Duf’s Blog

As I was on the way to the gym I was startled when I felt something jump onto the back of my head and grab on.  Instinctively I swatted furiously at my hair only to see a damn tree frog wind up on the dashboard.  Who knows how long he was in the cab of the truck.

Well the last thing I wanted was for him to jump into some crevice where he would later die and stink up the interior so I threw my gym towel over him to keep him contained until I found a safe place to stop.

Well the little sucker wiggled his way out from under the towel and started hopping around.  Luckily I snagged him as he jumped onto my lap.  I pinned him with the towel until I could roll down my window and deposit him outside.  Tree frogs are everywhere….

My Uncle Randy has always been a pack rat, just like my grandfather was.  He has turned his fascination with “stuff” into a career of sorts.  For decades he has been turning ordinary, everyday items into functional pieces of art.  On the left is our wedding gift from my uncle.  It is a lamp made out of circuit boards from an old answering machine.  The legs of the lamp have two of our party favors attached as “feet”.  I’ve always loved the lamp and it resides in my office at work. He has made some amazing pieces, take a look at just some of them here.

Well anyway his pack rat mentality also extended to the realm of pictures.  We recently found out that he still has a huge collection of old photos, many of which I have ever seen before.  He posted a bunch of them to Facebook, including my infamous 7th grade perm school picture as well as various old pictures of Todd, Torrin and my mom.

Take a look below at some of them, it’s my 4th of July present to you.

Mom looks happy

I know I don’t and if you read the details of the plan you won’t either, even if you think of yourself as very green friendly as I do.

He must have spent a lot of time with his nose pressed up against the window.

Seriously though the Cap and Trade bill looks horrible.  Nancy Pelosi has really become quite irritating.  Do you want the federal government requiring you to do an energy audit before you are ALLOWED to sell your home?  No thanks. 

It’s a very sad thing to me that a worthwhile cause like being environmentally friendly can get drug through the mud and come out the other side looking like this.

Has anyone else noticed that Missy, who used to be a routine reader and commentator on my blog has vanished?  In case you didn’t know, she was my first serious girlfriend in high school.  The last thing I knew she had a myriad of health issues going on many of which unfortunately related to her unhealthy lifestyle.  On her blog I commented as much, encouraging her to see these health problems as a reason to get healthy.  I don’t think she appreciated my suggestion.  Oh well, when we split up back in the 80’s it wasn’t exactly on good terms anyway. 

Yesterday during the class I was suffering from remote control overload.  I had my dual screens jammed full with various remote control sessions.  I was remoted to the instructor’s pc, my classroom lab pc, and my work pc which was in turn remote controlled into a couple servers at the office.  I found myself feeling very stressed out as I tried to multi-task between the various sessions.

There has been a lot of discussion on Facebook about community days starting back up in my home town of Shillington.  When I was growing up Community Days was a big deal for most.  It happens about a month after school left out so there was still plenty of summer left.  Many of the good looking girls from school showed up at community days to show off the tans they had been working on at the pool.  However I don’t recall doing anything that “fun” at community days.  I don’t think I ever rode on the rides as they were mostly cheap knock offs of real amusement park rides.  In fact I think the most fun I had there was spending a lot of time at the radar gun stand.

At that time I was in the middle of my dreams of being a major league pitcher.  As a pitcher I took pride in being able to throw HARD.  The radar gun booth was the chance for me to affix a number to exactly how hard I could throw.  There was one problem, the radar gun seemed to hate me.  Although I would be rearing back and letting loose with all my might I would rarely see a number that got out of the upper 60’s.  I think I may have clicked into the 70’s a few times.  I remember my frustration as I would make attempt after attempt that would crash into the background with a satisfying SMAAAACK,  only to have a number pop up that seemed ridiculously low. This HAD to be total bullshit.  I had several theories of why my numbers were low.     

