ali was also updating some of the participant information in the system which in theory, should have been ok.  While I was in the system checking a couple things I noticed I wasn’t seeing an average pace number for some of the finished runners.  I thought it was odd but printed out a stack of results to have someone post for me anyway.

Well as I looked more at the results I saw something was f’d up.  A bunch of the women were all showing the same finish time, oh geezus.  This is the sort of issue that crops up time to time and the kind of issue that can only be handled via experience.  Without dropping a bead of sweat I erased all of the results from the race and imported them via a secondary method, hoping it would correct the problem.  Luckily it did.

I could only assume that having the participant data modified while results were coming in caused the problem somehow so I had Ali stop the work.  The rest of the race the times flowed in normally.  All in all for being the largest 5K the club has ever put on, things went very smoothly.

I was both the first one on site and last one to leave as I recollected my equipment from it’s various collection points.  I didn’t mind at all, it gave me a moment to reflect on how cool it is that I witnessed the venue go from empty, to crushed with people, back to empty with hardly a hiccup.

Some guy was flying around his quad copter with a HD camera mounted to it during the race.  Check out the video he compiled here, it’s pretty cool.

I was quite pooped the rest of the 4th of July and didn’t even entertain dragging myself out to see any fireworks shows.  There were a few houses close by that provided mini-versions of pyrotechnics that was enough for me.

On Friday I fast forwarded my weekend chore list, trying to get everything done ahead of time.  Part of that list included my two headed grocery shopping at both Costco and Publix.  I took the SSR out for the errands to make them a lot more fun.

On Saturday morning I decided to go to do the normal club group run.  I wanted to try to do the 7 mile route, a distance I have not covered since I did the stupidly long 16 mile jaunt with Tracy several months ago.

When I walked out the door at 5:20 am I noticed my weather station showed an outdoor humidity level of 99.7%.  I felt every point of it during the run.  All in all, I held up ok to the longer distance run.  I ran it with Mitch, the club president, and Steve.  Luckily neither of them was looking to push pace as we averaged around a 9:20 mile which was plenty for me at that distance.

By the time the run was over my cotton shirt was absolutely drenched.  Thank goodness I have some water proof slip covers in the back of the SSR to accommodate such a situation.

Early Saturday afternoon Ali stopped out with the dogs.  She brought a bunch of empty bins with her.  The purpose of her visit was to collect various dinnerware/bakeware items that have remained at the house.  They stayed there because Alison didn’t have a place to keep them.  Since we set her up with the big Ikea shelving set that was no longer the case.

Ali had not been out to the house in a long time, at least a month, maybe even closer to two.  As we went through the house collecting various things for the bins there were various swells of emotion that rolled in, something that I think is unavoidable, regardless of how much time has passed since the separation.

We hung out with the dogs in the back yard for a bit during a break in the process and Nicki seemed quite content as she laid sprawled out on the carpet with mommy and daddy under the roof of where she spent that majority of her life. It made me smile but feel sad at the same time as I looked at her.

There were too many crates to all fit in Ali’s Volt so I threw the excess and the dogs in the van and went back to her place to help her unload.  Some of the crates had enough weight in them that she would have struggled hauling them up two flights of stairs.

The property has remained bogged down from excessive rain.  Despite the various bodies of water around the yard I tried to at least cut a small portion of the increasingly ratty looking grass, basically mowing the mound the house is built on.  I am hoping for a solid 2-3 rainless days so I can get out there to knock the rest down.

I saw a couple movies over the weekend.  The first one was Life of Pi, a movie I knew little about but had heard was quite good.  I knew it involved animals and little more.  Very early on I got a sense the movie was a Forrest Gump / Castaway hybrid although as things rolled along I realized the film had a personality all of it’s own.

I became very attached to Richard Parker, the tiger, despite his ornery ways and inclination to kill things.  Speaking of killing, there were several scenes of animals, albeit make believe CGI versions of animals, getting killed in ways that I found disturbing.   If you are an animal lover like I am you might want to have your finger close to the fast forward button for a few scenes.

All in all I found the movie touching, deep and meaningful.  It gets a very solid A in my book.  This appeared to be a film that would have been worth seeing the 3D version in theaters.

Last night I watched Jack Reacher on the Xbox, yet another Tom Cruise action film, a role that no one can dispute he excels at.  Despite seeing Tom in this sort of role again and again, I never seem to tire of it.  I enjoyed the film and was ok overlooking a few moments of absolute sillyness.  I’ll give it an A-.

Yesterday morning I went to a duathalon/triathlon but not as a participant.  My initial goal was to go there to talk to and shadow the guy that times their events, John from Endurance Sports Timing.  John and I are in contact a bunch since we both time races and use identical hardware and software to do it.  We often will compare notes, trying to help each other when needed. Cindy decided to sign up for the run/bike/run duathlon since I was going to be there anyway.

The race was staged by Elite Events a father/son team that started putting on events in our area couple years ago.  I had heard various things about their events, mostly negative but never had seen anything first hand.

It was interesting being on the sidelines of a race, observing the loosely controlled chaos instead of being in the middle of it.  I could see where some of the complaints about their events were coming from.  The race started late, there seemed to be inadequate race staff directing participants at key areas of the course and the race results were delayed and had a number of errors.

The registration and finish line area had no bathroom facilities at all.  If you had to relieve yourself you either went in the woods or walked around 3/4 of a mile to the other side of the park, a major f up.  You needed to have at least a couple port-o-potties out there.

On the plus side, the organizer has some good equipment to make the race come off as more professional with nicely branded signage and equipment.  They had a nice PA system with a wireless mic that allowed a lot of flexibility.  I can tell that they have good intentions but perhaps lack the manpower to address the needs to pull off all aspects of a race successfully.  Having races that combine duathalons and triathlons lends itself to scoring problems.  I think simpler would be far better in their case.

