Category Rants

Last night I finished up restoring full surveillance to the chicken coop and run.  The camera we have installed under the raised platform was offline until I got a new cable to replace the one the mouse chewed through.  The under deck camera immediately proved useful last night where it once again caught the big field mouse trying to figure out how to get to the chicken feeders that we now started hanging high in the air each night.  I have not figured out if the mice are still getting in via a tunnel system.  There are no holes directly around the coop structure so it makes me think they have dug a much deeper, longer tunnel somewhere.  My hope is the longer we keep food out of their nocturnal reach the sooner they will decide to relocate somewhere else.

Today another chapter in the most unusual winter weather I have seen in this area will be written.  This morning it is warm and humid but a summer style storm is predicted to roll through mid-day which will bring in more typical cool winter weather for the next several days.  I hope we can get at least a few weeks of more normal winter conditions before Mother Nature once again cranks up the muggy meter for at least 6 months.

I saw that Donald won the Nevada primary easily yesterday, continuing his momentum towards winning the Republican presidential nomination which seems surreal.  Ironically, although Trump and the guy I am pulling for, Bernie Sanders, have vast differences in their political ideas and personalities they do share a common problem if either becomes the President, Congress.  The ideas and promises that both candidates are throwing out there are things that different portions of the population want to hear and presumably want implemented.  However it seems that a lot of people are forgetting that outside of a relative few circumstances, a President needs the cooperation of Congress to get anything substantial changed or done.

Since Congress is filled with a bunch of lifetime politicians that have been bought and paid for several times over by huge corporate special interest dollars, the odds of anything changing is actually quite small.  The only real path to change is an overhaul of thinking not only in the executive but also the legislative portion of the federal government.  With all of the focus on the presidential race in 2016 the public will likely rubber stamp through the majority of the sitting congress which will ultimately lead to a big pile of nothing in the end.

Campaign finance reform and an implementation of term limits for congress is the first step towards lasting, real political change actually occurring.  Big money doesn’t want that of course so it will never happen. That is the sad reality of our political system and something that is pushed into the background behind all the pomp and circumstance, just like the puppet masters want.

So the headline I paid most attention to yesterday was that Apple is fighting a judge’s order to bypass the built in security on an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernadino case.  The FBI thinks there is important information on the phone however it is locked with a passcode.  Part of Apple’s security is an option where it will automatically erase all contents of the phone if the incorrect code is entered 10 consecutive times. Evidently this is the case with this particular phone.

The code is a 4 digit number so there are 10,000 possible combos.  With the 10 consecutive fail limit and the longer timeout enacted between each possible wrong code it could become a VERY long process trying to successfully guess a passcode on an Iphone.  I can just imagine some FBI employee in a dark room whose job is solely to enter passcodes, one at a time, having to wait until the consecutive incorrect passcode timer clears to try again.

Well evidently the FBI is tired of waiting.  They initiated court action to FORCE Apple to provide them some way to bypass this security feature in the name of “national security”, a catch phrase that has been used far too many times in the last 15 years as an excuse to strip Americans of their rights to privacy. Well Apple had the balls to say, NO.

The are appealing the ruling and appear willing to take this to the highest court in the land, stating that the government request would be akin to creating a back door for their devices. This could obliterate any future privacy for their customers if this backdoor got into the wrong hands which far too often is the end result.  I think public opinion will fall hugely on the side of Apple in this situation, no matter how many times the government says “terror, fear, terror, national security, terror and God bless America”.  If that public opinion is enough to finally stop the federal governments increasingly Big Brother tactics is yet to be seen.

We are now in the heart of snowbird season and it is as miserable as ever.  Last night I had a reflex reaction of yelling at an old fart that suddenly slowed to a near stop to make a right turn without using a turn signal.  As I jammed on my brakes I screamed out my fully down passenger side window “Use your turn signal! Jack ass!”  The old mans window was down as well so I am sure he heard it.  I very rarely will scream at other drivers, they typically just get an enthusiastic THUMBS UP hand gesture from me.  I guess the impending full moon has already started it’s magic.

Friday night I said to Cindy repeatedly how weird it felt to be the night before a running club race and I have absolutely nothing to do.  No equipment to charge, sort or pack in the truck.  No registration lists to finalize and print. None of the normal stress and anxiety that would precede every single race was present and it felt odd but in a good way.

On Saturday morning I headed outside to do yard work right about the time the race was scheduled to kick off.  When I came back inside I had a voicemail and something around 10 missed calls from the club treasurer who was on site at the race.  Obviously they were having some sort of problem.

So even though I made no arrangement with the club to be the race timing support line after my tenure was complete, I called back.  The woman that has assumed timing responsibilities was dead in the water because she couldn’t get into the software that is used to pull times from the timing hardware.  Evidently in the two weeks since I turned all the stuff over after the last race she had not tried to go into this software.  Since she was logging into the race laptop under a different user profile the timing program did not have the authentication information that is required to launch it for the first time.  If the software would have been started at any point prior to the race this problem would have been able to be handled at that point instead of race day.

So luckily I had installed remote control on that race laptop before turning it over to the club.  I was able to remote into the system and figure out which password it was looking for as there were several that are associated with the clubs MyLaps account.  Once I got into the timing software I saw that the runners times were sitting on the boxes.  I quickly configured the race and exported the files needed for the scoring software.  I asked Laurie if she wanted to take it from there or wanted me to do the rest.  She chose the latter.

By this time the race was long over so I tried to work fast.  As soon as I tried to import the times I saw there were a couple of things in the race that were misconfigured, one of which would have prevented any times from  being posted.  I corrected these things and after a few clicks we had some results on screen that looked to be correct.  I asked her if she was good to go from there.  She said she was and thanked me for the help.  Nothing like timing a race from your house.

