THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

I thought I would give an update on the Lowe’s situation that I posted about last Friday. I called the installer about 4 p.m. and he said that he had sent his information off to the store. I called Lowe’s then and they told me that they had received it but there was some sort of processing that had to be done on their side before I could come pay for it. They told me that they would call me when it was ready and that my order had all kinds of ASAPs all over it. Mmm-hmm, sure they will.

So that Lowe’s is on my way home from work, so I stopped in an hour or so later. I went back to the flooring department and waited for the associate to finish helping someone else. While I was waiting, the guy from “installed sales” called me on my cell phone and told me it was all ready. When the flooring associate was finished, I told him my situation and he started looking for the order but couldn’t find it. I told him that the guy had gone out there today and measured and he said something like “Oh then it couldn’t possibly be ready now – it usually takes 2-3 days.” I told him that the guy from Lowe’s just called me like 5 minutes ago! He still couldn’t find it and so he went back to get a manager (I’m used to it!). They came back out a bit later and found my order. Apparently it was put in on the “old” system and not the “new” system. Or something. In any case I went to pay for it but couldn’t use my 20% off coupon because they don’t take them on installed sales / special orders / labor. I tried to get them to do it but the system wouldn’t let them and the manager wouldn’t (or possibly couldn’t) override it. Bummer as that cost me like $400.

So finally I accept the price and go to pay for it. The POS gives an 800 number to call for an authorization and after awhile of trying that, I get the notice that my card has been declined and I’d have to call Citibank. I called them and apparently Lowe’s had charged me $1900 this morning and they were wanting to know if that was an actual purchase. It was not, and after a few calls and investigations it turned out that they had charged me (again) for the deck materials (even though I had paid for it back on Wednesday). So that was annoying but I had Citibank lift the hold so I could buy the carpet.

By this time it was getting late. I had made an appointment for some folks to come look at our house to rent at 6:30 (yay!), and it was becoming apparent that I was not going to make it. So I made a call to have Carolyn be ready to show it. I hurried home and ended up hitting the tail end of their visit.

While this was all going on, I had received a call from the other Lowe’s, saying that my deck materials were on their way. I called back and ended up getting hold of a manager down there and after walking her through the various transactions, she saw where I was double charged, and said she’d reverse it. I have yet to verify if that has actually been taken care of or not.

Saturday I went to inspect the decking and (of course) they had just dropped it in the driveway AND there were things missing. So off I went to Lowe’s (again). Turns out that some of the stuff that I thought was missing they put in the front room of the house (even though I looked there; not sure how I missed it). And some of it they didn’t have and would be delivering later. I went back out to the house in the afternoon and counted and I think most of the stuff was there.

In non-Lowe’s annoyances, we had arranged for a few people to come over Saturday afternoon to paint but when I got there, it turned out that the drywaller had not finished sanding the drywall. So we couldn’t paint, and it was rather embarrassing to have to send those folks back home.

Back to Lowe’s, as I have mentioned previously, they have this promotion going on where for every $1000 you buy, you get a $100 gift card. I’ve been entering in my receipts, but I haven’t really been tracking it to make sure I hit the even thousand mark. Since obviously $3909.99 in total purchases is a lot worse than $4000. Well, $100 worse anyways. So I was entering in all my receipts from over the weekend and it came to …….. $7002.49! How cool is that? And I even went back in late on Saturday night to buy one last 5 gallon thing of paint since I didn’t think we would have enough. So that paint was free and then some. So we should be getting $700 in Lowe’s gift cards in the next 6-8 weeks. I think we can find some things to spend that on…

Yup that middle number is now an 8. Again. For now.

I’ve been in the middle of my revolutionary weight loss program – “Eat less; exercise more”. It’s been going pretty well as you can see below. Blue line is my actual daily weights – Green line is the “trend” line which is just a weighted average.

I was down to 188.4 on Sunday morning (slightly up this morning). I’m shooting for 170.

I am trying to get this weight loss pic on my blog somehow as a widget so that I can be accountable and that you can all follow along with me, but it’s not working so well.

