Category SSR

So Friday after work was one of those lotsa stops nights.  After work I stopped at 4 different places before getting home.   One of those places was Sam’s.   As I was passing through the front of the store I saw one of those LG sound bars that I noticed a few weeks prior.    They had it on special, $30 off it’s normal already discounted SC price.  I had thoughts of adding a sound bar to my new kick ass bedroom LG 3D tv.  I submitted to the impulse and threw it in my cart.  I guess I will write it off as my first ever self Halloween gift to myself.

I got around to setting it up late that night.  It’s a pretty awesome set up.  Not only do you get the sound bar which includes 6 small speakers you also get a remote subwoofer that connects to the bar via Bluetooth, meaning you can stick it anywhere.  I opted to put it in the corner next to the laundry unit with the opening facing the side wall, allowing thumping bass to bounce off the wall and back into the room. The bar has two optical inputs, a conventional audio headphone input jack, a usb port and the ability to connect to your phone via BT to stream audio.  It also integrates directly with the TV, meaning when I hit the volume on the original TV remote it automatically controls the sound bar instead. It’s pretty awesome.

The one thing that is not awesome is how crowded the top of my dresser is getting.  With the tv, cable box, Xbox 360, sound bar, white noise fan, and Blu-Ray player I have now consumed pretty much all available space.  I am considering if I want to take on wall mounting the TV.  The sound bar can be wall mounted as well.  It would really clean up the look and let me reclaim some dresser real estate.  I always get a bit nervous cutting into walls but I am sure with a “measure twice cut once” attitude I could get the stuff on the wall and looking good.

The weather on Saturday morning was GLORIOUS with temps in the low 60’s and not a hint of humidity.  It was actually enjoyable to go out and weed the property in the crisp air.  It makes me think that eventually I will land in some place where this kind of weather is more prevalent.  90/90 for 6 months a year gets to be a drag.

After I got done with that I turned my attention to my two trucks.  First I wanted to try to isolate where in the driveshaft my Tacoma was squeaking.  My method for doing so looked a bit dangerous.  I backed the truck down to the flat portion of the driveway.  I then drug down my big floor jack and the rubber tire stop.  After putting the stop in front of the driver side tire I put the floor jack under the rear differential and jacked the back end of the truck into the air.  I then reached into the truck and put it in DRIVE so the rear wheels (and driveshaft) would spin.

Yes, I realized this had some potential danger.  I had already envisioned my course of action if the truck somehow came down with the wheels spinning and the wheel stop didn’t hold.  The truck was facing towards the house, meaning any forward movement would be slowed by the hill.  I also left the driver door open for quick access to the brake pedal.

So I engaged the shifter with some trepidation.  The rear wheels started to turn and the truck seemed stable.  I got down beside the Tacoma and looked/ listened.  I could not see or hear anything unusual of course.  I had Cindy tap the gas while I was down low observing to see if I could get any trace of the maddening squeal, nothing.

I turned the truck off and brought down my jackstands.  I thought that maybe if I supported the rear end with jack stands on the rear end instead of the differential it could yield different results.  It didn’t, I still heard nothing unusual.    I did use the spinning wheels as an opportunity to shoot the spinning driveshaft with copious amounts of WD-40 on the joints, hoping this would do at least something to relieve the symptoms.

I then turned my attention to the SSR.  For quite awhile there has been a noticeable clunk in the front end, especially noticeable when making left turns at a decent speed.  I sort of ignored it and sort of babied the truck when turning left.  I have very little experience with suspension/steering issues but it didn’t stop me from jacking up the front end and peeking around.

Just jacking the truck up is a bit of a chore.  Because of it’s lowered profile, I can’t get my heavy duty floor jack under the frame.  I actually have to put my light weight floor jack under there first.  It has a slightly lower profile. I used it to get the truck up an inch or two and then switched back to the 7500 pound Big Red jack.

So I first did a visual inspection, nothing looked particularly unusual or damaged.  I then started tugging on things, tight, tight, tight, loose….  Hmmm, I found a short rod that I later saw identified as a “stabilizer bar”  The bottom nut on this was loose, loose enough that I could easily move the bar back and forth.  I went to the passenger side and pulled on the same bar, rock solid.   Hmmmm, did I just find the problem?

I thought back to when Cindy and I took the SSR up to Seaworld.  During the trip I hit a MONSTER pothole on the way to Universal.  I remember thinking at the time “that had to screw something up”, well I think I just confirmed it did.

The fitting that was loose was an odd set up.  The bolt the nut was threaded onto had an allen wrench fitting inside of it.  I assume it was to allow for adjustment.  I didn’t really adjust anything, I just held the bolt in place with an allen wrench and tightened up the nut with a 7/8″ crescent wrench.  As I lowered the SSR back to the ground I thought I could not possibly get this lucky, could that be all that was wrong?

I took the truck out for a quick road test which included several hard left turns, no clunks! I pulled back into the garage quite pleased that I appeared to at least have addressed a problem with one of the two trucks.

Saturday afternoon Cindy and I attended the running clubs Oktoberfest.  I was technically “working” the event as I was stationed at the registration table checking guests in and working the Ipad to take credit card payments from walk up guests.

As mentioned Friday, I was not expecting to have a great time at the event.  I am not a big fan of anything German, especially Germans blabbing away when I am hiking the grand Canyon. 🙂  Well I was wrong, I had a great time.

Now of course this experience was greatly enhanced by the free refills I was receiving in my Oktoberfest beer stein.  I am not quite sure how many Michelob Ultras I had but it was enough to certainly keep me smiling all afternoon long.

The event had poor pre-registration numbers but a strong walk up crowd.  I would estimate in total there were 200 people that attended the event.  I am pretty sure everyone that showed up had a good time.

Sunday was another 4:15 AM alarm, this time to go time a rare Sunday 8K.  The event was not well attended unfortunately but the costumed runners that did show up were quite entertaining to see.  Despite the small turnout there were news crews from two of the local network affiliates covering the race.  Must have been a slow news day. Cindy ran the race and did quite well, winning her age group.  I don’t know if I could currently maintain the 8:07 pace she did for the full 5 miles.

On the way home from the race we stopped at Ali’s place to pick up Nicki, Sadie and Zoe.  Who is Zoe you ask?  Zoe (a Jack Russel)is the dog of our old neighbor whom moved away and recently back to the Naples area.  Zoe was Nicki’s first dog friend years and years ago.  Zoe used to be a regular visitor to the house. Rick is away on a cruise so Ali has been dogsitting her.  We thought it would be nice to take Zoe back to where she lived for many years.

Unfortunately Zoe is not doing very well health-wise nowadays.  She is 13 or 14 years old and is nearly blind and deaf.  Despite these handicaps she still seemed quite interested in exploring the yard.  She was out there with Nicki and Sadie for a long time.  Of course we could not leave her unattended with her limited sight.  A couple times we had to redirect her but for the most part Zoe seemed to be quite content just walking unencumbered around the large fenced in area.

Even with her problems I found it funny that she still begs for treats.  She always used to do that by rubbing a cabinet with her paw accompanied with a tireless bark.  The barking has stopped and she sometimes winds up pawing a door, wall or dishwasher but you still get the idea.  Having all three dogs together in the back yard was like being in a 10 year ago time machine for a short while.  It was great just to see them all hanging out and enjoying the beautiful weather.

Well it appears the NFL has totally figured out Chip Kelly’s offense.  The Eagles limped to yet another home loss against the dreadful Giants.  The loss extended the clubs record setting consecutive streak of losses at home, yay! The team looked like shit, plain and simple.  Once again the defense played ok but the offense that seemed to be so dynamic and explosive early in the season, failed to produce a single touchdown for the second game in a row, ouch.