So later in the day I heard some very insulting talk was going around the race where certain board members were suggesting that perhaps I intentionally sabotaged things so there would be a problem at the race.  I could hardly believe that after almost 10 years of club involvement and my generous three month/ 8 event notice of my leaving that the very first race I am gone, people would question my integrity in such a manner.  Now of course I was furious but I only heard it from one person so I wanted to wait until I got further confirmation which I received last night.  Not only did the discussion go around the race site, it continued at party held Saturday afternoon that a number of club members attended.

Well that was all I could tolerate.  It’s very disappointing and offended me personally.  I did the only logical thing and notified a couple key people that I am permanently on the DO NOT CALL list for any future race support needs.  I am normally a pretty laid back person but if you spit in my face there are going to be consequences.

Cindy and I worked on repairing the coop surveillance system.  I discovered that I would not be able to reliably splice together the chewed apart cables because one of them is a coaxial set up.  So instead I ripped out the damaged wires and ran two new wires that I had laying around as spares.  I need a total of three wires so for now we just left the camera under the deck disconnected.  I also drove a piece of schedule 40 conduit pipe through the hole in the coop floor and ran the ethernet cable through it, hopefully protecting it from future assaults by sharp toothed rodents.

On Saturday afternoon I met up with Chris at a track meet he was timing.  I wanted to get some more familiarity with set up of the camera based timing system that is used for track meets.  I am going to be helping him out with a couple events so I need to learn the set up.  I was only there for a little more than an hour as Cindy and I were going out for an early Valentine’s Day dinner and movie.

We did not pick out the restaurant ahead of time and decided we would just wing it, a dangerous choice on a Saturday night in snowbird season.  The first few places we were thinking about looked stupidly full.  We wound up eating at a place called Rosedale Brick Oven.  It was full as well, requiring us to stand around for maybe 20 minutes until we were seated.  It was small and cozy.  Our waitress was very friendly and Cindy and I both enjoyed our meals.  I cleaned my plate and helped Cindy dust off most of hers.

We were going to see The Revenant but we decided to do so at the Paragon theater, a venue I never frequented since it was converted into an upscale theater a couple years ago.  We were quite surprised when we stepped in the theater and found it had power recliner seats, holy shit.   We both found the seating to be very cool.

So it seems like the last 6 or 7 times we have gone to the theater we have had issues with ignorant, rude individuals that for whatever reason have no consideration of other theater patrons.  We have been not going to to the movies nearly as much recently as doing so in snowbird season greatly increases your odds of being nearby such an idiot.  On Saturday night we went even further, seeing a movie that was out for several weeks already and not going until the late 9:20PM showing.  Surely we should have minimal problems. Nope.

We had two sources of irritation the entire movie.  To our left was a couple.  The woman apparently found the movie too boring to merit her attention.  Instead she spent a large part of the two and a half hours scrolling through her Facebook feed on her phone.  Behind us there was some hispanic woman in blue pants that was talking off and on at normal conversation volume most of the film as well as fcking around on her phone, including texting and taking a phone call early on.    Cindy handed out a generous dosage of head turning stink eye but it did nothing to abate the bad behavior.

I am always conflicted in these situations. Of course I want to strangle these individuals but I try to keep my cool because I know if it gets to the point where I get up and go over there it is impossible for me to be anything close to polite or nice in my request for them to shut the fck up.  I then weigh in my mind in the big picture if it is worth creating a scene or not.  Most of the times it is not but Saturday night was getting close.

Well the movie was pretty freaking crazy.  It was like a hybrid between Castaway and Rambo.  I do understand why Leonardo was acclaimed for his performance.  The movie was filled with some brutal and very raw violence, some of it involving animals which of course made me cringe more than once.  It was one of those movies you think about after you leave the theater which is why I give it an A rating.  After having yet another poor movie theater experience Cindy and I are still considering ways to go to the movies when next to no other human beings are present.

We did not get home until after midnight.  On Sunday I felt like we never got out of first gear.  I was sleepy and generally unmotivated.  Later in the afternoon we decided to go over to the swamp with Sadie for a walk.  The weather on Sunday was perfect with temps in the 70’s with bright skies and low humidity.  The swamp is no longer a well kept secret, the parking lot was FULL.  The swamp itself was also full, of water, the most I ever saw.

Very early on in the path one section of the trail was cut by a 10 foot section of running water from the high levels.  Somebody threw a relatively small and shaky branch across the area to assist in crossing but it wasn’t very effective.  I made it most of the way across the branch but still wound up with one wet foot.  Cindy decided to just bite the bullet and walk through the water in her sneakers.

We had a very cool treat, coming across a group of four full sized otters on the path.  Sadie was EXTREMELY interested in them.  As we got closer they split with two going into the water on either side.  Once we got up to them they just stared at us from the water, making odd noises.  They were very cool.  As soon as we walked further up the trail they came back out of the water and started dancing around on the path.

By the time we got back it was almost 5:30.  Cindy made dinner for Sadie and then I took her back to Ali’s while Cindy made dinner for us.  Last night we just vegged and worked on plowing through our backlogged dvr content.  It wasn’t the most spectacular Valentine’s Day I’m sure for Cindy.  She did like the Garmin Vivo HR I bought her, a real time fitness tracker that includes a wrist based heart rate monitor. You can analyze yourself to death with the damn thing.

Yesterday I called my dad, returning a call he made a couple days prior that I forgot about.  As usual we talked about various subjects, one of which included a very aggravating situation I have been dealing with where there are layers upon layers of bullshit involved.  Dad has a long and not so glorious history of bucking the system and fighting various situations where he felt he has been wronged.   Sometimes he has been successful in his cause and other times he was just successful in pissing a lot of people off, which he also considers a win.  Well in my case there is absolutely zero doubt I am being wronged.