I’m actually considering moving from Blogger over to WordPress.

So I have now been blogging for 3 years now. I meant to put up a post on the actual 3 year anniversary date, but for some reason I was thinking that it was at the end of the month, when in fact it was on April 12th.

To celebrate, all readers will receive 50% off their monthly membership fees for TPMTHDM for the rest of the month!!!!

See now don’t say I never do anything for you.

Lowe’s is idiots? Lowe’s is an idiot? Hmmm… I must be grammatically sound before I go OFF on the annoyances of the past few days. On the one hand, the store’s name is Lowe’s. If you go to one singular store, it says Lowe’s, which I guess must be singular. But Lowe’s is an idiot doesn’t sound right. I guess what I’m really trying to say is the people at Lowe’s are idiots, which works. Okay then.

So Wednesday afternoon I go down and buy the last of my deck materials. I covered this in the last post. So the guy there said that they could totally load up their truck for me to rent and come by Thursday to pick it up, and to just call tomorrow (Thursday which is now yesterday). So I called and of course nobody had heard of anything nor done anything. Not surprising. So they set to work on it and then they call back a little later and say it’s a lot of stuff and would be like 2 or 3 trips / loads so would I rather just pay them $60 to deliver it. So I say okay. They say it would be delivered tomorrow (Friday which is now today).

So I call them up today to see when it might be delivered. After being transferred around several times, STILL nobody has heard of anything; the delivery guy does not have my “ticket”. They’re currently looking into that.

But that is not all; oh no, that is not all. Also on Wednesday (ear-lie in the morning before work) I went into a different Lowe’s to get my carpet. The first step in that is to pay them to come out and measure the area so that I know how much carpet to buy. They put me in the system, I pay the $35 for that, and then they turn me over to a flooring installer who will call me within 48 business hours. Flash forward to today and of course nobody has called me. So I call them up, go through a few people and finally get someone who tells me that they have 48 business hours. And I’m thinking “Lady, I have the timestamped receipt right in front of me and it’s been 50 hours”. She says that they have all day today to do it.

Now normally it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, because we’re actually not ready for the carpet until we paint, so it will be probably a week or so before we can get it installed. But Lowe’s has a promotion going on where for every $1000 you spend, you get $100 in gift cards. Well actually they have 2 similar promotions going on, but one of them expires 4/27. So I really need to pay for this carpet by Saturday (tomorrow) or I lose out on about $200 in gift cards.

So I ask for the name and number of this company that is supposed to call me. I call them, and of course Lowe’s has sent them zip. So she takes my number and calls me back in a few minutes. She had called the store and gotten my order. Then she asks “Can we come by on Tuesday?” I mention how I really need this done by tomorrow and she tells me she’ll see what she can do and will call me back.

In the meantime a lady calls me about renting our current house so I’m talking with her. And like 500 people call me while I’m on the phone with her. So I call back the deck Lowe’s – they don’t know anything and they’re going to look at it. I call back Missy from the flooring company – they called back the store and had them switch it to a different installer so that they could get it done today. What? GOOD customer service? I’m floored!!! Goooooo Pro Flooring of Cincinnati!!

But then Lowe’s calls the house and talks to Carolyn (even though I told them to call my cell) and she doesn’t know what’s going on with anything because I haven’t kept her in the loop. The lady is snippy with her and so then she (Carolyn) calls me (one of the 500). Finally I get that straightened out and someone is coming to measure this afternoon (no thanks to Lowe’s)

Good times!

So I sent this to my sister a few weeks ago but I don’t know if she checked it out.

This is a good one for any of you Spanish speakers out there.

You know how they have those menus at businesses where they say (in Spanish) press 2 for Spanish, etc.

Take a listen to National City at 1-800-738-3888. That is totally a gringo with the worst accent in the world

Sorry – no pictures today. But I did want to make a note about the new deck. We’re putting on a new deck and so I went to buy some of the materials. Lowe’s is having a promotion where for every $1000 you buy, you get $100 in gift cards. This promotion ends on Saturday so I wanted to make sure I bought all the stuff this week. I’m also going to buy all of our carpet (probably another $2000) this week.

