A cruel joke, Ioniq oil, Franken-wheel

Mother nature evidently has a cruel sense of humor.  When we got home Sunday afternoon we were both thrilled to see pretty much all of the standing water on the property had receded into the ground after 2-3 days of no/light rain.  Heck I even took the tractor into the back yard of the coop and mowed the two foot high grass that had been poking out of the water.  The chickens even seemed happier to have full access to their area without having to wear flippers.

Well out of nowhere, a tropical storm developed Sunday night and blew through our area in the last 36 hours dumping tons of rain, putting me back at square one.  It frustrates the hell out of me.  I can not wait for the return of winter. During that time I will need to do something to significantly raise the ground level in certain areas around the house with the chicken yard being first priority.

Despite the near constant rain I tried to be somewhat productive and changed the oil on the Ioniq.  It was probably not needed yet but since we were going on a road trip I wanted to get it done.  The rain forced the work to be done inside the garage which required some extra care to avoid getting oil on the floor.  The procedure went smoothly.  Getting access to the oil drain plug and filter is a little weird as they are hidden behind two access panels of a weird felt-like cover over the entire bottom of the front end of the car.  Of course I shot video of the work since I found no other Ioniq oil change videos, a possible niche market.

It was ironic that my new large format 3D printer that I have been waiting for over a month to be delivered finally showed up yesterday.  I wasted little time in setting it up.  The first thing I noticed was it is far less polished of a set up than my FlashForge Finder.  The controls are pretty sparse, the bells and whistles are far fewer but this printer is not about that, it’s about printing big shit.

So instead of doing the smart thing and trying a small print first, I went right into trying to print something big, a console tray for my Tacoma.  I got the print started ok but when I got up this morning the one corner had lifted off the print surface so I killed the print.

Not only do I need to learn the ins and outs of the new printer, I also need to learn how to work in a new slicer software since the program I used for the Finder is proprietary.  I have no doubt I will get better at it but this week is not the best one to try to do so because of everything else going on.

Speaking of everything else, I have a lot of anxiety about going on the road trip.  I always have concerns about leaving the house and specifically the chickens in someone else’s care.  However this time I also have a TON of things going on at work currently which makes taking a week off less than ideal.  I am confident it will all work out ok in the end but I still have an unsettled feeling that I do not enjoy.

I ordered an Inmotion trolley handle to attach to my Msuper for the trip to allow Cindy a way to push the wheel more easily.  I broke the built in trolley handle doing backwards maneuvers.  My eventual fix will be replacing the handle and case of the Msuper but that isn’t going to happen this week for sure. This stop gap measure should get the job done short term.