After talking to dad on the phone for quite awhile it got me all fired up and reignited the anger I have had bubbling for going on two months about the situation.  Well that anger and frustration carried on through the night and kept me awake until after 1:15 AM where I finally forced myself to sleep after reading a book for awhile to redirect my mind.  I have a decision to make regarding this with two distinctly different mindsets.  Once choice is basically rolling over and allowing common sense  to be thrown out the window in exchange for a known quantity of result. The second choice has a much wider range of outcomes varying from better to worse but involves identifying a spade as a spade and possibly exposing myself to additional risk.  Last night I was definitely all about the latter option.  I still have some time to decide what ultimately makes more sense in the big picture.  Either way, I very much look forward to sharing full details sometime in the future.  It’s a real diamond.

So in addition to the problems with the chicken coop door we still have had problems with mice in the chicken run at night.  We spotted them on the security dvr the other night and I saw them again last night.  We started pulling the two feeders way up in the air at night, removing the food source for the mice which I would hope would convince them to move on to a new area.  On the camera last night I saw the mice looking for the food and being frustrated that it is no longer easily accessible.

So this morning I woke up and checked the dvr to see if the chicken door worked.  It did not, apparently once again falling prey to the cold temperatures.  However when I cheeked the live feed three of the four cameras were not showing video, odd.  I said to Cindy that maybe for some reason the cold temps were affecting the cameras.

So I went out to the coop with my volt meter to measure power output to the motor that runs the chicken door.  When we opened the door to the coop we immediately noticed debris inside the front door by the small holes in the flooring, something that should not be there.  At just about the same time Cindy and I realized it was from a mouse.

We quickly put together what happened.  Since there was no food accessible out in the run, at least one of the mice worked it’s way inside the coop before the door automatically closes at 8PM.  It apparently was inside when the door closed, trapping it. So the debris was from the mouse looking for an exit point.  Of course it could not dig through half inch treated plywood so I assume the mouse was still in the coop hiding in some corner which of course freaked Cindy out.

Well as Cindy was cleaning up some of the mess she saw additional debris in the front corner.  She pulled away the stuff that was stacked there and discovered the source of my camera problem.  In that corner is a 1 inch hole where the wires for the cameras and the ethernet cable enter the coop.  The hole was plugged with a bunch of foam pipe insulation, or used to be.  Not only did the mouse chew away the foam, that little fcker chewed through all three wires for the dvr cameras that are outside, disabling them.  It just got personal.

In addition to destroying the camera wires he also munched on the casing of the ethernet cable.  Luckily it appears he did not get far enough to break that connection.  If he did my anger would be multiplied many times over as replacing that cable is more expensive and labor intensive.  As is I am hoping to be able to splice the camera wires back together and then cap that hole with something more teeth resistant.

This weekend is the first running club chip timed event in more that eight years that will take place without my involvement whatsoever.  Cindy and I are both looking forward to not setting the alarm clock and waking up when our bodies tell us instead of a buzzer.  It will be interesting to see how things turn out with the race.

This weekend I will have some timing related items on my schedule.  I am going to be heading down to a track meet that Chris is timing for an hour or so to get some familiarity with the camera based timing system that is used for track meets.  There is the possibility that I may help him occasionally with these events so I need to get some face time with the equipment.

Saturday night Cindy and I are doing a dinner/movie combo as a belated celebration of my retirement from club race timing.  We haven’t been to the movies in eons, partly because of scheduling partly because of a desire to save a few bucks due to the strong flow of dollars leaving my bank account the last few months.

So on my commute to work this morning there was an accident on Immokalee Road that had a lane closed, causing traffic to have to merge to the left.  I was already in the left most lane so I didn’t have to do much but slow down.  I started to hear a horn going off repeatedly to my right.  I look over to my right and see a Rogue that for some reason refused to let a small pick up truck from the right lane merge in.  The truck was trying to get in the middle lane in front of the Nissan repeatedly as there was little room left in the road before a merge was required.  Each attempt was met with a horn and the Nissan quickly darting ahead to make sure there was absolutely no space for the truck to merge.

When I recognized what was going on I had to get a look at the Rogue driver that apparently valued being one car ahead in the traffic jam so dearly that they had to be a complete and utter asshole.  The driver was an obese black woman who had one unbroken slope of flesh that flowed seamlessly from head to body.  She looked ahead stoically as if being inside the confines of the car somehow separated her from the rude driving behavior.  Thankfully the person behind this bitch had a degree of common courtesy and let the pick up truck in.

The Rogue, that was so intent on not letting anyone in front then inexplicably turned into the ultimate rubberneck, slowing down to below walking speed to look at one of the two vehicles involved in the crash.  Both I and the truck she cut off swung out around her as she continued her turtle paced gawking.  About 30 seconds later the woman apparently had her fill of staring and went zooming up the middle lane, once again passing us before she had to slam on her brakes at the traffic light.

People like this just annoy the shit out of me.  I can only wish a lifetime full of flat tires for these individuals.

I sent a couple of our coop Ring videos with chickens mulling about to the company via their community sharing link.  They like to post interesting, unique videos captured by the smart doorbell.  They responded back with a release form, indicating they wanted to post the videos.  Evidently nobody has installed a Ring on their chicken coop yet.  Imagine that.

Last night we watched the second episode of Biggest Loser.  I found myself more annoyed then I was after the first show where I saw the carnage after they retooled the cast and format.

The subtitle for the show this year is “Temptation Nation”, this episode outlined exactly what that means.  Basically many of the challenges this year involve temptation.  This is not a new concept.  In the past they would do challenges where contestants were thrown in a room full of shitty food and they had to resist the temptation to eat it, which the majority of them did.

Well this year they are basically forcing people to eat shitty food as a punishment if they lose a challenge which I think is absolutely idiotic.  Every single person on the show is a food addict to some degree.  Forcing them to consume the foods that got them into their morbidly obese state serves no positive purpose whatsoever.  Could you imagine if a person in rehab was forced to take drugs or drink alcohol?  I simply could not believe the show producers thought this was a good idea and further reinforces my feeling that there is a new person/people running the production of the show. Whomever it is, sucks.

