The Random Thoughts Review

Hey everyone out there in internet land:

Happy 2008!

I rang in the new year over at Mike’s. The evening started out innocently enough. Mariya got in from the windy city about 7:30 or so and we ended up going to Nero’s Gyro’s for supper. Nothing very impressive, but neither of us had been there in forever and we decided to try it out. Large seating area, and no one was there. but the food was really good. We just got a standard gyro and split it. Very tasty. I recommend it.

After that, we went over to Mike’s. He had a karaoke machine and we sang oldies songs until about 11 o’clock. Then, people watched TV until the ball dropped at midnight. After that, we watched a bit of Mythbusters and headed out. I took bean dip (from the family recipe), but not much of it was eaten. I’ll find other ways to get rid of it. There was a good selection of food there, though.

I hope that everyone has a good 2008. How did you celebrate?

A while back, I bought an all in one printer/fax/copier/scanner to use with my business that I’m getting started.

I bought the Canon imageclass mf3240 laser, and I’ve been pretty happy with it. My only complaint has been that it basically took over my phone line and I haven’t been able to use my home phone to receive calls. If someone calls, I have about 2 seconds to answer a phone or the fax machine thinks it is getting an incoming fax and starts playing annoying beeps in the ears of those that are calling.

My problem seems to stem from having multiple phones on multiple extensions. Supposedly, it can be fixed easily enough if you hang the answering machine and main phone off of the fax machine.

Tonight I decided to get this fixed so that it worked as it should, and I would be able to get phone calls or faxes.

After looking through the manuals for the Canon, I found that it has a ‘Receive Mode’ that can be set to various things, from FaxOnly to AnsMode to FAX/TEL. I first started out with FAX/TEL. I thought that it would take care of my problem. But, it didn’t work right when I called from another phone. Then, I tried AnsMode. That worked right for a regular phone call, but I needed a way to see if it would receive incoming faxes properly. So, I started googling for fax back services. The first thing I ran across was a San Francisco Rent Board website that would send out faxes. So, I decided to try it. I called the number up, told it send me the annual statistics (on something) and waited. The phone rang. The answering machine picked up, said a couple of words and went quiet. Then, the little ‘Processing/Data’ light on the machine started blinking.. and blinking.. and blinking..

After several minutes I decided to call the home phone from another phone.. Got a busy signal. Then I picked up a home phone. It was just quiet. I could talk, and hear myself. So, I unplugged the fax machine from the phone line. After a few seconds it beeped the “I’m done receiving” beep and started printing. 14 or 15 pages later, it had finished.

So, I thought that I had things going. But, I wanted to find another faxback service to do some additional testing. More googling led me to:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00259105&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=351106&dlc=en&lang=en

Basically, that’s a two way fax testing service. You send a one page fax to 1-888-hpfaxme and a few minutes later you get a fax back. You know that your machine is sending faxes properly, and you know that your machine is receiving faxes properly. How cool is that? And useful.

This morning on the way into work, I was listening to a “book on tape” and the guy was talking about an interview that he had with a man on death row. The subject of the story was fearing death, but he happened to mention that the interview took place while the convict was eating his last meal, which was described as “enough food to feed three men”.

This got me to thinking… What would I want to eat for a last meal? The first thing that came to mind was a Krispy Kreme doughnut. I’m not sure why.. but I’m just being truthful. I made it to a computer browser and looked up last meal on wikipedia.

Wikipedia entry

So, back to the question.. What would I want? Well, we’ve got a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Just thinking about the logistics of the meal.. I wouldn’t want too much of any one thing. I’d rather have a sampling of many divine tastes than a ton of one thing. It goes without saying that calories and nutritional content are not important. So, would I want a salad? Hmm.. I really like a good salad. But, that’s just filler. Maybe a tiny bite or two of a good chef’s salad, with ham, egg, and various types of cheese, with a little bit of French dressing on top. A chocolate covered strawberry would be awesome. It can’t just be any strawberry, though. It needs to have been picked at the peak of perfection. Nice and sweet. Dark chocolate, too. Not insanely dark. 60% cocoa would be dark enough.

