The tank WAS a gorgeous centerpiece to our living room.  It was a saltwater setup, with uber filtration, protein skimming, compact florescent lit goodness with a ton of live rock, etc.  I didn’t love having to top off the water every couple of days, but it was pretty cool and when we got the environment dialed-in just right (after a year to two), it was pretty much on autopilot, maintenance-wise.

Unfortunately, the entire environment got wiped out a few years back when we had that big windstorm and resulting 6 day power outage.  Tropical salt water environments don’t survive at 42 degrees, unfortunately.  It was sad, and once we came to the realization that we’d be starting over from scratch, we put the tank and equipment into the furnace room for future consideration.  Now that we’re contemplating a long-distance move, setting it back up makes even less sense than before.  Thus, we decided to sell the whole setup on Craigslist, and a bargain price of $150 (likely what we paid for the dang light).

I got a few “nibbles” on the ad last week, but everyone wanted to bargain with me. One fellow wanted me to trade the aquarium for a paintball gun.  Not being motivated to become a paint-baller, nor to acquire more crap that I am not going to use, I refused.  The ad expired on Friday, so I re-posted it yesterday.

Today, instead of the usual email inquiries or even phone calls, I received a text message about the tank.  Conversation went JUST like this:

Craigslist Messaging Guy (CMG): Do you still have your fish tank for sale?

Me (Me): Yes

CMG: How low are you willing to go if I pick it up today?

Me: It’s still $150.

CMG: Would you take $100 if I pick it up right now?

Me: No, I’m in no hurry to sell.

CMG: Would you be interested in selling  jst (sic) the filter or the lights?

Me: Sure, how about $150, and I’ll throw in the tank and stand for free?

CMG: lol. I would, but I only have $100, so thats my offer.

Me: Give me a call if you find $50 in the couch, and I’ll contact you if the price drops.

]]> http://www.calnan-web.com/weblog/2009/09/21/craigslist-messaging-guy/feed/ 2 http://www.calnan-web.com/weblog/2009/09/21/facebook-dos-or-doa/ http://www.calnan-web.com/weblog/2009/09/21/facebook-dos-or-doa/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:13:37 +0000 John http://www.calnan-web.com/weblog/?p=1178 All you west-coasters are waking up, getting your morning cuppa joe, and sitting down at the computer to see which of your friends stayed up too late posting on Facebook.  Unfortunately the site is down this morning, variously giving you either an incorrect password message, or telling you that they are performing maintenance.  “Try again later”.

OMG WTF! How will I know if Sally finished her term paper, Steve made it to Albuquerque, or see the latest baby pictures from Mary and Bill?  Quick, to Twitter!  Ah… it’s not just me, the whole system is down…

Facebook and Twitter both were victims of a Denial of Service (DOS) attack a month or so ago, so it could very well be that Facebook is under attack again.  They could also be a victim of their own success, having grown to the point that they seriously need an upgrade in their server/software department.

My suggestion is that you use your usual morning Facebook time catching up on some really important stuff.

• Go to Google News or your news service of choice, and see what’s happening with the two wars we’re fighting.
• Read the content of the proposed Health Care Reform legislation, so you know what’s actually being proposed.
• Go for a walk, run, bike ride, or some other physical activity.
• Go back to bed, and snuggle your S.O.  First, go brush your teeth though.

My preference is that I receive the notifications by text message to my cell phone, rather than via email.  This is primarily because my email to cell phone link isn’t always the most reliable.  The RPIN system has a cell-phone notification option but the online form does not allow phone numbers to be entered, just email addresses.  The work-around to this is as follows:

1. Point your web-browser thingee at the Regional Public Information Network website (yes, click that now).

2. Click the link to Subscribe to RPIN “Sign Up Today”. You will see the form to enter email addresses and Notification Type:

3. In the email address box you need to enter the email address that can be used to send text messages to your phone via email.  This varies by carrier, but here’s a quick list I just pulled off the internets.  If your carrier isn’t listed, call them and ask them for the email format:

Verizon: 10digitphonenumber@vtext.com
AT&T: 10digitphonenumber@txt.att.net
Sprint: 10digitphonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile: 10digitphonenumber@tmomail.net
Nextel: 10digitphonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
Cingular: 10digitphonenumber@cingularme.com
Virgin Mobile: 10digitphonenumber@vmobl.com
Alltel: 10digitphonenumber@message.alltel.com
CellularOne: 10digitphonenumber@mobile.celloneusa.com
Omnipoint: 10digitphonenumber@omnipointpcs.com
Qwest: 10digitphonenumber@qwestmp.com

So, if my cell number was 253-555-1212 and my carrier was Verizon, I would enter

2535551212@vtext.com

4. Select “Cell Phone” under notification type.

5. Enter more cell phones, if you want your spouse or 12 year old to know about the imminent disaster.

6. Enter the types of emergencies you want to be notified of, and the geographic areas you are interested in.

7. Click “Subscribe”.

8. You will need to agree to terms and conditions on the following page.  You’ll then receive an text message to confirm your registration.

I think I've done some beer drinking in this same outfit...

So, like Twitter and Facebook before me, I guess I became a victim of an internet attack by Kim Jong Il.  My site was hacked a few days ago and even I could not get to it for a time because it had been flagged as “distributing malware”.  I think maybe the North Korean dictator was jealous of my well developed musculature, so he had his minions shut me down.

I noticed the shutdown when I tried to post a boring workout summary on Sunday, at noon.  I’m not sure when the actual hack occurred, nor exactly what the malware “payload” was on the site.  I do apologize for the inconvenience, and if you have had any repercussions from the attack.  If you have visited my site since June (which, I’m gathering from the internets, is when many WordPress sites were hacked) I’d urge you to scan your computers for any malicious code.  If you don’t have a good antivirus/malware detecting software, you really do need to buy some in this day-and-age.  You can also get a free online scan by TrendMicro’s HouseCall utility.

The warnings about my website generated by Google didn’t give a whole lot of detail.  Rather than hunt-and-peck through 100′s of files on the site I just ordered a backup restore from a week or so ago.  I also removed several old web pages from my original “static” website.  Once the restore was complete, I was unable to find any of the typical signs of malware, or re-directs to bad sites.  I asked Google for a re-review of my site, and as of this morning I was in the clear.  I’ve put new & improved passwords on all my stuff, so I think I may have thwarted ol’ shorty for now.

Thanks.  Boring posts about workouts coming soon…

Part of my problem has been that I never quite got my head around the Wednesday night training vs. Saturday morning sessions that I had been doing at Hocevar Performance Gym.  Wednesday nights actually work better for me in a lot of ways, I just never quite got into the rhythm of what I was going to be doing workout-wise for the rest of the week.

Given that my spare time is a pretty precious commodity right now (and for the foreseeable future) I am going to concentrate my hard training time on the kettlebell/bodyweight training, and taper back on the road cycling.  Practically speaking I can accomplish a helluvalot of conditioning in 4 hours a week with the kb’s, but I’d need 2 to 3 times that amount of bike time to just maintain.  I asked Luka to provide me with some workouts that I can schedule during the week, and he obliged with a series of 4 workouts that utilize my inventory of kettlebells, exercise equipment, and (gulp) the hill that my house sits at the bottom of.

Much of the training I’m doing with Luka is Escalating Density Training, or EDT.  The principal of EDT is to do a set of alternating exercises that use opposing (or different) muscle groups, and do as many sets as you can in a given period of time (known as PR, or Personal Record).  Monday was Luka’s “Workout A”:

4 sets of:

• Kettlebell front squats, (2 x 20kg), 8 reps
• Negative Chin Ups (3 second descent from chin-over-bar), 5 reps

EDT-PR Zone 1: 10 minutes, as many rounds as possible (I did 9)

• 10 x 24kg kettlebell swings
• 10 pushups

EDT-PR Zone 2: 10 minutes, as many rounds as possible (I did 5)

• Kettlebell reverse lunges, 6 reps R & L, 16 kg kettlebell
• Kettlebell 1 arm rows, 24 kg, 8 reps R & L

3 sets of:

• 10 x v-ups
• 30 second plank

The principal here is that I will be able to do more work with less rest as I progress… so future sessions of “Workout A” should mean more rounds completed (by virtue of having to rest less), and eventually more weight being used.  I’ll try to keep up with my posting here, so you can keep score at home.