So Cindy and I joined the Powerball craze.  We didn’t go crazy like buying 74,000+ tickets as some group of people did, we bought two tickets.  Cindy picked the numbers on one ticket and quick picked the other.  When I checked the numbers this morning I was excited to see we hit exactly zero numbers on either ticket.

You may have read how the Powerball people are basically mind fcking the general public.  A little while ago they made a change to the game, increasing the amount of “white numbers” you can choose from 59 to 69.  This addition of 10 numbers made the odds of anyone winning the top prize soar astronomically, to 1 in 292 million.  Of course Powerball officials will feed you a line of shit saying this change allows more winners overall of the smaller amounts of cash.  It does not take someone with a degree in psychology to see the game they are really playing.

Making the top prize so difficult to hit makes for lots of rollovers and lots of huge jackpots.  The big jackpots build big public hysteria as everyone wants to take a shot at the dream, resulting in massive ticket buying.  Whomever is in charge of the mind manipulation department at Powerball Inc. should get a big raise this year.

Tonight after work I drop off the stuff for the two days of race packet pick up.  It marks the start of the grind that will wind up late morning on Sunday.  It can’t come fast enough.

Last night I drove home, changed clothes and then headed right back out with Cindy to meet Katie and her boyfriend for dinner.  I was worried that since it was now officially the worst of snowbird season we would be treated to a horrible wait at Carrabbas.  Luckily we only had to wait around 15 minutes to get a table.

While we were waiting I grabbed myself a beer and a sangria for Katie to celebrate her 22nd birthday.  After we sat down at our table we actually had a manager come over and card Katie, worried they had served alcohol to a minor.  I assured the woman she wasn’t a minor and I was the one who purchased the drink on her behalf anyway, relieving any blame from our waitress for not carding Katie.  Katie does look young so it wasn’t surprising.

I went very simple with my meal, getting a bowl of whole wheat spaghetti.  It was something I hadn’t had at Carrabbas for a long time but it hit the spot.  Everyone else seemed to enjoy their meals as well.  We had a good time.  Cindy drove me home despite the marginal effect three Bud Light drafts had on me.

So yesterday Obama once again flexed his executive order muscle, single handily implementing universal background checks for gun ownership, eliminating the silly loophole that lets anybody with a pulse buy a gun if they do it at a gun show as well as some other restrictions.   There is a very odd situation that seems to arise when it comes to the issue of background checks for gun ownership.

Every poll you see indicates a strong majority of Americans are fine with more stringent background checks being implemented.  Despite this support, any attempt to implement this through congress has been derailed, backed by strong NRA lobbyist influence.  Personally I would rather the president not use executive orders to implement this sort of policy.  History shows however this is a common thing with 2nd term presidents as they have nothing to lose.  When you are the president that is cursed with an obstructionist congress, these orders seem to be the only way to push any change through whatsoever.

I also find it hypocritical that many of the gunners are probably the same people that stood up and applauded that the FAA now requires all drone owners to register their toy aircraft with the federal government.  You have to disclose all of your personal information and are then assigned an ID number that has to be affixed to the drone.  If gun owners were asked to do the same thing they would have a shit fit.  It’s all so silly.

Some gun supporters will try to prop up an argument that background checks would have done nothing to red flag most of the mass shootings that have occurred over the last decade which is probably true.  However this again is not seeing the forest through the trees.  In the big picture, putting consistent, basic screening procedures in place for everyone interested in gun ownership is a greater good principle that overall will help prevent at least some degree of unwarranted gun ownership.   I mean think about it, why do we require people to get a drivers license if accidents still happen?  The answer is so there is at least some base standard for competency to be able to operate a vehicle.

Finally, take a look at this clip from 1999 when an executive vice president of the NRA testified before congress that universal background checks are a good thing and should be implemented.  If it was a good thing in 1999 why is it a bad thing in 2016?  Again, the logic has flown out the window.

Background checks will not stop gun violence in the United States and ironically, actions like Obama implemented yesterday actually causes a huge surge of gun buying as some people believe the government is going to take their guns away somehow.  Regardless, most people realize that background checks should be consistent and not situational.  If you don’t have a criminal record or a history of mental illness buy as much deadly force as you feel is necessary, just do it in an above board way. If you are going to walk around with something that is able to extinguish a life in an instant, I don’t think jumping through a small hoop to do so is too much to ask.

So for the huge Thanksgiving race I left my normal job early two days to be able to help at the running store that was hosting early packet pick up.  This week the race was large with over 1000 runners but I didn’t anticipate being involved in packet pick up since it was not a chip timed event.  Well I got reports during the day from the store owner that he was being overrun with people and he had  no volunteers assigned to help out in the task.  Evidently this need was never considered for some unexplainable reason.  Anyway I again made arrangements to leave work early to go help for a couple hours.  I felt bad for Carl, he actually was having to ignore actual customers to address the huge lines of people waiting to get their race stuff.  This theme of poor planning resounded consistently throughout the entire event.

Our race morning responsibilities were reduced from their normal level since the event was not chip timed.  Somehow the morning still had a high level of stress again from a lack of planning.  When we showed up on site we looked around at each other wondering where we were supposed to set up, another detail that should be well established and known well in advance.  Once the location was established I asked where the closest power connection was located, another detail that is supposed to be scouted ahead of time.  The school liaison said she wasn’t aware we needed power for registration.  Luckily our equipment manager had brought our portable generators.  I fired one of those up to provide power for the registration laptops.

I left Cindy alone to handle data entry while I went with the equipment manager and a couple others to set up the finish line.  Since this was a first year race the course was new.  It was designated as finishing on the track inside the football stadium.  Apparently whomever laid out the course did not measure it accurately, the advertised 5K race (3.12 miles) was actually more like 3 miles in reality.