On a positive note, Cindy had a great race, winning the masters division, something she never did before.  For her efforts she received a personalized beer glass and a finisher medal.  Unfortunately she was one of the victims of the scoring problems and did not get announced as the masters winner.

During Sunday afternoon I headed outside for a prolonged outdoor workout session, my best outdoor session in months, despite the blazing sun and thick, muggy air.  I knocked out 100 pull ups, 100 push ups along with a number of other calisthenics training on both the bars and my set of rings.

During the workout we had to be very aware of fire ants.  Because of the wet ground they have been migrating closer to the house and it’s higher ground.

I decided to do my first set of push ups in the grass.  Prior to getting into the plank starting position I inspected the spots where my hands and feet were going to be, making sure they were ant free.

As I got to around rep 20 of 25 I started feeling burning on my stomach.  I ignored it and quickly pumped out the last 5 reps.  Well when I glanced down, my white shirt had a couple hundred ants on it and the burning on my abs grew rapidly.  I ripped off my shirt and start swatting and plucking the bastard ants from my mid-section.  I was quite thankful that the elastic band on my shorts was tight enough to discourage the ants from traveling south before chomping down on me.  The rest of the push up sets were performed on the dog deck for safety sake.

All in all I bet the outdoor workout was close to an hour.  I felt tired but accomplished at the same time.  The dip in the pool felt fantastic.

I got my electric bill in the mail.  It was much higher than I have become accustomed to, around $165.  When I looked at the average daily kilowatt usage it was something like 7 units higher per day than the same month last year, which didn’t make any sense, until I thought about it.

There are two possible explanations I can come up with.  Last week I noticed that one of the off stops on my timer for the pool pump had fallen off.  That means instead of running 3 hours a day it was running more like 14-15 hours a day.  I am not sure how long it was screwed up.  If it was for a couple weeks that would be a pretty solid explanation.

The other suspect is my AC system.  A few times I have noticed that the outdoor compressor is making an electrical buzzing/humming noise, a noise I don’t recall hearing before.  The AC system however seems to be functioning otherwise, the house is being kept cool overall.  What I am wondering is if the low speed/power part of the compressor is not working.  The low speed feature of the two speed compressor is a big energy saver, if that is screwed up I would imagine my electric usage could creep up considerably.

I am going to have someone come out to check it.

Friday night I threw in my Netflix DVD, a movie named Primer.  This was an 8 or 9 year old low budget movie.  I am pretty sure I added it to my rental queue based on a recommendation of one of the hosts of a WoW podcast I listen to.   They said it was excellent but you had to pay attention.

Well when I hit the play button I was already drowsy.  I was drifting in and out throughout the movie.  As a result I basically I had no fcking idea what was going on.  The movie is very dialogue heavy and since I missed tons of it I was just lost.  I can tell you the movie involves time travel created in a garage and the complications that arise from it.  Other than that, I got nothing.  I can’t even give it an accurate rating but unless you are going to be laser focused on what is going on through out the flick you may want to take a pass.

On Saturday I met Ali early to go buy hardware to hang her three bikes in her garage.  I needed some stuff at Lowes myself so it worked out.  Of course hanging the bike racks had complications as most projects I am involved with do.  The tapcon screws I bought were nice and long to ensure a secure attachment to the cinder blocks.  The problem is the threads on the screw only extend halfway up the screw itself.

Since the cinderblock of the garage walls was not filled with poured concrete, once the wall of the block was punched through there was nothing but air waiting behind.  So if I turned the Tapcon all the way in the threads had nothing left to grab onto.  Luckily I had brought some of my shorter concrete screws that saved the day.

Ali thanked me for the work and I loaded up the girls to hang out at the house while I worked outside, working with the stuff I bought at Lowes.  I was basically doing a lot of reshuffling, the intense humidity and heat made it not much fun.

First I moved the boring ornamental grass that was in two boring/beat up pots in the front of the house. For a couple years I thought these things were an eye sore but I never got around to doing anything about it.  I wasn’t quite sure where to repurpose them but wound up putting one on either side of the small shed ramp.

I was utilizing similar procrastination with two small trees that had been wasting away in pots by the house for at least 3-4 years.  Ali and I never could decide exactly where to put them and I just didn’t give any further thought to it once I started running things solo.  Finally, after much walking around, trying to decide what spots would be visually acceptable while remaining in the sprinkler zone, I put both trees in the ground, one to the left of the small shed and another to the left of the big one.

In front of the house I replaced the boring grass with some new pots with colorful plants.  That area needed something visually interesting to counter the native, but very boring green bushy things that inhabit the small strip between the sidewalk and house.

I also put two new plants in front of the main supports by the front door.  That area had been barren for several months after I ripped out plants that spread unevenly and looked ratty.  The replacement won’t spread and if it thrives will add additional color with it’s dark purplish “leaves”.

I also did some work in the garden.  I amended 4 or 5 beds with fresh bags of garden soil and then planted 7 or 8 rows of different seeds.  Summer is a rough time to get much garden productivity in Florida, at least for me.  I figured I had nothing to lose by throwing some seeds in to see if I get lucky. I planted, spinach, carrot, beet, bush beans, and broccoli.

I even addressed some indoor plant issues, dumping the one big pot and filling it with a much healthier and colorful plant.  I didn’t drink much during all the of the body melting labor besides chugging a beer.  I felt thirsty most of the rest of the day.  It was so damn hot out there, I was spent.

You can see all the pictures from the day here.

Saturday night I did something I had not done in years, went bowling.  Growing up I was an avid bowler, bowling in a Saturday morning league as a kid and even bowling for my team in high school although I was pretty much regulated to JV.