I was surprised when they took Vick out although his play was pretty awful.  Evidently when Vick can’t run, he can’t play.  I knew the game was done at that point although Matt Barkely is kind of fun to watch.  I like his fact pace and quick release.  He seems to really  put everything he has into every throw.  In fact his QB style remains me a little bit of Dan Marino, except for one thing, he turns the ball over like mad.  In his roughly three quarters of play I think he has turned the ball over 5 or 6 times?

Even better news is it looks like both Vick and Foles are questionable for next weeks game at Oakland so Barkley might be our new starter.  Yes, I think the season is pretty much done at this point.  Oh well, I really kind of expected it anyway.

Last night I watched the most recent Die Hard in the bedroom with the freshly installed sound bar.  The movie was ridiculously unbelievable but hey, it’s Die Hard it is supposed to be that way.  The movie was also non-stop action and destroyed more vehicles than ethanol gas.  It was also the perfect film to test the sound bar with.

The smaller enclosed space of the bedroom was a great fitt for the new system.  The endless gunfire and explosions rocked the walls of the bedroom.  It really felt like a theater experience.  Although I give the movie a solid B rating the LG sound bar gets a shiny A+!

This week I will be easing off the gas pedal in regards to my normal exercise routine.  This upcoming weekend is the Tough Mudder, I don’t want to do anything that could hinder my ability to survive it.

Friday night  I was quite busy, wedging in a Sam’s club and Publix stop before getting home to do race prep.  By the time I was done doing everything and loading the truck it was bearing down on 10pm, even with Cindy’s help.  My body did not welcome the return of 4:15 am alarms on a Saturday morning.  I drug myself out of bed anyway and got the show on the road.

This was the third year of this race and more than likely the last year of it as well.  It was only decided to take place less than 2 months ago.  It has never been a very well attended event and this year there was a change of the course that made timing the event incredibly inconvenient.

The finish line, which used to be in the parking lot where pre-race registration is located, was moved almost a half mile away.  The decision to move it did not include thought of the logistical implications of doing so.  Both the start and finish line were moved and both were located in the middle of a street with no AC power available.  Luckily the club has a small generator for these situations, however on Saturday there were complications.

At the finish line we have two major things that require power, the fan motor that keeps our inflatable finish line upright and my equipment which includes a couple laptops and a small laser printer.  We have used the generator to power everything several times in the past.  When I would print, it would tax the generator for a few seconds due to the power a laser printer draws while printing, but it still was able to handle things. For some reason on Saturday, that was no longer the case.

The generator was able to power the finish line arch and that was basically it.  Even just adding in my laptops caused it to sound labored.  When I tried to print the generator nearly shut off from the added current draw.  The power was so poor that the printer wasn’t even able to spit out a page, the output  was just a blur. Great.

So in order to deliver results we had to throw a laptop and the printer in the back seat of a car and drive back over to the registration area where AC power was available.  I threw both things on a table and spit out one set of results instead of the 4 or 5 sets I would normally produce as the race was ongoing.

The course layout was not the only problem.  I had the exact same issues with my timing software that I experienced at the last race where runner finish times were showing up as the time of day instead of their net finish time.  I had reported this issue to the software author and received a patch that supposedly fixed the issue.  I was quite annoyed that it didn’t.  The bug meant that producing accurate finish results was much more of a pain in the ass than normal.

I also had lost the ability to post the finish results to the internet directly, adding to my frustration since I had signs posted around the registration area with a QR code for runners to view live results which was now worthless.  It was caused by yet another bug in the software.

It all added up to a very frustrating first 6 hours of my Saturday morning.

Once  I got home I chewed through the post race work as well as sending a long perturbed email to the timing software author, outlining the latest problems I was experiencing.   Timing races is stressful enough without the timing software throwing random roadblocks in my way.

Although I was sleepy I had stuff yet to do.  After weeding the property and assessing the grounds as too wet to mow, I changed my sweaty shirt and headed out in the SSR.  I haven’t driven the truck any considerable distance in a loong time.  I figured a trip to Home Depot and my mom’s place would be a good opportunity to blow out the pipes.

I was stopping at Home Depot to get a new valve for mom’s toilet.  Her valve stopped shooting anything beyond a trickle of water into the holding tank, making it take 10-15 minutes to refill.  While I was there I also grabbed myself a bad ass contractor quality rake.

When I raked the mulch earlier in the day with my generic, wood handled, pressed on head rake it felt flimsy and ready to pull apart.  This new mega rake should last longer than me.

I miscalculated the SSR cargo bed length, thinking the rake would fit in there when laid out diagonally.    It was not even close to fitting.  The rake wound up riding shotgun in the passenger seat on my way to mom’s.

I got to mom’s place maybe a half hour after she got home from work.  She was very happy that the valve replacement went smoothly and solved her problem. I really liked the type of valve that I put in.  I like it so much that I am thinking I might replace the old arm and float style valve that adorn both of my toilets with this new style. Mom thanked me for my efforts as she can once again use the toilet in her bedroom instead of walking to the other side of the condo.

This was the first time I have driven the SSR since I did the stereo work where I eliminated my double ground that was causing electrical feedback in the audio system.  Well the drive revealed a new issue, the sound to the front speakers was cutting out randomly, like something was loose.  I also noticed that my volume level seemed lower than before.  I resigned myself to having to rip open the dash again once again to track down the loose wire and turn up the gain on one of the modules used for the radio install to give me more volume. Great.  I will make sure to do it this time with the top down and out in the sunshine to make the reassembly process easier.  Warming up the air bag cover makes a big difference.

I even had some time to finish up the build of Tuffwing.  I got the servos glued down, the winglets attached, the motor/prop installed and the electronics in their compartment.  I thought I would be a good idea to do a stationary test of everything once I was done.

I had one hand on the plane, holding it stationary in my lap while my other hand worked the radio.  After verifying the servos were working as expected I hit the throttle.  The powerful brushless motor roared to life but it felt like the thrust was in the wrong direction, all the air was being pushed forward instead of backwards.

I instinctively reached my right hand towards the front of the plane to feel the air.  Well the prop was spinning quite quickly, fast enough that it was nearly invisible.  As I reached I felt the tip of my right ring finger make contact with something.  I glance down at my hand and it is already flowing blood at an alarming pace.  I knew I cut my finger badly.  If you slice a finger, normally the blood will sort of seep out, this was flowing from the gun, meaning it was deep.

I cupped my other hand under the red one to catch the blood as I made my way to the sink.  I rinsed off the blood and then grabbed a paper towel to apply pressure to the wound as I made my way back to the bedroom where my first aid supplies are.  As soon as I removed the paper towel the blood gushed again.  I knew that the cut probably should have stitches but I just did not feel like throwing a big wedge in my day to do so.  I slapped a heavy duty band aid on the cut and wrapped it tight.  I followed it up with wrapping tape around the bandage to further secure the dressing and add additional pressure.  When I was done I could feel my pulse radiating from the tip of my finger, it was not a feeling I enjoyed.

After my do-it-yourself first aid I jumped right back into my plane testing.  I read that I can reverse the motor direction by simply reversing any two of the three wires that are connected to it.  After doing so I cranked the throttle back up, with all body parts out of harms way.  The thrust the beefy high current battery and brushless motor created was very impressive.  If I manage to get the wing in the air it should be a BULLET.  The 80 mph top speed they boast the wing is capable of seems realistic from my bench test.

When I redressed the cut later in the night the bandage and tape was pure red with dried blood.  I am crossing my fingers that this gash will heal on it’s own with diligent bandaging.  The cut is about an inch long and I would not be surprised if it is to the bone deep.