While we were unloading the finish line equipment a school security guard/track police came rolling up in his golf cart.  He was extremely irate and started chastising the equipment manager and anyone else in the area for daring to drive the truck on the track.  He said it was STRICTLY forbidden and the truck had to be removed immediately.  The equipment was off the truck at that point so the equipment manager took the truck out of the track area.  The track look unaffected by the truck’s presence.

Even after the truck was off the forbidden zone the track police followed our equipment manager after he parked the truck and continued to scold him for driving on the track.  Bill finally had enough and told the guy there was nothing he could do about it now and he should just shut the f up abut it.  The track cop was not very happy with the response.  I’m glad it didn’t escalate into a “Don’t taze me bro!” situation.  The incident somehow seemed appropriate going along with the very messy planning for the event.

So even though the event was not chip timed it was supposed to have very basic awards.  They were supposed to recognize the overall first place winner for adult male and female as well as the top boy and girl in elementary, middle, and high school.  The way the kids were supposed to be identified was by looking at the bib of kids as they crossed.  The bib was supposed to have an A, H, M, or E on them to identify the classification of the finisher.  In theory this plan should have worked but it was again missing a key component, volunteers to execute it.

There was nobody actually tasked with collection this information so last second I threw Cindy out there to try to collect what she could.  We got some of what we needed but not all of it.  We were lucky that the event organizer from the school district has a very can do, go with the flow personality.  She ad-libbed the awards in such a way that did not put a spotlight that all of the advertised awards were not being presented.  The race was a very frustrating reminder of why I no longer enjoy being part of this process.

Not long after getting home I was outside working in the yard working on getting weeding and some other basic stuff done.  After eating lunch Cindy and I headed out for a Rural King/Home Depot trip.  Shortly after leaving home we were on Immokalee Road.  I spotted an object moving across the road , close to the bike lane on the right.  I swung left and saw the turtle creeping along, I was amazed it got that far.

I immediately identified the turtle was in danger.  Cindy said she thought the turtle would be fine, I told her there was no way it could get over the curb it was approaching.  I made a command decision and cut over to the left turning lane that was maybe a 100 yards down the road and threw the Prius in park.  I crossed back across the road and started running towards the turtle in my flip flops.  My pace accelerated as I saw what I feared was coming true, the turtle got to the curb and turned around, now heading back out into the lanes of traffic.

As I ran I started pointing to the right and yelling at oncoming traffic to get over, hoping to get the attention of the drivers, even the ones that stupidly had their face in their smartphone.  As I closed the distance there were a couple close calls where the car did not get over until the last second.  I imagined how terrible and furious I would feel if some idiot would hit the animal just as I was moments away from saving it.  As I got there, there was a small break in traffic allowing me to scoop up the soft shell turtle and put him on the bank of the canal he was trying to reach.  I felt fortunate to have reached the turtle before an idiots tire reached it instead.

We grabbed our stuff from the two stores and returned home.  At Home Depot we grabbed some mulch to replenish the areas that the chickens keep emptying.  They find scratching in mulch, even the fake rubber variety to be a lot of fun for whatever reason.  If you are the type of person that places a lot of value on perfectly maintained mulched areas do not adopt free range chickens. Saturday night we were quite tired from the race alarm clock.  We decided to just stay home and catch up on DVR content which was fine with me.

Sunday morning we headed out to do a run.  We only ran a little over 3 miles but doing it at a 9:20 pace was enough to make me work at a level higher than I should have to.  My running endurance just sucks anymore.  The only positive I can say about it is my regular IT band stretching seems to at least have made the day after soreness and pain on my right side much less severe than it was.

Since the Eagles didn’t play the Patriots until 4:30 I had some time to get stuff done.  I hopped on the tractor and mowed the property which was looking pretty shaggy from the unusually high amounts of November rain.  While I did this Cindy took it upon herself to wash all three of the vehicles.  The skies were overcast which made for some very comfortable temps for mowing, I actually didn’t sweat.

So I sort of assumed that once again my Sunday Ticket would be wasted this week.  I was pretty sure the local Fox affiliate would be broadcasting the game which would mean it would be blacked out on satellite.  I was surprised when I saw FOx was actually showing the Panthers/Saints game.  Ok, well I guess I will flip over to the Sunday Ticket.

So I fire up the satellite receiver and find the Eagles game in the guide.  When I select it I get a message that the game is blacked out locally, WTF? Surely it has to be a mistake so I call up DirecTV.   I explain to “Omar” that the game is being mistakenly blacked out  on my receiver since it is not being broadcast locally. ( I checked cable and OTA antenna)  He said he did see the game being marked as blacked out but did not know why.  He also claimed there was absolutely nothing he could do about it as this is controlled by the NFL.

I found this statement illogical.  I told him I receive my feed from Directv.  If Directv agrees a game is being blacked out incorrectly, why can they not remedy the situation?  Omar had no resolution available except to apologize repeatedly.  I found this situation extremely annoying since I have already had 5 or 6 Eagles games this year that I have not used the Sunday Ticket for since they were broadcast elsewhere, significantly lowering the bang for the buck the 250 bucks I fork out for the service delivers.  I told him I would expect Directv to compensate me in some way for not providing content I pay for and should be entitled to.  He said he would transfer me to a “customer loyalty representative” who would arrange for appropriate compensation.

I am transferred to another rep named “Eva”.  I explain the situation for a second time to Eva.  Unlike Omar, she says she doesn’t see the game as being listed as blacked out.  However I asked her if she showed the Panthers/Saints being being blacked out (it was as well) in my area.  She said no so I think she just was not looking at relevant or correct information.  She again apologized and said she would speak to her supervisor to see what compensation they could offer me.  While I was on hold I figured a $20-$25 credit would be reasonable.