I also bowled in adult leagues for a good part of my 20’s and even bowled in a league down here in Florida for one year back in the early 2000’s.  Since then I can count the times I have bowled on one hand, probably two fingers actually.  Bowling, despite the added bonus of the lanes no longer being smoke choked, just fell out of the the circle of things I would do regularly.

So the alley we bowled at was the one I had not been to before, it was not huge but cozy.  I was a bit taken back when I saw the per game prices, a pretty ridiculous in my mind $4.75 a pop per person.  However I also saw the alley had a flat rate deal where you could rent a lane for a period of time.  Since we were having 5 people bowl this was the obvious way to go.  $37 for two hours of lane time seemed like a good value.

We were put in a lane to the right of what seemed like a big family group utilizing two lanes.  The family included one very old man although I had no idea just how old.  It turns out he was 94.

I was wondering what the big metal ramp thing was that was straddling the ball return.  When it was the old dudes turn I quickly figured it out.  You take this contraption up to the lane, point it and then push the ball down the ramp.  It is evidently something designed to help both ends of the human age group, the very young and the very old.

The ramp turns bowling into more like a big game of skee ball but hey, if it lets the old guy get out for a night of fun with the family, great.

Now of course when you are right next to gramps when he is bowling it is distracting.  The problem was made worse by some rather  oblivious females in the family that were helping him.  They would bring the ramp up to the line and place the ball for the old guy, which was fine.  But what wasn’t fine was after placing the ball they would stand to his right, in our approach lane, the entire time his ball slowly rolled towards the pins.  Several times the women noticed their bad positioning yet they continued to do it.

After pulling this bonehead move time and time again a young guy in their party that was actually paying attention helped out grandpa and stayed to the left.  If someone was really thinking, since the two lanes the group were occupying were the two left most lanes, they would have simply set up gramps on the left lane instead of the right. No one in our group made a big stink about it.  Everyone realized that above all it was great he was out there trying to participate.

I was not very happy with my bowling performance.  Early on my 1o year old bowling shoes were sticking like mad, making almost every shot veer to the right.  I didn’t start really feeling comfortable until game 2.  Then just as the old bowling muscle memory was kicking in the lanes went into Saturday night party mode.

They turned off the lights, turned on the video screens playing music videos and filled the lanes with various color lights shooting patterns all over the floor.  Well once they did that my game once again went south.  Not being able to see the floor removed the normal visual reference I use.  I was all over the place once disco mode was initiated.

I did manage to roll a few of those satisfying strikes where the pins are obliterated into the pit.  I always enjoyed that feeling. It is right up there with a called strike 3 when a fastball cracks into the catcher’s glove.

The scoring of bowling has come a long way from my hey day.  Gone are the clear score sheets on a projector that you filled in with a wax pencil.  Everything is computerized with video screens that keep score, give you visual feedback on your efforts, advice on shooting spares and even a radar gun telling you how fast your ball is heading towards the pins.  Others in my party were impressed I was consistently clocking in at 19mph + on a typical roll.

In total we spent 3 hours at the bowling alley.  It was a lot of fun, assisted by a steady flow of beer.

On Sunday morning I got up for a running/swimming brick.  I only ran 4 miles but it was one of the most uncomfortable 4 miles I can recall .  Early on everything felt tight and rigid.  My legs just were not interested in running.  Even my breathing, which is normally not an issue was labored, amplified again by the very sticky air and hot temps.

I really felt like bailing after the first 2 mile loop, I was that miserable.  I continued on anyway, knowing the disappointment in myself for quitting would be greater than the physical discomfort in the run.  The overall pace was actually on the quick side for me, just under a 9 minute mile but I felt every single stride of it.  I was REALLY beat at the end of it.  Of course running the morning after a late night of bowling/drinking typically is not a blue print for success, at least not for me.

The run, after a sizable breather, was followed up with 1200 yards in the water park lap pool.  By the time I was done I was a click over zombie mode. I was really beat.

I had plans to get some more stuff done outdoors during the day Sunday but the weather did not cooperate.  It was a bizarre rain pattern.  At least a dozen times the weather swung between blue sky and hard rain.  By the time I woke up this morning there was standing water adorning the yard, very early on the calendar for this to be happening already.  It could mean I am in for a very swampy summer.

This will be a short but busy week for me.

Saturday morning I was up early and over at Ali’s place.  She had bought a roof rack for her Volt (for SUP)  and I told her I would install it for her, it certainly didn’t seem like anything complex.  I opened the box and looked at the instructions.  In there was a repeated reference to a vehicle specific guide that included measurements for various parts of the install.  There was no such guide in the box.  Luckily I was able to hop on Ali’s computer and print them out online.

Putting the parts together was not overly difficult.  The car specific instructions included stuff like what length you should cut plastic guides to that were slid into the rack to ensure proper spacing of the feet.  So I have the parts together and plop them on the roof of the car.  Something didn’t seem right, the feet were way too far away from the drip rail of the Volt, not even close.

I double checked the strip measurement in the guide which said I was supposed to cut right around 5 inches from the strip.  Now that I am playing Monday morning QB, I am wondering if the intention was to cut off the 5 inches and then insert the longer, 14 inch leftover piece into the rack.  However if that was the case, the instructions totally suck because it was not written or illustrated that way at all.

So anyway I knew it was now time to go into Shawn thinking on his feet mode.  I pulled out the now useless plastic guides and had Ali help me with a trial and error fitting.  I loosened both feet and then we slid them out so they were both sitting in the drip rail as they should be.  I then had Ali hold down one side while I awkwardly lifted the other and tightened down the bolt to lock the foot in place.  It took a few tries but eventually we got it where it should be.

