It sure beats dreaming about the things I normally dream about!

So in addition to joining others on this 30 day blogging challenge, I also took it upon myself to join a weightloss challenge with John and a few of his buddies. Unfortunately for you, that means that I’ll be doing some fatblogging a month earlier than the rest of the world.

This challenge isn’t just “who weighs the least at end of X amount of time” like most weightloss challenges. Instead, I give them what I want my desired goal to be. This goal is then devided 12 times, and setup as milestones every 2 weeks or so. So for my goal of 36 pounds, I need to lose 3 pounds every two weeks. Sounds simple enough, but I also kept in mind that Holiday foodstuff is a keen weekness of mine. Cookies, eggnog, turkies and hams, and a family tradition that my mother-in-law makes called Tea Ring. Yum!

In an effort to curtail some of my weaknesses, I’m going to rely on my blog as a quick place I can go for some fat camp therapy. If you see half-crazed posts about how we just got a goodie basket and I can’t break away from the Poppycock, then you’ll at least know the reason why.

So far, I’m ahead of schedule by 1 pound. I have another week until my first official milestone, so as long as I don’t mess up and GAIN weight, then I should be fine.
John, who invited me to this whole mess of another challenge (and yes I really need it) has a really cool plugin that charts your weight and progress. I forget it at the moment, but once I find it, I’ll be adding it to my blog as another tool.

So far, I’ve been able to hit the treadmill like a machine. It didn’t take long for me to get some wheels back. I’m slowly working my way up to a 45 minute run. I’m at 15 minutes now, which is 5 minutes more than last week. Once I hit 25-30 minutes at my current pace I’m going to notch up the speed too. I also hit a few circuit weights when I’m at the gym, but nothing fancy. I’m mostly concerned about getting my cardio up first.

Now I just need to work on my eating habits.

My parents taught me be treat everyone like family. To show compassion. Be hospitable. And always be willing to provide service. They are good folks and I’m glad they instilled some solid foundation in me.

But sometimes people just can’t accept your help.

A week ago we were driving to the gym as a family when we saw a car stalled in the middle of an intersection its lights off. This isn’t a good situation no matter where the intersection, but in Delray Beach, FL where the average driver’s eyesight is 20/200 it is a nightmare. A lady in her 40′s got out and started pushing, while another lady in her 30′s steered.

My wife looked at me and said “You want to help don’t you?”. I told her to pull to the side while I help get them out of traffic. That was my goal, to get them out of traffic and out of harms way.

Without saying anything I run up to the lady and start pushing the car. She’s too busy screaming and cussing at the driver to even realize I’m there. And the car doesn’t move. I’ve been a poor college student and pushed my share of cars over the years. I know when a car is in neutral and when its not. The car was not in neutral.

“Put it in neautral” I yell. The lady next to me looks over with a look of surprise like “where did you come from!”. Then she yells to the driver “Put it in neutral!” along with some choice words I won’t repeat here. The driver responds “it is in neutral!”, to which she replies “No it’s not, the guy says put it in neutral!” The driver looks in her rear view mirror, looks me in the eye as I’m having a hernia  trying to push a car in gear and says “What guy?”, to which the other lady says “the guy trying to push our car”. They proceed to argue for what I swear is eternity about whether or not the car is in neutral and whether or not I was actually helping. Are you serious? Do you have to have your drama right now while everyone’s lives are at risk in the middle of an intersection? We start pushing again and the lady behind says “just pop the clutch already!”. WHAT?! We aren’t going 2 miles per hour and you want to pop the thing?

The light cycles and I realize we aren’t going anywhere. I step in front of traffic and guide it around the parked car. As I’m doing so, and as senior citizen drivers of Delray are honking at me because I’m in the road (duh!), I yell out a few directions of what we’re going to do. I tell them not to worry about popping the car but just get it out of traffic. The light cycles again and we put the plan to work. We get the car to the side of the road, so far so good. Goal accomplished!

Or so I thought.