Naturally I also have 20% off coupons that I am combining with this deal, so it’s like 30% off. Actually they have a totally separate gift-card promotion similar to the one above so it’s like 40% off.

So anyways, I already bought some of the deck stuff last week but I had to buy the rest of it. Lowe’s has a little deck design program that spits out all the stuff that you need with quantities and such.

So I went to the checkout lane and put in all the stuff. The subtotal came to like $2330, and I gave them my coupon. The guy was having some problems putting it in. The coupon said that it was good for 20% off up to $2000, so we both agreed that it should be $1930 (20% off $2000 = $1600 plus the extra $330). But he couldn’t figure out how to put that into the system.

So he calls over his manager who is not sure what to put in and in fact was getting a little snippy with me. At first he looked like he was going to give it to me for just $1600 which I told him was wrong. Then he snips at me that he can’t give me the discount on the extra $330, which I knew and was not trying to have him do.

Anyway he too had problems, so a 3rd person was called over. This guy looks at the coupon and says that it means that it’s good for a DISCOUNT of $2000 (I guess up to purchases of $10,000), so he just gives me the 20% on the whole thing, so instead of $1930, it was $1864 – a savings of $66 plus tax!

Gooooo me!

Still looking like an end of May move date; it’s getting closer! We’ve been painting here at the old house trying to get it ready to rent out.

Over at the new house they have put on all the interior doors and all the drywall. We’ll be going over on Saturday I think to finish priming and then putting the paint on early next week. Also I believe it’s finally been dry enough that my contractor is renting a Bobcat to do the final grading of all the dirt in the backyard (we’re sloping it). And the siding should be arriving soon; so that will go up probably next week. Good times for all!

Woohoo it’s exciting triathlon time again! Just like last year I am racing in the Miami University Student Foundation triathlon.

Here is my race report. First of all, I am going to be going by my watch time. I did get the official results from HFP and they are 2 minutes slower than the time I had on my watch. I could understand a few seconds discrepancy but 2 minutes? My friend PJ also had a watch on and his time was also 2 minutes or so slower on the “official” results. So until that gets resolved, I’m calling shenanigans.

So, looking back at last year’s report, my first big dilemma came at a wake up time. This year due to the large number of participants (over 600!) they moved the start time from 8:00 to 7:30, and then to 7:15. I decided to wake up at 4:30 a.m. I didn’t sleep all that great and ended up waking up on my own at 4:18. I packed the car and set off.

The second big dilemma, upon review, was which route to take to Oxford – Cross County or 275. I was disappointed to find that no empirical data existed from my choice last year. How else was I supposed to determine the best way? I’m a scientist!. I need the data.

So here’s the data from this year’s route – where I took Cross County.

Time: 28 minutes from my house to the intersection of US-27 and 275.

Or should I say, 28 minutes from my house to ALMOST the intersection of US-27 and 275, AT WHICH POINT I GOT PULLED OVER BY A COP!!!!!.

Yeah, I got pulled over at like 5 a.m. by a Colerain Twp. police officer. He comes up to the door and asks the classic cop question “Do you know why I pulled you over?” I, of course, follow Rule 1 of being pulled over by a cop which is “Never admit to anything”. I knew I wasn’t speeding – that was for sure – I was hypermiling . So I say no, and he tells me that I have a headlight out. I was aware of this as Carolyn has been telling me to get this fixed for some time now. But the first words out of my mouth (had I not followed Rule 1) would have been “because my license plate sticker is expired?” I thought for sure he was going to bust me when he ran my plates but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He ended up just giving me a warning, and then asked where I was going and we talked a little triathlon. It was refreshing to meet a cop who wasn’t a complete jerk. I even tried to go out to RateMyCop.com to give him a positive rating but they don’t have Colerain Twp’s department online yet. But hey let’s hear it for buffer time!!! Carolyn kept wondering why I was leaving so early.