Like most projects, it probably took longer than it should have, however if I had to do another one I am pretty sure I could cut the time invested in half.  The rack felt rock solid and ready to hold whatever stand up paddleboard Ali winds up purchasing.  The rack also can double as a bike carrier, negating the need for Ali to buy a small tow hitch for the car to transport her road bike.

Saturday I also finished up reloading the freshly painted hobby room.  Between the paint on the walls and the organization I did, the room feels transformed.  It no longer feels like a cluttered dumping ground for anything in the house I didn’t have a good spot for.  It’s warm and cozy with a real work area and plenty of open floor space.

I could actually throw the blow up mattress in there for a guest and not feel slightly embarrassed at this point. You can see all of the pictures from the project here.

Saturday night I attended my first Tarpons football game in over a month. This season has been pretty much a joke.  Going into it season ticket holders such as myself were supposed to be getting 7 home games.  Instead, because the league is falling apart, we got a total of 3 home games and two of those three games were awful blow outs. (one was 62-0)

Now to their credit, the Tarpon ownership realizes that season ticket holders were royally screwed.  As compensation season ticket holders were given free tickets to Saturday night’s championship game and also promised free season tickets for next year, although I am very skeptical that there will even be a next year.

So anyway, I contacted the team owner ahead of time as I was instructed to, to make sure tickets for Saturdays game were waiting for me at the Will Call window.  So I walk up to the window about a half hour before kick off and there were no tickets there in my name, well that’s annoying.  More annoying was my being told that the tickets they could give me were not my season ticket seats, instead they were a few rows higher, saying my normal seats were “not available”.

I told the woman behind the glass that was kind of dumb.  She gave me some explanation I didn’t really care to hear.  We wound up sitting in the regular seats anyway, nobody cared.

The game had the best attendance of 2013 at least, maybe 25% of the seats had a rear end in them.  The game also was the most competitive of the year with the Tarpons pulling out a one score victory to lock up the league championship.  I drank something like 4 or 5 Shocktops so by the time the game was over my ticket window problems were long forgotten.  I hope the Tarpons do actually come back for the 2014 season, I enjoy attending the games.  I can only hope they come back into a league situation that does not seem so rag tag.

Sunday morning I did another training brick which included a bike ride and swim.  I forgot my swimming goggles which made things sort of suck.  The first 50 meters my eyes were on fire from the chlorine.  After that they stopped burning but it still made swimming more of a pain in the ass than normal.  I wound up cutting my pool time down to just 800 yards.  I emerged from the water with two very red eyes.

Sunday I finally got to see the Hobbit.  I was a bit worried if I would like the film or not just because Lord of the Rings was such an epic trilogy and by all accounts the Hobbit story (I never read it personally) is more mundane.

Well I have no idea how closely the movie follows the book but I do know the movie was great.  It felt right in step with the LOTR films and I enjoyed it from start to end.  I am looking forward to the release of the other two scheduled Hobbit films. Solid A from me.

I didn’t get a chance to rotate the tires on the truck this weekend to see if my vibration is tire related or something else.  Hopefully I get to do it one night this week after work.

I did manage to replace the toilet arm and float in the master bathroom.  The old arm was encrusted in rust, surely contributing to some of staining I get in the bowl.  I am hoping it’s new brass replacement will keep things a bit tidier.

So the final interior room that is still the blah builders white, the hobby room, is getting painted finally.  This room has been the dumping ground for stuff that had no other good spot like race timing gear, RC plane paraphernalia, exercise equipment and other various junk.

I pulled most of the loose items out and split the pile between the guest bedroom and the great room.  As I pulled it out I saw lots of sorting that needed to be done.  There are a lot of Ali items in there as well as stuff that can be thrown out or recycled.

I didn’t bother to put much thought into the color for the room, opting for the same pleasant sandy shell color that is used in the main living space and master bedroom/bathroom.

When the room is put back together I plan to do some major rearranging and optimizing.  It should be a nice facelift.

The only painting that is left on my to do list is painting the walls of the garage.  I always had this dream that it would look sweet in Eagles Midnight Green with silver on the back wall. 🙂

This morning I did my first real world video of my robotoaster in action.  It is simply incredible.  Hold on to your seat.

I forgot to mention some other robot news in my household, my Neato is getting replaced.  I mentioned that I had battery runtime issues a little while back.  I was only getting 10-15 minutes per run and was occasionally getting a “Please press OKAY to restart. Battery Issue (ooo2)” error.

I had a new battery set sent to me which I installed a couple weeks ago.  Well the new battery runtime has been steadily going downhill as well and the battery error has still been popping up randomly as well.  So I called Neato back and they told me they would send me a replacement unit, cool.

It’s too bad, up until the recent battery issue my XV-14 has been absolutely bullet proof. Doing it’s job well while requiring a fraction of the maintenance my Roomba army used to require.  The new bot should show up early next week.

So today one of my Obama hating friends asked me how I felt about Obama since the latest headline about Verizon phone records being collected by the NSA.  Of course my first reaction was to laugh out loud a little bit as I normally do when the “Blame Obama!” crowd attributes everything negative that happens in the government to Obama. They seem to believe he is directly involved in every email, text message, phone conversation and decision that is made within the geographic boundaries of Washington D.C.

Of course I think it is shitty that the government basically scrapes all communication that is made within the country and keeps it for safekeeping.  I read about the new underground mega-datacenter that was recently completed whose main purpose is to store, inspect and catalog mountains of communication, all in the name of keeping us “safe” thanks to those sweethearts at Homeland Security.  Yea that agency that was created by W along with the Patriot Act to protect us from “terror”, what a joke.