The lady who was helping me push says “Can you just help me pop it? We did it earlier today.” I looked ahead, saw that I had about 150 feet of runway before the road started to incline, and agreed to help a little more. The older lady said she did it earlier with about 5 boys pushing her. I knew it was near impossible, but since I’m a nice guy I said we could give it a shot.

I pushed the car not more than 10 feet and she tries popping the bloody thing already! I told her to wait until I give the ok before she tries to pop it again. So I start from a cold stop again and get it up to maybe 10 mph with pure Murphy hustle. “POP IT!” I yell. I see the brake lights come on and a couple jolts as she lets go of the clutch. You’ve got to be kidding me! Do you know how to pop a clutch or not.

I tell the lady that that was as far as I could help. Then my wife pulls up in our Ford Explorer to pick me up. That’s when the lady says: “Can you give me a push?” What? Umm… I really don’t want to. I look in the back for jumper cables, tow rope, anything that could get us out of the worse possible scenerio. I got nothing. I tell them I’m sorry, but I can’t help.

“But if you could just push us until we get it started. We did it yesterday.” She begged. I looked at my wife who gave me a “don’t look at me” type of look. I looked at the back of their bumper, the front of mine, and saw they’d match up. Against my better judgement, I decided we’d give it a try. I line everything up. I then tell the driver to pop it as soon as we reach the sign ahead, and that I would be braking at that point so she didn’t ruin my car. She agreed and off we went. 5, 10, 15 mp, so far so good. And then she tries to pop the clutch, 30 feet early! I feel a large “thump” against my bumper and slam on my brakes. Sure enough, I slammed into the back of their car. Luckily there was no detectable damage because our speeds were so slow. But I was still pretty pissed.

She gets out of her car. Looks at her bumper, then says she almost had it started if I could giver her one more try. I shook my head but somehow said ended up agreeing to another shot. I told her to not touch the clutch until I honked my horn (and you better believe my brakes would be on before that). We started off again, 10, 20, 30 mph. We hit 35, I hit the brake and horn at same time. I see her car shoot forward like a slingshot, then jolt, and jolt again. I didn’t see any brake lights so she did it right. But the pop-start didn’t happen. And if that didn’t do it, nothing was going to.

I get out of the car, frustrated, and say I’m sorry but that’s about all I can do. I tell her to have the battery and the alternator checked. We push the car to the side of the road again. And since I didn’t have a cell phone on me I told them to try the gas station across the street.

There were many details that I left out for brevity  (to which I think I failed already), but basically concluded that the two people I was working with were morons. I can’t say I’m any better because I let them persuade me to help even though it was against my better judgement. But to hear the two ladies bitch and whine and blame each other for the car problems the whole time I’m trying to help was a clear indicator to me: these two weren’t ready to receive help! I’m glad I got them out of harms way and off to the side of the road, but I should have stopped there. Instead, I ended up being a nice guy and going beyond my capacity to help.

And I left with a feeling of frustration instead of the good feeling one usually gets when you help someone in need.

That’s it, I’m going to be an asshole from now on.

But it wasn’t my fault. UFOs kept me away from the blog. It’s the truth! Last night at about 11:00 pm I was flipping through the channels to find something that would be good “background noise” while I wrapped my blogs. I came across Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind just as it was starting. I was immediatley enthralled once again by this masterpiece. This film was done so well that it could be released today and it would be just as good. The storytelling, the detailed cinematography, the special effects, the acting, and the directing were all timeless.

I remember watching this when I was 8 or 9. I don’t know if my parents knew I watched it or not. But it was totally fascinating to me. There were some scenes that were so intense that I had nightmares for months after seeing them. This one scene I remember vividly from my childhood:

As an adult I watch this and am very entertained. Just remembering the emotions I went through as a kid gives me that much more satisfaction watching it as an adult. Fright is a powerful emotion, and I love the adrenaline rush, even if it was from 20 years ago!

And yes, Aliens kept me from blogging last night.

Well, sorta. My 19 month old daughter wanted to be entertained, so I loaded up Hulu. Hulu is great. Not only do they have all the recent stuff from your favorite shows, but they also are building a deep archive as well.

