Category Rants

Wow the pictures of the damage from Sandy are pretty horrific, especially the Atlantic City and NYC images.

The most serious of all the problems appears to be in NYC’s subway system.  The 108 year old subterranean transit grid is flooded from floor to ceiling in many areas.

If the flood water was rain water that would be a pain in the ass and serious.  However this is corrosive salt water which even after it is pumped away can have devastating effects on mechanical and electrical equipment.  I simply can not imagine the scope of headaches facing those in charge of getting the system back up and running.

In related news, Ali decided to cancel her trip to NYC to run the marathon.  Partly because of this disaster.  The likelihood of them having mass transit functional in time for this weekends marathon seems impossible.  I was very surprised that at least yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg said the marathon is still a go.  The good news is Ali will have automatic entry into next year’s race and will have plenty of time to make sure she is ready to perform at her best.  Instead she will be using the planned time off to visit her family.

Early voting started in Florida on Saturday.  The lines have been miles long with some people waiting upwards of an hour to vote.  We have an early voting location right next door and the lines snaked out the door for the majority of the day yesterday.

Part of the reason for this is the stupid, stupid decision to go backwards and utilize paper ballots.  The entire process is just slow.  They only had two people checking voters in which is far too few in a presidential election year.   Checking in requires you to hand over your drivers license while a volunteer senior citizen slowly enters your info.  Then you sign your name and they hand you a ticket that allows you to vote.

Next you go into the actual voting room where you again wait while the long 3 page ballot is printed out.  You then take that ballot to one of the flimsy tables with thin cardboard “walls” and start filling in circles like we did back in 1974.  It just seems ridiculous that we still vote this way.

Anyway I went next door first thing this morning and voted so I managed to avoid the massive lines.  I did my small part.  Hopefully it makes a difference.

Last night after work I figured I would stop at Lowe’s and get the paint for the bedroom.  What I expected to be a quick stop turned into a long, drawn out, annoying as shit affair.

When I painted the bathroom in July, the clerk at the paint counter convinced me to sign up for mylowes.com.  He told me how this wonderful site would keep track of your Lowe purchases.  He said in my particular case it would be beneficial because it would also keep my paint color code so I don’t have to worry about keeping old cans of paint around.  Ok, sounds great, I signed up.

So when I walked in there last night I expected to utilize my mylowes account to pull back my paint code.  I expected too much.

The first hassle was I didn’t remember my account password but I did have the little mylowes card with a bar code on it.  I asked if they could access my account using that.  He said he thought they could if they used their little hand held custom Apple Touch devices.

He walked me back to another counter and a woman that had one of these scanners.  At first he asked her if she could do it but it became obvious quickly that she had no idea how to do it.  She was fumbling around for awhile before the guy that was with me grabbed it and tried.  He was unable to get my account to come up either.

Ok, I told him I would initiate a password reset so I could just get into the info via the website.  After stepping outside and waiting for the email to show up, I completed the reset process and headed back to the paint counter.

The guy I was just dealing with had disappeared, I later found out he went to lunch.  Also other customers had showed up so I had to wait until they were helped.  In the meantime I went over to the public pc and logged into my account and brought up my past paint purchase, figuring that was all I would need.

So the woman that didn’t know how to work the handheld device was the one that was covering the paint counter.  I told her I finally had my account up so she could get the paint code.  She came over and looked.  It was like she had never seen mylowes before.  She said she didn’t see a paint code but I could tell that she didn’t even know where a paint code would be on the site.

She called over someone else and they said that the one number MIGHT be a paint code but he wasn’t sure.  My patience expired.  After more head scratching and confused looks I told the woman that I would just have to go dig out a paint can if I still have one.  I told her I didn’t understand why Lowes would push customers into using their site if the employees aren’t trained on how to use it.  Luckily I did have an old can of the paint in the utility room.

In the middle of the paint drama, I walked out and met Ali in the parking lot.  She brought her Volt to show me.

It’s amazing how far the tech has advanced in the past 5 years.  When we bought the Camry Hybrid it seemed like we were right on the cutting edge of cool tech.  The Volt makes the Camry look like old school.

Ali was showing me some of what she learned about the car during the brief orientation at the dealership.  The dual video screens, one for the dash and one for the AV system puts a huge amount of info at your fingertips.  The OnStar connection teamed up with Iphone integration puts a ton of entertainment in front of you.  Ali flipped through screens where you could check the local weather forecast, closest gas stations and what is playing in movie theaters (complete with plots and directions to closest theaters)

Of course all of this stuff is like crack to a techno-addict such as myself.  It is like driving around in your own little gas free space ship.  Ali was very excited about what will likely be her set of wheels for at least the next half decade.

With the back seat folded down Nicki actually has substantially more room to relax then she did in the Camry.  The hatchback configuration will give Ali a lot more flexibility to haul stuff in general.

So since I spent so much time at Lowes I got home much later than I hoped.  The game plan was to put another big dent in the paint prep for the bedroom.  I was annoyed I was getting a late start.  Well the start got delayed a lot longer.

My dad had called me a few days ago about some message he was getting on his laptop that he couldn’t get rid of.  I told him at the time to call me when he was ready to get the laptop on the internet so I could remote control to it.  Well last night he was ready.

I went through a very tedious process of walking dad through getting remote control software loaded on his laptop.  This was further retarded by his slow internet connection which is via a 3G wireless adapter.  Eventually after close to an hour on the phone I was able to rectify his problem.

 By the time I was done with dad it was after 8PM.  I was frustrated but wanted to at least get something productive done in the bedroom.

I patched a couple damaged areas around the window, swept the walls to remove any stray cobwebs and wiped down the baseboard area with a wet rag to ensure a good surface to tape onto.  It’s far less than I hoped to get done but at least it was something.

I expect the next 4 days to be both physically and mentally grueling.  In addition to the painting project I hope to get my Pioneer stereo installed in the Tacoma over the long weekend.  I am quite sure that will have it’s own unique set of “challenges” as well.

Just to make things interesting I have another race to time on Sunday morning.

At least I should have no shortage of things to write about come Tuesday.

Saturday morning I timed a regional cross country meet, the third year I have timed this particular event.  This was the largest event to date with 33 teams and 857 kids signed up.  Before the race some of the kids that were assigned to help out were given a task.

There were big envelopes made up for each team.  Inside each packet was that team’s roster along with the chip numbers assigned to them.  To make this process easier, I sorted the teams so each team had a contiguous block of numbers assigned to them.  I thought this couldn’t get much easier, you look at the first name and last name on the teams list and the numbers they are assigned, you then simply pull out all of the chips in between those numbers and drop them in the envelope.

Well despite explaining this process pretty thoroughly, even though I don’t think it warranted a thorough explanation, it somehow got messed up.  When I looked over at the table a few minutes later it was covered with chips strewn about.  I walked over and asked what happened.  The one girl said that someone was “confused” and messed up what I thought was a fool proof procedure.

I was pretty worried about the wrong chips getting into the wrong hands and the timing headaches it would cause.  Luckily they eventually got it all sorted out.

The finish line for this race is in the school’s football stadium which is always kind of cool.  The only thing that isn’t cool is the real turf that it is made out of has millions of tiny little rubber pellets which quickly fill your sneakers and adhere to anything placed on the ground when the field is damp with morning dew.  The good thing about real turf is I had zero issues with kids tripping on the finish mats since it is short and uniform in height.

I had a bit of a scare during the girls varsity race which was the first of four.  About half way into it the timing box started beeping continuously.  I looked at the indicator leds and saw there was an issue with one of the two timing mats.  I was really surprised because I was actually using two of the brand new timing mats I had received a a few weeks ago.

So I quickly cycled power on the timing box, hoping it was just some sort of weird glitch.  No dice.  I looked up at the clock and saw I was at about 12 or 13 minutes.  I was considering if I wanted to try to quickly replace the mat.  I imagined a nightmare scenario where a girl would be streaking towards the finish line I was still f’ing around with the mats so I decided to just let it go and rely on the one mat that was up and running.

Luckily it seemed to work out.  After the first race I swapped in another mat and it worked fine, confirming that my brand new mat was indeed dead.

After that excitement to start the day the rest of my timing duties went down pretty smoothly.  Despite the huge volume of kids I had relatively few problems.  The biggest problem was the roughly dozen timing chips I did not get back that we have to now try to get back with threats of a bill of $20 per chip.

I didn’t get off site until after 11:30.  I had to rush home and quickly post the results before heading right back out.  I was supposed to go pick up Ali to go look at cars, specifically a Chevy Volt.