I assumed the gun was positioned in a way to read a right hander’s throw since the vast majority of people throw right handed.  There also is the variable of where on the background you hit.  You could throw a ball with the same effort to two different spots and get a significantly different reading both throws.  Whatever the reason, I threw my arm out many times at community days hoping to pop a number that would be written on the high score sign.  It never happened.

Just a side note, when I was being scouted by MLB scouts at our high school games I was told they clocked me at right around 80 mph.  Not good enough to make the big show.

I called mom Saturday morning and asked her if she would like to come over Saturday night to hang out.  In the past mom has been very resistant to impromptu visits usually citing that she was busy.  Well since she lost her job that excuse no longer holds water so she had to agree to come out although she initially tried to throw out a few excuses not to.   Ali picked her up on the way back from a meeting she was already at.

Mom made one of my old favorite meals, meatloaf, and brought it out with her.  On Saturday afternoon we mostly relaxed after I got done with weed whacking the fence line.  We got to enjoy the now toasty 85-86 degree pool multiple times.  Sadie of course was thrilled to have people in the pool that could splash her.

On Saturday night we watched Kingpin.  This movie was recommended to me by a co-worker.  It is an old movie, it came out in 1996.  It was great.  It has a good cast including Bill Murray, Woody Harrelson and Randy Quaid.  It’s a comedy about bowling.  It had tons of laugh out loud moments, the funniest of which involved a scene with Woody and his disgusting, brown toothed landlady. The phrase “pump and dump” will always have a special meaning from now on. If you like to laugh and haven’t seen it, get it.  I’d give it an A.

On Sunday we again had a nice laid back time with mom.  Again the pool was put to good use.  We dropped her off Sunday afternoon on our way to see the movie UP.  We decided to see the 3D version of the film at a different theater.  For quite awhile we have been going to Coconut Point to see movies because it is big, new and empty.  Well the 3d/Imax theater was not.  There were a ton of people there, most of which were trying to see Transformers in IMAX. 

We dropped $13.50 each for the 3D experience, pricey.  We were handed our glasses and headed inside.  The theater was very nice but not quite as luxurious as Coconut Point.  We sat through the previews until the exciting message came on the screen to put on your 3d glasses.  I put mine on and immediately the images on the screen jumped to life.  All of a sudden there was depth where none existed before.  However Ali was not having the same experience.  “Everything just looks blurry” she says.  I was worried that maybe this was side effect of her having lasiks, maybe she can’t see 3D as a result?  My worries were put to rest when I looked over at her and saw that instead of having her 3D glasses on she had instead pulled her sunglasses off the top of her head onto her face.  “You have your sunglasses on Ali…” I say.  Ali laughed out loud at her senior moment.  Once she put the 3d glasses on stuff was actually in 3D, imagine that. 

The 3D effect takes some getting used to.  It’s very cool for sure, especially for a techno-AV fan such as myself.  I did notice in certain situations some of the picture would appear to blur a bit during movement but for the most part it was fine.  The movie itself was great, Ali and I both liked it a lot.  It made her cry on more than one occasion while having lots of fun moments along the way.  I’m sure it would have been good in 2D too.  Up gets two thumbs up from me, an A.

Monday and Tuesday I was taking more at home, remote classroom training so there isn’t much to say about it.  It was more Exchange 2007 training.  I have been messing around with getting OWA secured by running it over SSL.  I have never had a need to mess with making certificates before so I knew very little about it.  I also have been trying to get Outlook Anywhere working, that has proved to be much more of a challenge.

After class yesterday I decided to put on a couple miles on the treadmill.  I need to crank my cardio base back up as well as get my weekly 300’s going again.  My weight has been creeping up just a bit in the past month or so.  At my leanest point in the past two years I was tipping the scales under 175.  Right now I seem to be fluctuating between 180-185.  No it’s nothing major but I feel better when I am leaner.