A nice buttery piece of corn on the cob, with plenty of salt would taste most excellent. I’d want some of Mom’s baked beans (with hot dogs) to go along with the corn on the cob. Actually, I’d like half a hot dog, cooked on the grill. Let’s just go all out and make it an all-beef hot dog, even.

Two bites of a piece of fillet mignon, with a bite or two of baked potato to go along with it would be very good. I don’t want too much, though. I could see myself quickly getting full at this point. The fillet should be medium-well, and the baked potato needs to have plenty of butter, salt, and pepper.

Drinks are a big thing. Any space that I use in my stomach for liquid is space that can’t be used for other foods. So, I really don’t see myself drinking very much during the last meal. But, I’d have to have my diet Mountain Dew. And, to go along with that, a glass of iced sweet tea (really sweetened, not just a dab of sugar) would be great.

I’d want to have a taste of fried chicken. I prefer the breast piece, but it would have be properly moist. Chicken breast can get dry pretty easily. It has to be moist. Plenty of breading on the outside. Only a bite or two, though.

I feel like I’m just getting started. Speaking of getting started, I’d like a few bites of movie popcorn to eat with my salad. Don’t ask me to explain myself. I won’t ask about the logic of your final meal choices.

I feel like I’m seriously lacking in the dessert department. That won’t do. I’ll go for a single chocolate truffle. I’ll even let Mariya make it, but she can’t put as much coffee in it as she normally does. Don’t want that much kick. I also want cake and pie. For pie, let’s make it a bite or two of pecan pie that Mom has made. For cake.. Oh.. freshly baked chocolate chip cookies with milk! Gotta have that. (well, one cookie with milk. Can’t overindulge) Back to cake.. Let’s go chocolate. One of those triple chocolate things. Not sugar-based icing, though. I want icing that is whipped cream based. It’s a much lighter icing that doesn’t give me as much of a sugar rush. But, let’s throw in a piece of wedding cake while we are at it. On the plate with the wedding cake, I want those really salty mixed nuts that you see at weddings. The flavor combination of sugar and salt really works for me.

So, here we are. The final list. (Ha ha.. final.. Ha.. I’ll be updating this for years)

Starters:
* Chef’s salad, with ham chunks, diced hard boiled egg, and various types of cheese.
* Movie popcorn

Main Meal:
* Corn on the cob
* Baked beans
* Hot dog
* Fillet mignon
* Baked potato.
* Fried chicken breast.

Dessert:
* Krispy Kreme doughnut
* Chocolate covered strawberry
* Chocolate truffle
* Pecan pie
* Chocolate chip cookie with milk
* Chocolate cake
* Wedding cake with mixed nuts

Drinks:
* Diet Mountain Dew
* Iced sweet tea

If you know me… does my list surprise you? Why?

What I’m really curious about, though.. What would you have for your final meal?

I recently switched from Verizon to AT&T. I wanted a phone that AT&T has. Mariya has AT&T. I have a brother that has AT&T. So, I switched.

I’ve been with Verizon since 1999. I’ve been pleased with the coverage. The phone selection stinks. Verizon is very annoying with locking their phones down, and I got my most recent phone on November 5, 2005, with a two year contract. In early October I was billed for the October 6 through November 5 billing period and the bill was paid.

I got my new phone on October 26th and ported my number to AT&T. Earlier today, I got a verizon bill in my email for $191.49. This was strangely high, since I am on a $32.80 a month plan.