Ali has been concerned that the Camry was getting up there in both years and mileage (it crossed 100k miles a few months ago).  The idea of getting smacked with unplanned repair bills wasn’t something she was real keen on.

I had been following the Volt for a long time.  It is a techolover’s dream car.  It takes what I think is an ideal approach to green travel, upping what the Camry does to an impressive degree.  Although the Camry is also a gas/electric hybrid, it utilizes both pretty equally to squeeze out it’s mileage numbers of 35/40 mpg, quite good for a sedan.  The Camry actually can be driven short distances in pure electric mode at speeds of up to 42 mph which we always thought was kind of cool.

Well the Volt can go around 40 miles of normal driving using nothing but battery power which is awesome.  If you are going on a long trip there is a gas engine that can be utilized as well so you don’t have to worry about being stranded if the juice runs out like you would if you had something like a Nissan Leaf.    The Volt potentially can avoid all use of gas for long periods of time if your daily driving requirements are not huge but is flexible enough to be used for long road trips as well.

Toyota actually makes a plug in Prius now but it only can go a maximum of 6 miles on pure electric mode which seems kind of silly.

I was the one that pitched the idea of a Volt to Ali since I saw they were offering huge incentives on the car since sales have been far less than hoped for.  She asked that I accompany her to the dealership since I worked as a slimy car salesman for 16 months in my early 20’s.

I called ahead to the local Chevy dealer to verify they had a Volt to test drive.  The sales guy executed sales 101, telling me he wasn’t sure if they had one (he knew they did), but he would check and call me back if I gave him my number.  Now, innocently he has obtained a contact number where he can hound me incessantly if he chooses to.  After probably reading a magazine for a few minutes, he called me back with the good news, they had one on the lot we could drive.

As we pulled into the dealership we were greeted by Jason, a friendly younger guy.  When I was looking at Camaros I had stopped in there and the place seemed to be populated with nothing but old stereotypical car sales guys.  I was glad we didn’t get one of them.

Jason grabbed the keys to the car and handed them to Ali.  I told her there was no reason for me to drive it even though I certainly would have liked to.  It is a geek’s dream.  Sitting behind the wheel reminds me of sitting in the one of those wrap around cabinet video games, there are just bells and whistles everywhere.

The test drive went fine, you couldn’t really tell you weren’t consuming any gasoline although the lack of typical engine noise was a good clue.  Ali liked the car.  There was one issue though, Ali didn’t want the options on this particular Volt.  Most Volts are equipped with leather seats, something Ali would never go for.  This Volt also had upgraded chrome wheels and a couple other things Ali didn’t care about.

The sales guy said he would go inside to do a search of other dealers inventory for something that was what Ali was interested in.  While he did that Ali got to look over more of the interior of the car in detail.  Luckily Ali approved of the cup holders, one of the most important things when it comes to buying a vehicle.

So we went inside and Jason showed us what he found.  The two cars that had the exact options Ali wanted were in two colors Ali did not want, red and blue.  Ali much prefers neutral colors like tan or the silver of the car she drove.  There was a silver Volt that had what Ali wanted minus the navigation system.

At first this seemed like a big negative to Ali but when Jason said the car comes with 3 years of free Onstar service which included turn by turn directions (minus a map on the screen) it seemed like less of a negative.  I told Ali she uses the NAV in the Camry very rarely and if she needed a map it already will reside on her Iphone. Jason said he also expects there will be a 3rd party smart phone app, similar to what is out for the Camaro that allows her phone to basically replace an in car system, displaying Iphone map data on the car’s AV screen.

Ok, so now we were landed on a vehicle that Ali would like.  Jason asked if we could get numbers that we were happy with if Ali would buy the car.  She said yes, although it would be a big stretch.  When Jason was running back and forth checking on things, he had left the print outs of the prospective vehicle on the desk.  I took a look at it and had to laugh a bit when I saw the print out included the dealer invoice.  I already knew approximately what the invoice was but I don’t think he intended for me to have it quite so accessible.

Ok so now they had to take a look at the Camry to see what it’s worth.  The Camry is still in great shape, it’s biggest wart is the high mileage.  I had run wholesale numbers on it’s worth prior to coming to the dealership so I had realistic expectations. Well Jason’s initial number did not come close to meeting those expectations.  They were obviously trying to “steal” the trade initially, another very common tactic.  They never expect a person to accept the first offer but if they are dumb enough to do so they make a killing on the trade so they always start very low.

I told Jason that number was way low based on the numbers I saw.  Of course he disagreed with my numbers and asked if he could bump the trade a grand if we could do a deal.  I told him that I had already been in contact with another dealership in Estero that was very interested in selling us a car.  I also said we were considering taking a look at a new Prius.

Basically, the most important thing you can do in a car sales negotiation is establish that you are not married to buying a car and are willing to walk away.  So, after some more staged back and forth talk about the numbers we arrived at a trade number $2500 above what we were initially offered.  It was higher than the black book values I found.  I backed this up by quickly checking retail prices of high mileage Camry Hybrids on AutoTrader which were not good.  It was a decent trade offer.

What made up for the median trade offer were the amazing incentives they are offering on the Volt.  2013’s have a $2000 rebate AND 60 month zero percent financing, wow.  If that was not enough to knock your socks off, come tax time, Ali will be receiving an ADDITIONAL $7500 back from Uncle Sam for the Volt purchase.  So basically you are getting a $10k spiff and free financing, it is pretty crazy.

So it was easy to figure payment numbers no interest to worry about.  The numbers still came in a bit high so Ali and I did some quick on the spot discussions related to divorce financial issues where we would utilize the majority of the remaining joint funds to help her knock down her monthly payment.  I agreed to do so in good faith, trusting that it will be accounted for cleanly when the time arrives to do so.  Even now, I was excited to help Ali to get into cool, new wheels.

So after confirming with me that I thought it was a good deal, Ali shook Jason’s hand and became the proud owner of a new Volt.  She should be picking it up tomorrow once it arrives from the dealership where it is currently housed.  Ali is hoping to employ my tech savy to get the Volt dialed in once she takes possession.

I walked away from the deal with the odd feeling of being jealous of both Ali’s living arrangements and future transportation accommodations.  She will probably save $100 + a month in gas at the current prices and can use the $7500 government spiff to fund her car payment budget column for quite a long time if she needs to.

When she posted about her Volt purchase on Facebook, her brother, whom has been on an anti-Obama jihad for some time now, immediately jumped all over the Volt.  He accurately pointed out that the Volt is HEAVILY government subsidized.  Not only will Ali get that huge spiff for buying a Volt, GM gets a spiff for making it, a big one.  He finds this egregious.

I don’t look at it in quite the same way.  I think the world needs to be pushed, pulled and dragged into a life where fossil fuels become a consistently smaller piece of the energy pie.  I think the Volt is the perfect compromise of both worlds.  Now the problem is, this tech can not yet be made available to the public at a price point where it will be widely adopted.  These government incentives are an effort to do this.  I think it is a big picture idea that is going to take time.  Unfortunately we live in a very short term, me first, fck you world where so many people care about themselves and themselves alone.

The Volt is also an effort to kick start domestic production of the massive battery packs that are used to power the car.  The last two decades have seen these type of technologies consistently farmed out overseas where they can be built cheaper.  I love that GM is relying on an American company to make these battery packs.  Ali’s brother was more concerned about the recent story that the battery plant has been nearly idle because of the slow Volt sales.  Again, big picture versus little picture.

The hope is that with the government footing a large portion of the Volt bill, this car, and others like it will become more and more mainstream.  The more mainstream they become, the less expensive they become as the technology is more widely adopted.  It’s a seed that was planted.  The government is watering it daily right now until it grows large enough to be self sustaining.  Will the plan ultimately be successful?  I certainly hope so but even if it would ultimately fail, I think it is a fight worth fighting.

I am a real fan of the greater good concept.  It is in everyone’s best interest to get away from fossil fuels both for economic and environmental reasons. (unless you are a fan of Exxon)  If you don’t agree with that basic premise and that in order to do so is going to take a massive financial effort to drag us away from the slimy tentacles of big oil, I would suggest you are sadly mistaken.

Saturday night I  headed downtown to meet up at a post race party for an 80 mile relay run that was held during the day.  I had a good time getting relatively drunk and hanging out with good people.  I got home just before midnight.

I had plans to run Sunday.  When I woke up right before 8am I almost immediately dismissed them, I felt shitty. Immediately the internal discussions start up, the taskmaster reminding me that if I blow off the exercise I will be annoyed with myself.

