Quit buying stuff made in China!

For crying out loud people, quit buying stuff made in China. I mean fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Every fucking thing I pick up at every store says “Made in China” on the fucking tag. Fuck I couldn’t even buy toothpicks that were NOT made in China here locally in Ohio. What the fuck? This is pissing me off to no end. And why is it happening? Because we let China export a shitload of stuff into our Country while the USA doesn’t export shit back. I’ll pay an extra $5 or $10 for an American made toy for my kid. I’m tired of my wife bringing home a toy for our kid only to have it break the first day. I then look and see “Made in China” and have to glue it back together. I’m about ready to put all the broken shit in a pile and ship it back to China. What a bunch of bullshit.

On top of that how about how China treats animals? Just search YouTube for China Animal Cruelty and you’ll see what I mean. It’s total bullshit. People in China have no moral or ethical values it seems. They see people as a fucking thing, like a plate or a bowl or a car bumper.

Fuck am I pissed about this shit.

Working out with a heavy bag in my basement

Well over the weekend I purchased an Everlast 100 lb. heavy bag. I mounted it on a 3/4″ black steel pipe I put up between two floor joists. The pipe is secured by 4 pieces of 3/4″ plywood sandwiched together (two on each side). The plywood has holes drilled in it and then the piece of pipe and the thick pieces of plywood were pushed up in between the joists and then anchored with 2.5″ wood lag screws (6 per side). I actually held myself up on the pipe afterwords and I weigh in at 250 lbs and am 6′ 1″ tall. It holds real nice.

Anyway…I watched a few videos on Youtube, and learned how to properly wrap my hands before taking to the bag. You have to be careful what you watch on YouTube as there were a couple videos from “expertvillage” that were very very wrong ways to wrap your knuckles and wrist before you start pounding the bag.

I pounded the bag today for three (3 minute) rounds. Giving about a 1 minute break in between. My fists are a little sore, and so are my arms and calves. It was well worth it however. This is going to be my preferred way of cardio workout but I’m going to start revving up the pounding each time I train.

I don’t have any kind of formal training but I like to think I’m about average at hitting the bag. Right now I’m not working on power punching as much as getting the technique down well and trying to hit the bag square as to not twist or bend my wrist. Don’t want a boxers fracture (already had one), nor to I want a sprained or broken wrist.

I gotta tell ya, I can’t say enough good things about the Everlast bag. It’s a champ. I’m glad I got the 100 lb. bag too instead of a 70 or 80 pounder. At 6′ 1″ tall and 250 lbs. I think I would be swinging the lighter bags around all over the place.

I got the heavy bag on sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods (a local store). I walked in and found the bag I wanted and bought it on the spot. It was on sale from $130 down to $99. Also bought a pair of Mexican style 180″ hand wraps. I can tell you that if I didn’t have the wraps on my hands would probably be pretty tore up right now. They gave me the little extra padding I needed to not have ripped up knuckles etc.

Really looking forward to my next session. Love it.

In Chicago

Well I’m in Chicago with my wife and I gotta say that I love the city. It’s pretty busy. So much so that I don’t think that I would want to go to New York City. Chicago is just about perfect. Not too busy but not too boring either. It seems like NYC would be fucking hectic all the time. I however have never been to NYC so this is just a guess.

I love the John Hancock building. It’s just beautiful. I’ve not even been in it yet but I can see it from my hotel room. We’ll head up and eat at the top later today most likely. I love the white lights at the top at night.

I’m sitting in the hotel right now in a “window seat”. It’s a seat beside the window that’s really long enough and wide enough to sleep on. Since I’m on the 10th floor I can see the stuff going on below and it’s really cool. I look out the window and see the John Hancock building and it’s a marvel of engineering. Wow.

It’s about 73 degrees here today and overcast. Looks like it’s gonna rain. I can see the lake and it doesn’t look like it has many waves. I’m used to Lake Erie which gets really big waves due to it’s shallow nature.

The old Water Tower and the old #98 Fire Station are really cool. Old school at it’s best.

Giordano’s Pizza is what we had for dinner last night. It was the best pizza I have ever had. I love it. I wish I could take a whole bunch home.

I’m happy I’m here in Chicago.

Anxiety and weird feeling on the front of my neck

So over the past 3 to 5 days I’ve been having this weird feeling at the base of the front of my neck. It’s not so much pain as it is annoying. It’s really hard to describe. It’s almost as if someone is holding their hands around my neck yet doing it lightly. I can breath fine and I don’t have any shortness of breath. I have had anxiety and “worry” issues for years now. I take Zoloft regularly and I take Xanax on an “as needed” basis.

I’m the type of person that gets all worked up about something like this and thinks “oh no, there must be something wrong with my heart or maybe my carotid arteries are clogged or something. I tend to go a bit overboard with trying to “self diagnose”. The Internet is not a help these days it just makes it worse it seems.