My suspicion was that I had been hit with an early termination fee (ETF). So, I called up Verizon customer support and talked with Deandre (pronounced Dee Andre). I explained the situation to Deandre and what I suspected had happened. He confirmed that I had been hit with the ETF. I explained to him that this didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I had already been billed for the total of my contract period. His stance was that I had technically terminated service before my anniversary date of November 5, so it didn’t matter what I had been billed for. My only option (let’s call this option #1), according to Deandre, was to port my number back to Verizon, leave it there until November 5 and then cancel. I could “get away with this” because Verizon has a 30 day guarantee where things can be “undone”. I explained that this is something that would just cause a lot more work for their system and for me, for not positive gain at all. Why do it? Why just just get rid of my ETF and we could call it good. He said he couldn’t do that. The system had it in there. So, he put me on hold for a few minutes.

So, he presented another option. He said that the best he could do was to credit me half of the ETF in liu of porting my number back and forth. So, it was now a $87.50 charge. So I said that I was basically going to have to pay $90ish to cause more trouble for both Verizon’s system and for myself. I tried to emphasize that this just didn’t make any sense to me.

He put me on hold again for a while. Came back. $50 fee. To get this, he had looked over my account details and had put me on a “variable” ETF schedule, where you get $5 of credit (towards an ETF) for each month you have your account in good standing past 6 months. I told him that I had been with Verizon for 6 or 7 years, so I shouldn’t have any ETF at all, based on that. He said that there was a $60 minimum ETF normally, and he was waiving that. Additionally, he said that the “variable ETF” schedule normally didn’t apply at all if you were porting your number to another carrier.

I told him that the purpose of an ETF was obviously to make sure that Verizon got its money. I had completed the terms of my contract, monetarily speaking. I had paid all of my monthly bills. I didn’t expect to get any proration of the last month’s bill. I had paid up to November 5, and I was totally happy with that. The ETF just didn’t make any sense to me.

So, we started looking at my bill. He said that it was $191.xx. I asked where the extra $16 had come from. I suspected taxes. He said there were something like $22 in taxes. I did the math in my head, and that meant $169 or so. So, I said that didn’t make sense with a $175 ETF. So, he looked farther, and saw that my account had been prorated to the tune of an eleven dollar credit for October 26 through November 5. At that point I said, why not just charge me the $11 and we can call it all good?! I said I couldn’t fathom what the difficulty could be with that. I had expected to pay the bill through November 5 all along.

He said that he’d put in to get it waived, since I was only a week away from having my contract completed. I told him that I’d like to fill out a survey or something telling that he had been willing to work with me on this. He said they didn’t have that, but he put me through to the voicemail of his supervisor. I then left a message on her (Marilyn Vinson) voicemail, saying that Deandre had done a pretty good job of helping me.

Satisfied? Well, I guess so. Bummer that I had to stay on line for 30 minutes to get this done. If I hadn’t been persistent, I would have been out the $175. So, internet readers.. pay attention. Put in your time, and you, too, can have proper outcomes to your difficulties.

A few days ago (last Thursday, maybe) I walked into my office at home and flipped the light switch. The light flickered for half a second or so and went out. So, I flipped the switch off and back on. It flickered for slightly less time and went out again. I thought to myself, “Hmmm. That’s not quite how a burned out light bulb behaves.”

But, me being the optimist that I am, I figured I’d change the light bulb and see what happened. I’m aware that I might have boring blog posts, but even I wouldn’t stoop to the low level of a new blog entry just because I had to change a light bulb. That would be too pedestrian, even for me. So, needless to say, changing the light bulb didn’t make any difference. Still no light.

That got me a little bit excited. I was going to get to do some detective work with electricity. I really enjoy working with electricity. If changing the lightbulb didn’t work, the next obvious thing to check, and what I was assuming all along, was that the switch had gone bad. I could see the light behaving as it had (flickering) if the switch had gone bad, so that was my best guess as to what the problem was. So, I made my way out the shed, grabbed a replacement switch (you have spare electrical parts lying around your home as well, I’m sure) and headed back into the house. A quick flip of the breaker switch, some screwdriver and plier work, and I had a shiny new switch installed. I went and flipped the breaker back on, made my way back to the office, flipped the switch and….. nothing.