We found a clip that I totally remember from my childhood. This clip also reminded me that Sesame Street isn’t the same today as it was back then. The sadistic humor didn’t stand out when I was kid, but it sure did this time around. Check out how the King of Eight treats his bastard child, the Prince of Nine:

Costumes, pranks, decorations, scary stories, horror movies… not sure exactly what I’m going to put on the domain. If it ends up like most of my blogs, it will have a wide-variety of content. What would be ideal would be if I could figure out a way to get user generated content. Any ideas?

Today there are several services that offer the streaming “personalized” radio similar to Echo. The major players are Pandora, Slacker, and Last.fm. All of which offer personalized radio stations, though none offer the true social component like Echo did. A couple do have “friend” capabilities, but it is very limited what friends can do. However, as far as creating a station around tastes that you like, I think all of these services have evolved tremendously in the past few years.

Another cool feature is that some of these stations will travel with you offline. Pandora offers several ways to make your music portable, via mobile phones (including the iPhone) and stereo add-ons like the Logitech Squeezebox series. Slacker has a cool offline offering too: a proprietary wi-fi enabled player.

I have been a long-time Pandora user, fan and supporter. There have been so many times where the music Pandora offered had matched my mood that it could have created a mashup album. Some of the suggestions are pure genius (although I’ll admit sometimes it can be off). Example of a perfect match: The Beatles “Blackbird” playing on my Modest Mouse station. Another example: Led Zeppelin on my Pearl Jam station. Want another example? Check out my bookmarked songs, you’ll see a few different patterns.

Even though I’m a fan of Pandora, I decided that during the next week or so I’m going to give the other two a valiant test. I’ve used Last.fm a few times. I think I finally understand their UI. Slacker is much easier to use, but I just never got around to creating an account for their free web-based player. I’ve done that now and tomorrow will be the first full day of Slackerdom.

I’ll post my observations on the services, once I feel I’ve observed something.

But it’s all fodder.

Things to talk about. Things to start a conversation. Others are talking about it, so should I? Or should I start my own conversation.

If I was to start a meme, I’d probably have some motive behind it. My mind works like that. It is always looking for ways to gather the data I need to move forward on a project, an idea, or some task that will help my life. But then again, don’t all our minds work this way? I mean I do genuinely care about what others have to say, but I have been finding myself becoming more critical and pausing with a WIIFM moment here and there. But today I have a treat: no motives. Just guilty pleasure.

My meme of choice, should I choose a daily topic would probably be along the lines of trying to disconnect from all this noise. I might want to discuss classic literature even. Well, not Jane Austen type of classic literature. I’m talking cool early-19th century sci-fi shit like Wells and Verne. There’s some guys that were well ahead of their times.

Speaking of Verne, anybody see B. Frasier’s Journey to the Center of the Earth in Uber 3-D? I’m always interested in the classic-to-film translation, and there are many scenes that could be interpreted in pretty cool ways. How bad could B Fraz mess it up? Speaking of Center of the earth, my favorite rendition of the Jules Verne masterpiece would have to be this made-for-TV series. Treat Williams, Jeremy London, and Tushka Bergen! Man that was campy. And awesome. Sadly, I missed this year’s latest attempt at a short-run TV series on USA staring Ricky Schroader. I bet it was campysome too.

Oh IMDB. How you bring me back to fond, fond pre-pubescent Sci-Fi miniseries memories. Earth 2! SeaQuest! Eerie Indiana! Amazing Stories! Man the world was awesome when science didn’t matter.

(500 Bonus points: for using the word pre-pubescent in my post. Twice)

This post is part of My Other 30 Day Challenge, Part Deux

[UPDATE: Blame it on staying up too late, but my mind auto-switching the names of Wells and Verne has been corrected. I knew who I was talking about. But you probably didn't.]

The wife and kids are away for almost two full weeks. They went to Kansas City to visit grandparents. So it’s just me and the backyard lizards until the end of the month. Hmm… no wife… no kids… that means that I can do anything I want!