I try to get a good cardio workout in at least 3 times a week where I walk fast on the treadmill and get my heart rate up to about 155bpm and keep it there for about 30 or 40 minutes. I did this on Monday and my neck/upper chest felt funny the entire time. No different than when I am not exercising.

In the past I have had blood work done, a stress test, Holter monitor etc, just because I’m anal about shit and want to make sure I’m “OK”. I had all this done about 3 years ago. The docs all said everything was just fine.

Right now I am 6′1″ tall and I weigh 280 lbs. I used to weigh 314 lbs. but I lost the weight and still need to lose more. I don’t smoke, I drink occasionally but usually it’s about 2-3 beers a week at most. If not beer it’s Chianti (wine).

If I am standing up and I bend forward 90 degrees like I am half way to touching my toes, I can feel the weird feeling in my neck get worse. It’s almost like pressure. If I didn’t know any better I would say that I had pressure on my carotid arteries or something. The feeling has been with me constantly today. Not pain…..just annoying kind of weird pressure. It feels kind of similar to feelings I have had in the past when I have had anxiety real bad or some sort of anxiety attack. However if I take Xanax usually I’m fine after a short while. In this case I take Xanax and it helps a bit but the feeling doesn’t go completely away.

I have no idea what it is. I did talk to my doctor today on the phone and she said that this could be anxiety induced and that if I’m not better by next week she would like to see me.

I really just wanted to share this in case anyone else has had something like this and knows what this is. I also figured this may help someone who is having the same feelings.

Update on Internet Explorer 8 (working fine now)

So in my previous post I stated how I hated IE8, at least on my home PC.  Well here is what I found out.

It all had to do with Spybot Search & Destroy software.  I removed that application and then followed the instructions here .  That site explains how the antispyware software puts all these restricted sites into the restricted sites list and that IE goes through that list before starting up to the home page when you launch IE8 and/or open a new tab.  I downloaded the Deldomains.inf file and then right clicked on it and chose “install”.  It did it’s thing and fixed my issue.

I have to give all credit to this fix to the nice folks at www.mvps.org .  Great site and good people.

Due to this I have IE8 running on everything I own (even my couch) and I have no problems and it’s much faster than IE7.  I love it.

Gotta give mad props to Microsoft for this browser.  It’s finally a step in the right direction!!!

Internet Explorer 8 not so good

OK, so I decided to download and install Internet Explorer 8 since it was finally released.  I have been running Windows 7 on my work laptop and have had 30 days of goodness and it has been problem free.  I actually really like Windows 7.  You cannot install IE8 on Windows 7 Beta since it’s running a special version of IE8 that can use features built into Windows 7 that only Windows 7 has.  I digress….

Anyway, I downloaded it and installed it on my home PC.  I’ve been running IE7 on my home PC for years now.  My home PC is a Pentium 4 1.5GHz box with 1.2GB of RAM and it runs Windows XP Pro with SP3.  It runs awesome and is fast for all I need it to do.  It runs Firefox, Chrome, and Opera beautifully with no problems.  It also runs IE7 with no problems….other than the typical “IE just locking up” problem.  I’ve seen IE just become unresponsive on a number of different boxes and just need to be forced to close.  For the record Firefox has done this on 3 different machines of mine too but just not as often.

As a side note, my work laptop is a Dell D830 Latitude with a 2.0GHz Intel Core Two Duo processor and 2GB of RAM.

So, last night I download and install IE8 onto my home PC (P4 1.5GHz 1.2GB RAM).  The install takes about 20 minutes and then reboots.  OK, no problem.  After that I launch IE8 for the first time (after my PC finishes booting and settles in).  It takes about 25 seconds before IE8 comes up.  After it comes up it seems like no matter what site I go to it seems to take a long time to get there when compared to IE7 or Firefox.  Weird.  So I close IE8 and restart the computer and just let the computer sit for another 10 minutes after reboot to make sure it’s done with all it’s stuff.  I launch IE8 again….slow.  Still about 20 seconds before it shows up and can be used.  I then go to 3 or 4 sites, and then cl0se the browser.  I then open it up again, to find that it still takes about 20 seconds to come up, maybe 15 seconds.  Yeah in the grand scheme of things 15 seconds is not much.  However IE7 took about 4 seconds and Firefox about 2 or 3 seconds.

After letting my wife use IE8 for about 30 minutes just doing some web surfing she says “yeah I hate it”.  So I uninstalled it, restarted, and am now back to using IE7.

I am not sure why the biggest software company on the planet can mess up it’s browser and OS so many times.  I will continue to use Firefox for everything and only use IE7 for work required things that cannot use Firefox.