I’ve written (and you theoretically have read) this much and I haven’t even gotten to Oxford yet? Hoo-ee this is going to be long.

The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful. I spent a couple of minutes trying to remember the name of that town between Cincinnati and Oxford. I also had a car pass me with a bike on the back (I guess also going for the triathlon). The bike had saran wrap all over the bike seat and handlebars. I thought that was an interesting way to try and combat the rain (forecast was for rain all morning). But then I thought it would be extra time during transition to try and pull that off. I didn’t see them at the race itself so I don’t know if they pulled it off before the race or not. Anyways, once I got to Oxford, I missed the turnoff and had to turn around.

I got there at about 5:30 or so. I went up and registered and then took my bike into the transition area.

As you can see from the picture above, I got the prime “end of row” spot on the rack. Yet another reason to get there early. You come down that row after the swim, so being right there on the end is worth AT LEAST 5 seconds or so .

Here is a picture of PJ and I. I was wearing my shirt from last year’s race; trying to “intimidate” everyone else by letting them know that yes, I’m a veteran. PJ said that he opted for a blank white T-shirt to let potential advertisers know that he was available. We talked about sponsors and I commented that really, advertisers were wasting their money sponsoring any of the front runners – after all, I’d be on the course for MUCH longer, giving them much more bang for the buck! Notice too my ultra tight super streamlined racing swimsuit.

One of the things that I had done this year was bring a 2nd towel. It was time for some strategic placing. I left one towel out in the transition area. And then, I made my way poolside.

This picture is taken right at where you start the swim. You start right in that bottom left corner, and then do a serpentine swim down one lane and up the other, until you make your way through the 8th and final lane, exiting the pool at the 8th lane, in the top left corner of the picture. Notice PJ there in the background.
Here’s a closeup of the area right next to the pool exit. You can see that I stuck my 2nd towel there. That way once I got out of the pool I could grab a towel and dry off as I made my way to the transition area. Again, saving me the CRUCIAL 5 SECONDS THAT WILL GET ME INTO 1ST PLACE! PJ wanted me to point out that he too put his towel there but it’s not in the picture simulating how he was already out of the pool before I got there

We kind of hung around for the next hour or so, making a few trips back to our cars to get everything ready. They had the mandatory pre-race poolside meeting at about 7 and midway through I decided to head back to the transition area to make my final adjustments (dump the shirt and flip-flops I still had on). As we were heading back there we heard an announcement “Final warning to clear the transition area before we turn the timing mats on”. We made it just in time.

Sat in the bleachers for about 40 or so minutes while the first 300 or so people started their swim. Then we made our way back down. Unlike the 3 Pigs last year, I got my goggles in place with no mishaps.

Then it was time for the swim. Even though I promised to cannonball into the pool if I did it this year I didn’t. PJ did and got a few laughs from the people around.

When I started swimming it seriously felt like there was a current pushing against me. I don’t know if I was just imagining it or if it was some sort of byproduct of all those people in the water or what. I had just read about this attachment to pools that let you use a regular family pool as a lap swimming pool by pushing a current back at you and that’s what it felt like.

My goal was to try and pass more than the 2 people I was able to pass in the swim last year. I knew people would pass me, especially since I had put in an overly optimistic swim estimate of 9 minutes. Turns out 10 people passed me while I did not pass anyone. I did manage to swim freestyle the whole time without stopping. A few people hit my feet as they were coming up on me; I gave them some extra hard kicks. Then one guy was passing me like right on top of me; getting all in my way (rather than passing on the left where there was plenty of room). I gave him an elbow. Other than that, not much happened.

Got out of the pool and grabbed my clandestine towel. Unfortunately I forgot to hit the lap button when I did so I’m not sure of my exact time. By the time I got into the transition area and hit it, it was 11:31. So I’m guessing about 11 minutes or so.

Transition was fine. Not much to do and I made my way out – 1:52 on my watch plus whatever time due to not hitting my watch on time. Again, let’s say 2:23. I left the transition area right behind PJ who managed to not take forever like he did last year (3:39!)