After I had my Pop Tart breakfast I felt a little more human so I started leaning back towards grabbing my sneakers.  My mind was made up when I saw it was a very comfortable 66 degrees outside, a temp I have not had the pleasure of running in for probably 7 or 8 months.

I drove down to the water park and decided to do the big 10K Oakes loop.  The first half mile or so I felt pretty shitty, questioning if I wanted to continue running for almost an hour straight.  Eventually things settled down and felt better.  I completed the 10K with no stops for water or a breather in what felt like a decent pace, I didn’t even bother to bring my GPS.  Mentally, I felt better for making myself get out there and do the work, even when I really didn’t feel up to it.

I picked up the dogs on the way back home since Ali was going to work and I was going to be home doing chores.  Since the Eagles were on bye this week I had all day to buzz around.  The lion share of my time was consumed by mowing, I spent well over four hours on the tractor since I mowed the back yard as well.

The weekend was over in a blink of an eye.

I doubled the time of this upcoming weekend thanks to the use of some of my vacation days.  By this time next Monday rolls around I hope to have the bedroom painted and the Pioneer stereo installed in the Tacoma.

I started off my weekend at 4:30 am, dragging my tired ass out of bed to go run with the club.  If I didn’t have the Tough Mudder coming up on the calendar I would remained firmly in bed.  In my mind I felt like at some point before the race I needed to get the “long” course under my belt which is about nine and a half miles.  I figure if I can run that distance continuously, running the roughly 12 mile Mudder course shouldn’t be a problem since there are tons of breaks for the obstacles thrown in there.

I wasn’t really planning to do the long course yet, especially since my knee was bothering me just running 6 miles the week before.  I told Matt I would see how I feel once we hit the water stop at 3.5 miles and make my decision then.

We headed out at a pretty quick pace, something like 8:15 miles, faster than I would prefer if I was going for the long haul.  Eventually we throttled it back a bit.

Saturday was the first morning where it actually felt somewhat “cool” .  The temperature was right around 70 which is still high for 6am, but the humidity level felt much more tolerable.  I definitely could feel the difference when running.

When we reached the water stop I did a quick knee assessment.  It actually felt pretty good so I told Matt I was down for doing the long run.  So instead of turning right and heading back towards our starting point, we went left and ran another mile and a half to the end of Gordon drive before heading back.

My legs were feeling it pretty severely for the last couple miles, they had not been pushed to do this distance at this pace since I ran the Hooters Half in March.    My overall pace actually was almost exactly what I did in that half, no wonder I was tired. It felt good to get the long run under my belt. I would say the run combined with the 200 pull up lunch break qualifies me as being officially ready for the Mudder.

I took the SSR to the run, something I don’t normally do.  With the top down and the wind whipping around I was actually on the cool side, I had the heat blowing on my legs.

So when I got home I had a long list of things I wanted to get done.  I had already tried to get a head start by weeding the property on Friday night.  The first thing I wanted to get done was spraying Weed B Gone on the entire yard, at least everything that is close to the house.

I have had an uphill battle with weeds in the yard forever.  There are three weeds that like take over my lawn, two of the three I don’t know the name of, the third is dollar weed, or Creeping Charlie as I like to call it. I have been trying to keep the weeds under control by applying granular weed and feed in bag on a semi-regular basis.  That stuff is VERY expensive and overall I have not been pleased with the results.  It will normally hold back the dollar weed for a bit but it always returns.  The stuff doesn’t seem to touch the other two weeds that dominate the lawn.

Weed B Gone is a more direct approach.  You attach it to a hose end sprayer and blast away.  Unlike the bagged weed and feed, this stuff is designed to work fast, killing the weeds in a matter of days instead of weeks while leaving the grass intact.

Not only is this stuff more direct, it is also more dangerous.  When you read the directions there are a number of warnings, like don’t apply on a windy day, don’t apply within 25 feet of stuff you don’t want to die, don’t let pets on the grass until it is thoroughly dry, don’t let it run off into sewer systems, etc…

Well I didn’t pay much attention to one of the warnings which says to apply while wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt.  If some of it gets on your skin, you are advised to wash the skin for 15-20 MINUTES with water which sounds ridiculous.  I applied the solution with a steady breeze wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I definitely got some of it on my legs, arms and hands.  I rinsed myself at the end but only for a few seconds, hopefully I don’t drop over dead.

I am hoping the mass extermination of weeds combined with our going into dry season soon will allow real grass to fill these spots in a density enough to choke weeds out in the future. Time will tell.

I then grabbed by loppers and shears and got busy trimming and pruning a few things around the house.  This is a nice warm up for the hellish, November cabbage palm mass pruning that I will have to do.  You have no idea how little I am looking forward to that miserable job.

Next up was some tractor work.  The blades on the tractor, although only a couple months old had already dulled.  The cutting performance while mowing was pretty awful.  I decided to pull them off and try to sharpen them.

Luckily with the Craftsman mower, removing the blades with the deck on the tractor is much more doable than it was with the Cub Cadet which required me to yank the deck to pull the blades.

The blades were still more or less intact although the cutting edge was very, very dull.  I could saw away on my arm with one and not draw a drop of blood.  I decided to use my dremel for the job after locking each blade up in my table vice.

I have never tried sharpening with the dremel, the few times I did it in the past I used a grinding wheel attachment for my cordless drill.  I couldn’t find that attachment.

The dremel actually seemed to work pretty well.  The smaller grinding head gave me better control as I worked the cutting surfaces.  By the time I was done at least I could feel and edge on the blades.  It will be interesting to see how long my sharpening holds up.  I did a brief test cut and there was a definite improvement.

While I had the blades off I drug up the pressure washer and blasted the organic crud off the underside of the mower deck.  In the process I wound up splashing the wet, green/brown sludge all over me.

Finally I needed to give the SSR a bath.  The trip to and from SoBe last week had left the truck with a bug facial that needed to be cleaned up. After finishing up all the outdoor work, heading inside offered me no rest as there was cleaning and laundry to do.

By the time I was done it was after 3.  I was beat.  So beat that my original idea of going out to see Looper Saturday night got shelved, I was just too tired.  Instead I stayed home and threw in a Netflix dvd I had sitting around the house so long that it had dust on the cover, Underworld : Awakenings.

I have seen a number of Underworld movies.  They have a simple formula that works, vampires, werewolves, gruesome violence and Kate Beckinsale in tight leather body suits.  They stuck to the formula and once again it delivered a solid 75-80 minutes of brainless entertainment, B+.

So I woke up Sunday and was debating if I wanted to go for a bike ride or not.  Surprisingly, my right knee felt pretty solid despite running nearly 10 miles the day before.  Then once I decided I was going to get on the bike I was debating what ride I wanted to do.  I settled on doing the 17.25 mile Publix ride.

I pulled down the Dawes for the ride, thinking the aero bars would come in handy if I hit the sustained wind that normally is part of this route.  Despite it’s added weight, the riding geometry the Dawes offers is actually more comfortable than my lighter, higher end Trek 2.1.

For the first half of the ride I was hauling ass. I was over 21 mph for almost the entire time.  Of course I knew this meant I had a wind behind me, helping to push me along.  I knew this same wind would be my adversary on the ride home, I just didn’t realize how big of one.

Man once I turned back east it was miserable.  I knew there was wind, I didn’t think it would suck that bad.  I dropped a couple gears and got down on my aero bars, but only briefly.  I realized the elbow rest on the left side had shifted downward which made the position awkward and annoying.  Instead I grabbed onto the drops in my handlebars and stayed there for the majority of the ride home.

I struggled to keep my speed above 16 mph for most of the 8+ miles back.  My legs were totally gassed by the end of the ride where my overall average speed dropped to 17.7 mph.  I jumped into the pool with my bike pants and top still on to cool off.

After changing I hopped in the van to go pick up the dogs so they could hang out at the house with me.  I had cleared the slate of the majority of the chore list so I was looking forward to a day of relaxing, as much as I can relax.

Watching that Eagles game certainly did not relax me.

For the second week in a row the defense had the opportunity to win the game and for the second week in a row they failed to do so, in an even grander collapse.  However the blame for this performance certainly does not rest on the back of the defense alone.

Ok if you look at stats alone, you may think that Vick had a great game, well if you take away the blown coverage that allowed Maclin to run for a 70 yard td, Vick’s game was not good at all.  After making stupid predictions of next to no turnovers by himself the rest of the season, he was involved in 3 more turnovers.  Luckily for the Eagles, the Lions offense was awful for the majority of the game, was unable to turn any of those turnovers into points.