“I’m gonna see Dark Knight! I’m going to work on my websites! I’m gonna see the gators and snakes at the conservatory! I’m gonna say “Look at ‘dem boots”! I’m gonna run on the beach! I’m gonna go deep sea fishing! I’m gonna go waverunnerunnerunnerin! I’m gonna work on the garage! I’m gonna make it like I want it! I’m gonna eat steak! I’m gonna walk in to any pickup game! And win! I’m gonna drive my SUV really fast! I’m gonna cut you off! I’m gonna buy lots of gas! I’m gonna valet park! I’m gonna say ‘sup’! I’m gonna wear sunglasses at night! I’m gonna buy a striped shirt!”

Yeah, I have lots of plans for my “down time”. However, the down side to being able to do anything I want is I can do anything I want. So far, my plans to turn into Mr Weekend Adventure have more-or-less been a metamorphosis of me turning into a poo floating down a lazy river. So far, I’m Day One into my temporary bachelordom and I’ve done the following:

1. Got a haircut.
2. Floated in the pool
3. Fell asleep watching a Dr. Who marathon on BBC America.

It’s now 8 PM on Saturday. And you know what that means… time for more adventure!

PS – photo is not me. It’s this guy.

PPS – If you haven’t figured out, my plans for adventure are inspired a single striped shirt.

Growing up in the west, and living in six states west of the Mississippi before I turned 30, I had intended to settle down and raise my family somewhere in the west. I have extended family laced through every state in the Pacific and Mountain time zones, and we just love the climate and culture that comes with this rich western heritage. The eastern seaboard was so foreign to my wife and I that it might as well be a different country. This actually turned out to be one of the reasons we selected Florida as a place to move to. If we’re going to move, why not try something completely new? Between the two of us, we’ve “been there, done that” to almost every popular destination from Kansas City to the Pacific Ocean. Sure we’ll give up the mountains and dry climate, but we also gain oceans, beaches, moderate climates year round, and what is arguably a better education system for our kids (Nevada’s public schools need a ton of help). I’m a wannabe stormchaser (my years in Tornado Alley were, in a word, awesome), so I actually am excited about living in a hurricane zone. We will evacuate when told, but I’ll still enjoy watching the local weather coverage during hurricane season.

The work is the same. I’ll still be producing websites and driving traffic to them. But the lifestyle is dramatically different. Currently, I work in Florida during the week, and fly home to Vegas on the weekends. My routine travels have taught me a few life lessons:

1. Traveling can be a banal task. I used to love flying because it always brought the prospect of going someplace new. I’ve since become very jaded to jetset mindset. Spending 5 hours on a plane can be extremely stressful, and a waste of time. Especially when you are 6’4″ and 270 lbs. Who can read or write at leisure if you can’t even be comfortable? My tray table can’t even lower because my knees are holding it in place.
2. Giant airplanes are made for tiny people.
3. Red-eye flights are a life suck. Think about it: I leave at 11 pm on Sunday, arrive at 6 am on Monday. Minus the 3 hour time difference, that means I need to squeeze my nightly slumber into less than 4 hours. On a plane. In a seat made for little people. I sleep light and am half-dead the remainder of monday.
4. Subway, Target, Costco, and 7-11 are homes away from home. After living in all 4 time zones in the continental United States, I’ve learned this one over time. If I ever start feeling homesick, all I need to do is find a familiar place. With Costco and Target, in particular, my mind gets so wrapped up on how much I hate being in those stores and how fast I can get out of there, that I forget my global location is even relevant.
5. As much as I loathe Bank of America, having locations EVERYWHERE has proved helpful during the relocation.
6. Seatguru.com is a large man’s best friend. I’m so glad my employer, who’s also fairly tall, gave me that tip.
7. Finding new places to eat and trying out some of the local flavor can really be a great way to unwind and build a personal knowledge base of the local setting.