Anyway after running I decided to hop in the pool.  Sadie was very excited as I put on my swimsuit and grabbed a towel.  I ran out to the pool deck and did my customary big splash can opener as she was right by the side of the pool.  Well when I came to the surface I didn’t see her at first as the water was running in my eyes.  Then I realized she was in the water!  Evidently she must have fell in inadvertently when I jumped in.  She was swimming just fine but she tried to get out in the deep end.  I tried to assist her but she squirmed away and instead headed towards the shallow end.  Ali and I have wanted to make sure she knew how to get out of the pool herself so I figured this was a good time to show her.  I scooted over towards the steps and called her to come to me.  She swam over like a champ and got out of the water all by herself.

When she was in the water she looked anxious to get out but once she was out she seemed no worse for wear.  Immediately she was ready to resume the splashy splash game.  Nicki just stood safely in the distance looking with amazement at Sadie’s love of water.

I spent some time on Monday night setting up the new timing system in the living room putting it through it’s paces.  I think I have all the bugs worked out.  Of course the trial by fire with be on the 4th when 600 + runners descend on the race site.  It should be a challenge.

Billy Mays died, that wasn’t supposed to happen.  We already had 3. 

My brother just had his 39th birthday, it’s hard to imagine Todd will be 40 next year.

My Dad is officially out of New Mexico, they closed on the sale of their house yesterday and are now on the way back to Flying Hills.

I have been in the middle of doing an Exchange 2007 migration at work.  When we started the process I was annoyed that MSFT did not offer us any upgrade pricing.  In addition,  Exchange 2007 requires 64 bit hardware as well as 64 bit Windows which throws more expense into the process.

Well I finally got the server up and wanted to test it out with Outlook 2007 since Outlook 2007 takes advantage of all of the new features where as Outlook 2003 does not.  I pop in the Exchange  07 CD looking for the Outlook 2007 client.  It’s nowhere to be seen.  I fire up Google and do a quick search.  As I see the excerpts from the results my blood starts to boil.

Microsoft no longer includes an Outlook license for Exchange users (they did with 2003).  Well maybe they dropped the price of the Exchange license then to make up for this omission? Nope, same price if not a little more.  I checked with my sales rep, if I want to get Outlook 2007 for my users it would cost me $63 per head! WTF??!!!  Those greedy assholes….  This is bending you over and ramming it home dry in my opinion.  It’s blatant double dipping.  Essentially it works out to paying double what an equivalent Exchange 2003 installation would run.   

Thieves.

So my option is to lay out 6K plus for Outlook 2007 licensing, stick with Outlook 2003 or have users work in the Exchange 2007 Web Access client which is pretty robust on it’s own.  I am 99% sure one of the latter two options will be the avenue we pursue.

Once again we have had a threesome of famous people die in close proximity to one another, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.  Ed McMahon and sadly, Farah dying was not all that unexpected.  Ed was older than dirt and Farah’s downhill battle with cancer was well documented.  While the death of Farah, who was one of my first memories of a truly beautiful woman was the saddest, the death of Michael Jackson was shocking.

Yes for the past 25 years Michael has been almost as famous for his bizarre lifestyle as his music.  He has bleached his skin, mangled his nose to the point of disfigurement, straightened his hair as well as many other extreme measures to change his appearance.  He seemed determined to live as long as possible as evidenced by his familiar pose with an air mask on his face and the hyperbolic chamber he owned that was used to promote healing.  The guy was getting ready to go out on tour again for cripes sake. 

It will be interesting to see what the official forensic report comes back with.  I certainly don’t think he was trying to kill himself.  It feels odd today to count Michael Jackson among  the deceased celebrities list. The guy was the definition of a superstar for a long time.  He also was the subject of much controversy with his apparent fascination with young boys.  I wonder if he will become the next Elvis, a celebrity that continues to be famous far after he is put in the dirt?  Is Neverland the next Graceland? Will he be remembered more as the mega-performer or the bizarre introvert?  Who knows, all I know is it just feels pretty strange today realizing he is gone.