Sunday was my second 4:15 am alarm of the weekend, this time to get up to go to the Marco Island triathlon.  Cindy was competing in the race and I had offered to help our equipment manager set up and tear down for the race.  It was my first time attending the Marco tri.  The hotel that was used to host the event was beautiful as was the beach area behind it where the race was stationed.

Lugging equipment around with my sliced finger wasn’t ideal but the substantial bandaging I had on it at least kept the cut protected.  I just used the other 4 fingers when the right hand was needed.  Setting up the equipment went well.  We had it all ready to go early enough that I was able to walk over to see all of waves of the race start including Cindy’s which was the last wave to go, 12 minutes after the first athletes.

I saw Cindy a few times during her race like when she came out of the swim, the bike to run transition, and as she came back in towards the finish line.  She initially was disappointed in her finish time of 1:27:19, saying she really was slow on the swim due to getting dunked by others swimming over her. In reality her swim was the same speed as last year, even with her problems yesterday.

She felt much better when we looked at the official results, she got second in her age group and was only a minute away from the number one spot.  Her bike and run was strong, making up for whatever issues she had during the swim.  It was the best finish she has ever had at a triathlon.

We were there until the very end helping to rip back down all of the stuff we put up several hours earlier.  By that time the sun was high in the sky and I felt it beating on me, making shade  a very welcome commodity.  We didn’t pull out of there till almost 11:30.  On the way home I stopped in to pick up the girls for an impromptu sleep over.  By the time the van pulled back into the driveway it was firmly early afternoon, around 1PM.

I was REALLY tired, so tired that I passed out for a much needed nap mid-afternoon before waking up to watch the Eagles-Broncos game.

Now I went into this game already chalking it up as a loss.  The Broncos offense has been prolific and the Eagles defense has been dreadful which I was sure would add up to a beating.  I just didn’t realize it would be THAT bad of a beating. 52-20, ouch.

The Eagles are in for a LOOOOONG season if they can’t find a way to turn their defensive roster into something resembling a NFL defense.  They are just awful, unable to do much beyond giving opposing punters the day off week in and week out.  Their secondary which is now filled with a bunch of no names can’t stop anyone, the pass rush is very inconsistent and their run defense is nearly as porous.

The Eagles fast paced offense didn’t seem to bother the Broncos much. They turned around and did the same thing to the Eagles, using a hurry up style for nearly the entire game except when the game reached blowout status and they were eating clock.  The game got bad enough that at the end of the third quarter Fox switched to another game, the hated Cowboys no less.

I find it hard to believe that Chip Kelly, despite his focus on the offensive side of the ball, could have ignored the defense this much.  Yea, I already assumed this year was going to be the rebuilding variety but if that means I have to watch this type of performance week in and week out I am going to need to find other ways to entertain myself on Sunday afternoons.

Sunday night we watched Dredd, the rework of the old Stallone classic, Judge Dredd.  The movie utilized the latest technology to create a visually impressive background for the film.  It used the technology to do things like show heads being blown apart in super slo-mo.  Is that really necessary?  I also found it extremely odd that you NEVER see the face of the guy that plays Judge Dredd, his helmet remains in place every second.  I am not sure if this is because the guy that played Dredd is not a well known actor or maybe had some zits on his forehead he didn’t want the public to see.  Whatever the reason, I thought it was odd.

So anyway, to me the movie was an overly gory, everyone dies but the good guys film that I just didn’t care about at the end.  I’d give it a B-.

I had a busy morning already.  I had to prepare the dogs breakfast, drop them off at Ali’s place and gas up the van before getting to work.  The rest of the week appears to be lined up to follow the same, too much to do format.

I am hoping to take in the series finale of Breaking Bad tonight.  I want to make sure I am fully awake to soak in every tragically brilliant moment of it.

So yesterday was the last day of freedom before returning to work.  I had a pretty diverse day.  My ideas of mowing the grass were washed away by yet another very wet afternoon.  I attached the new stickers we picked up on the trip to the back of the party van.  The back window and bumper are getting filled with lots of adhesive proof of the various adventures the van has taken me to.

I also did a little digging into the additional noise I was hearing out of the van the last few days of the trip.  I turned it on and laid on the driveway to listen/look.  I saw the joint in the exhaust pipe in front of the muffler had only one of the original three bolts in place and I could see the joint was loose, leaking condensation and exhaust.  That would explain the extra noise I was hearing.  I should be able to fix it up myself this weekend with a new gasket and a few bolts.

Later in the morning I stopped by my mom’s place to give her a few souvenirs we picked up on the trip.  She was at the community pool with her “pool lady” friends, both of whom are two decades older than she is.  Mom liked the stuff although the small ceramic mask we picked up for her in New Orleans had a small piece crack off of it that I took home and glued.  I hung with mom at the pool for awhile talking about the trip and other things, it was nice.

Tuesday afternoon I did various things at the house like more computer work, planting the Joshua tree seeds I bought out west and getting a workout in although it was a big failure.

Last night was a running club board meeting but I skipped it.  The weather was shitty, the meeting agenda wasn’t pressing and I didn’t really feel like driving all the way into town for it.  Instead I used the time to do some spur of the moment work on the SSR.

Ever since I installed the Pioneer radio in my SSR I have had an annoying problem, I would get an engine whine coming through the speakers that corresponded with the RPM’s.  I have tried to address this problem a couple times, once by turning down the gain on the potentiometer on  one of the 3rd party modules in the install and a second time by relocating the ground to a different location.

Recently I was contacted by someone on the SSR fanatics site asking about my stereo install since he was installing a Pioneer radio in his truck as well.  During the conversation he mentioned how he simply used the ground built into the radio harness and did not run a separate ground wire to bare metal.  He said he has no electrical feedback in his install.  This got me thinking…

Prior to doing my install I looked into how others have done it.  The guideline I followed included a physical ground so that is what I did in my install.  However from my Tacoma radio swap I did no additional grounding and just used the factory wire harness and it’s built in ground.  So to test this theory I ripped into the dash of my truck for the 6th or 7th time.

I am disgusted at the rats nest of wires every time I pull the radio out.  Despite multiple efforts, I never found a way to clean it up that actually fit in the space I have available.  It took me awhile to dig through the cluster of wires to find what I was looking for.  When I looked at the ground connector I realized there were two black wires.  One of the wires was bare and meant to be used to ground other parts of the system, the other was wired into the factory ground in the harness.  Well I realized I had basically double grounded the system which surely was the source of my problem.  To verify this I removed the auxiliary ground and powered up the radio.  It worked fine. Doh.

Realizing this stupid mistake was aggravating but a relief at the same time.  After a difficult struggle getting the radio and it’s tangle of wires back into the dash I turned the truck on and revved the motor, verifying my noise gremlin was gone.  It was.

Putting the front dash panel back on was a pain in the ass but I already knew it would be, just as it was every other time I have had it apart.  Once it was all buttoned back up I did one more test run and again all I heard was music, finally.  Persistence pays off.

Last night I stayed up way too late getting caught up with Breaking Bad, watching the last two episodes.  Wow, some crazy, crazy stuff went down.  I had a hard time falling asleep afterwards even though I was exhausted.

So once again Saturday I managed to consume almost my entire day doing work around the house.  Part of the work got particularly messy when I decided to use the pressure washer, which I had already pulled out to blast crud off the mower deck, to clean the castle stone border around the pool.  In the 9-10 months that the stones have been in place they had become encrusted in black mildew just as many things do in the south Florida climate.