Luckily, my long distance commute will soon be over. I could have chosen to fly home every other week, but leaving a wife at home with a 6 year old commander of chaos and an adventurous 1 year old for a week at a time is cruel enough as it is. When I see her at the airport on Friday’s she collapses in my arms with a sigh of relief. I get daddy time with the kids for two days and she gets the reprieve. The frequent flying is challenging, but well worth the hassle.

Now I think there is an unwritten law, a code of blogging ethics, that says “If you are a blogger, and win something big, you must blog about it rub it in show how appreciative you are to the sponsors.” So here it is. My “I WON! I WON!” post!

Here’s everything I won (and the sponsors that supplied them):

• $550 – 1 Xbox 360/Guitar Hero Package or Cash depending on availability
  - From Groovle
• $804 – 1 year subscription to www.plrproebooks.com
  - From PLRPro Ebooks
• $1,164 – 1 year subscription to plrpro.com
  - From PLRPro
• $1,500 – 1 drupal customized site. You pick the niche, and they will create a 15 page site loaded with some really cool drupal features
  - From Swimming Pool Knowledge
• $1,895 – 1 full conference pass to SES Chicago
  - From Incisive Media

I’m still kinda shell shocked and trying to figure out the best way to use each of the prizes. Some I’ll enjoy and others I’ll leverage hoping to improve some of my marketing skills (much improvement is needed). Looking over the prize list, I can’t say there isn’t one prize I’m more excited about than the others, all of them are great prizes.

So a huge “Thank You” to Shoe, Tigh (Manager at Shoemoney Media) and all the sponsors! You ROCK!

Nice Idea – Click here for funny video clips

If you can’t see the video in your RSS reader you can find it here: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/712008/nice_idea.

It now easily makes my top 10 TV Shows list. I’m even ranking this one higher than The Office (ZOMG!).

Today wore me out. Physically, Mentally, Financially and Spiritually.

Life at work was fast paced and busy. So much so that I’m worried I may have missed details. A lot got accomplished, time flew, and before I knew it the day was over. Well, almost. There is a project happening after hours that I hope goes seamlessly. I seriously did my best today. I was focused and productive. Exhausted me to the bone, but I made it through.

During the day, my auto technician called me to tell me what was wrong with my car. He said it looked like someone did some damage and I knew immediately what he was talking about. This part of the day sucked. It turns out that when I replaced the radiator last summer, I snapped the seal on the A/C manifold line to the condenser AND bent and kinked the ATF cooling line. It wasn’t the fault of any of the shops working on my car, it was all mine. I actually was aware of this, but in ignorance decided that since it seemed to be working fine, it must be ok. Next time, I’ll leave it to the pros. They can run tests that I can’t. That radiator was no small task, and I had a sense of accomplishment completing it on my own. Now I know the mistakes I made, it doesn’t feel as much of a triumph.

It handled fine for a year, but the lack of flow in the transmission line lead to more wear and tear on the flywheels. The seal on the A/C line was sitting there fine as long as no one moved it. It wasn’t fastened, but it still was passing freon OK. Well, when they replaced the transmission, they tested the transmission lines. When that happened, they bumped the A/C line and knocked the seal off center. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem, but since I had already snapped it, there was nothing holding it in place except for friction. It was like snapping a dead twig from a tree.

The total damages for my stupidity this time is going to be about $880. If you count the radiator and all the possible side-effects from my errors, we’re probably looking at close to $4000 total in damages for what should have been a $800 job if the dealer did it. Man am I doubling over in pain taking all this in.

But that’s not all. Unfortunately, the rest of the night’s events will remain private. Let’s just say I had some opportunity to do some provoked soul searching. It wasn’t pleasant. I still have a rush of feeling cornered scouring through me from discussing things and discovering things I didn’t really want to talk about. But in the end, I support my wife and did it for her. I know I’m leaving a lot of open holes here, but trust me, soul searching is much better when you initiate it on your own.

Thank you DG for helping me sort it out. Your words of encouragement were priceless.

That’s what my Ford Explorer (please, it’s a Ford Exploder, we’ve determined that already) has become. In the past 14 months, there has been a “self-destruct” button that was hit somehow. I know it’s old. 1998. But that 10 year mark has never been so hard to hit before. I mean, this thing dates back to pre-Windows XP days. You know, as in Windows 98. It’s friggin ancient!