The bike course was different this year than it was last year. I had set my internal goal at 50 minutes, and figured that would need about 15.5 mph. So I decided to aim for 16 mph on the flat stretches. Because I’m a total nerd, one of the things that I do as I ride is calculate miles per hour and stuff in my head as I ride. So I figured that I should be aiming for a mile every 4 minutes. At the 4 mile mark I was only at 15 minutes (1 minute ahead of pace) and I thought “Wow I’ve got this!”. Then I told myself “Well, maybe I should wait until some of these big hills before I start congratulating myself ”

As the bike course started I was keeping track of how many people I was passing. I am nothing but devoted to my faithful readers who I knew would be hanging on every detail such as this. I almost stopped counting the people that passed me (because there were a lot right at the beginning) but then a funny thing happened – people stopped passing me and I started passing people!

Shortly after that I looked up and realized I had gone off the course. At least I thought I had – I had just passed a road off to the left and gone straight. But I couldn’t see any course markings or any bikers ahead of me. Just as I was about to start panicing I did see some race officials in the distance.

And they signalled the start of the first hill. It was brutal. I immediately passed 3 people who were walking their bikes up. I managed to ride all the way up but it was slow and very hard. I had noticed from the course topo map that there were 2 big hills, so when I got to the 2nd one I thought “Wow this one wasn’t even close to that first one”. Then I realized that was just a fun intermediate hill. The 2nd hill was also pretty big though not as bad as the first one.

After about mile 9 or 10, the rest of the course is fairly flat with a slight downhill back to the transition area. I was hitting about 20 to 25 mph. The final totals were passed 32, passed by 26 (net +6 for the bike). Time for the 20.5K (12.7 miles) was 51:16, or 14.9 mph.

Transition 2 was a brisk 34 seconds, which I note was 26th overall, again proving the adage that although I can not swim, bike or run very fast, I can do NOTHING very fast.

As I made my way to start the run, I noticed that I was going to have to do about 24:30 on the run to hit my stretch goal time of 1:30. It looked like beating last year’s time of 1:38:45 was definitely going to happen, barring some sort of craziness on the run.

So off I went. The first mile was pretty slow – I had a bit of the jelly legs going on. I didn’t see the Mile 1 marker, but at the water station which I think was about there, I had about 9 minutes. I had both passed and been passed by a few people. Somewhere around here, this one person passed me and I decided to try and run with him as long as I could. I figured since he was going a bit faster than me, he’d be good to try and push myself. I ran behind him for most of the rest of the course and we passed a few people. I briefly passed him when he stopped for water but he then passed me right back. My time at Mile 2 was 16:55, meaning my 2nd mile was at about 8 minutes. At about mile 2.5 I started pushing a little harder. I saw that while 1:30 might be tough, I could probably hit 1:30:SOMETHING which I figured I could count . I passed the guy I had been running with as well as a few other people. Once we crossed the street back towards the transition area I kicked and really blew by 2 people there. Final passing totals were passed by 6 and passed 22 (net +16), and a final run time of 25:22, which is an 8:09 clip.

Final final time was 1:30:40, a time I was EXTREMELY pleased with. I improved in all 3 disciplines, leaving me to wonder how I could possibly get better again next year!

Again, like I mentioned, the “official” results have some definite time discrepancies, but here they are.

I’m assuming that the discrepancies are the same for everyone (at least several people I’ve seen have mentioned them), so even though the times are off, the order is probably fairly accurate. I was 285th out of 532, 24th out of 30 in my age group and 3rd out of 3 in the “Miller” division.

The race after party that was so fun last year was completely lame this year, probably mostly due to the rain. It had sprinkled off and on. During my bike it had rained a bit off and on and then when I got back from the bike all my stuff was noticably damp and then it had continued to sprinkle. I didn’t even get any free pizza!! .

All in all it was an extremely fun time and I’m looking forward to coming back next year! And remember, don’t mess with me, I’m an “athelete” [sic]

So I have decided to add walking to my list of exercises on my running log. In fact, if you read this blog post in a timely manner, you will see that I did some walking back on April 8th. 4.5 miles as a matter of fact. Why would I do something like that, you might ask? Well… read on.