Hitting the stones with the high pressure washer did a great job of blasting the scuzz off the stones.  Unfortunately it also did a great job of bouncing alot of it, along with dirt/sand all over me.  The front of my body was coated with shit from head to toe, the price of pressure washing…

I did take a break to do something fun for a little bit.  A little while ago my sister and her husband went to a race track where you could take various high performance vehicles out for a spin.  I saw my sis driving a high end Audi and Damon driving a Lamborghini and a Ferrari.  Video was provided by something similar to a GoPro, mounted behind the driver to give a FPV (first person view)  It was cool.

So anyway, it gave me the idea to do my own first person view video with the SSR.  I don’t have a GoPro or a GoPro style mount so I used the next best thing, a paper towel roll and duct tape.  I jammed my Flip camera into one end, placed the paper towels on the top of the SSR “waterfall” that separates the driver and passenger seats and crudely secured it to the windscreen with a big chunk of duct tape.  It looked absolutely ridiculous.

I had no idea how the rig would work once I got on the road.  My biggest concern was it didn’t fly out of the truck.  I turned on the camera and hit the road.

As you can tell from the 4:30 of video, the rig didn’t work all that well once I was up to speed, the video starts to shake violently from getting buffeted by the wind.  However there was one part it did work pretty well for. Behold my FPB (first person burnout)

On Sunday morning it was brick time but in a different manner than normal.  Cindy agreed to do the DD ride with me which is an out and back to the nearest Dunkin Donuts which is almost exactly 10 miles from my house, making for a challenging 20 mile overall ride.  Despite leaving before 8AM, the heat and humidity arrived in force very early on.

I lead on the way to DD, we covered the first 10 miles in something like 31:30, a good pace considering I haven’t done this ride in ages.  After downing a small coffee we headed back east, typically the more difficult of the two directions since the wind is normally working more against you.  Cindy got in front and maintained a crazy pace of 20+ mph, at times even scraping 23,  I was down on the aero bars of my Dawes giving everything I had to stay within 6 or 7 feet of her to catch some of the wind blocking.  Otherwise there would be no way I could have maintained that speed.

We actually wound up doing a negative split on the ride and I am almost positive it is the fastest that 20 miles has ever been gobbled up, even faster than when I have done the ride with Randall. Cindy is a really strong cyclist obviously, significantly better than I am.

So after arriving home I was exhausted. Staying on the aero bars for 10 miles pedaling my ass off had sucked all of the energy out of my legs.  Still, I wanted to get some swimming in.  So we changed and headed to the water park.  I got 1500 yards in the pool.  I wasn’t as fast as the week before when all I did was swim and averaged 10 minutes per 500.  I still pulled a good time for me, averaging about 10:30 per segment.

After the laps we got some additional ancillary exercise by climbing the water slide tower 5 times to do each slide one time.  By the time it was all over I was spent.  The bust ass bike in the heat followed by the swimming was like pulling the drain plug on my energy reserves.  I had ideas of changing the oil on the Tacoma Sunday afternoon but I said f it, I was just too tired to head back out into the afternoon frying pan heat to do it.  I took a two hour nap instead.

Last night I saw Ted, the movie about the talking, crude teddy bear.  I heard it was funny, really funny.  It was.  I laughed out loud a ton, it was lots of fun as long as you don’t get offended by dirty humor.  If you haven’t seen it and are looking for a way to fill a couple hours with laughs rent it. I give it a shiny A.

This is one of those weird weeks for me, I am doing remote classroom training from home.  The best part of it is the class doesn’t start till 10AM, meaning I get to sleep in and get stuff done around here (like the write the blog) before having to “work”.  I am hoping this training will be more interesting than the last I attended.  It should be since it is a subject I am more interested in, Windows Server 2012 installation and configuration.

Yesterday I found myself f’ing around again with the clutch fluid on my SSR.  When I tried to flush my clutch fluid a couple weeks ago I f’d up and managed to suck some air into the system.  Since the work the clutch pedal felt different and was releasing closer to the floor, not the way things should be with a hydraulic clutch.

So the way to fix this is to bleed the system.  With a stock SSR this would be very difficult since the bleeder valve is INSIDE the transmission.  Luckily, when I had the Corvette C6 clutch installed I opted to have a remote bleeder valve installed which is basically a tube that extends below the truck, making draining/flushing/bleeding the system easy.

So after two or three cycles of purging the system the clutch pedal once again felt “normal”.  In the future I should be able to avoid the bleeding process since I now understand what to do and not do when it comes to changing the clutch fluid.

Like I mentioned yesterday, it is very rare for me to talk much about TV on here.  Imagine how rare it is to talk about it on two consecutive days?  I am a big fan of all of Gordon Ramsey shows.  Last night I was watching Kitchen Nightmares, a show where Gordon is asked to go into a restaurant that is struggling and turn it around.

Typically each episode follows a similar blueprint.  Gordon shows up, tries the food, says it all sucks, and then he screams and yells at the owners until they eventually realize that his way is the right way.  Some owners roll right over and follow Gordon’s direction willingly, some are very stubborn and only relent after a lot of objections.  However in the end, Gordon always wins out although after he leaves there have been a number of places that went back to their old ways to some degree.

Well this was the first time Gordon gave up and walked away.  He was called into some place in Arizona called Amy’s Baking Company.  The place is owned by a husband and wife whom are just ridiculously awful.  My throat started drying out from my mouth being open in amazement so often during the episode.  The wife looked looney bin crazy and had an incredibly strong overreaction even to the most minute amount of criticism. The husband was a belligerent asshole whom regularly chastised customers verbally if they complained about the shitty food.

Well as the episode progressed I had no idea how Gordon was going to pull the nose up on this restaurant.  Every suggestion he made was met with rolling eyes, cold stares and bitchy attitude from Amy.  The husband, whom actually came off as the more rational/sane one of the couple did his fair share of ranting, at one point telling Gordon he shouldn’t fck with him, as he was a “gangster”, amazing.

Well after a long sit down at a table where Gordon abandoned his normal, in your face tough love style, instead utilizing a calm and logical demeanor to try to get through to these loons, he still got nowhere.  Crazy Amy just could not tolerate being told a single thing she was doing was not right.  Gordon threw up his hands and said “I’m done”.

This was the first time in roughly 100 episodes of the show that Gordon walked away from a Kitchen Nightmare.  You have to wonder why people like this would even ask for help if they are so unwilling to listen, even to someone with world class credentials like Gordon Ramsey.  If you have Hulu, On Demand etc.. I recommend you check this episode out.  It is a perfect blueprint of the type of people you should aspire NOT to be.

So my day at home yesterday was uneventful (still home today).  I putzed around the house feeling tired and weak.  I did venture out to get coffee and have my oil changed in the SSR.   Yes you read that right, I paid someone to change my oil.  No, it isn’t because I suddenly developed a lazy streak.

With the extended warranty I purchased through the credit union for the truck the oil changes have to be documented.  I called awhile ago and asked them if simply presenting the receipt for my purchase of oil and a filter were enough to fulfill the documentation requirements.  They said they were “not sure”, believe it or not.  So to avoid any conflict I am paying to have it done and making sure they include my VIN on the paperwork. I cringed when I forked over $80 for a 6 quart Mobil 1 oil change, knowing full well I could do it myself for less than half of that.

So last night for dinner I had one of my Trader Joe meals for one, bean and rice burritos.  I felt like cracking a Diet Coke to go with the meal.  I normally reserve Diet Coke for Friday pizza night but when I am feeling shitty I will find myself reaching for one as well.  Yes, I know Diet Coke is a terrible thing to ingest and is probably the next item on my list to get eliminated permanently from my diet.