Do I think that Obama has stuck to his 2007 election promises that included protecting civil liberties? No, not really, but can you please give me a list of presidents that have delivered on the majority of their election promises?  I think you would be handing me a piece of blank paper.

If he is guilty of anything it is allowing the Homeland Security behemoth to keep rolling forward in it’s privacy smashing practices since it’s 9/11 era inception.  Does he have the power to dismantle the agency?  Theoretically yes, realistically no.

I really don’t understand the outrage or surprise with this story, to me it is old, old news.

So on Friday I was walking back out to the van from the grocery store.  I reach in my pocket for my keys and come up empty, feeling only my wallet.  I then dive into the other pocket and only feel the Iphone.  This can’t be the case, especially after losing a $50 bill on Tuesday.  I feel again in my jean pockets, knowing that my huge clump of keys are far too big to miss.  Logic would say they are also too big to not notice the noise they would make if they fell out.

So I start looking through the grocery bags, wondering if placed the keys in a bag and simply forgot? Nope, the bags were keyless.  Now my mind was starting to race, retracing my steps in the grocery store, trying to remember if I pulled them out at anytime.  Then I thought about what a HUGE pain in the ass it was going to be if I did truly lose them.

So the only thing I could think of is I pulled the keys out at the register to get my wallet out.  Surely I just left them there.  I marched back in the store quickly, leaving my cart by the side of the van.  I saw no keys and asked the cashier if she saw them, nope….. SHIT.  I was considering retracing my steps through the grocery store but I knew I had not dug anything out of my pockets while shopping.  I went to the customer service counter, hoping a kind Samaritan found the keys and turned them in, nope.

So I walked backed to the van, dejected, not quite sure what I was going to do.  As I was standing there running through my dwindling options I spot something on the ground about 30 feet away.  It looked like the red swipe card for my gym.  I walked towards it, thinking I couldn’t be so lucky.  I was, there my huge key chain laid.  I was amazed it could hit the parking lot without my noticing.  It had to happen when I was pushing the cart back out, that is the only noise that could have hidden the sound of impact.  I felt very fortunate to be hitting .500 in finding lost items for the week.

Since I got a lot of the chores done while I was sick (still am blowing nose and coughing), I had more free time on Saturday than normal.  Yes I suppose it would have been nice to use that time to allow myself to relax and recover from the annoying cold symptoms.  But that wasn’t happening, instead I decided it was time to get out the pressure washer.

However prior to firing up the washer I constructed a barrier around the pool utilizing chairs, cushions and pool tools.  The purpose of the barrier was to allow me to let the Roombas sweep the pool deck.

Since buying the Neato almost a year ago my Roombas have been collecting dust.  The Neato just does a much better job and requires nearly zero maintenance compared to the Irobot machines which require fastidious cleaning and maintenance to continue running.

I let the Dirt Dog, a robot specifically designed for outdoor/workshop cleaning and a conventional Roomba designed for indoor cleaning loose on the deck.  I wasn’t really concerned about using the indoor Roomba outdoors.  If it breaks, it breaks.

  I was not very happy when I saw I had a small hole in my pool barrier which the Dirt Dog unfortunately sniffed out.  I found it laying dead on the bottom of the pool.  Roombas do have edge detection sensors, designed to keep them from driving over edges.  However the smooth pool deck does not always allow enough stopping power, allowing the wheels to skid to the point where the bot tips over.

I know this because I have had it happen before, three or four times before actually.  That is the reason that I started creating physical barriers instead of relying on electronics to stop the robot.  My prior experience also assured me that just because the robot is underwater, that doesn’t mean it is necessarily dead for good.  Of the other pool mishaps, only once was I unable to get the robot up and running again.  The rehabilitation plan has been simply letting it bake in the sun to totally dry out and manually turn the various motors to get them un-siezed and working.

I set the bot on the table and hoped once again it would survive the drowning.

The main focus of the pressure washing were the storage sheds, both of them were suffering from the algae and black mildew that come with Florida climates, especially the back of the sheds that get no direct sunlight.

Before starting the pressure washing I finally got around to removing the two solar floodlights that were on the large shed for at least 5 or 6 years but only worked for the first year or so.  I’m not sure why I never got around to pulling them down before Saturday.  I did keep their solar panels, hoping for an Uncle Randy type of inspiration to hit me where I could use them to power something else.

The new pressure washer is really nice, the extra 600 to 800 PSI (3000 psi washer) really helps blast off crud.  I even took the extra step of climbing up on the roof of the big shed and blasting it as well, something that hasn’t been done in over a year.  The before and after shots show the dramatic difference some water pressure can make.

So once I was done with the small shed I still had gas in the tank.  As is often the case, pressure washing breeds more pressure washing.  After all I figure if I have it dragged out and hooked up I might as well pressure wash other stuff too.

I wound up blasting the patio stones in front of the water equipment, a few of the fence posts, the castle wall around Nicki’s palm trees and the dog deck.  In total I was probably out there for at least 3 hours.  I should have worn sunblock, I got a little fried in the face.

Saturday night I went to a monster truck show a mile away at the county fairgrounds.   I was quite surprised just how full it was, all 7 or 8 grandstands were stuffed with people.  The show was entertaining.  In addition to the monster trucks and their ear bleeding, car smashing fun, I got to see see impressive motocross stunts and quad runner racing.

I thought it was quite funny that end of the first quad race there was a fake, wrestling style on mic interview where the winner of the heat called out another racer he referred to as “fat boy”.  He challenged the guy to a solo race.  As expected, “fat boy” squeaked out a win in the last turn.

Over the weekend I noticed a distinct set of tires tracks that swerved off the road, across the driveway and back.   This more than likely drunk moron was at least 40 feet into my yard.  He only missed the parked vehicles by less than 10 feet.  I guess the good news is he didn’t smack the mailbox at least.  Although if he did, he would have had two very large rocks waiting to destroy his suspension. There a bunch of idiots that live in my area unfortunately.