When Eva returned she said her supervisor authorized her to offer me a $5 credit.  I laughed out loud and asked her if she was serious.  I then asked how they arrived at that tiny number.  She said her supervisor said there are a total of 512 games available on the service over the course of the season so through some fuzzy math that equated to 5 dollars for not being able to see one game.  I explained to her I don’t watch 500 games, at most his year I will be able to see 10 games of the Eagles.  For that privilege I am paying roughly 250 bucks, hence my $25 idea.  When I expressed my dissatisfaction with 5 bucks she placed me on hold and came back a few minutes later saying the most the supervisor would authorize was $10.  All of a sudden I felt like I was in a car negotiation except Directv was haggling me over much smaller amounts of money.  When I threw out my 25 dollar figure Eva challenged my math, wanting to divide my 250 bucks by 16 instead of 10, regardless of how many Eagles games I get to actually see on the service.  She said it works out to more like $15 a game.

I found myself flabbergasted that I was actually getting haggled over $10-15 in a situation where Directv is clearly in the wrong and not providing service that I paid for.  I said to Eva, “so just to be clear, you are telling me that Directv is that concerned with $10-$15 that it is willing to haggle a 15 year customer of theirs over it?”  Eva was silent for a few moments and then started to just repeat the same crap.  I cut her off and told her to just forget the $10, instead letting her know this interaction will be communicated to Directv support and will be considered when it comes time to renew the service. Without waiting for any further response I said goodbye and hung up.  Idiots.

To be honest I expected the Eagles to get smashed anyway so being forced to just listening to the game wasn’t a huge penalty, or so I thought.  It turns out that thanks to Directv I did not get to see the most exciting game of the season.  It seemed to be a very odd game where the majority of the 35 points the Eagles put on the board were scored by members of the team not playing offense.  The Eagles scored every non-conventional way you can imagine, a blocked punt, interception return, and a punt return were the way 21 of the 35 points got on the board.

The Eagles were up 35-14 with the time running out.  The Eagles almost managed to completely collapse allowing two quick Patriot touchdowns which included a successful onside kick in between.  Then after an apparent near game clinching defensive stop Sam Bradford gave the Patriots one last shot with an inexcusable fumble.  The Eagles barely escaped with their lives as the Patriots ran out of gas driving for a game tying touchdown as time expired.  I am pretty sure this will be looked back on as the highlight of the 2016 Eagles season and I didn’t get to see any of it thanks to Directv, thanks guys.

These next two weeks are going to be quite busy with normal work, timer work, holiday prep, and the the NYC trip all occurring simultaneously.  I will try to pick off action items as efficiently as possible as procrastination is something I just don’t do.

Last night I somehow managed to land on TLC while I was in bed, they had a compelling yet very disturbing show on, my 600 pound life.  The one and a half episodes I saw each had a 24 year old woman as the feature subject, each well over 600 pounds.  I found each situation a combination of frustrating, disgusting, and tragic.  I simply can not understand why anyone would even want to exist in this condition.

There did seem to be a common thread between these two cases, a HORRIBLE supporting cast around them.  The first woman’s husband who looked like he was right off the set of Deliverance admitted on camera several times that he really doesn’t want her to lose weight as he feared it would mean she wouldn’t need him anymore.  He happily would scoop nothing but horrible food into the cart at the grocery store to feed to his wife.  To me it is just another form of domestic abuse.  It was so pathetic.

The second girl lived at home with her family.  The stories of her mother, who was easily pushing 300 pounds herself, criticizing her daughter for being even heavier were amazingly hypocritical. Mom admitted she exerted no effort in trying to feed her daughter anything resembling a healthy diet growing up.  Even after getting the surgery there were scenes of the daughter around a family dinner table that was loaded down with fried chicken, mac n cheese, cookies, cake and other terrible choices.  Again to me, this family may as well be loading the gun and handing it to the daughter to pull the trigger.  They should be ashamed of themselves, truly.  Pass the mashed potatoes!

Yesterday marked yet another mass shooting in California where so far it seems like a worker went postal on a group of his former fellow employees.  Much like soldiers dying overseas for causes created by the defense industry juggernaut, shootings have been happening regularly enough that each subsequent incident numbs the public just a little further.  Yep for a few days there will be the normal, pointless, social media insults exchanged between the people that think that more guns are the solution to most problems in the world and those that don’t.  I used to mildly participate in these exchanges but realized it was pointless and accomplished nothing.

Do I have any answers to the gun controversy?  Nope, I am realistic enough to realize that any sort of gun control, no matter how logical will go nowhere in the end.  NRA lobbyists are very, very good at what they do and have plenty of money to keep doing it.  Lock your doors, the forecast is for fear.

So I will do my best to recap four days packed with more stuff than my memory is comfortable regurgitating.  Wednesday I left work early after reports of the mob scene at the running store with hundreds of people signing up last minute for the Thanksgiving race.  I got to the store and saw people lined up 10 deep.  There was no way I would have room to set up my laptop at the registration table so I instead went into the back room of the store and made my own desk comprised of a white board laid across two piles of shirt boxes. I worked back there on data entry non-stop for a couple hours.  The pile of paper I had to burn through during the last two days was just ridiculous.

When I got home Cindy had loaded most of the race equipment in the truck which was a huge help, allowing me to concentrate on getting  the data from the last minute entries handled.  We tried to get to bed as early as possible to be some version of rested for what surely was going to be a mentally demanding morning.

I was quite unhappy when I woke up at 1AM and rolled around unsuccessfully for 90 minutes trying to fall asleep a bit before the 3:30 alarm went off. At 2:30 I had enough, Cindy was already awake as well.  We got up and got ready to leave an hour or so earlier than we planned.  I knew the running club equipment truck was going to be there so I figured we could get a head start on the set up.  We wound up pulling into the start line area at a ridiculously early 4AM.