So anyway, I took the last can from the fridge and wanted to put more in there to get cold.  I had a big case of it on top of the fridge that was in a cardboard tray covered with shrink wrap.  Instead of pulling the case down first and then removing the plastic wrap for some reason I decided I would cut the wrap while it was still on top of the fridge.

I pulled out a scissors and started to cut.  All of a sudden I hear a noise and a high powered jet of diet soda starts spraying across the kitchen.  The stream reached clear across the kitchen island and even doused the recliner in the great room which was at least 10-12 feet away.

For a few moments I was dumbstruck, wondering if this really just happened.  I went and grabbed a paper towel but by that time the damage was done, I had sticky soda all over the place.  I was angry at myself for not just pulling the case down first.  The price for the stupidity was an extensive clean up with wet towels.  I f there was anything fortunate about the incident it was the vast majority of the soda wound up on hard surfaces, namely the granite counter top and the tile floor.

Once I did pull down the case I saw there was a bunch of soda trapped inside as well so I had to pull every can out and wash them as well.  When I pulled out the can that blew I saw the tiny pin hole I accidentally created with the scissors.  Lesson learned, never open a shrink wrapped pack of soda from the side with sharp objects.

Today my illness has mutated into a hacking cough and a lot more nose blowing.

So I left for my quick east coast visit with Randall and Tracy late Friday afternoon.  Time was of the essence since the Marlin – Phillies game started at 7.  I wanted to get across the alley as quickly as possible.  That plan was quickly derailed when I saw no less than 8 cars pulled over westbound with another half dozen state troopers waiting to nail more in a MASSIVE speed trap.  I was paranoid that a similar trap was waiting for me around some corner so I kept my speed generally no higher than 75 for most of the drive.

Despite my lower than anticipated cruising speed in the SSR I pulled into Tracy’s driveway right around 6.  After dumping my stuff and quickly changing we headed right out the door.  For some reason I thought it wouldn’t take that long to get to Miami, even on a Friday evening.  Boy what  a stupid thought that was. Traffic was in a word, awful.

I was quite glad Randall was driving.  He has adapted to the “everyone is an asshole” driving style which I simply can not stand.  This style requires non stop hard acceleration, hard braking and squeezing into any tiny opportunity to get your vehicle in front of the thousands clogging the roadway. It was crazy.

The traffic resulted in us not getting into the building until the third inning.  Before finding our seats we hit the food stand, I was hungry by then.  Two personal pizzas and two beers cost a FCKING ridiculous $37, a theme that repeated throughout the night.

So when Randall told me about the tickets he bought I quickly looked at a seating chart and thought they were good seats on the lower level somewhere.  Well I had no clue just how good they were.  We descended and descended until we were 5 rows off the first base line, the best seats I ever had at a MLB game, kudos to Randall.

I have been to Marlins stadium before but when I did the roof was closed.  Friday night it was wide open, giving the stadium a different feel.  To be honest, because of the high humidity I wouldn’t have minded if they closed it up and flipped on the AC.

The seats were fantastic, I couldn’t believe that Juan Samuel, the Phillies first base coach whom I remembered quite well from his days as a shortstop/2nd baseman, was within 50 feet of us.  It was very cool.  Being so close to the action was a new experience.

The Marlins, despite being in a brand new stadium for only the second year already have fallen right back into piss poor attendance.  The stadium might have been 20% full.  Of course the executives don’t help matters when they sell off their quality players year after year.  They gutted what was a potentially solid line up after the end of last year.  That and Miami has always been just a terrible place in terms of support for their football and baseball teams. We were surrounded by as many Phillies fans as Marlins fans.

I had decided, despite the ridiculous prices, I wanted to drink some beer.  I kept the flow of Bud Lights going for most of the game.  A loose wallet inventory at the end of the night revealed that in total I had spent around $90 on food/beer, crazy.

The alcohol kept what was sort of a boring game, exciting.  I had my first legitimate shot ever to get a foul ball, ironically I didn’t try to get it.  When it came our way I was pretty drunk and had an almost full Bud Light in my hand.  The ball came bouncing our way and popped up in a trajectory that was almost exactly over my head.  For whatever reason I was more interested in not spilling my beer than catching the ball.

Randall, who was on my right and a young guy that was on my left had different ideas.  They both sprang up and grabbed wildly for the ball.  The kid outreached Randall but the ball bounced off his hand and into the lap of a Phillies fan a couple seats to my right.  I probably could have easily outreached both Randall and the kid but if I caught the ball I would have wound up giving it away to a close by kid anyway.

The game wound up going extra innings with the Phillies winning in the 10th after Chase Utley hit a RBI triple.  Randall and I stuck around for the post game fireworks.  It seemed weird the Marlins put on a fireworks show after a loss.  As a Phillies fan it seemed totally appropriate. 🙂

Randall and I didn’t get back to Tracy’s house until a very late hour.  I don’t think my head hit the pillow until a little after midnight.  I was exhausted and drunk.  This was an issue because of a commitment I made earlier in the night.

Somehow I missed the fact that Tracy was training for her first ever full marathon, in Alaska, no less.  She had mentioned she was doing a 16 mile training run Saturday, starting at a bright and early 5:30 am.  I had my SSR meet up on Saturday but it didn’t start until 9:30.  Some quick math in my head worked out that I could do both without a major problem.  Too bad part of that math didn’t figure in that I never ran 16 miles before.

So despite getting home late, drunk and tired, I set my alarm on the phone for 4:30 am and pulled myself out of bed.  When Tracy saw me up she laughed and reminded me I totally didn’t have to come.  I told her it was fine.  Once I mentally commit to doing something, even something ill advised as this, I have a hard time derailing it.

A rational person would have never even considered doing this.  The farthest I have ever run is the 13.1 mile half marathon distance and the last time I did that was at the Hooters Half Marathon the first weekend of March.  Since then I have run 6 or 7 miles, once a week.  Jumping up to a 16 mile run from that level  would be stupid in any conventional running wisdom book.

Tracy was doing the run with her local Team in Training group.  She was concerned that they would be keeping a pace she wouldn’t be able to maintain which is why I offered to tag along, to keep her company.

So we showed up a little before the run start time.  They had a nice spread of pre-run food and drink available.  I had heard of team in training before but I never knew the level of support they offered.  They had several groups out on the road, different pace groups, ranging from walking pace to fast running pace.  Each group included at least one Team in Training coach or captain who was responsible for making sure the group was ok as well as offering encouragement and advice.

So we headed out into the dark streets, walking for what felt like close to a half mile before we started running.  The pace was intentionally slow since the distance covered was going to be quite long.  Tracy was worried I would mind running so slow, I assured her I didn’t care, especially when venturing into distances I never had seen before.

The Team in Training style of run isn’t something that would appeal to me if I was training for a race.  There was a lot of stopping during the run, too much for my tastes but something that works better for a less competitive mindset.  Not only did T in T have the food and water at the start, they had no less than a half dozen water stops set up along the course.  They really put a lot of effort into supporting runners in their program.

The mileage early felt ok but not great.  It didn’t take long for my right hip to start throbbing.  As we got into double digit mileage everything else from the waist down chimed in with their mutual dislike of being asked to carry my body along for such a long distance.

During the run there were lots of “interesting” people to see.  The most memorable for me was the guy that had what looked to be a male “tramp stamp” on his pelvis, easily visible above his low hanging shorts.  There was a 10 minute section of the run where we were subjected to the maddening sound of sea wall being driven deep into the sand with a pile driver.  Damn that was annoying.

