Thank you Dennis Kucinich

It's a shame that Dennis Kucinich has dropped out of the race for US President. He has a good message, and ideas that I think offered what this country sorely needs. But it was not to be this time. Nonetheless, I am grateful that he took the time to be heard as much as time and money would allow.

The Democratic nomination is now among Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. I was an early supporter of Obama's, and came to favor Kucinich as I realized just how much my views agreed with Kucinich's. Now that it is down to the 3 remaining candidates, I am again enthusiastically supporting Obama.

Thank you Dennis.
Here's to Barack Obama as the next President of the United States!

Honda Fit: 1, Joe: 0

Note to self: When opening a car door, if you should happen to hear a truck noise nearby and need to take a look, it is best to stop opening the car door until you are again ready to pay attention to the hard metal of the door in close proximity to your head.

Yup. that did ring my bell and get my attention. I got some ice a few minutes later and let Shirley handle the driving whilst I got that knot to go down. Today the aftermath is manifesting as a nice little bruise under the eye.

This will be fun to explain if it's still there on Monday when I go in to the office. Hmmmmm.... I'll have to come up with a good story; the truth is just that I was an id10t :)

Finally driving the Yaris :)

Back on 31 Aug 2007, we ordered a 2008 Yaris. We picked it up this past Wednesday. The reason why it took 4+ months is that Toyota had stopped making the '07 models when we ordered ...and they'd not yet started making the '08 models. The reason for the special order was because we insisted on getting ABS. The target demographic for this car is apparently younger folks looking for an inexpensive car, and to help keep the cost down, few if any dealers stock Yarii with ABS. Sheesh, it's only a $300 option. Well, I ordered it with ABS, side curtain airbags, and various other options (doing a special order means you order exactly what you want :)

And what's the best thing to do when you get a brand new car? Start taking it apart! The stock horn sounds like the old RoadRunner cartoon - just a little *beep*. I wanted something safer. So I pulled off the front bumper assembly (have to do that to get to the horn - which sits front of the radiator) and installed dual FIAMM horns - 130 decibels of dissonance (one low tone and one high tone). NOW it sounds like a real car, and the horn has already helped a few times when folks didn't see this little car tooling along the road.

Here's a shot of the finished horn install ...it worked out quite nicely that there was the perfect sized hole - sitting unused - just waiting for me to take advantage of it for the mounting of the 2nd of the 2 new horns.

And here's the view from the outside after everything was back together. I guess the first change to the car was the blind spot mirrors I added before we even left the dealer. The horn swap was the second. More mods are in store, mostly geared toward improving safety and fuel efficiency. And speaking of fuel efficiency, I filled up when it got down to 1/2 of a tank. On the first bit of miles, I've gotten 37.6 miles per gallon. My goal is to average over 40, but I won't worry about that too much until after the break-in period (after which I plan to switch to synthetic oil, a higher quality air filter, swap out the crank pulley for a lighter one, etc :)

Auto Detailing from '2Xtreme'

I've had my Subaru Outback for 10 years, and it's been a great car. Never been in a wreck, so it's got great 'bones'. But it was really needing a day at the spa - a good thorough cleaning. So I called Derwin (1-813-900-8000) from 2Xtreme. Derwin used to do auto detailing out of his shop, but decided he could offer a better price for customers and have less overhead by devising a mobile system. So for only $50, Derwin came to our house, and in about 2 hours he had the inside and outside of my car looking the best it's looked since it was new 10 years ago. I was amazed. You can see more pics of the finished job up here on Flickr.

For those in the Tampa area, Derwin will come to you and do his magic anywhere in Hillsborough County, and in parts of Pinellas County. And for the record, I am not receiving any discount or other benefit from this posting; I just felt that this was a fantastic job for an extremely reasonable price.

Colonoscopy - all done, all fine

When one hits the half-century mark, it is recommended to get a colonoscopy to screen for colon cancer and other ailments. I'm 51, so I was overdue.  This is the wrong way. I opted instead for a more standard colonoscopy, which I had done this morning. It turns out that the actual procedure only takes 15 minutes. It's the before and after that requires one to allocate some time. The prep day: I was told to eat no solid food the day prior, and to drink only clear liquids. This was pretty easy, really. Some years back, Shirley and I used to do a juice fast on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of each week. We'd drink just fruit and vegetable juices and water, and then break the fast on Friday when we'd meet for a salad. So one day was easy. AND black coffee was allowed, so no worries. The more interesting part was the procedure to empty out one's insides. At 11am I took the prescribed 4 pills. The packaging made them look huge, but as the second pic below shows, the pills were actually quite small - very easy to swallow:

The next step was to add some warm water to the HalfLytely powder, cap and shake the container to mix the solution, and put it in the fridge to cool. Then it was back to juice and coffee for the next 4 hours. Starting at 3pm, as per instructions, every 15 minutes I drank 8 ounces of the HalfLytely mix. It's sort of like a slightly gelatinous, somewhat salty  Gatorade ...with a mild lemon-lime flavor. Given that I don't care for salt, it was a little unpleasant, but not bad. It takes about 8 doses (1 every 15 minutes) to get all the solution consumed. And trust me, it works! I'd not heard nor read much about this, so I figure I'll let the curious know ...after about 5 doses I took up residence in the bathroom. It was like a firehose. That sounds funny and disgusting and it is quite accurate. After a few hours (and finishing the other doses of the solution) I knew that the doc would have a very clear view of my innards. Picture day: Today was picture day, the day for the doc to take a video of my colon and check for any issues. I'd been told to stop drinking even water after midnight, so I was a tad thirsty. Oh well. After signing in at the hospital (and waiting around for the required time that one must always wait it seems), I was given a lovely gown to wear (the kind that's open in the back :). A needle (for IV) was positioned in my right arm (they wanted to use the back of my hand, but it was so frickin' cold there that my veins had wisely retreated for warmer parts). I was led to the procedure room, chatted a little with the doc - and asked if he might supply me with some pics of my innards - and they started the anesthesia. The next thing I knew I was lying on a bed in a little recovery area and Shirley was seated in a chair next to me. Somewhere along the way I remember the doc saying that I'd done a good prep (I so knew that already). Everything looked good inside, which means I'll go back for another movie day in 5 years. And the good doctor was kind enough to supply me with pics, so that you, dear reader, may now know me inside and out. With no further ado, here are pics, in order, of the inside of a human colon (mine) as the instrument travelled along:

It's now 5pm, and even though the procedure was done at 8:30am this morning, I'm still feeling very slightly foggy. So it makes sense that they warn patients to not drive, to not work (and probably should not blog) for 24 hours after the colonoscopy. Oh well. The End.