Hmm.. That was unexpected. The lightbulb was confirmed good. The switch was brand new, so it was most likely good. That left… the light socket. Since I didn’t think I had a spare light socket lying around (come to find out later, I did have. *snap*) I ended up having to go to Lowe’s to pick up a replacement light socket. The light socket that I originally had in there was a 3-light socket. Lowe’s had a replacement 2-light socket that was $3.98. It had the same size threading for the lamp shade, so I figured it would work well enough. I was only using a single light bulb in the socket anyway, so the 3 to 2 change didn’t matter.

So, I made my way back home, made sure the breaker was off, and proceeded to replace the old, obviously decrepit, 3-light socket with the shiny new 2-light socket. A quick trip to the breaker box later, and I was ready to test my handiwork. I flipped the switch and…… nothing.

This was a conundrum. The bulb was good. The switch was good. The socket was good. That left…. the wiring? The odds of the wiring magically going bad were very, very slim. So, it was time to get out some better testing equipment. So, I pulled out my trusty digital multimeter and started taking some readings.

And, I saw some interesting numbers. You would expect to see something close to 120 volts across the hot and neutral wires. Hot to neutral at the switch was showing 54-57 volts. Hot to neutral at the light was showing about 27 volts. Very strange. With the switch ‘off’, I was getting about 11 volts across the hot and neutral at the light. I pondered this for a while.

Then, I decided to look at other things in the circuit. The hallway light, the bathroom light, and one bathroom outlet were on the same circuit. Testing of the hallway light and the bathroom circuit both revealed that they were getting 120 volts, just like they should. My paper telling me what’s on each circuit (that I keep near the breaker box) also said that the doorbell was on that circuit.

At this point, a lightbulb went off…. in my head.

A couple of years ago the doorbell quit working. There’s a doorbell transformer up in the attic that converts the 120 volts from the house to the 12 volts that is needed for the doorbell. It’s just a little box, about 2 inches on a side, that attaches to a junction box. Nothing very interesting. When the doorbell quit working, I just assumed that the transformer had probably died. There was about a foot of insulation on top of the junction box and transformer, and I figured that the transformer might have gotten warm and quit working, and I didn’t care about the doorbell all that much anyway. Since blowing in the insulation a few years ago, I’ve tried very hard to not go up there and disturb it, since that decreases its effectiveness.

But, having the office light quit working got me to wondering whether or not it had been wise of me to ignore the doorbell problem. I began to wonder if maybe the transformer was pulling off those missing volts and converting them into pure heat up in the attic. I decided that the switch and the light socket were OK, so I put everything in the office “back together” (using the old 3-light socket) and turned the circuit back on so that I could use the light in the bathroom.

And, I flipped the switch in the office, and the light worked perfectly. This was last night. I had fully prepared myself for a trip into the warm attic (summertime sun and all that) and now the crazy light was working perfectly. So, I went to bed last night comfortable in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be getting up early in the morning (to avoid the daytime heating) for an attic trip.

This morning arrives. I flip the switch. The light flickers once or twice and goes dark.

So, I turned off the circuit and headed for the attic. I didn’t really know exactly where the doorbell transformer was. I had a general idea of where it had been several years ago before burying everything under a foot of shredded newspaper, but one’s mind can play tricks in times such as those. So, I started digging around. I found wires for the alarm system and knew that I was close. I dug more. Each time my hand dipped down into the insulation little puffs of dust rose into the air, inevitably destined for my nose. Finally, I found the junction box. A couple of minutes later I had the transformed totally disconnected and made my way out of the attic. Flipped the circuit breaker back on, tested the light, and it worked.

That’s where things are at now. The circuit is live and hopefully when I get home tonight the office light will still be working. We’ll see. This has been a fun experience, though. I love working with electricity.

This morning I experienced another first in my running saga, and I figured it had been a while since I had posted a blog entry. So, I decided to post one. This is a pretty minor thing, so don’t get excited that you are going to read anything cool.

