travis' brain dump

  

Ok, so this was on heck of a project, lol. Ordered up the kit from Sam’s Club (thanks to my parents for letting me use their Sam’s card) for about $1400 shipped. We recieved the boxes, all 5 of them (4 plus the slide) about 4 days after ordering, I was pretty amazed. Here’s the outline review of the process. I wish I’d had more time in single days to dedicate to the project, but overall it didn’t take too terribly long. The first couple of days were hard to work on the project as I only had a couple hours after work.

Day 1 (2-3 hours work):
Unpack the boxes, review all the parts, etc.

Amanda, supervising the unpacking of the parts.

The piles growing in the back yard staging area.

That’s a whole lot of parts!

Day 2 (1-2 hours work):
Let the assembly begin!

A good chunk of Day 2 was spent not only getting the framework together but leveling the dang thing. Nothing says awesome like having to dig into the ground in odd places to shave off some land to get the main playhouse level.

Day 3 (3-4 hours work):
Finally, some visual progress!

While I didn’t get quite as far as I had wanted to this day, at least the floor, the picnic table and all the primary supports were in place. The framework was also anchored into the ground at this point.

Day 4 (4-5 hours work):
This was a Saturday. While I’d hoped to get more work in today, it was cold in the morning then a busted cordless drill set me back an hour or so. Had to go get another one from Sears. Bummer.

I was hoping for a little more done today, at least get the slide and the steps up, but alas, it wasn’t in the cards. Kiddos will have to wait til Day 5 and me skipping a few steps to get the slide in so they have something to play on while I finish this thing. lol

Day 5 (4-5 hours work):
Much more progress today!

Coming along nicely, next stop, the roof!

Finally a roof! Assembly of this wasn’t too hard at all. Just more time consuming due to the smaller parts being assembled all over.

A lot got done today visually, but it really wasn’t much more work than Day 4. Still, it was finally coming together and looking like something!

Day 6 (5-6 hours work):
Finally almost there! Major progress visually, despite the fact it only took a few hours to get the monkey bars and the swings operational.

Day 7 (1 hour work): FINISHED!

All in all it wasn’t a bad project. My only complaints were some of the upper portions (where the use of smaller parts is more common) didn’t quite fit correctly. Not much modification was needed but you needed to know how to spot some of upcoming problems of placing a piece in a location that you might have to move it from later. Accuracy of the instructions to the parts, I’d give it a 7 out of 10. Nothing structurally problematic though, just mostly cosmetic. The only major issue I had with this was the lack of enough 3″ lag screws and 3/4″ truss bolts/barrell nuts and lock nuts. Those things were the bane of my existance. Nothing a trip to Home Depot didn’t fix, however.

I most certainly wouldn’t say this thing is sturdy enough for adults to play on, but the kiddos… you could load up about 5-6 on there without a single hint of strain. I for one am glad to be done with it. The last day just bugged me getting the final little pieces finished and all checked out. Can’t complain too much though as it sure beat buying something similar from Backyard Adventures or Rainbow for twice as much. Just an FYI, this set is made by a company called Backyard Liesure Holdings which just so happens to be the same company that creates the following playsets:

- Create-N-Adventure™
- Adventure Playsets™
- Backyard Adventures™
- Leisure Time Products™
- Backyard Builders™
- Politron™

Pretty interesting. So all in all I got the same product (for the most part) as Backyard Adventures for about half the cost, although I had to put in the ~24-25 hours of work. Still worth it in the end to see the kids having a blast playing on it. If you’re looking for an affordable, large scale playset. I can’t say I’d warn you away. Just make sure you take your time, read the instructions and assemble the parts properly.

Now comes the fun part of destroying the old swingset and playhouse… muhaha!

  

Tough Mudder… for those that know what it is, you know what I’m talkin’ about… For those that don’t? Well, it’s 8-10 miles of obstacles of rock, water, tubes, walls, wood, fire, electricity and yep, you guessed it, mud.

What am I thinking? Honestly, I’m not quite sure, LOL.

I got drafted by Randy to join in this, sure to be, adventure at the end of June…  Am I ready for it? No way what so ever! What does that mean? Yep, you guessed it… intense training. Am I nervous? You bet!