During the day Sunday I got around to playing with my huge and heavy tires.  There are many ways they can be utilized in work outs.  My big challenge yesterday was flipping it about 125 feet out and back.  Flipping the 300 pound tire got tough very quickly.  My eventual goal is to be able to flip it to the fence line and back.  After that the goal is to do it again, faster.

On Sunday night I attended another Tarpons game.  Once again the game was woefully attended and had a woefully lopsided outcome.  The Tarpons won 62-0.  The game did include probably one of the most exciting plays I have seen in indoor football.

The Sarasota Thunder were close to actually scoring, on something like 5 yard line.  One of their players fumbled the ball which bounced into a Tarpon players arms in the end zone.  For a second you could tell the player was thinking about just kneeling down.  Instead he changes his mind and starts weaving his way through the crowd of bodies.  He used some dazzling moves and a well timed lateral to another player to return the ball all the way back for another Tarpons touchdown.  It was something to see.

There are a lot of very out of shape players in arena football.  However the Thunder had one that had the deadly combo of being  very short yet very fat.  I mean the kid couldn’t have been over 5’6″ but he had to be pushing 300 pounds.  He only lasted half the game, in the second half a slightly taller, slightly less heavy guy was wearing the same jersey.

The game got so bad that the Tarpons did an impromptu Harlem Shake routine in the middle of the game, drawing a 10 yard delay of game penalty.

If I had any doubt about the long term viability of the team, it was answered last night.  I am sure the Tarpons are done after this year.  The owner, whom I talked to on the phone and via email before, was in front of us talking to some other fans.  I asked him how his wireless internet company we talked about was doing.  He told me it was dead, he had to bail on it because he was putting any money he had into keeping the Tarpons afloat.  He told me how he has sold a bunch of stuff, including his Hummer in order to pump money into the team.  I kind of felt bad for him as I looked around at the seats that were 85% empty.

Hell I’ll be surprised if the team/league doesn’t fold before the year is over.  You can’t get away from the feeling that everything is being held together with shoestring and bubblegum.  Part of the problem is the dartboard schedule that has been changed a half dozen times since the 2013 line up was announced.  Part of it is the lack of quality games.  Ridiculous blow outs like this game just aren’t fun to watch, even if you are on the winning side of things.  There might be one or two teams outside the Tarpons that don’t totally suck.

It’s a shame, arena football can be a lot of fun and for the money is a good entertainment value.  It’s too bad that it just can’t seem to grab substantial fan base in my area.

So my weekend had no outside obligations so I decided to fill it up with internal things.  I woke up Saturday morning with a spring in my step.  The bright sun and cool, crisp temperatures seemed like an ideal scenario to get stuff done.  I was outside and weeding by 7:30.

I decided I wanted to get the rest of the landscape beds mulched on Saturday.  After weeding was done I pulled out in the truck.  I made a pit stop on my way to Home Depot at mom’s place.  She was at work but had asked me if I could take a look at her noisy toilet.  I also dropped off a bunch of stuff I harvested from the garden for her.

From my years of yard maintenance I know that the back of the Tacoma will hold about 30 bags of mulch. I also knew I would need more than 30 bags to finish the job which included the orchard, the border around the pool and the two raised areas around the palms in the front yard.

I also made a pit stop at the pool store.  When I went to flip on the pump Saturday morning to run the pool vacuum I got nothing, the pump acted like it was dead.  I smelled an electrical burn that concerned me.  The last thing I needed was to have to replace the pool pump after all of the money I have spent on other home repairs/improvements the last few weeks.

Well after verifying that there was power going to the pump I jumped on the internet to get some guidance.  Maybe it is something I can fix easily myself.  Thankfully it was.  There is a large capacitor that can go bad on a pool pump.  The only thing I had to verify was that the motor was not seized up.  Luckily on this Pentair pool pump that was easy to do.  There is a plastic cap that covers the shaft of the motor. After removing the cap, a quick grab and twist verified the motor itself was spinning freely.

The local Pinch a Penny had replacement capacitors as this is a pretty common failure.  I was a bit surprised that it cost $43 but I was still way ahead of the $500 I would have potentially spent if I didn’t do any homework and just replaced the pump.  The replacement of the cap was easy.  I was quite relieved when I threw the switch and the pump came roaring back to life.   I taped the process just in case there are others on the internet looking into replacing their own pool pump caps.

So as I was spreading my first 30 bags of mulch I found myself kind of enjoying it.  The labor was steady but not brutal, the sky was bright blue, humidity low and the temperatures perfect for working outside.  I could hardly believe the orchard consumed almost the entire 30 bags of red mulch.  I knew I would be heading back out for another load.

I decided to grab another 30 bags although the rough estimation in my head told me I probably could get away with only 25.  I figure it is better to figure a little high than go low and wind up having to go back out once again.

By the time I was almost done spreading the mulch the lustre had worn off the joys of yard work.  Ironically, the sky by that time had become overcast and looked like rain could be looming around the corner.  Just as I was in the homestretch of ripping open the 30 additional mulch mulch bags I was startled by the sound of a voice behind me saying “Excuse me, sir”..

I jumped a little bit as I spun around.  It was a young guy, a younger looking guy and a young girl.  They were people that lived up the street that said they were interested in the garage fridge I was giving away for free.  I had posted it on the community Yahoo groups email list I started several years ago.

In the ad I said that if needed, I could help deliver the fridge in my truck although I was hoping to not have to follow up on that offer.  When I saw their mid-size sedan in the driveway I knew I would be put to work.  I backed the truck up to the garage and with the help of the two young guys hoisted the original fridge that came with the house into the bed of the Tacoma.