Although the pace was never enough to make me really breathe heavy, except when we went up some bridges, my legs felt like total cement as the run came to a close.  I just wanted to stop the pain.  Finally, roughly three and a half hours after we started, the 16 miles was behind us.

In my head, there was too much stop and go for me to count it as an official run but that is just the way my brain works.  My body disagreed, I was beat.

By the time we got back I had to jump in the shower and then head immediately out to the SSR event, despite an overwhelming urge to just crash on a couch for a couple hours.  I didn’t wind up getting on site until after 10:30.  Since I wasn’t having any scheduled work done it wasn’t really a big deal.

The format of this event was different than the last tech session which was very hands on.  At this location we had use of a garage that was fully staffed with mechanics whom were tasked with doing most of the work for the SSRFanatics.  To be honest, I would have preferred a more hands on event.  Even so, a lot of the fanatics were giving the mechanics tips on how to complete certain tasks since they had more hands on experience with the trucks.

I basically did a lot of observing, coffee drinking and donut eating along with mingling with the other SSR guys.  One guy showed me this cool rag/cloth that can give similar results to clay bar’ing your car with much less work.  Another guy showed me the way he handled the fading rubber on the running boards.  The group is filled with endless tips and tricks.

I bought a set of cool LED projection lights.  Once installed they project the SSR logo on the ground.  I’m not quite sure how/when I will install them but it should be kind of cool once I do.

I did bring my Craiglist, factory chrome wheel along, hoping that maybe I would be able to get it swapped out with the badly pitted wheel that is on the truck now.  Luckily they had a kid free that could do it for me.  He moved the tire to the “new” wheel without major incident.

The wheel that was pulled was in the worst shape of the 4 by far.  To be honest the wheels now look good enough that I might not even feel the need to look for long term replacements.

I was feeling increasingly zombie-like as the event went on due to the long run.  I cut out around 1:30.  I definitely enjoyed myself more at the first get together but I still had fun regardless. You can see all my pics from the event here.

When I got back to the house I snuck in a quick nap after an ice cream/grocery store run with Randall and Tracy.  Randall and Tracy were invited to a birthday party Saturday night.  I told Randall I was fine tagging along.  With enough alcohol I can manage to blend in, even in a situation where I don’t really know anyone.  Randall brought a number of BLP’s to assist me in the process.

The party was fun, held at a cute house that was on a canal, complete with a dock and boat.  Everybody there was nice and I never had an issue bouncing around between various groups.  I drank every BLP that was there and ate way too much of the very good food laid out on the table.

It felt good to sleep Saturday night.  I woke up at a very late for me, 8:30 am.  I had told Randall I was heading out late morning.  That gave us time to go out and have breakfast.  Tracy had suggested we go to a place she heard a lot of good stuff about named OB House.

We arrived and saw a big crowd waiting outside.  Tracy put in our name and was told we had about a 30 minute wait.  Randall and I walked around a bit while we were waiting, first to take a look at a city wide bike rental thing where you can grab a bike from one location and return it to another.

We then walked by the science museum/Imax theater.  The museum includes this incredibly cool perpetual machine type thing where balls make their way along a wire mesh track that is HUGE.  I could have sat and watched it for a long time.

We finally got to sit down, the wait was probably closer to 45 minutes.  The indoor seating area was pretty small but cozy.  The one negative that hit me right away was the noise level.  The hard floor and walls teamed with a small area made for a very loud space requiring substantial effort to make the person across the table from you hear what you were saying.

The food itself lived up to the billing, all three of us liked what we ordered quite a bit.  The $8 orange juice made me cringe a bit but Randall was nice enough to pick up the bill. I threw down the tip.  As we were leaving we were interacting with his incredibly friendly and cute french bulldog.

He LOVED people and would go from person to person looking for affection.  He was so cute.  We also ran into some other friends of Randall and Tracy that were coming as we were going.

So once we got back I packed up and got ready to roll.  I thanked Tracy and Randall for the hospitality as always.  It was great to see them.  I had a lot of fun jammed into a small block of time.

The ride back across the state was entirely top down despite the bright sun and hot, muggy air.  I arrived back at the house with a toasted face, not a good thing for someone with a history of basal cell skin cancer.  I spent the rest of my Sunday attending to only the bare essential must do chores.

Next weekend is going to follow a similar blueprint with Troy rolling into town on Saturday for a 4 day visit.

If you want to see all of my pictures from the weekend look here.

When I was messing around with the AWESOME Craigslist search aggregator, searchtempest.com, a couple weeks ago I stumbled across a guy in Jacksonville that was selling a rear SSR factory chrome wheel for a SUPER cheap $75.  Although the guy was way too far away for me to go pick up the wheel and my being pretty sure it was sold anyway, I sent him an email expressing my interest.  I was surprised to hear it was still available.

Let me back up a sec.  My SSR, although incredibly awesome, has a few warts.  One of them are it’s wheels.  The prior owner evidently took a set of factory painted wheels and had them chromed.

Well either the chrome job was not good or this is just normal for 7 year old rechromed wheels, but the finish on the wheels has started to pit.  Some wheels are worse than others.  They are 15 footers, looking good from a distance but not so sharp as you get closer.

I saw some ridiculous prices for a set of new factory SSR chrome wheels, somewhere in the neighborhood of $2500, f that.  So anyway, you can understand why picking up a factory chrome wheel for $75 made my eyes light up.

Now normally with a Craigslist transaction, at least every one that I ever participated in, delivery of the item is handled in person as a local transaction. Obviously driving to Jacksonville and back for a $75 wheel would be rather silly, probably costing me upwards of $100 in gas and 10 hours of drive time.

I asked the seller if he would be open to my paying him with Paypal and him shipping the wheel to me.  Of course I would pay all shipping costs.  I was mildly surprised he said he would do it, cool!

The wheel arrived yesterday, packed with care.  Other than a small nick in it which I already knew about, it was in really good shape.

My plan is to swap this wheel with my driver side rear which has the worst pitting of the four.  Hopefully I can score similar deals to eventually get factory chrome on all 4 corners.

MMORPG alert, next few paragraphs are about WoW, something many of you will not care about or understand.

I have talked a few times on here about how surprised I was that once I became separated that my time gaming and specifically playing WoW fell off a cliff, the exact opposite of what I expected.  I figured a life where my only considerations were me, myself and I would include plenty of recreational time to do something like play WoW, my prime source of gaming enjoyment for over 7 years.

There was a long period of time where I was spending up to 30+ hours a week in the game, not that it was a good thing.  I just found it so engaging and enveloping, feeding into my need to always have something to do, even if those tasks are virtual. There were some nights where I didn’t crawl into bed at a ridiculous time early in the morning as I always had just one more goal to accomplish.

I found the game to be fascinating, not just because of the game but because of the dynamics of the millions of people playing it with you.  In many ways WoW felt like a real society upon itself, your interactions in game relied on many of the dynamics of human nature.  You ran into all types, the asshole, the bully, the coward, the whiner and even the occasional all around good guy.    I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think it was these interactions that made the game really interesting.  Fast forward to 2013.

Over the years the game developers have made a number of improvements to the game to make many functions in the game significantly quicker and easier.  For example, to do an instance (a challenge where 5 players work together to accomplish a goal) you used to have to do a lot of work.  You would announce in a town that you were looking to get a group together and then wait until you could find enough people to fill the various group roles.

Once you had that group together you literally had to travel to the area where this instance is located, in some situations this could have meant doing 10 minutes or more of virtual travel until you arrived at the location.  This situation was indeed laborious and time consuming.  But there is something else it did, it committed you to accomplishing the goal since there was a lot of work involved in both assembling the group and getting to the instance location.  Many times you would create in game friends during this process and going forward would often seek out these friends to do other instances since you knew them and they knew you.