I addition to their stumbling offense, the Lions were playing horrible sloppy ball, committing an amazing 16 penalties.  If I told you a team had 16 penalties and failed three times to score any points off turnovers you would assume they lost the game.  You would be assuming correctly, unless that team happens to be playing the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Eagles scored a TD late in the 4th quarter to go up 23-13 with just over 5 minutes left in the game.  A good team does not lose a game when playing a team that has sputtered all day in that situation.  Well of course as well all should now realize, the Eagles are not that good of a team.  Instead they allowed themselves to be gashed up and down the field.  They actually tried to allow the Lions win in regulation after committing pass interference in the end zone.  Instead the Lions had to settle for a game tying field goal as time expired.

Overtime  was a total joke.  After Vick took back to back sacks the Eagles had to punt out of the back of their end zone, giving the Lions great field position.  The Lions easily gained the yardage needed to kick the game ending field goal.  What a fcking mess.

Let’s point out a few names since Andy refuses to do so, preferring to just take blanket blame for everything once again.

Let’s talk Mike Vick, whom at this point might be the most overpaid QB in the league.  Outside of his great 8 game run in 2010, his stats since have been mediocre at best.  His new found love of turning the ball over has made his presence behind the center a liability.  I have never seen someone that turns over the ball this much be allowed to keep his job.

Vick gets hit more than anyone else I can remember in recent history.  It literally seems that more plays than not, he is on his back.  The blame for this lies both with him taking too long to get rid of the ball and an offensive line that seems to generally suck.  They appear to be out classed each and every game.  Andy always seemed to understand the importance of a good o-line in the past.  Granted they have had injuries that have forced some not so qualified players to step into starting roles, but again, good teams are able to rise above injuries.

Ok let’s turn to the special teams.  They suck.  I can’t tell you how long it has been since there was a punt or kick off return that was anything significant.  Hell they even threw Desean Jackson back there for one punt and he promptly lost a couple yards.

Ok how about that defense that has collapsed when the game was on the line?  Well the most obvious flaw is the dramatic difference in sacks this year when compared to last.  It seemed like Stafford was basically untouched, it was like we had four Mike Mamulas on the D-line, always one step away from making an actual play. Jason Babin and Trent Cole are totally ineffective all of a sudden.

Who the F is number 27 and why the F is he allowed on the field?  He was involved in almost every big passing play during the Lions come back, blowing coverage repeatedly.

I mean maybe all of this bitching is because of the false sense of how good the team was after the Eagles built a 3-1 record to start.  If you looked at how they squeezed out those wins it was obvious this team was far from dominant.  Now they are following last years blueprint where they lose games that could have been wrapped up if the team was able to perform when it matters.

If this team stumbles it’s way to another .500 year I think it will be the rubber stamp that Andy’s methods of managing the team have finally run it’s course.

Oh during halftime I went out and hung on the bar with one hand.

I was feeling pretty funked Sunday night.  Maybe it was a hangover from the shitty Eagles loss, maybe it was a combo of other things on my mind.  I just know that the world did not feel very bright and shiny.

So as I explained on Friday, my game plan to attend the pull up event in South Beach, despite my dog sitting for the weekend, was to leave around noon and hopefully get back around 8, rolling the dice that there would be no excrement waiting for me when I got home.

I was surprised when Friday night I got a call from my mom.  She said she wouldn’t mind driving out to the house after she was done working on Saturday so the dogs would be ok.  I hadn’t even bothered pitching this idea to her since I assumed she would not want to do it.  Of course I was thrilled with the offer, it will eliminate the poop potential.  Mom said she would just stay the night and get up early Sunday to head to work.  Sounds good to me.

Saturday morning I was up and working early.  I had the girls ride with me in the van to Ali’s place to go pick up the Camry.  Ali mentioned it was due for an oil change so I told her I would do it while she was gone.  I left the van there and took the Camry back out to the house to do the work.  In addition to changing the oil and filter I added coolant and air to the tires.  The car really could use a bath but that is an extra cost service.

I spent the rest of the morning getting as much done as I could before I was to leave for South Beach.  When I have the dogs I don’t even bother worry about cleaning until after they are gone, especially now.  Very recently, seemingly to me since Nicki started on some thyroid medicine a month ago, her coat has rapidly transformed.  It has made her fur very long, much longer than ever before.  In addition, her shedding is non-stop.  In no time at all the carpet had various black spots where Nicki had been laying down, her hair just falls out.

I also noticed that Nicki’s level of thirst since being on the thyroid medicine is drastically increased.  She was constantly at the water bowl.  I really think this is all related to the meds.  I haven’t seen positive signs from the meds, Nicki still is moving slow and obviously has joint related pain.

So I got ready to pull out for South Beach.  I packed a small bag with various items, unsure exactly what I would be doing once I got there.  I included a towel, some water, a rubber resistance band, a change of clothes, my Flip camera and some deodorant.  That should cover most foreseeable circumstances.

I fired up the SSR, dropped the top and after filling the gas tank was off to South Beach.  I had the top down for the majority of the drive.  I actually drove through a period of significant rain with the top down.  I was on a section of highway with no real place to pull off to put the roof up.  Actually, as long as you are moving at a decent speed, the wind rushing on top of the truck shields the cabin from getting soaked too badly.

I had asked Luis, one of the Barstarzz members that invited me to the event about where the best place was to park.  He said the parking garage at the building which includes a Publix, Best Buy and Staples was a good choice if you don’t mind walking a bit.  The first two hours are free and the hourly rate after that is very cheap.  Cheap parking in South Beach is non-existent normally.  Since I only had the small bag to carry I didn’t mind the walk.

I did exercise some caution with my wallet.  I opted to leave it in the truck and just carry some cash and my credit card in a velcro pocket.  I had some concerns about some shady person snatching my bag when I wasn’t paying attention at the beach.  I figured if I kept my money, credit card and truck keys on me at all times that would be the safest bet.

The walk to the beach was pretty lengthy, maybe 6 or 7 blocks.  In my flip flops it took me about 15 minutes to get to the event, which was scheduled to start around 2PM.

By the time I got there it was probably close to 2:45.  There was a big crowd gathered around the bars watching people take turns on the 15 foot tall pole mounted in the sand.

The first thing I did was look for Luis.  Luis is an older guy like me that got into bar work outs late in life.  He is the one that invited me to attend the event.  I spotted him and introduced myself.  It was cool to finally meet someone I only knew virtually up until that point.  He kind of gave me the lay of the land as far as the event goes. Mixed in with the casual exhibitions there was going to be a pull up, muscle up, dip and free style competition, cool.  I figured I should at least give the pull ups a shot.

I wore my Bar-barians shirt to the event after verifying with Luis ahead of time that it wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t know if it would be weird to be wearing Bar-barians clothing at a Barstarzz event.  Luis assured me it was fine.  I actually didn’t leave the shirt on for very long.  95% of the guys there were shirtless so I decided to join them.  If there is ever a place to show of the fruits of your calisthenics labor, it is South Beach.

As I was walking around I saw someone I recognized.  I knew I saw a video about him on YouTube a little while ago.  He goes by the name Raven (real name Ray)

I went up to him and introduced myself. Raven is a very unique individual and not a very young man, he recently turned 62 years old.  To say Raven believes in regimens would be an understatement.  For the last 42 YEARS, he has run 8 miles, everyday, on the beach.

He started doing this in January of 1975.  From what I saw on his website, he originally made a New Years resolution to run 8 miles a day for an entire year.  Well, he never stopped from that point on.  About 5 years into his running regimen he added pull ups and other body weight exercises into his daily routine as well.

To date he has run a total of over 100,000 miles in total, just an incredible feat. However what is really amazing is when you think in detail about the reality of what this man has done.  He LITERALLY has run that 8 miles every single day since 1975.  He has run through injuries, illness, horrible weather and just about any other adversity you can imagine.

As I talked to him I asked what was his biggest injury issue.  He said it was his back, at certain points he could barely get out of bed but he still put his 8 miles in.

Raven actually invited me to join him, a lot of people now run with him, at 5:30 at the 5th street lifeguard station.  If I knew about it ahead of time I may have packed some running gear and done it.  Instead I took a rain check and filed it away under the “to do’s” the next time I am in South Beach.

Raven was there because he wanted to take part of the pull up competition.