I haphazardly used one of my ratcheting straps to keep the fridge from rolling anywhere.  Luckily I only had to go a few streets up the road.

The house the young couple lived at was at the very end of the street.  The house was WAY off the street and required traversing a twisty, bumpy sand driveway to get there.

The house was interesting.  You could tell that when it was built there was some real thought and effort put into it.  However it looks like at one point it probably became when of the many foreclosure casualties in my area.  The young couple obviously didn’t have the means to keep the place well maintained.

We guided the fridge inside using my hand truck.  It felt kind of weird leaving it at a strangers place after being under my roof for over a dozen years.  Oh well, it freed up room in the garage and hopefully will serve it’s new family well.  The young couple thanked me for my efforts.  I headed home and resumed my labor.

In addition to the mulching, I grabbed some additional stuff at Home Depot as improvements to the yard and garden.  For the garden I grabbed a tray of a different kale variety and cauliflower.  Both will be great home grown food additions if they flourish.

For the yard I bought an avocado tree and a coconut palm.  The avocado tree was planted up front in the spot the remains of the frost murdered plumeria resided.  In the past year I discovered that I like avocado.  It just happens to be a GREAT super food.  It would be awesome to be able to eventually grow my own.

The coconut palm was planted where the palmetto used to be.  The coconut palm that is planted off the corner of the pool cage is probably my favorite tree on my land.  That actually started as a tree of roughly the same size as what I bought.  It’s now probably 30 feet high and has fronds that are 12 feet long.

I just happened to have enough castle wall stone left to make a small border around the palm tree. I weed blocked and mulched the area for aesthetics.  I am crossing my fingers it takes hold and flourishes.

By the time the last tool was put away I was thoroughly spent.  I had managed to fill pretty much the entire day with various work although I did like the fruits of my labor.  The landscaped areas look much better with their new thick coat of mulch.  You can see all the pictures from the day here.

Saturday night I made the mistake of downing a couple Bud Light Platinums on an empty stomach compounded with a dehydrated body, I hardly drank any water all day long.  The end result was my getting buzzed extremely quick.  While buzzed I went on a Facebook posting spree, throwing up a bunch of random, mostly stupid things.  Moral of the story, don’t drink and post to Facebook.

On Sunday morning I got off to a late start thanks to the clocks jumping forward this weekend.  My planned brick at the waterpark didn’t get started until shortly before 11.  I had a surprisingly decent bike ride, averaging  18.5 mph on the 12.5 mile ride.

Ali showed up to join me for the swim portion of the brick.  I put in 800 meters at the pool, the last 400 were at a fast (for me)  8 minutes.  It was really surprising because my swimming endurance felt pretty damn awful.  I felt gassed after the first 200.

The was my first brick of 2013.  Hell it was my first swimming since last September and I don’t think I have done any fast biking in almost as long.  It felt good to get out there. I hope to reestablish Sunday bricks as part of my normal fitness routine.   I just need get them done earlier in the day.

On my way home I stopped at Ali’s place (she was not home) to get a book case she no longer needed since the Ikea additions to her place.  Once verifying it was the correct width to fit in the vacated fridge wall space, I loaded it into the truck.  Doing this myself was tricky.  I carefully slid the shelf down the carpeted stairs which include a 180 degree turn and then awkwardly hoisted it on to the tailgate.

It fit the wall perfectly although a finished wood shelf may not look very stylish in a garage setting.  It gave me a lot of functional storage space over the fridge, which had become a one shelf storage area in the past year.

The SSR got a needed bath Sunday afternoon.  It has had a bug facial since the SSR meet up.  I never get tired of washing the truck.  I love the way it looks when I am done.

Sunday night Ali and I went to go see the Great and Powerful Oz.  Since neither of us had plans we figured we might as well go together.  Ali is a huge Wizard of Oz fan so the idea of a prequel to one of her favorite films of all time was appealing to her.  I went to get out of the house, I don’t share Alison’s love of OZ.

The movie wasn’t bad although I was fighting a severe case of drowsiness throughout.  Ali thought it was really good which isn’t surprising since she loves the story so much.  Personally I’d give it a B or B+ but if you love OZ you will be into this film for sure.

So once again I had IX Webhosting turn off the Bar-barians web site.  I am finding myself thoroughly annoyed at the way they have been handling the issue of CPU utilization.  When the new BB site first launched in early February I had no idea it would get as much traffic as it has.  In 30 days it got somewhere around 2 million hits.  Hits are page views, not 2 million unique visitors.  That is a lot.

I have been really working hard at getting the site as optimized as possible by doing things like utilizing W3 Total Cache, implementing a CDN via Amazon Cloudfront and making dozens of little tweaks to minimize the load on the shared server.  My efforts have gotten CPU usage down significantly but IX still says it is too high.  Ok fine, I understand the need to keep utilization down.  What I don’t understand is how poorly IX is at handling the situation professionally.

Each time they turn off the domain I have to call them, let them know I was going to do additional tweaking and then they would turn the domain back on.  In the support ticket it always says they will check usage again in 48-72 hours to see if my changes helped.  Well what has happened each time is this recheck date passes, the domain is still online, so I assume what I did worked.

Well instead what happens is a random amount of days after the stated recheck someone actually does it.  When they do, instead of notifying me of the new usage numbers, they just shut the domain off again without notifying me first, requiring me to start the process all over again.

There are several problems I have with the support I have gotten on IX on the problem.  First, nobody “owns” my ticket.  Each and every time this happens I have dealt with a different person, none of which has a grasp on what has been going on.  It’s very annoying that they don’t assign tickets to individuals so they work with customers to resolve them completely.