Training starts tomorrow and boy I can’t wait… *face palm* Surely I’d have picked a better day to start than the day after DST begins eh? *rolls eyes* It’s about 18:30 right now and I’m feeling as thought it’s going to be hard to go to sleep tonight… only to turn around have to get up at the equivalent of 2:45 (3:45 DST) to start working out. For the record… I don’t give a rats rear end about the stupid reasons behind DST. It’s dumb, and it kills people. (I’m actually not being dramatic, read: Is Daylight Saving Time bad for your health?) Regardless, I will be up at the crack of dawn sweating to the P90X blues, working during the day and then taking on another interval training in the afternoons before dinner and slipping into a coma due to exhaustion, er going to bed. What better way to lose weight right? I’m actually doing pretty good.

I finally got rid of my “work related weight gain” that I acquired last summer due to insane hours and lack of working out for 3 months and the subsequent 2 months of recovery I needed after. *NOT* doing that again. Only 15lbs from goal weight overall! Of course, after I finish up with this I have no idea what I will weigh… In other news, along the way I’ll be hitting up a couple 10k’s if all goes well. The Bolder Boulder is a must but if I’m training for the Tough Mudder, you can bet I’m going to decimate my time from last year. Last year I came in at 1:14:50. I’m looking for sub one hour this year. While I don’t know for sure if I’ll land in the upper 40′s, I will be breaking the hour barrier and at least be in the mid to upper 50′s. (personal goal setting at it’s finest!)

Here’s to hoping I don’t hit the snooze button tomorrow!!!

  

So, another year down… another to go.

2010 had some pretty interesting challenges, lessons learned, blah blah the usual nonsense. What does 2011 hold? Who knows at this point. NYE went pretty well… it was a calm one. Just spent it hanging out with Andy and Amanda and the kiddos gorging on food continuously for the entire evening… gotta get in that last night of crazy eating before those weight loss new years resolutions kick in eh? I’ve actually done really well this holiday season, partly due to the fact I’ve been sick most of it. This cold has been such a pain in the rear end but it seems to finally be getting out of my system.

So much I could throw on the list of new years resolutions and goals but at the very least, this year, I’ve got to do the final kill on these few extra pounds lingering… I’m goaling for the first three months of 2011 to get that done… this past summer really screwed me up with that crazy work schedule. I was within my goal weight by 10lbs and ended up gaining 10 back due to working so much. On my list of goals is to run another 2 10k’s this year and get a better time than last year by at least 10 minutes. I think I can do better than that, but we’ll see. I figure if I can drop 20lbs by April and kick training into high gear from the end of March through the end of May, I should be able to tear up the Bolder Boulder this next year.  Eventually I want to work myself up to a half marathon, but I’m not going that crazy this year. That’s just way to ambitious for me with my schedule, lol.

I’ve got the usual various other goals to work on too… you know those personal goals for finances, the ever looming Camaro project that is slowly but surely moving forward, etc… I just want to make some major dents this year. On the plan as well, remove that horrible old swing set from the back yard and build the kiddos a mega-plex to play in for the summer. Should be a fun project but I’m definitely done with that archaic setup we’ve got going on. It should be a pretty interesting year. But for now, I’ve still got 3 solid months left of snowboarding season and that’s got priority.

So in other news… on the tech side of things… I’ve integrated my blogsite with Facebook. Now it’s easier to login to the site using facebook credentials. Anyone with an existing account can login the same way and link their blogsite account to their FB account from their user profile screen. Also new accounts registering can do so using their FB credentials. This is all part of the eventual removal of the traditional registration/login system that has been allowing about 50 spammers a month to sign up using automated methods. Really irritating. More to come on this as I play with more features, etc.

Anyway… enough boring nonsense.

  

so… after fifteen hours of driving, three days and two nights in provo,utah, one snowboarding trip to park city, one visit with an old friend, a few hours of chaos with kiddos and an android g2 phone later… christmas is over.

This by far was the most expensive trip (in part mostly due to shelling out 5 bones for a new phone) but overall was a good one. It was good to see some of Amanda’s family and get out of town for a few days but I’m still on the fence on whether the several trips through some epic powder was worth 600 bucks or not. Nothing says awesome like doing a cartwheel tumble down a hill so violently that you eject your cell phone from two seperate pockets that were previously secured well with velcro… lol

Anyway, regardless… the kiddos, Amanda and even myself had a pretty good trip. I am however glad to be home… now if I can just kick this stupid cold I will be happy.

Only one thing left to survive… New Year’s.

Merry Christmas to all… (albeit a day late)

-=posted via my t-mobile G2=-