We immediately started working on laying out the start mats.  We had the 8 rubber mats in place and had just started laying the first cable when we saw a pair of headlights approaching.  The vehicle appeared to be approaching a little faster than it should be and we had a 10 meter coax cord loose in the road so I stood up and started waving my arms and yelling for the vehicle to slow down.  Well as the car got closer I saw the lights on the roof, it was a city cop.  He stopped right in front of the mats and started giving me shit.

He didn’t appreciate my tone of voice as I was yelling for him to slow down.  I didn’t appreciate him not appreciating it.  We had a rather angry back and forth exchange. He was quite put off that I was not nice in asking him to slow down and probably further put off that once I saw he was a cop that I did not drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness.  I told him that I had a loose cable on the ground and did not want it getting caught in his vehicle and damaging the equipment.  The cop asked where the safety cones were, which I had not grabbed from the equipment truck yet.  I guess I foolishly assumed two bodies on their knees in the middle of the street were a good sign to slow down, although I should have had cones there from the get go. I pulled the wire out of the way and told the cop he could go now.  He definitely won’t be sending me a Christmas card this year. Wouldn’t it have been awesome if the race timer got arrested?

As we were finishing up another vehicle rolled across the mats faster than he should have.  Again we yelled for him to slow down.  He thanked us for the warning with a stream of expletives as he drove away, a Happy Thanksgiving to you too buddy.  I did post about 8 cones around the start line mats, many of which adorned with SLOW signs to dissuade drivers from flying over them.  They were not successful.  When I returned to the start line later the mats were buckled and shifted from idiots going too fast over them.  I guess my ideas about leaving mats across the road prior to the race start just isn’t going to work out.

So as we started setting up the registration area other volunteers started showing up to help get everything rolling.  I had asked Chris to show up to help me handle race day registrations since I knew I had to make sure all of my timing equipment was up and running before the race started.  After I got done setting up the finish line equipment I returned to the registration area where the line of people signing up on race day had swollen greatly.  I was flabbergasted that this many people waited to the absolute last minute to sign up, especially considering the huge influx of people that already signed up the last couple days.  It was nuts.  I told Chris, who was also running in the event to just do as many as he could before he had to head to the start line.  I had to get there to get the start equipment up and running.  I told him whatever entries that were left I could enter at the finish line.

So the race start group was huge as you can imagine.  Having roughly 3000 people compacted into roughly a block of roadway creates quite the crowd.  I had to wait nearly 5 minutes until I could disconnect the start box.  I ran over to the registration desk and grabbed an incredibly thick pile of yet to be entered paper entries and the main laptop and ran back to the start.  I threw the timing box  and computer in the back of the golf cart and hauled ass to the finish line.  This race is brutal logistically because not only do I have to wait at the start line forever for all the runners to clear, the event also has some VERY fast participants.  The winning runner crossed around the 15:30 mark.  I got the finish line up and configured with literally less than 60 seconds before he crossed the finish mats.

Normally by the time I am at the finish line I am just collecting times and posting/printing them.  Because of the deluge of paper entries I instead found myself doing data entry for the majority of the race.  I had over 50 paper entries that were handed in last minute.  Chris didn’t stop keying them in until 7:23.   Almost all of these people were out of towners that I did not have in my participant database that made the process very slow, made slower by trying to publish some finisher results while getting peppered with questions from participants who assume I know everything since I am sitting behind a computer.  I did not get my last paper entry into the system until after the one hour mark of the race, utterly ridiculous.

Finally I was able to breathe and realize I was officially past the worst part of the worst race I had left to time.  I may have actually smiled just a little bit for the first time all morning.  The timing for the race went smoothly overall.  I had a couple problem times which is pretty unavoidable with an event this size.  I fixed those problems and have heard only a couple post race issues which again is great with a 3000 person 5K.

Cindy once again reclaimed her role as the event mascot, spending a good portion of the morning in a turkey suit encouraging the runners, especially the kids.  She really excels in this role. We rolled off site around 9:45 after helping to clean up the majority of the race equipment.  The DD coffee on the way home felt especially satisfying, we survived our last Thanksgiving race, the largest event I have ever been involved with to date.

There was little time to relax when we got home.  I had post race stuff to attend to, Cindy had a big Thanksgiving dinner to coordinate.  Her family was due to show up around 4.  We both buzzed around for a good portion of the afternoon prepping despite both of us having low energy reserves from the skimpy sleep followed by the race craziness.  We combated it with some afternoon coffee.  I followed up with a 5 hour energy just as people were starting to show up.

I did watch some of the Eagles embarrassment on tv during the afternoon but don’t even feel like wasting time typing about it.  It was a horrible, horrible game on a national stage.  Chip Kelly has been exposed as a miserable NFL personnel manger and a one trick pony when it comes to game plans. That is all I can say about it.

In addition to Cindy’s family, a friend of ours came over with her dog, Sage, who is a high energy labradoodle.  Before we let her into the backyard we corralled all the chickens back into the run for safety.  As we expected Sage was very interested in the chickens, running around the coop barking at them.  The chickens of course did not realize they were completely safe in there and started freaking out.  We tried to distract Sage and get her to play in other areas of the yard but her interest always turned back to the chickens so we headed back inside with her.

We had a lot of people under the roof, double digits including ourselves.  Cindy prepared a varied meal that was very tasty, she got good feedback from all.  The 5 hour energy and the natural energy from having all of those people around helped me stave off tiredness.

Kim was the last one there.  As her and Cindy talked I was hanging with Sage on the floor.  She was laying next to me and very content to let me rub her for as long as I wanted to.  It was cute.  When they left Cindy and I got most of the stuff cleaned up before retiring for a much needed night of sleep.  I slept like a rock with no recollection of the time in between closing my eyes and waking up around 7:30 Friday morning.