So the pull up contest eventually started.  As others made their attempt I tried my best to get loose.  Raven went before I did and knocked out 21 pull ups although his elbows were at 90 degrees at the bottom of his reps, a less than ideal range of motion.  There were varying degrees of correctness in the form many people used.  Some even used chin up grip for some reps. No one made a big stink though since they weren’t doing enough reps to win anyway.

Finally it was my turn to go, I might have been the 8th or 9th person to get on the bar.  At that point the most amount of reps was 22, which I knew on a good day was within my wheel house since my PR is 25.  I grabbed on to the highest of the three bars and started pulling.

I tried to keep my form very clean with my legs straight, feet together and using good extension at the bottom while making sure I was getting chin high at the top.  My pace was pretty quick and explosive early on, I got to rep 18 before I had to pause.  I managed to squeeze out 5 more reps to become the temporary leader with 23 reps.  It was kind of cool to have a big crowd cheering me on as I squeezed out the last few reps. I wish I gave someone my Flip to shoot video of the reps.  There was someone filming the entire event so I know my set is on film somewhere.  Hopefully I can find it.

As I was there a tall young guy came up to me and said hi.  His name is Max.  Max reminded me that a couple years ago he and I were communicating back and forth about exercise stuff.  Once he described the communication I remembered him but I still would have blanked on his name.

Max is almost the exact same height as I am, he is also 22 or 23 years younger than me.  Despite his long build he has been able to really do some high level stuff as far as body weight movements go, much more advanced than I have gotten.

Unfortunately Max also has had a ton of injuries along the way, despite his young age.  He actually was currently suffering from what sounds like a pretty serious shoulder injury.  In addition, during our talks he described a myriad of other injuries he has gone through.  Max is real focused and intense when it comes to achieving a goal once he sets it in his mind.

I talked to Max quite a bit, he seems like a real cool kid.  He lives in the Miami area, we exchanged email and phone numbers.  We agreed we should get together and work out once he heals up.

One of the other people I was looking for at the event was a woman I know primarily as “Low Bar”.  She is one of the few women that are actively involved in bar exercise.  She is from NYC and is familiar with the various bar groups there, including the Bar-barians.  She had flown down for the event.

I was periodically scanning the crowd for her but she was nowhere to be seen.  She showed up a little later.  I gave her a hug and welcomed her to Florida.  From the picture you can see why she is nick named Low Bar as she is less than 5 feet tall.

I sat next to her while the freestyle competition was going on.  I shot most of the video I took during the freestyle part of the competition.  You can see it below.

So the event started winding down around 6:30.  I was planning to simply walk back to the SSR and start the 2 plus hour drive home.  Low Bar asked me if I wanted to grab food with her cousin and her.  Since I had mom in place to tend to the dogs I said sure.

Before I left I found Luis and thanked him again for inviting me to the event.  It was a lot of fun to be around that kind of positive energy.  I should invite the Barstarzz guys to hit my backyard bar park, that would be quite the scene.

I got in on the group picture before I left.

So we walked towards Ocean Drive and picked a spot to eat, thinking we would just eat out in the sidewalk seating area.  Instead the hostess directed us inside to eat, um ok.  Well this place, called Mangos, evidently is also a night/dance club.  We were seated directly underneath a speaker that was blaring loud dance music.  It didn’t take long until I got up and asked the hostess if we could eat outside instead because of the noise.  She accommodated us but let me know there was a certain line in the sidewalk that I had to keep my chair behind.  No problem.

We had a good dinner.  Even with being outside it was still kind of loud, I had a hard time making out what Low Bar’s cousin was saying at times because of the noise and her strong Fillipino accent.

One thing that is nice eating outside is you get a nonstop stream of “interesting” people to look at.  Some of the fashion decisions that were on display were pretty mind blowing. After our meal we walked back towards the hotel they were staying at.  Once we hit 5th street I peeled off and started the long walk to the parking garage after giving them both hugs goodbye.

The drive back across the alley was a bit treacherous at times with some torrential downpours, including one I walked through to get to the front door of the rest stop.  You can see my level of drenching in the picture.

I  pulled into the driveway about 10:30.  After letting the dogs out (mom was already in bed), I took a shower and crashed into bed.  I was quite tired.

You can imagine the joy I felt when at 2:20 am I hear Nicki crying by the door.  I assumed that meant she had to go to the bathroom.  Well at least she is letting me know.  Well the funny thing was the first thing she did when I opened the bedroom door was go lay in front of my mom’s door.  I called her over and went out back.  She did a number two and a one so I despite my being delirious with exhaustion, I preferred that to waking up at 7am to the smell of shit on the floor. Unfortunately afterward I had a very difficult time falling back asleep.

Mom was up early, crazy early to get ready for work.  She wanted her alarm set at 5AM.  Well it didn’t take long for the dogs to realize there was something going on in the main living area.  They decided to wake me up a little after 6am, oh well.

So I told mom about my time on the east coast.  As we were talking I realized this was the first time mom has set foot in the house since Ali and I separated.  In fact, mom said it was the first time she has been at the house since last CHRISTMAS.  When she first said that I was sure she was wrong but as I thought about it I couldn’t remember any other visits.  It seemed impossible that so much time had passed so quickly.  My life does feel like a bit of a blur the last 6 months or so.

Mom was the first person to sleep in the bed Jeremy donated to me.  She said the bed was comfortable although she said she slept terribly.  I wouldn’t credit that to the bed though, almost every time mom stays at the house she reports poor sleeping results.  The deviation from her routine must through her for a loop.

So mom got ready and headed out around seven for work.  I thanked her again for her dog sitting, it was nice to not have to be constantly checking my watch when I was over in South Beach.

So despite a severe lack of sleep I decided I needed to get some running in for Mudder training.  I drove to the now closed for the season water park to run around.  My initial hope was to do four laps around the outside of the park which would add up to 8 miles.

The skies were overcast which made running early on pretty bearable.  As I got to the halfway point my right knee was feeling pretty shitty.  Each stride had an accompanying ping of soreness associated with it.  I decided to only do 3 laps instead of 4, finishing the 6 miles in 55 minutes and change, not a great pace but ok.  I figured running the last 2 miles wasn’t worth it if I was really hurting.  When I got home I iced the knee and it actually doesn’t feel too bad today.

Well that Eagles game was a bummer.  I actually was so tired I was half asleep for nearly 3 quarters of the game.  I was awake when Vick fumbled another two times.  His turnover problems are a real big deal.  Obviously opposing teams realize that the best way to beat the Eagles is to pressure Vick.  When this happens he makes a lot of poor decisions and he’s not good at protecting the ball.

Despite the turnovers the Eagles actually grabbed their first lead late in the game.  The drive that got them the lead had the opportunity to be a HUGE fail for Andy.  For some reason he decided to go completely against the book and go for it on 4th down with over 10 minutes left in the game on his OWN 30 yard line, a huge risk.  Luckily the Eagles converted by a few inches but man, he would have been crucified if they didn’t.

So anyway, the drive was very long, covering 17 plays resulting in a 14-13 lead.  All that was left was for the defense to hold the Steelers with a couple minutes left on the clock and the game could be secured.  Well obviously it didn’t happen.  The biggest fail was when the Eagles had the Steelers pinned back on their side of the field facing a 3rd and 12.  Instead of dealing the knockout blow, they played a soft zone that allowed a 20 yard completion.  Once that happened I knew they were done.

The Steelers proceeded to march down the field easily and kicked a game winning field goal with three seconds left.

It was a disappointing ending for sure but I think the bigger news is Mike Vick’s torrid turnover pace. The amount of times he has turned the ball over thus far this season is staggering.  He will obliterate the league record at this pace. Hopefully Andy is smart enough to eventually realize that either Vick has to take care of the ball better or someone else has to start taking the snaps.

Ali ran the Chicago Marathon yesterday, the reason I was watching the dogs for the weekend.  She had much cooler temps to run in this year, hovering around 50 which for me, would be ideal.  Ali prefers warmer air.  She managed to finish a couple minutes ahead of last year’s time but had a lot of struggles, especially the last 10 miles of the race.  She said her entire lower body was just in severe pain.

The good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is she gets to take another whack at the marathon distance in a month as she is signed up for the NYC marathon.

After the Eagle game I had enough daylight left to go out and hop on the tractor.  Once again it was not running smoothly, acting like there is still some ethanol slime in the fuel system.  I will need to find some additive that will dissolve the shit.  I never like doing chores at the tail end of the weekend but it felt good to get the grass done.