Second their repeated pattern of letting their own recheck dates pass seems crazy and piles on to the frustration.  In this latest incident, I was told the domain was going to be rechecked on March 6th.  It actually wasn’t checked until FOUR DAYS LATER.  Since I had not been contacted on the 6th I assumed I was in the clear.  BAM, nope, you are dead, again.

Third, IX does not give their customers a way to check their cpu utilization themselves.  It requires one of their network administrators to pull a report.  This means there is no real time way for me to know how much of an impact the changes I am making are helping.  I make a tweak and then basically know it didn’t work when they turn off the domain again.  It is VERY inefficient.

So I am done trying to shoehorn the Bar-barians web site into my current hosting account.  I have several options.  The cpu usage on my account looks like if I split the BB web site onto it’s own shared hosting account it would fall under the CPU threshold at IX.  However after all the aggravation with the way IX has handled the issue I don’t really feel like rewarding them with more of my business.

I could move the site to shared hosting with a different provider, one that has a reputation of being more friendly to WordPress hosting and has better tolerance of the demands WordPress hosting can put on a server.

Finally I could look again at moving the site back to the Amazon cloud.  However I am not sure what size instance I would need to run the site efficiently.  Depending on the size I would settle on (a micro instance was woefully underpowered) I could wind up with a sizable hosting charge.   I am also not sure how keen I am taking on the responsibility of administering the virtual Linux server from floor to ceiling since I only have very limited knowledge of the environment.

So anyway, this week I will be looking in earnest at new home for the Bar-barians site, I need this Groundhog Day scenario to come to an end.

So last night I threw my latest Netflix DVD into the Xbox, Snow White and the Huntsman.  I don’t really recall why I added it to my queue in the first place.  Maybe it was because Charlize Theron is hot? Anyway, the movie was fine, I found it mildly entertaining.  Besides Charlize, it also has Kristen Stewart and the dude from Thor in the cast.  It is a decent Netflix rental and not much more, I’d give it a B.

On thing I would give a solid A+ to is my new sound system.  Not only does it sound awesome, I just love the network connectivity.  It allows me to wirelessly stream any audio from my Iphone 5 to the system from anywhere in the house.  This morning I was blaring the Stern show via the Sirius Iphone app on the system.  It works for Ipod music and Pandora as well.

Last night I got a jump start on my weekend work by doing laundry, cleaning Tuki’s cage and the bathrooms.  This weekend I am planning to load up the back of the Tacoma with 30 bags of mulch to cover the landscaped areas that did not get touched as part of the pond border project.  Unfortunately, 30 bags might not be enough to cover what is left.

The water park is now open again on weekends.  I am thinking of firing up my training bricks by doing a decent bike ride followed up by swimming.  My shoulders (especially my right one) hurt like hell once more and swimming seems to be a very good way to keep that under control.

I might buy my Tacoma valve cover gasket kit this weekend.  Once I have it hanging on the pegboard it will give me visual motivation to get the job done.

Last night was spent getting the pool deck back in order.  Before I started I did a full walk around to carefully inspect the work since it was now totally dry.  It looked really good.  Although Giovanni was not good at all at following through on a schedule there is no doubt the company does good work.

I am VERY glad I decided to paint the deck the accent color instead of the wall color.

Putting the deck back together myself was a challenge.  When I pulled stuff off the deck there was no issue with dragging the bigger/heavier items off the stained, faded and shitty surface.  Well I certainly could not use the same casual approach when putting stuff back.  I struggled to carry the big table back in through the narrow screen door myself without letting it touch the ground.  The smaller table was a challenge as well because I left the ceramic tile top on it.

I used the moving process as an opportunity to do some sorting and removing of things I didn’t need/want or were just trash.  The two cheap, made in China, sling chairs I bought only a few months ago got put out by the road.  They were already starting to rust and looked like shit.  Get what you pay for.

I also cleared out a bunch of old junk from the pool storage box that hasn’t seen use for years and probably never would have again.  The table by the dog door had a bunch of unneeded stuff on it as well, most of it wound up in the trash.

By the time I got everything back on the deck it was close to dark.  I barely had enough light to do a quick cleaning of the middle rail of the pool cage.  Certain sections of it were greenish. Hitting it quickly with some Simple Green and a towel cleaned them up enough that I will be able to postpone a pool cage pressure washing session for a little while.  By the time I was done I was working basically by the street light in the middle of the neighbors yard.

When I woke up this morning I looked out my bedroom window and liked what I saw.

Last night I had another random, odd dream.  I was back in the center of Gouglersville, the town I grew up right outside of.  The area around the fire house was filled with people sitting in chairs, it was way more people than Gouglersville has in population.  I have no idea what they were doing there.

My attention however turned towards the old Brightbill’s general store, the place where I bought countless packs of Topps baseball cards as a kid.  The building looked like someone took a hatchet to it, the front of it was cut at a 45 degree angle and it had no roof or second story anymore.  It was like it was turned into some sort of bastardized storage space.

Outside the remains of Brightbills were a number of people as well as someone in front of the stuff that was in the storage space who was calling out numbers.  I realized there was an auction going on.  I walked closer and looked at the items, they looked to be things the Brightbills collected over the years.

I obtained a bidder number and recall bidding on an item although I don’t remember what it was.  All I remember is I blew the first bidder out of the water, offering triple what the last bid was.  The dream ended just as the bidding ended.  I still have no idea what I won.

Speaking of sleep, I have had a weird thing going on for a week or more.  I keep waking up maybe an hour before my alarm goes off.  Sometimes I fall back asleep sometimes I don’t.  It has happened every night but a couple during this time period.  I think my sleep quality overall has been pretty poor recently.  By 8PM I am starting to fade.