Oh, and then I went for a bike ride.  Recovery pace, about 13 miles, lovely weather for it.

I saw a strange referring link this morning in my stats, and when I clicked it, I got this result:

It’s an auto-tranlsated rendering of my Bicycle Porn posting.  It’s springtime, after all, and I’m sure that as the weather warms in Russia, the boys there turn their thoughts to sex and bicycles just as much as their American counterparts.

FreeRice.com is a website that went “live” on the 7th of October, 2007. The concept is that you play a word game that helps you to expand your vocabulary. When you guess a word’s meaning correctly, you “donate” 10 grains of rice to feed starving people. The rice is paid for by the sponsors whose advertisements appear in the banner underneath the word game. The rice is to be distributed through the United Nations World Food Programme.

OK, so what? What is 10 grains of rice going to do against the millions of people without adequate nutrition in the world? That would be my question. Well, since the website’s inception, the “grains” that have been donated are growing at a fantastic rate:

Total Donations by Day

A quick search on the internet reveals that there are approximately 29,000 grains of long-grain rice per pound. 2,840,667,010 grains divided by 29,000 = almost 98,000 pounds of rice. Not bad.

So, go expand your vocabulary!

Do they have a bicycle emblem, you may ask? Hell, yes!

I think I’ll go for a ride today.

Now, understand that the best friend I’ve almost never met, Jim Carson, is embarking upon NaNoWriMo on this very day. Way, way more ambitious, he and many other souls will attempt to write a complete novel during November. He’s checked out books on writing books, and made a regular science project out of this (who would’a thought it?). No doubt he’ll be magnificent.

I, on the other hand, can walk past the computer for days on end, and only cast the keyboard a furtive glance. I can sit here for 3 hours a day, surfing for cycling googaws and anatomy lessons, and never feel inspired to be creative. Writing an entire novel in a month would be a bit of a stretch for your hero, dear reader (both of you). In the immortal words of Dr. Leo Marvin, what we need here are “Baby Steps”.

After a couple of Cabernet’s (purely for health reasons, mind you. French paradox and all that.) it sounded like it was quite do-able, so I signed my sorry ass up. All through the day today I’ve been mulling this little venture. It was close to that kind of feeling when you have an optional hill to climb on the bike, you are alone, no time constraints, and you stand at the bottom and look at the hill as you consider your options. Will it be “You know, I really need to get home and run the dishwasher”, or “What the hell, climb the damn hill”.

At 3:30 I quit walking past the computer, loaded the bike, and went for a ride. I needed to get out of the house, and I felt like I needed to get in the 15-20 miles that I didn’t get last night because no one showed up for the night ride. So I rode a variant of the valley route, from Kent to the north toward Tukwila. I went up Frager Road instead of my usual Russell, found a short steep little hill that ended at a little turn-of-the-century cemetery on Orillia Road, then doubled back down to Russell Road and the Green River Trail (I know, boring, TMI, but I’m going somewhere with this). I reached the construction site at 228th and Russell Road, and the work crews were finishing up their concrete pours for the day. The road is not open yet, but with a few sidewalks and some landscaping this project to put a truck route from the valley up to I-5 will almost be complete. One of the workers waved me through and said “Go ahead, try it out”. The sun is setting, I’ve got my mileage in that I needed, and I’m 2 miles away from the car… almost done. “Go on, see where it takes you, man”, and he gives me another gesture that I should proceed.

So I did. Once I weaved my way through the barricades and cars at the bottom, I had the whole hill to myself. It must be about .7 or .8 of a mile long, and the usual for around here of about 350′ feet of climbing. Nice new concrete road with no potholes and no traffic. So I got my hill work, got my mileage, and I got something of an inspiration to start typing entry one for NaBloPoMo.

It ain’t War and Peace, but tomorrow is another day.

15.4 miles today, 3,798 ytd.