You know when I run, at least when I run by myself, lots of random thoughts go through my head.  As I was running Sunday my mind drifted to to the topic of people that spend a lot of energy screaming about “entitlements” and how they are ruining the country.  I then thought about the hypocrisy that many of these exact same people are responsible for parenting the most “entitled” generation in US history.

These people that are so eager to cut seniors medical or social security benefits are the same people that think it necessary to equip their child with a one digit age with the latest and greatest iDevice.  They feel it is important that they have some sort of video screen stimulation in front of their child’s face  most waking moments of the day.  Their child should not be made to suffer the cruel punishment of having to actually look out a window during a road trip and look at scenery.

These are the people that see nothing wrong with their child receiving a medal when their soccer team gets last place.  After all, children should be taught early on that no matter how hard they do or don’t work, they will be rewarded.  I mean wtf, how can parents complain about an entitled society when they parent in such a manner that does nothing but encourage that mentality?

I literally laugh out loud when I see bumper stickers were parents proclaim their child had a perfect dental check up.  Good job Sally, way to go Petey!

Their children are being raised in a bubble.  No one is allowed to yell at them, nobody should ever treat them unfairly, they are not allowed to endure hardship or struggle to attain a goal.  It is just handed to them.

You see, as much as failure hurts, it is an absolutely essential part of life.  If you are never allowed to fail you don’t ever appreciate or even know what true success is.

Maybe more people in the country need to go on solo runs so they can come to these type of revelations on their own.  Don’t talk it if you don’t walk it.

I saw this quote floating around Facebook and it struck me as so true.

I watched episode one of this season of Dexter last night.  Damn, I have no idea where the story can go from here, the way it ended you would think it was a season finale, not a premiere.  It’s awesome to be able to watch shows like this in real time courtesy of  Xfinity online.  Shows like this (Showtime) can’t stream through the Xbox though, I need to watch them on my laptop or pc.

My property has once again transformed into swamplands after a day of rain that included several periods of intense downpours.  Yeah it’s annoying but dry season is right around the corner where we can flip pages on the calendar without seeing hardly a drop.

Last night I also got on the Homeland bandwagon, another show that people rave about.  I only watched the first episode but I can already see I will be into the show big time.

Yesterday I migrated my fitness blog, Dufisthenics off of WordPress.com onto my private hosting space.  Hosting the site on WordPress.com is convenient but it also is somewhat limiting.  You aren’t able to do much customization as plug ins aren’t allowed.  They also want to charge you to allow certain things to be done which can be done for free if you host it yourself.  They also do not allow you to run Google ads on their site.

In addition to the move, I installed a new theme.  I find the new lay out more visually appealing.

Unfortunately my exercise routines have been a bit sidetracked lately due to injury.  In addition to my right knee being always problematic to some degree, my left wrist is becoming a long term problem.

A wrist is a hard thing to let heal since it is used in so many ways and so often.  For now I am trying to avoid things that blatantly cause pain but at least thus far I am not seeing/feeling any significant healing taking place.

Speaking of blog facelifts, I think I will be bolting a new skin onto this blog as well.  The skin that is in place is admittedly boring and was hurriedly put in place when my site was hacked awhile back.  There are bunch of good looking free alternatives out there.

Tonight is the first presidential debate.  I really have no need to watch the debates as I don’t need to be convinced either way.  Even if I did need convincing, if I thought that anything either candidate SAYS in a debate really means that much in the end I would be sadly mistaken. If a candidates debate performance is the deal breaker for you I would suggest you do more research.

So after a ridiculous amount of waiting, unanswered phone calls, and emails, I finally got the paperwork for the extended warranty on the SSR sent to me.   After receiving them I was reading through the plan outline.  One thing that caught my eye was the “Maintenance Requirements” .   It said in there that you had to have receipts for certain maintenance items (like an oil change) and the receipts had to include the date and VIN number of the vehicle.

Well I have changed my own oil for years, not only to save money but also so I know it is done right after I had a Quick Lube place try to get away with not replacing the filter.  Plus who knows what type of oil they dump in your vehicle in a place like that, they dispense it from giant vats, it can’t be very good.

Anyway, I wanted to clarify that if I changed my own oil, I could be setting myself up for a fight if I submit a claim, so I called the customer service number for the warranty company.  I explained to the guy that I typically change my own oil.  I asked if I kept the receipts for the oil/filter if that would be sufficient to indicate proper maintenance was performed.

The answer I got back was annoying.  He basically said it may or may not be.  He said that it would only become an issue if they asked for proof of oil changes if an engine related problem was submitted.  It sounded like he was saying if I change my own oil I am rolling the dice as far as coverage goes, great.

So now for my next oil change I hope to find a place that will do the work for me and provide the proper documentation if I provide them with the oil and filter.  It’s an annoying hoop to have to jump through.

So last night I wanted to get the grass mowed, it hadn’t been touched in a solid two weeks so it was looking shitty.  A quick walk around the property revealed I need to once again invest in very expensive weed and feed to combat weeds that are overtaking areas of the yard.  This battle is straight uphill.  It seems that no matter how much I spread it is only a matter of time until Creeping Charlie (dollarweed) and various other weeds reestablish a foothold.

So I have a hard time getting the tractor started, a real hard time.  Once I do get it running the motor is reving up and down, almost sounding like it is out of gas.  I quickly drove it over to the other shed to gas it up.  After filling the tank I figured I was ready to roll.  I had to hurry since daylight is a lot more sparse at this time of year than the middle of summer.

I turn the key and the tractor makes no hint of wanting to start, it just turned over and over, regardless of choke position.  It almost seemed like it wasn’t getting any gas.  I looked at the fuel filter, there was gas in it although it didn’t seem like it was as much as there should be.  I disconnected the hose after the filter and gas flowed freely.  Weird.

So the hose ran into some intermediate valve looking thing before another hose connected the valve to the carburetor.  I pulled the hose for them valve end and saw  yellow snot hanging out of it.   I instantly knew what it was, the fcking by product of ethanol being added to gasoline.

This sludge is normally common when gas has been sitting unused in a fuel system for a period of time.  However in this case the tractor had been used within a couple weeks. I couldn’t believe it.  The fact that ethanol is even included in gas is controversial.  It is more of a handout to corn growers than anything else.  Ethanol is actually a pretty terrible fuel when you factor in the energy and dollars required to create it.

So anyway the way I fixed it was to grab my can of carb cleaner/starter fluid, jam the straw up into the valve and blast the shit out of it to dissolve the slime.    After doing so the tractor ran normally.  Unfortunately I had wasted probably a half hour of daylight screwing around.  I hate ethanol gas.

Mowing was slow going because of the high grass, certain areas required multiple passes.  It seems that my relatively new mower blades have already dulled significantly, yet another thing for me to address.  So as I expected I ran out of light as I was finishing the third of the four quadrants I divide the grass into.  Well I wasn’t going to let a little thing like darkness stop me.  After all the tractor does have headlights.

Unfortunately the tractor also has a headlight problem.  The driver side light has some sort of loose connection that makes the light flash on and off depending on how it gets jostled around.  Not only did it make visibility next to impossible if I was turning left it was just plain annoying.  I did the best I could under the limited visibility to knock everything down.  I guess this weekend I will see how many spots I missed.  I pulled the tractor into the shed around 8pm without a speck of light to be seen anywhere beside the full moon in the sky.

Last night I tried to bandage the spot on my back where the cancer was burned off.  It is in a spot where I just can not reach effectively.  Trying to apply a bandage while looking in a mirror proved to be entirely too aggravating so I just smeared some Neosporin on the area and called it good enough.

This weekend I have plenty to fill my plate.  I would like to run at the club run tomorrow but my knee still is feeling side effects from last weeks 7 miler.  I will probably not decide what I am doing until tonight.

On the way home from work the other day I saw an AC service truck driving around with this on it’s back window. (Send the Commie back to Kenya)  I thought this was idiotic.

Not only did the guy immediately identify himself as one of the masses of “lightly informed” (my polite word for stupid) that prefer to make their political decisions on one liners and lemming mentality, he also identified himself as a very poor businessman.

I mean as someone that does business with the general public, why would you want to annoy and piss off at least half of your potential customer base with something like this on your work vehicle?

If I needed AC repair desperately and this guy lived right next door to me, I wouldn’t call him.  If he is dumb enough to throw this on his window, I question his ability to fix my AC in an efficient manner.

Last night I returned to yoga and again I was teamed up with the only guy in the room on a partner stretch.  I thought I adequately insulated myself from this occurring by positioning myself on the opposite side of the room that he was.  However the instructor slapped us together because of height and the stretch we were doing.