I have a couple gripes.

Apple just released their third version of the Iphone in as many years, the 3Gs.  I find Apple’s Iphone strategy rather annoying.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my Iphone and the 3.0 software update adds to the goodness although there are some more annoyances there as well, but lets just talk hardware for now.

The good news about the 3Gs is the camera has been upgraded and OFFICIALLY supports shooting video.  What angers me about this is the lack of “official” Iphone support for video with the camera on the older models.  The existing camera works just fine for shooting video as evidenced by the jailbroken Iphones that shoot video easily.  However Apple has chosen to not turn it on and instead wants to tie it into new hardware. 

I think it is pretty shitty to force customers (that don’t want to hack their phones) to buy yet another new phone to get a feature that has been available on many lesser phones for YEARS already.  I mean cut me a break.  Yes surely this is all part of the Apple master plan for keeping their bottom line sufficiently plump but it annoys me, a lot.  I don’t want to buy a new phone every year.

Like I mentioned, the 3.0 software update has a lot of nice features like cut and paste, landscape mode typing for more apps and even tethering!  For those that don’t know what tethering is, it means you are able to use your Iphone as a gateway to connect a computer or laptop to the internet.  Again this is a feature that other phones have offered for years.  Hell I could do it on my Treo 650.  However there is one small catch.  The feature is available but AT&T won’t support it in the US!  WTF??  That is total bullshit.  Between our two phones I spend over $130 a month  but because AT&T wants to be stingy with their 3G bandwidth they won’t allow their customers to tether?  This is just another reason it is ridiculous that the Iphone has been enslaved to only one carrier.  There is no competition for them so they can dick with Iphone customers as much as they please. 

Again I love my Iphone, I do not love Apple or AT&T.

Gripe number two.  Companies and government manipulating the current short term economic situation into long term gains.  Example in point here in Collier County, fees.  County government has been crying the blues about getting less money in their coffers because of the huge decrease in property tax revenues.  Of course when their funds were increasing 15-20% every year for a half decade or more they had no complaints and did the best they could to spend every penny, in many cases in a wasteful manner.  Well now that money is tight their answer is to invent new fees.

They want to do all sorts of fun things like require permits and inspections for individuals wanting to install water heaters, require a full code inspection for any house that is on the market before it is sold and the most annoying of all, institute a $75 fee for residents that want to use the county beaches.  This sort of practice infuriates me and this is why.  Governments use the economic downturn as the reason for the need to invent all of these new fees and charges.  The problem arises when economic prosperity returns, property values increase yet all of these fees and charges that were invented to help the short term funding issue are never removed. 

The same shit is happening with local businesses.  As my mom can tell you they are laying off people left and right, cutting salaries, cutting benefits again all in the name of economic hardship.  Once that hardship passes do you think the employees will magically have their salaries and benefits restored to their prior levels?  Of course not, at least not until long after the cash has been rolling back in. 

Instead of the owners of these businesses tightening their belts, maybe buying one less exotic sports car, yacht or private plane they instead hack and slash at the people on the front line.  It’s far easier than making a concerted effort to streamline business practices to maximize efficiency.

It’s a dirty practice that seems to be happening almost everywhere.

So we go back to our house around 7:30 Friday night.  We didn’t want to go crazy with getting things back to normal right away so we just unloaded the van and did some basic unpacking.  We even got to do our Friday night pizza routine which was cool.  We knew there was tons of stuff to do over the weekend.

So I step out the door Saturday morning to start the festivities and am immediately smacked in the face with the heat and humidity.  At 9 am it was already 87 degrees.  The first thing I had to do was fix the mower deck so we would be able to mow down the grass that grew like weeds over the past two weeks.