It rained on me this morning during the run. It didn’t just sprinkle a little bit. It rained. And rather hard. I was totally soaked by the time I made it back from my 4.24 mile run. It didn’t help that the sidewalks I was running on were pooling water in a few places which caused me to get my newest pair of running shoes totally wet.

Oh well. That’s the way it goes.

In other news.. In case you hadn’t heard, I’m training for the Milwaukee marathon. It’s sometime in early October. It’s a bit more hilly than the Bayshore, so I’m going to be doing more hills in training. It will be a challenge, but what’s life without a challenge or two?

The past few weeks I’ve been a bit negligent in my running, but I’m starting to get back into it now. I ran 12ish on Friday, 19.4 on Sunday, and then 4 today. I’m thinking about changing my training program to a different one that is supposedly totally focused on increased speed. I’m not sure yet, though.

After my 12 miler on Friday, my left knee started hurting. On the 20 miler on Sunday, it started hurting about halfway through, and today the last mile or so wasn’t a whole lot of fun. The pain feels like it is kinda on the outside of the knee. Not quite like any ache that I’ve experience so far. So, I’m watching that one. I kinda limp jogged the last mile today. Not a fun experience. Walking kinda ‘tweaks’ the knee now. Let’s see.. what else.. I’ve been nursing a minor case of what I assume is peroneal tendenitis on the right foot for a couple of months now, and Sunday’s 20 mile run caused my left foot to hurt just a little bit. Not on the outside like I get with the peroneal tendenitis, though. This one was more on the inside of the foot, just back a little bit from the ball of the foot. It doesn’t feel like a bit deal, though.

I ran the July 4th race here in town. 20:50 was the official time, but I think I lost about 15 seconds getting to the start line and waiting for them to stop the timer at the end. 20:35 is probably more accurate as to how long it took me to run the 5 kilometers. That’s about 80 seconds faster than I’ve ever run 5k before, so I was pretty pleased. I came in 6th in my age range, and I would have needed to run the 5k in about 19 minutes to have placed in the top 3. So, I feel good about it.

More updates later, but this is it for now.

The Bayshore Marathon, on May 26, 2007, has come and gone, and I have lived to talk about it.

As it was my first marathon, I really didn’t have any idea what to expect. I’ve been writing about training for the marathon for some time now, so I won’t bore you with those details. But, I’ll briefly go over a few events of the past week or so that are relevant.

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been tapering for the marathon. Three weeks before the marathon I ran 20 miles, and each subsequent week I have been running fewer and fewer miles, the idea being that you want your body to be in great condition and not overly tired for the actual long run. The pains that I had previously been experiencing in my feet had pretty well gone away, and I was feeling quite good for the marathon. Since the 20 miler I have been doing intervals on all of my shorter (non Sunday) runs, and I was doing a sub 6 minute mile pace during the sprinting portion of my intervals. So, this past week’s running was: Last Sunday: 8 miles. Tuesday: 4 miles, and Friday: 2 miles, with the race being on Saturday. Each of these runs went well.
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For some time now I’ve been meaning to write up a description of my weight loss. Everyone that has ever known me has commented on it, and several people have indicated that I’m something of an inspiration to them. That wasn’t my goal. I’m glad that I might be helping others out in some small way, though. First, I want to say that all views expressed here are my own, and they only pertain to how I feel about myself. I’m not discussing what I think about others. I feel it’s important to specifically point this out, because I think I’m probably a lot harder on myself than I am when I look at others.

Some background information is in order to fully understand the whole process. At least since elementary school, I’ve always been either overweight or on the verge of being overweight (until recently). I can vividly remember being overweight in middle school/junior high. I was rather short and heavy. I didn’t look very good, but I’ve always been a relatively positive person, so I didn’t obsess over my weight or anything. Physical appearance just wasn’t a motivating factor in my life. This continued through ninth grade.
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