Red Robin has a free birthday burger that they email you. Well, they don’t email you the burger (that would be tricky) – just a coupon for one. I was going to go on my actual birthday since I was out in the area for lunch, but alas, I had forgotten my coupon, and I didn’t feel like driving back to work to get it. I thought that I could probably have gotten away with it by showing them my license or something but just decided to do it the next day.

So the next day dawned and around 11 or so I decided to walk to Red Robin. I looked it up and it was only 2.5 miles (turned out to be about 2.3 as I cut through an abandoned golf course). It was a beautiful day (about 70 degrees or so) so I thought eh why not. Plus, I had just read an article about hypermiling so I was being all fuel conscious.

I think that had I realized QUITE how far 2.5 miles is (while walking) that I might have reconsidered. I know I definitely rued the long sleeve black shirt I picked out in the morning…

Pretty uneventful. The burger was good, and came with fries. It was interesting in seeing how just because the fries were there, I ate them, even though I’m trying my revolutionary diet, and as such didn’t really want them. I did not eat all of them though, which is unusual for me (I have a big “clean your plate” problem when it has food I like). I ate by myself and then tipped the waitress with a buck or so of change I had in my desk.

At least they didn’t bring me out a plate of nothing but a candle!

I do want to point out that I am not counting this walking time toward my goal of 4 days of exercise. I also want to point out that if you did NOT read this post in a timely fashion (so as to be able to see my walking outing on the exercise widget well then what’s wrong with you? You need your recommended daily allowance of DanMiller after all.

Okay – many of you have commented in on my last post, wanting to know if Kroger had indeed gotten the best of me.

OF COURSE NOT!!!!!

In fact, I’m hurt that you could even suggest such a thing. They caved like a master spelunker. It actually wasn’t even that hard. I called up to the Kroger 1-800 customer service line. Spoke to a lady there, explained my situation, and she added it to my plus card like that.

We talked for a little while and I thought I would share a few things. I asked if there was indeed a limit on how many of these pharmacy coupons you could use. She said that she thought there was a limit of $60 but that the pharmacist could override that. She said that they typically would override it for good customers, such as myself (her words).

Then she started talking about how they have that limit there because some people would just take advantage of things. She said that there shouldn’t be a problem for good, loyal customers such as myself (she said this several times during our conversation).

Then she delivered the money line, which went something like:

“Because you know, some people just use these coupons to get free groceries and that’s just not right”

GOOD! TIMES!

She’s right – free groceries aren’t right – it’s better when they pay you! That happened Friday afternoon – got a whole load of stuff and after coupons, and the buy 10 get $5 off promotion and some of those pharmacy rewards, my total came out to -$0.36. It’s always funny when they’re like “Okay your total is 36 cents” and I have to be like “Uhhhh actually YOU owe ME 36 cents” .

Apparently Kroger does not read my blog in which National City caves (Part 1 and Part 2). I go there today for some deals and also go to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy. I had to have them transfer it over from Meijer where Meijer had only let me use one prescription coupon at a time (good for $20 off a future order). Naturally I had another one in hand.

The pharmacist scanned it (though she looked annoyed about it) and I paid and that was that. Except that I did not get a receipt saying that my Rx Rewards had printed, and my balance remained at $15.49 (from the $20 pharmacy coupon I did a few days ago for a different one). I stop and ask about it.

She then starts babbling lies. First off she says that they don’t print out a separate receipt. I tell her that I’ve seen it. She says they changed the system. I tell her I was just here on Wednesday and it did it. Then she tells me that there is a limit of how many you can do per Kroger card. I say I haven’t heard anything about that – what’s the limit. She makes up “3″. And then just walks away.

Ooooooh Kroger you have not heard the last of this one. I will get my $20 out of you. I called the annoyingly named helpline 1-800-KROGERS but they are closed. But I will be on the case Monday baby.