So I ripped the deck off the mower and began the tedious process of getting all the packed, rotting grass clippings off it.  Then I brought the pressure washer up to blast the deck clean so I could begin the repair.  My original thought was I could simply buy another tube of JB weld and slap the same metal patch back on.  Once I got the deck clean I placed the metal patch on the deck and realized that the rip in the deck had grown, the patch no longer covered the hole.  I had to reevaluate the repair plan.

I just happened to remember the various pictures my youngest brother Patrick had posted on Facebook regarding the interior restoration of his old Vanagon.  He used pop rivets to attach various pieces.  I thought that pop rivets may offer me a better solution for fixing the deck so it was off to Home Depot.  I grabbed a pop rivet gun, rivets, some more sheet metal and some tin snips. 

I had never used a pop rivet gun before.  It wasn’t too hard to master, simply drill a hole big enough for the rivet to squeeze through, stick the rivet in the gun, insert it in the hole and squeeze the trigger a few times until the shaft of the rivet snaps off.  I used 7 or 8 rivets to secure the original patch.  I then cut a small piece of the new sheet metal to cover the rest of the hole and riveted that in place as well.  After riveting I followed up with dropping a bunch of gorilla glue around the edge of the patch and then flipping the deck over and shooting some Great Stuff into the repair from the bottom.  The patch felt pretty solid.

While the glue and great stuff was drying I joined Ali who had already started on the arduous weeding process.  It’s amazing how many weeds can sprout in a two week time period.  By this time the heat was downright oppressive, it felt like we were being broiled for dinner. Ali and I spent at least 2-3 hours doing just the weeding.

I checked back on the mower deck.  The glue and foam had hardened so I reattached the deck to the mower and fired it up.  I mowed a few laps around the front yard to test the repair out, the patch held.  I told Ali the mower was ready to go.  She hopped on and mowed while I grabbed the weed whacker.  Tending to the grass took another couple hours as well.  Thank god we have a pool, it did a nice job of cooling off our elevated body temperatures in short order.

Even though she was helping me outside all day, Ali was motivated enough to make another great apple crisp desert from the tons of apples we pulled off our apple tree.  The dinner she made was also mostly from our garden as well utilizing spaghetti squash, white and black eggplant all grown by ourselves.  It was all very good.

During the evening I started getting a sore throat that typically leads into some sort of illness.  My nose started running as well.  I’m not sure if I picked it up during the trip or once we got back.  By Sunday it was full blown cold symptoms with lots of blowing of the nose, sneezing and general feeling of unwellness. 

Ali worked on Sunday so I tended to various other things that needed to get done around the house.  I also started on getting the new timing system ready for the 4th of July race.  I ran a 1000 timing chips across a reader one by one.

I still have general cold symptoms.  Monday night I tried taking Nyquil but I woke up the next morning in such a haze I went without it last night.  The past two nights I had a weird thing going on as I laid down to go to sleep.  As I tried to doze off I would start coughing then my nose would start to run like mad and my eyes would start dumping water like faucets.  It’s very weird.  Once I get up, blow my nose and wipe my eyes I have been able to lay back down and fall to sleep without the coughing and tearing returning. 

It’s good to be back but I I also really enjoyed getting out there to see some new sights and break out of the box of everyday existence.

I forgot to mention on the trip I watched two movies on my Iphone, Max Payne and Don’t Mess with the Zohan.  Max Payne is based on the video game from 5 or 6 years ago, I played the game all the way through.  I expected it to be pretty lame. For the most part it was although Mark Wahlberg did a good job of doing the best he could with the story.  It’s the classic revenge storyline with a dose of double crossing thrown in for good measure.  Yea it’s all been seen before.  I’d give it a B- or C+.

Don’t Mess with the Zohan followed the same structure as most Adam Sandler movies, lots of physical comedy, funny accents and silly faces.  There were a decent amount of funny moments but I saw far too much of Adam Sandler’s bare ass.  It was an ok flick. B

This was left on our voicemail while we were away.  You figure it out.