One of the game improvements was making this process basically instant.  You no longer had to assemble a group, you simply joined a queue to do an instance and it would pair you up with a bunch of strangers.  In addition you no longer had to travel to these instances, it simply pulls you to the instance magically and pops you back to where you were after it is complete.  For sure, it made this sort of in game activity dramatically more convenient and less time consuming. There were many areas of the game where this type of streamlining was done, making tasks that took longer and required interaction with other players, into quick hitting items that required very little else of others.

So the end result of this tweaking has been a game that is much more convenient but much less engaging.  Many times you can do an instance without a single word being exchanged between the 5 players involved.  The player to player engagement in all areas of the game is dramatically less than it once was.

Once again, in a way, the game is reflecting real life where convenience is king. Fast food, 140 character thoughts, quick weight loss, instant credit and other sorts of instant gratification are what our basically lazy society demands.  Very few people take the time to think about what falls by the wayside in the process.

I am not sure how I got on this tangent as my main point was that I hardly play the game anymore. Perhaps this is just part of the reason why.  Although there has been an expansion out for 6 months I still have 10 virtual me’s that have not made one step towards progressing to the new level cap of 90.  At this point I’m not sure if it will ever happen as real life and lack of interest consistently gets in the way.

This weekend I have a Sunday race to time.  It is a warm up for two more busy upcoming weekends.  The followiing weekend I wil be heading to the east coast to hang with Randall and Tracy, attend a Marlins game and attend a SSR meet up.  Then the following weekend Troy comes down to spend a few days which will surely be a good time.

So I left work a little early on Friday to facilitate my drive in the SSR to Longwood which is east of Orlando.  When I punched the address of the La Quinta into Google maps I saw 197 miles spit back at me.  Ok so doing some basic math, optimistically figuring I could average 70 miles an hour, I guessed the trip would take me roughly 3 hours.  I didn’t bother to look at any details of the Google info.

Well if I had looked at the details I would have seen the 200 mile route was the one that goes through the center of Florida through a number of small towns which slow you down significantly.  The I-75 to I-4 route was 250 miles.  Well when you add on three separate sessions of dead stopped traffic due to accidents, I didn’t roll into the hotel until 10 pm.  I was not a happy camper.

So I walked up to the front desk.  I saw the parking lot of the hotel was jammed.  I was glad I had a reservation.  So I give my name and the girl punches it in and makes a confused face.  She asks me how it is spelled and looks again.  It’s not there.

Well I was prepared, I had printed out my confirmation email, that should clear things up.  I hand it to her.  After she glances at it she sees the problem. I reserved a room for Thursday….  Evidently after 45 years I still haven’t mastered the skill of reading a calendar.

I covered my face with my hands in frustration.  After the killer drive the last thing I needed was this even though it was my fault.  At first it seemed like my only option was going to be being thrown into a smoking allowed room however the woman was nice enough to let me stay in their one remaining suite for the same price as my original reservation.

As I parked my SSR around the side of the building a black SSR pulled in right next to me.  As we stepped out I told the guy I bet I knew why he was there.  He was a fellow SSR Fanatic named Dan who drove up from Miami.  I talked to him a bit as we walked inside.

My suite was nice and was identical to the La Quinta suite Ali and I stayed in once or twice during our various western road trips.  It felt like kind of a waste for me to be in there by myself.    I was exhausted and after taking a shower collapsed into bed.

Well I had an awful night of sleep.  The ac unit in the suite provided great white noise when it was running but it also appeared to be on  a hair trigger thermostat.  When it hit the set temperature it would shut off and then when the temp dropped like a tenth of a degree it would rattle back to life.  This on and off cycle repeated all night long and felt like it woke me up every time it happened.  I am not sure why I didn’t just get up and turn it off altogether.  I awoke Saturday morning feeling exhausted.

When I went to grab breakfast in the lobby Dan was already there, I sat down at his table.  Dan has an interesting history.  He currently is a computer science teacher at a high school.  He spent years being a CIO and has lived in Colorado, Key West and South Beach.  We talked SSR’s a bit as well.  He had only been to one other meet up but said it was a good time.

After breakfast I got all my stuff packed up and checked out.  Before heading to the location of the event I found a nearby Dunkin Donuts using the Waze app on my Iphone.  If you use the built in Iphone nav app I strongly suggest you look at Waze.  It is NAV and so much more.

The meet up was supposed to start at 9, I got there around 8:30.  Dan said getting there early would be smart because of all the people that were supposed to show up.  When I got there I saw maybe 6 or 7 SSR’s already lined up. This was being held at a Maaco.  We were given full use of their garage, including a lift which made working under the trucks much more tangible.

I met a couple of the guys whose names I recognized from the SSRFanatics message board.  I was excited to finally meet the head of the group who goes by the handle of Dicktator. (his name is Dick)  I got his attention and told him I was Duf.  Dick greeted me enthusiastically.  Dick is 78 years old but still has a great energy about him.  I t wasn’t long until I heard a few of his dirty jokes. Between Dicktator and the rest of the group there is a HUGE collection of SSR knowledge.  I planned to tap as much of it as I could.

Since I was there early I got to throw my truck up on the lift first.  I was having my front radiator support replaced.  From the factory, the SSR has a shitty piece of plastic that is used for this role.  I bought a strong powder coated steel support to replace it.  This upgrade is highly recommended as it really helps to tighten up the front end, cutting down on the shaking and rattling over uneven road.

I was impressed at the hive mentality of the group.  Without asking I instantly had a half dozen guys helping out in the process.  Getting the new radiator support on is tricky and the installation was completed by one of the group veterans while I served as primarily a human jack support.

While it was up there I asked one of the guys about some of the vibration noises I was hearing when the top was up.  When the catalytic converters were replaced it looked like one of the heat shields was a bit messed up.  He shifted the shielding around to hopefully fix it.  Dicktator said that when the cats were replaced you normally want to replace the O2 sensors as well.  He said they can start to rattle as well as they age.

By the time I got my truck down a lot more guys had showed up.  It was very interesting seeing the various customizations guys have done to their trucks.  Some of the mods seemed to have crossed the line from cool to over the top.  The most visually and technically stunning was the gull wing door mod I saw.  Man that had to be tough to get set up. (and expensive)

Everyone I dealt with was really nice and friendly.  As I expected, I was the youngster of the group.  Of the 30+ SSR owners there there may have been 2 or 3 including myself that were under 60.  The great thing was they all had a youthful spirit about them.

The group arranged to have a food trailer brought in as well which was a nice touch.  I enjoyed a nice veggie burger for lunch.

I installed a rather simple upgrade while my truck was in the parking lot, LED brake lights.  Upgrading to LED’s required replacement of the flasher module as well.  The LED’s are brighter and just look cool, especially at night.

All of the work getting done inspired me to tackle one more project I was on the fence about doing, ripping my radio out to relocate the ground. Since I installed the Pioneer unit I have had an issue with engine whine getting picked up by the stereo.  My hope was relocating the ground to another location would fix the problem.

I figured if I was ripping things apart I might as well install the amplified antenna I bought several months ago to address my poor radio reception.

Well as I was digging into the dash I started having various visitors, wondering what I was doing.  Some of them were guys that had never ripped their dash apart before and were hoping to pick up some pointers.  It didn’t take me long to have the front cover as well as the A pillar and cowl covers torn off.