In the past I have messed around with the Black Friday scene, doing some occasional shopping.  This year I was not all that into it.  Cindy had her 9AM walking class to run so I used that time to get stuff done around the house outside, taking advantage of the cooler temps and lower humidity.  Once she got home we headed out to run some errands.  We took the SSR to add enjoyment to the trip.

One of the stops was Sam’s Club.  We took a look at some of the Black Friday stuff they had out.  One thing that caught our interest was an Atari 2600 package.  It’s basically an Atari looking console with some updates like wireless controllers and over 100 classic Atari games built in.  Cindy had an Atari 2600 as a kid and was very excited by it.  I never had one, opting for the more high end Mattel Intellivision as my first video game console.  I made an impulse buy and spent 40 bucks on the Atari system.  Later in the day when I hooked it up it did not take very long for me to realize that it was probably $40 wasted as any game I played normally was only briefly before I tired of the block graphics and klutzy controls.  Cindy, whose excitement was the main drive behind the purchase did not seem very excited about playing either.  Nostalgia sometimes sounds better than it actually is.

On Saturday I had plans to start with a run which were scuttled by an unsettled feeling stomach.   Instead we picked up Sadie and brought her home for a weekend visit.  We then got busy on part one of the two day Christmas decoration project.  I wanted to get the exterior decorations done on Saturday and the inside stuff done Sunday.  Our decorations got a few new additions this year with four fresh sets of colored string lights for the two front palm trees and a set of “AppLights” icicles for the front of the house, which are controlled via a smart phone.

The colored string lights are a first for our property.  Ali had a deep dislike for colored Christmas lights so as a result I bought/hung nothing but white lights during the last 15 years or so.  I continued the all white thing even after we split for no particular reason.  Well both Cindy and I were very happy with the addition of color to the holiday landscape.  It looked really cool and I suspect next year it will expand to the second set of four palm trees.

The icicle applights looked cool as well as they cycled through dozens of patterns and light combos.  When combined with our LED snowmen heads and techno LED string light tree we bought last year the front of the house is very busy.

We also got the chicken coop into the holiday spirit, stringing a long set of lights around the front of the run and roof line of the coop.  When it got dark out we walked the property admiring our handiwork, we were pleased.

Mid-afternoon I took part in an odd physical challenge.  When I posted about my shoulder issues last week an older calisthenics buddy of mind on FB who happens to be a physical therapist mentioned that bear crawling is a different type of way to help build up the shoulders.  I decided I would put that theory to the test in a rather large way.

I have done bear/death crawls in the backyard a few times.  Once I crawled out to the back fence line and back.  Another time I did it while towing the tractor with Ali steering it.  I thought I would up the stakes and crawl the perimeter of the fence line this time, more than doubling the total distance.  Of course I did it on video and had a stop watch running.  As expected the crawl got very uncomfortable very quickly.  I paused multiple times during the attempt but never let my knees touch the ground.  I returned to the start line after about seven and a half minutes, completely out of breath.

Cindy, who was filming my attempt then said she wanted to try it which I thought was a bad idea.  Cindy never has done bear crawls, to make her first one just short of a 1/4 mile seemed excessive.  When she started out her pace seemed slower than mine but she kept going, pausing much less than I did.  At first I thought she would stop rather early in the attempt.  Instead she kept plugging away and actually completed the circuit almost a full minute faster than I did.  My ego was officially deflated but I took it in stride.  It was a testament to Cindy’s competitiveness and determination.  We both have been feeling the side effects of the bear crawl since with some pretty major back and shoulder soreness/pain.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched our Netflix rental, Vacation, the reboot of the National Lampoon series I have always loved.  My hopes of it delivering the same level of entertainment as the original films was probably unrealistic.  There were plenty of laughs in the film but overall it fell pretty short of the bar Chevy Chase and the gang set 20-25 years ago.  Seeing Chevy in the film for a small cameo role did nothing but depress me.  Man, he looks just awful nowadays with no hair and an extra 100 pounds or so on his body.  Beverly D’Angelo looks like she has botox for breakfast every morning which was scary in a different way.  Overall the film was ok, I guess I can give it a B+ rating despite it failing to capture the magic of the originals.

Sunday morning we finally got that run in.  We decided to keep it simple and just run to the end of our dead end road and back, which worked out to be a bit more than 3.5 miles.  The cooler temps made the run feel more comfortable although Cindy’s GPS indicated we ran it at a slower pace than it felt.

When we got back we let Sadie out and noticed she had diarrhea going on, something that she has from time to time.  Cindy made rice to supplement her meals to help her solidify things.   Ali had told me she gave Sadie turkey from their Thanksgiving meal and we had given her left over turkey Ali gave to us.  I later found out that giving a dog turkey skin is actually a really bad thing.  The sky high fat content in the skin can cause big problems for dogs ranging from diarrhea to full blown pancreatitis depending how much is consumed compared to the size of the dog.   I asked Cindy if the turkey we got from Ali had skin on it, she confirmed it did. I was quite surprised by this revelation and amazed I had not ever heard it before in my many years of dog ownership.

After doing a coffee run we got started on the inside decorations which included setting up the tree and other decorations which have been reduced significantly over the last few years.  Cindy spent a lot of time tweaking the branches of it to make it look as full and pretty as possible.  The interior of the house looked warm and festive by the time we wrapped up around lunch time.

The rest of Sunday was more relaxing, the first real relaxing we did during the four days off.  I did still need to pay my bills which included a pretty big accomplishment, making the last payment on the SSR roughly a year ahead  of time.  Owning the muscle truck free and clear has been a goal of mine for quite awhile.  The removal of that loan payment means the only long term debt I am currently holding is on the house in the form of the main mortgage and the HELOC.  It feels good. I plan to continue adding to my car payment budget column even though I won’t be having a payment.  I figure it will come in handy when I finally decide to replace the venerable Tacoma.