This partner stretch was even worse than the last time.  The bottom person was on their back with the soles of their feet together and hips spread so your legs formed a psuedo-diamond shape.  The top person stood at the bottoms head and then leaned over the person, pressing their hands into the bottoms inner thighs while the bottom held the tops ankles.

Once ankle grip was established, the top person walked their legs back to stretch out the bottom.  It was basically a 69 position with about a 18-24 inch buffer.  I kept my eyes closed for most of it.

I also made the mistake of wearing one of my baggy XL cotton t-shirts to class last night.  Not only was it falling over my face constantly, it also turned into a big, wet, smelly sweat sponge in short order.  A form fitting dri-fit shirt is what I will be sticking with from here on out.

This morning I had the basal cell skin cancer burned and scraped off my back.  In total the procedure literally took less than 5 minutes.  Ironically, the most painful part of it is the injection of the pain numbing stuff which burns like a son of a bitch.  So unless something new pops up on my skin I should be good to go for another 6 months.

So Saturday morning I got up very early to go do the club run.  As I was leaving my house I saw a pile of roadkill right in front of the driveway.  It looked like an armadillo.  Then, I saw another armadillo along the neighbors fence line.  I can only assume this one and it’s smashed counterpart are the culprit for the many holes in both my and the neighbors property.  I have to admit, I did not feel my normal level of remorse when I saw the dead dillo in the road.  If I wasn’t pressed for time I would have tried to catch the other one.

So I went into the club run with conservative numbers in mind.  My right knee has been troublesome since the KOB vball tourney in mid-August.  I have run one three mile session on the treadmill in the last 6 weeks, that has basically been it.

Taking that into account, I figured it would be smart to only shoot for 4 or 5 miles.  I needed to get my running ramped up for the Tough Mudder but I don’t need to aggravate the injury. So not only did I plan to keep the distance down, I was looking for a rather leisurely pace so I could get my body acclimated again to distance.

Well the slower pace thing didn’t last very long.  My natural instinct to want to pass people took over almost immediately.  I moved up through the large group of runners and then came upon Matt who was running and talking to someone else.  Well Matt accelerated and hooked up with me.  I knew at that point my pre-run intentions were officially scuttled.  I would be running 7 miles and it would be at a decent clip.

Honestly I was kind of surprised that I was able to do 7 miles at a 9 minute mile pace without MAJOR complications. Yea I was tired but not gassed. The knee had some discomfort but not bad pain.

I picked up the dogs on the way home as Ali was going to work.  I had a number of things to address at home.  One of those things was going to be mowing but after another deluge Friday night the land was too swampy to bother.  I decided to just wait until things dry out later this week.

One of the things outside of normal chores I wanted to look at/fix was the battery in the Tacoma.  You may recall that after I replaced the starter I had some mysterious battery charging light issues that went away.  When I was looking into them I noticed the positive battery terminal had a TON of shit accumulated on it, despite the battery only being a year old.  At that time I gave the terminal and connectors a thorough cleaning and applied stuff that is supposed to prevent the corrosion from returning.

Well when I last changed the oil in the Tacoma I noticed the shit had returned in short notice.  I cleaned it off again.  The last time I had the hood open a week ago I noticed the corrosion returned AGAIN.  I also started seeing the battery light flicker off and on last week once again.  Ok I needed to look into this closer.  Under normal circumstances a battery should not corrode the terminals that quickly.

Getting the positive terminal off the battery was tough.  The corrosion had eaten into the nut and bolt that secures it, it was quite tough to break it free.

Well once I got it off I noticed something.  It looked like the positive terminal was loose, there was a crack around it’s base that leads into the battery.  It made sense.  This kind of corrosion is normally caused by leaking battery acid.  It seemed obvious that the acid could leak from the cracked casing.

I threw the battery into the van and took it back to Wal-mart where I bought it to get it replaced for free.  It was actually the second time I had been to the store I love to hate in a few hours.  I stopped there initially to grab more battery cleaning supplies.  While I was there I grabbed a new battery terminal to replace the badly corroded original.

I have to tell you, every time I go to the local Super Wal-mart, I feel like a hypocrite. The store represents everything that is wrong with America, as it sells dirt cheap made in China shit to an all consuming, fat, lazy, american population that stuff the aisles like mindless cattle.

As I walked around the store I found myself involuntarily just shaking my head at the humanity I was observing.  Maybe much like my slow transformation to a meatless diet, I can finally proclaim once and for all I will not buy another item from Wal-mart, ever.

So anyway, I got my new battery and battery terminal installed without issue.  I am hoping that is the end of my battery idiot light.

Saturday night I took my mom out to dinner at a place called the Fish House.  It was maybe 5 minutes away from mom’s place.  The nice thing about eating with mom is she typically wants to eat dinner early, meaning for the most part you miss the core of the dinner crowd.

The restaurant had a very casual feel, it kind of reminded a bit of the Snook Inn with outdoor seating, a seafood heavy menu and a relaxed atmosphere.  Mom and I sat in the covered sunroom style area. The restaurant is right on the water so you have a relaxing view as you wine and dine.  Both mom and I enjoyed our meals.  I would definitely take someone back there.

Over the weekend I had a couple odd wildlife sightings (besides the one alive and one dead armadillo).

When I was weeding the garden I pulled aside a 2×6 that is used to sit on while working.  To my amazement I was looking back at the face of a little mouse that had moved in to one of the raised beds during the last week.

After staring at me for a few moments he slowly backed down into his nest out of sight.  I put the board back in place as it was his makeshift roof.  Lucky for him, I currently have a lot of unused garden real estate until the winter planting season hits.

The other sighting was a small, young bird on the dash of the SSR.  The bird had somehow found itself on the dash of the truck (the top was down) and kept trying to escape through the windshield.

I was able to snap a picture shortly before he realized that flying the opposite direction was the ticket to freedom.

I also had a lot of buzzard visitors that came to dispose of the armadillo carcass.  I had no less than 20 of them hanging around.  These suckers are huge.  I could hear them hopping around the roof of the house while I was inside.

Sunday morning I did my second day of endurance work, riding 12.25 miles at a brisk pace (for me) and following up with 1200 in the pool.  Unlike the last time I swam at the water park in bathtub warm water, the temps were more suitable this time around.

The water park closes for the season next weekend. It sucks they close so early.  The weather here could easily support the place staying open into November but economics dictate otherwise.

The Eagles didn’t play until 4pm so that gave me some extra time to of course get things done.  After paying the bills I set the Scoobas loose on the hard surfaces while I used the carpet cleaner on the rest of the house.  After the dog excrement heavy prior weekend I figured a thorough cleaning would be a good idea.

I asked Ali if she wanted to bring the dogs over to watch the Eagles game which she did.  When she arrived I was on the phone with DirecTv.  When I flipped on the game I noticed that I was only getting the standard def broadcast, not the crystal clear HD that I normally receive.  When I tuned to the HD channels I was receiving a prompt to BUY the HD game for the low, low price of 44.99, WTF?  Well this surely had to be a mistake since everything worked just fine the first two weeks of the season.

The first person I spoke to had very limited power in the system besides being able to send a reset to the receiver.  She was not able to help me so she forwarded me to tech support.  This was another woman that seemed like she knew her stuff.  She joked about my issue and assured me she should be able to get me up and running shortly.  That’s great, except she didn’t.

She was dumbfounded for awhile, not sure why she could not get HD working on my account.  After putting me on hold several times she came back and gave me the very annoying news.  She said that because of my bastardized package, where I just have the Sunday Ticket but no regular DirecTv programming, she said that they no longer can include HD access.

I said “What are you talking about?  This worked 7 days ago and has worked for the last 5 years why would it just stop working?”  All the girl could say was they don’t offer the HD option anymore if I just get Sunday Ticket.

Well I certainly wasn’t going to take this as an answer.  I have had similar run ins with DirecTV when it comes to my package where I was told I couldn’t have certain things where eventually I could, if I pressed hard enough.  So I started the press.

I told the girl this was asinine that I am paying 300 for the Ticket, something they are giving away for free to new subscribers and I can no longer get it in HD.  I reminded her it was 2012, to make HD optional is ridiculous in the first place.  I used my normally successful tactic of asking her to put herself in my shoes.  I have been a customer for 12 years and this is how I am rewarded?

Well regardless of what I was saying, the girl said she is nothing she can do.  She said the option to add HD back into my account “was grayed out” because of my lack of a normal subscription.  Ok well then it was time to turn to common tactic two, “let me speak to your supervisor”.