For the record, the IE8 Beta that I have been using inside Windows 7 Beta has been great.  It’s pretty flawless actually.  Go figure.  Of course, Microsoft should give Windows 7 to everyone that bought (or got a PC with) Windows Vista.  Windows 7 Beta has been much more stable than the production version of Vista with SP1 on it.  Pretty Amazing actually.

New Facebook layout sucks!

Yeah, so after just a few days I cannot take it anymore.  Today I logged into FB only to find that one of my “friends” had sent some bullshit gifts to about 18 friends regarding New Kids On The Block (NKOTB).  I was not one of them.  I still however had to see all the bullshit gifts sent and it went 3/4 of the length of my page.  The only solution was to de-friend this person on Facebook, which I did.  Then all those stupid posts disappeared.

Since Facebook has taken it upon themselves to force everyone to read what everyone else does as a freakin’ news feed I will no longer visit the site.  In fact, I am going to deactivate my account until they change it back.  If they never do, then I’ll never be back.  There is way too many good things going on via the Internet to waste my time with the crazy new layout of Facebook.  It was great until they changed the layout.  Now it sucks.

Oh well, some companies never learn.  It’s also easy to tell when a good company gets all “corporateized” (yeah I know….not a word).  Once that happens everything gets messed up.

Goodbye Facebook.  I hope you learn…

Thankful in these tough times.

Yesterday I took a Gallup poll on the phone.  It took about ten minutes.  During the poll I was realizing my answers showed that I am very blessed.  The gentleman on the phone said that I am very lucky and that most people are not that happy in this current economy.

So I just really wanted to express the fact that sometimes you forget how good you have it.  I’m very thankful for all that I have.

If you can afford to help others in need, do it.  If you need help, don’t be afraid to ask.  These are tough times and I am thankful to God that they are not affecting me yet.

Asshole truck drivers

First let me start off by saying that not ALL truck drivers are assholes.  Just like not all people driving four wheelers (cars) are assholes.

So, tonight on my way home from work I’m rolling 70 MPH on cruise control in the center lane of the turnpike.  When this asshole rig gets up on my rear bumper.  And I usually don’t care because they do that sometimes.  However this guy was super close and was doing it on purpose.  He wasn’t like a car length off my bumper, not 6 feet, but about 14 inches.  Asshole.  I saw this same guy doing this to other cars in the right lane about 3 miles back.

Here’s the problem.  Now that the speed limit for rigs is up to 65 in Ohio just like the cars, they wanna roll hard all the time.  So if I’m in the right lane they always  go around me (mind you even if I’m doing 70 on cruise).  I try to run the center lane that way the rigs can roll past me in the right lane if they want.  If there is some slow poke fucker in the right lane (car) I can’t help it and I’m certainly not going to be switching lanes all the time if the rigs want to go 80 in a 65.  Fuck ‘em.

I never had this problem when the speed limit for rigs was 55.  I would roll the center lane and they would roll the right lane and only come into center to pass here and there.  Now at least 50% or more of the rigs are always climbing peoples asses and getting really close and using the jake brake (engine brake) etc.  This guy was swerving all around and just being a jerk.  It’s not like I was trying to do a damn thing to him.  He was carring all kinds of steel pipe on a flatbed and driving like he had no load.  What a moron.

I understand that there are a good amount of people driving cars that cause a boatload of accidents for truckers.  I know this and I can’t stand those people either.  It just really burns me up when truck drivers do this shit.  I mean fuck…..calm down a bit, slow down and chill out.

Usually I do my part to let rigs over when needed and I am always looking way up ahead to see if I see one entering the turnpike from a rest area or something and I get over to let the rigs in the right lane move into the center to let the other rig on.  We all need to help out, that’s a given.

What doesn’t help is when you get these jackass truck drivers who feel the need to drive 90 just so they can get up the next hill so they treat all the car drivers like dirt.  It just makes me want to not give a crap anymore about the truckers.  And bitterness and asshole driving will just breed more of the same thing.

Man….people need to take fucking chill pills and slow down a little.  I’m not talking drive like a grandma in the right lane doing 55, but fuck.  You know what I mean, and you know who you are.

What happened to white wall tires?

Yeah, what happened to white wall tires?  I know they have been not on cars for the most part for a long time.  I however saw a nice Buick with white walls and then started looking at all the other cars.  Just booring black wall tires.  No raised white letters (RWL) or white walls.  Just booring black wall tires.

Now I understand that some of the tires these days are 50 series or smaller and that doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the white wall to fit.

I think white wall tires look elegant on some cars (think Buick Lucerne here) but look like crap on others.

Heck why doesn’t anyone put raised white letter tires on their cars?  They look neat with the letters spinning around as you’re driving.

Who knows, maybe I’m showing my age, but I still think that we should have white wall tires, and raised white letter tires as OEM on certain factory cars.

My $.02