Some of it we’re to blame for sure. I know in the eyes of the Ford Gods we must have seemed like we were trying to kill the poor beast while they struggled to save it from the hands of total destruction. Add a toddler, a baby, and a wife that prefers driving on two wheels instead of four (pick a side, Cruella) , and I bet my Ford has been begging for mercy via a suicide wish for some time. It sure has been attempting to give up the ghost lately.

July 2006: my wife took my Son to the community pool. It was crowded. They have an overflow dirt-parking lot that my wife parked on. It was lined with HUGE-FRIGGIN-BOULDERS to show a rough outline of the front of a parking space. Kiss the bumper to a boulder, dump the kids and pool toys out the back, and have a fun day at the pool while your Ford cooks in the Nevada sun. But when my wife came back, she forgot about said boulder, put the car in DRIVE and attempted to go forward. She couldn’t figure out why it the car wasn’t moving, so she stepped on the gas to make it not move faster. She heard all sorts of grinding and scraping, and the car was moving weird, so she finally got out and realized that she had high-centered the car on a boulder. I don’t know if this was genius or not, but she had to rock the car back and forth, drive then reverse, to get it off the big rock. In the meantime, we lost a radiator which I miraculously was able to replace on my own. I’ve shared that whole story before. $400 for parts and tools.

August 2006, hit a deer. Nuf said. $200 for parts.

September 2006: we had to repair a windshield. We live in an urban explosion of master planned growth, and that means a million gravel trucks and dump trucks take the same routes into our community as we do. When the signs on the back of these trailers say “Stay at least 200 Yards Away at your own risk” they mean it. We’ve seen those trailers lose a ton or so of rock in a single bounce. We’re pretty good about staying a good distance behind these truckers, but unfortunately the rock that got us was a stray from a dump truck coming the other direction on our little two lane highway. When a rock going one direction at 50 miles per hour hits a windshield going the opposite direction at 60 miles an hour, the windshield is going to lose. Luckily, the windshield caught it and didn’t puncture. From what I remember from sleeping through physics class in High School, the velocity achieved on that rock could have been as lethal as a bullet. It did leave an impressive spider-web crack though. $200 for glass repair, still may need to replace whole windshield.

October 2006: New brakes. No biggie. This was maintenance work. Did it myself. $90 max.

January 2007: Compressor exploded. Literally. Shrapnel all through the engine compartment. Replaced the whole A/C kit, lots of other hoses, and of course the compressor. $1200 sacrificed to the Ford Gods.

May 2007: New thermostat. Again, no biggie. This was something I supposedly could do myself easily. Except it didn’t go as planned. Took me about a week because I stripped the bolt to the thermostat housing and had to drill it out. No drills would fit in the space to get the job done right. I cut off the top of the bolt and was able to drill a little into it. I then actually busted a titanium reverse threaded bolt breaker inside of it. Talk about screwed! So I had to use a dreml and cycled through about a dozen diamond bits to drill out the rest of the titanium bolt breaker and the remaining bolt. It was like a dentist drilling into an old filling. Took me several days to work at it from different angles, but finally broke through. I decided to stop and count my loses before I had to replace the whole upper intake manifold. I used a self-tapping sheet metal bolt to secure the housing in place in the hole evacuated by the bolt breaker. It’s worked like a charm since.

June 2007: New tires. Luckily, this was a shop job. Ordered online and had them balanced by my local Wal-Mart Tire Center. $550 total.

August 2007: Engine and transmission failure. We noticed it was having troubles switching gears. Took it in and it was well overdue for some tune-up engine work as two cylinders were mis-timing. One of the fuel injectors was toast too. And of course, as I was afraid of, the transmission was almost completely toothless. $800 for engine work and $1400 for transmission.

September 2007: A/C Compressor has a leak in the front seal. We’re still sorting this out, but it may still be under warranty. I’ll find out tomorrow. $FREE? I sure hope so.