The woman obviously was not pleased by my request and my belief that I would get further with someone of greater authority.  In fact she told me that although she can connect me with a supervisor, I will be told the exact same thing.  I told her I want to talk to her anyway.  She was an unhappy camper with me but I didn’t care.

So after a few minute wait (at this point the call was over 30 minutes long) I get another woman with a pleasant sounding southern accent.  She asks me what is going on although I certainly assumed she had an idea.  I recapped the scenario, basically no HD now, had HD before, fix it.

Initially the woman did do what the prior support agent indicated, said there was nothing she could do, the option wasn’t available.  Despite hearing this 7 or 8 times now, I persisted.  I told her that as a long time customer I find this very disappointing and if I it wasn’t resolved I would just cancel and be sure to let someone at DirecTV higher up the chain know why I cancelled.

Well that statement apparently got the woman to dig a little deeper.  On digging she saw that I stopped being charged an additional $10 a month for “HD access” in October 2011. Despite it’s removal 11 months ago, I had HD versions of the games until yesterday which she could not explain.  She put me on hold several times trying to figure it out.  Then all of a sudden the HD version of the game popped on the screen, it’s back.

I told her it was now working.  She was glad.  She said the trick was although she could not add HD back to the account, she did have the option to re-activate it.  Evidently that is different in the DirecTv world.  So anyway all was well again although I asked her if I was going to see this problem reoccur when I go to watch next weeks game.  She said it “shouldn’t”.  Of course I know that means it probably will. Oh well at least I had the game back in a format suitable for the 73 inch TV.

As I hung up I put an imaginary notch in my belt as I snickered mentally at the tech that said transferring me to the supervisor would be worthless.  Worthless, my ass.  Not taking no for an answer in certain situations is a valuable lesson.  I was told there was absolutely nothing could be done about the situation, but in there end, there was.

After all that effort to get the game on, it would have been nice if the Eagles put on a performance worth watching.  Unfortunately it was the exact opposite.  The Birds got smashed by the Cardinals 27-6.  Once again the Eagles and Vick had big turnover problems, the most horrific was a fumble at the end of the half when the team was ready to score.  Instead the Cardinals ran the fumble back the length of the field, a huge 14 point swing.

Once again Vick seemed to be getting smacked more plays than he wasn’t.  Some of it was his fault, some of it wasn’t.  He doesn’t seem to respond well at all when the defense dictates a quick throw to beat the rush.  Instead he holds the ball and more often than not makes a bad decision in addition to taking a physical beating.  Unless they find a way to change this trend there is no way Vick is going to make it through the season.

The game was ugly from start to finish.  At least this wasn’t one of those games that we can lament the team “should have won”.  This was a no doubt about it ass kicking.

It had to be sweet revenge for Kevin Kolb whom was traded away after Andy decided to bet the farm on Vick.  Kolb had a very solid game and was clearly the better QB yesterday.  Other than his torrid run in 2010 when he became the starter, Vick’s numbers have been middle of the pack at best.  His performance/numbers are nowhere close to the level his astronomical contract would dictate.

So by the time Friday rolled around I was totally over my training class, I couldn’t take it anymore.  By that time I had gotten what I needed out of the class, a basic understanding of how IP6 functions and is different than IPV4.  Unfortunately for me the class dealt with high end router/switch technologies that I have no use for in my current job environment.  Hell, a lot of the acronyms I never even heard of before.

Even with 5 days dedicated to the class, there was entirely TOO much content jammed in there.  It was ridiculous.  Even if the instructor did nothing but read each slide non-stop I don’t think we would have gotten through everything.

The instructor didn’t help the situation either.  Don’t get me wrong, this guy was a Cisco GENIUS but he was not so brilliant in time management.  Earlier in the week he was very sloppy with making sure class started on time, breaks were observed and lunch hour was actually only an hour.  Plus he didn’t set any finite time on the labs we did which was dumb.  Instead of saying “you have 40 minutes for this lab” it would be open ended which resulted in hours being wasted.

I was so glad when I clicked the TERMINATE button for the video conference for the final time.  It was a long week in the virtual classroom.

So I had a race to time Saturday morning.  I was out of the house early, right around 5AM.  I got Nicki to take a dump before I left so I figured I would be in the clear till I got back around 10.  Sadie didn’t dump beforehand but traditionally she is fine when it comes to not dropping deuces unless outside.

Well when I got back to the house I was hit in the face with the lovely stench of dog shit.  In front of the guest bathroom was a large pile of what looked to be Sadie shit.  In the master bathroom on one of the mats was a small runny puddle of Nicki shit.  I was not pleased.

I pointed out each pile to the offending canine and used my stern voice to let them it was NOT ok.  I then got to the pleasant duty of doody clean up, before even starting on all of the post race work that I needed to do.

Nicki’s shitting in particular is the most perplexing.  It was a tiny amount of crap, certainly she didn’t do it because she could no longer hold it.  Like I mentioned, she went before I left.  Part of this is our problem.  We have conditioned Nicki to associate taking a shit with getting treats her entire life.  Now it’s like she feels the need to HAVE to eject something from her anus nearly every time she is outside because she wants the reward.

This could all be stress related because of the uncertainty of bouncing between two living arrangements/time schedules.  Nicki is much more schedule/environment dependent than Sadie is, who can roll with just about anything.

On top of the shitting I have been treated to multiple episodes of vomiting.  Twice overnight Nicki has thrown up and Sadie has barfed more than that as the result of her insistence to ingest grass when I am not looking.  Every pile of vomit she produces always has grass mixed in with it.

Saturday night I went out and saw Lawless.  It was surprisingly good although were some cringe worthy moments with graphic violence.  I’d give it a solid A-.

On Sunday morning I was thinking about doing the DD bike ride.  Instead I decided to go to the swamp early with the girls to beat the heat.  We were in the empty parking lot before 9AM.

The first thing we saw were two deer in the parking lot. It made me think we might see a lot of wildlife this time around.  I had not been to the swamp since June.  I figured the summer rains would have brought the water levels back to their max, bringing in more wildlife.

As we walked the boardwalk we came across an older gentleman who wore a volunteer shirt.  He was towing a wagon that had wood and cordless power tools.  He was replacing rotted boards.  I talked to him a bit and told him I saw a few boards he already replaced, it looked like he did good work.

When we entered the main trail I was surprised by a couple things.  First the water levels weren’t as high as I would have expected them to be in mid-September.  Second, the grass on the trail looked like it hadn’t been mowed all summer long.

At some spots the grass was almost knee high.  Not only was the grass high, it was wet from the early hour of day.  In no time my feet were drenched.

I was a bit worried about how Nicki would do on the walk because of her recent mobility issues.  I was happy to see that she kept pace for  most of the walk.

Unfortunately we did not see much wildlife at all during the hike, outside of the deer in the parking lot, the only other animals we saw were two baby gators sunning themselves.

Repeatedly during the walk I had to scold Sadie for trying to munch on the high grass.  I don’t know what her deal is with her grass craving.  You would think she is part bovine.

By the time we got back to the van the temps had started to crank up.  I was glad we got there early.  Although Nicki did well during the hike, later in the day I could tell she was feeling the side effects.  When she would get up after napping she looked very stiff.

So I took in the Eagles game, basically assuming they would get smashed by the Ravens who looked great in their opener while the Eagles fumbled and bumbled their way to a narrow one point win against the stinky Browns.

Well with the way the game started it seemed my assumption was right on.  I couldn’t believe that Vick ended the Eagles opening drive with ANOTHER interception, this time in the end zone.  The Eagles turned the ball over THREE MORE times on top of that, an embarrassingly bad stat.  I think in the first two games they have turned the ball over 9 times.

However in the end they managed to grind out another come from behind, grind it out win, this time against a much better opponent. The Birds actually set some sort of record as being only the 5th team in NFL history to start a season 2-0 after committing this many turnovers.  A dubious title but I’ll take it.

Last year these were the type of games that the Eagles would consistently find a way to lose in the end.  The fact that this year they are finding a way to win instead gives me more hope that the team could actually perform up to their talent level this time around.

On a side note, the replacement NFL officials are an absolute joke.  I mean they are embarrassingly bad.  There were some horrible call and non-calls on both sides of the ball on Sunday.  This has not been the exception, the entire time the replacement refs have been in place week in and week out they have sucked, plain and simple.  The NFL needs to fix this.  If important games late in the year start getting decided by these bumbling boobs there is going to be hell to pay.