Some of the guys looked at what appeared to be total chaos and expressed  concern about my ability to get it all back together.  I assured them I had ripped it apart several times so I should be ok. 🙂

Installing the amplified antenna wasn’t too hard.  I located a ground to use in the cowl area and tapped power from the radio harness.  I moved the ground from near the instrument cluster to some bare metal above the passenger footwell.  Moving the ground didn’t help the engine noise issue.  I fixed that by turning down the gain on a potentiometer that was installed as part of the new radio. All in all I may have spent a couple hours working on this project.  I got a bunch of sun in the process since I was doing this in the lot with the hard top retracted. It felt good to get it done.

I did one more project on my truck.  One of the guys had his single bar frame support replaced with a better double wide model.  He gave me his old support.  I installed it alongside my existing support to stiffen up my frame even further.

Once I finished up that I jumped in to assist with a  a couple other things.  I was most helpful with a guy that was adding bluetooth to his existing factory radio.  I helped him come up with a place to tap power from and then helped him with the unfun job of getting the front dash cover back on.

I stuck around until after 5, well after the majority of the guys had already pulled out.  Before I left I said goodbye to Dicktator who was busy all day and was currently in the middle of an ignition switch replacement.  I told him I had a good time and was looking forward to the next meet up.

My drive back home was uncomfortable.  My lower back was screaming from two consecutive days of long drives.  I was also very tired from the night of miserable sleep followed by a day of wrench turning.  I took a 5 hour energy to keep myself alert.

The entire drive home was topless.  I definitely could feel the difference from the two frame stiffening additions I made.  The truck did not rattle around nearly as much as it used to.  The LED tail lights looked cool in the darkness of night and I enjoyed blaring the radio without the annoying background whine.  The drive back was thankfully devoid of accident back ups, I got back to Naples in just under 4 hours.

If you want to see all of my pictures from the event look here.

I slept like a rock Sunday night, not getting up until close to 8AM which is very late for me.  I had work to do, of course.

After weeding the property I turned my attention to replacing the two damaged screen panels.  One I ripped, the other Sadie did.  I grumbled to myself as almost on cue the wind started picking up as I was pulling out the tools for the job.  Luckily Alison was dropping off the dogs so I utilized her hands to hold the one screen that was most affected by the gusting wind.

After successfully completing the repairs I was extremely agitated when later in the day I saw a panel on the other side that was ripping along the spline.  Argh!

Mid-afternoon I decided to do something I haven’t had done in at least a decade, have my hair cut by someone other than myself or Alison.  When I do it myself it is next to impossible to do anything other than buzz my entire head to one length.  When I try to do a taper it usually turns into a mess.

I drove down to the nearest Sport Clips to give them a try.  I was surprised it was so busy on a Sunday afternoon.  There were 6 other guys waiting.  Luckily with three women cutting hair it didn’t take too long, I may have waited a little more than a half hour.

I told the woman that I normally just buzz my head down with either an 1/8″ or 1/4″ inch attachment.  She suggested we go less aggressive.  She buzzed the back and sides with a 3/8 attachment and hand cut the top to finger length.  Since it was my first time there I got the VIP treatment thrown in for free.  This included a shampoo, scalp massage , and a hot towel over your face.  It was actually quite nice.

I can definitely tell the difference having a pro cut my hair, I think it looks good although since it isn’t skinhead short it means I would need to attend to it on a more regular basis.  I am not sure if I will use Sport Clips exclusively from now on but it was a positive experience.  Whenever there are a few beers, a video camera and a clippers in the house you never know when I am going to go nuts.

Nicki made my dog sitting duties a little more gross than I anticipated.  While she was briefly indoors unsupervised she dumped a small puddle of diarrhea on the rug near the kitchen and two small ancillary puddles elsewhere.  This was after she did double dumps in the yard shortly beforehand.  This is the first incident like this since the excrement nightmare surrounding my PA trip.  Luckily, unlike that time, her loss of control seemed to be isolated although it didn’t make me feel much better as I held my breath during fecal clean up activities.

When I got my new Iphone, the Apple guy informed me that there was a 36 dollar “upgrade fee”.  Since both Ali and I upgraded our phones that meant I had an extra $75 added on to this month’s bill.  Well the Apple guy also told me that if I simply call up ATT and ask them to waive that charge, they normally will.  So that’s what I did.

After a 5 minute phone call and confirming I had been an ATT customer since 2007 they rep had no problem making that charge disappear.  Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

Tonight I am planning to run 10 miles after work.  Never did that before.

So since the new Bar-barians web site launched it has been very well received.  I have heard many positive comments.  I mentioned that during the afternoon of the first day for the new site it got shut down by my web host because it was using too much cpu time on the shared server it resides on. A couple components of the site were identified as problematic so I changed/eliminated these items, hoping that would solve the overload problem.  Well yesterday afternoon I saw they once again disabled the site.

I immediately got on the phone with my web host to get it turned back on.  They told me the site is still consuming too many cpu cycles.  With a WordPress site like I am running, the pages are very script heavy.  Scripts utilize cpu time to execute.

The guy on the phone said the Bar-barians site has been very busy.  He said in the past 30 days it has received 750,000 hits.  When I did some further digging I discovered that 500,000 of those hits occurred since the site went live FOUR DAYS AGO. Woah.

Having a popular site is an awesome thing.  However in this case the popularity is causing a problem.  If I can’t find a way to get the resource usage of the site down we will have to move it to a place with more dedicated resources. I got the web host to turn the site back on.  I told them it just launched so there are a ton of people hitting the site since it is all new. I said I would expect the usage to level off in a few days.

I took additional steps to reduce the sites footprint, installing a caching plug in that creates a static version of the pages, which it serves to most visitors as a flat html file instead of scripted php page.  In theory, this should greatly reduce the burden on the server.

I am hoping the combination of these things will keep the lights on at the Bar-barians site.  Moving it to a dedicated platform would result in much higher hosting costs.  I did speak to the guys about turning all of these hits into ad revenue.  With that much traffic it is quite possible that higher end hosting could be more than paid for with ad dollars.

Speaking of ad dollars, I just earned my first $100 of ad revenue last month (took 4 months to get there) since I had to start over from square one with AdSense after my personal account got shut down.  I an doing whatever I can to maximize my ad potential, running them on my YouTube channel, here and on my Dufisthenics blog.  I am still looking to catch lightning in a bottle like I did with my Tough Mudder video on my old channel that was approaching 90,000 views.   I really thought my cake break video might be that ticket.

Yesterday I was talking to my mom about her internet/phone bill that I pay for her.  I noticed the monthly amount was more than it normally is.  She called to find out what the deal was.

Mom had complained forever that her package didn’t include free long distance which didn’t make sense to me since it is normally thrown in anymore.  Well once the customer service rep was looking at mom’s account she realized that there was something wrong.   She said that mom should have been getting free long distance all this time.

So as an apology they agreed to give mom the next tier of internet speed, free long distance and a $10 discount over what she was being charged.  Wow, that’s cool.

Last night at the grocery store I had another act of niceness take place unexpectedly.  I was checking out and had no coupons.  The cashier noticed one of the things I was buying had a coupon in the latest Publix flyer.  She pulled it out, scanned the coupon and saved me three bucks.  Of course she had no obligation to do so and I would have never known there was three dollars I was leaving on the table that I didn’t need to.

She did it just to be nice.  It reaffirmed my faith that not all people are scumbags, just most of them. 😉

Tonight I shove off for a 200 mile drive north and east to the location of my SSR meet up.  I booked a La Quinta that is near by which should afford me a good nights sleep instead of my getting up with the crickets to drive up there Saturday morning.

It will be an interesting experience meeting all of these guys that I only know via a message board.  I expect to return with a greatly expanded knowledge of my truck and an appreciation for the good will of fellow SSR owners.