Standard, GPS difference, Downsizing, Better than me, Lazy, Can’t Breathe

Friday on my way home I picked up Sadie.  While I was there I also addressed a long running problem Ali had with her PC.  She has three monitors.  The third monitor was connected via a USB to VGA adapter.  That adapter has been problematic.  It seems whenever a Windows update is applied it stops working, requiring some intervention to get it working again.  I had an old video card that had three ports built into it that I was going to throw into her PC to eliminate the USB device.

So when I got there I pulled out her PC to look at the old video card, it already had three ports.  The DVI port was not being used.  I wasn’t sure why I didn’t use that port originally when I set up the system.  Once I started trying to attach a cable to it I remembered.  The DVI port was keyed in a way that did not work with certain connectors.  Luckily in my bag I had brought a bunch of different cables, just in case.  One of them fit which allowed me to fix the problem without even cracking the case.

I got it fixed so quickly that I had time to also fix a problem with her laptop which had a corrupted profile.  I worked on that as I sat downstairs and caught up with Ali’s boyfriend.  I had not seen him in awhile so it was good to talk.  I always enjoy his company.

This weekend had all of the standard to do’s but not much on the side project front.  The closest thing to that was pulling out a large portion of the stuff in the small shed and throwing out/ reorganizing those items to make it less cluttered.  There are a lot of spots inside and outside of the house that feel like they could use attention when it comes to organization and purging.  I am going to try to keep taking bites out of that task one small chunk at a time.

Late Saturday afternoon I took the Ultron back out to the same dead end side street to do another round of speed testing, this time with my GPS.  When I tested top speed just using the onboard speedometer it showed 94kmh (58mph) as my fastest speed.  That just seemed ridiculous so I wanted to do the same test with another measuring instrument.  I was very surprised at the results.  After three or four all out runs the GPS showed a top speed of 37MPH, which is still crazy fast on a vehicle with 11 inch tires but way less than what the speedometer showed.  I’m not quite sure why there is such a discrepancy when compared to the scooter speedometer.

The weird thing is the Dualtron, according to it’s onboard speedometer, got to 37mph as well, but that speed feels way faster on the Ultron.  My current theory is that is because the Ultron accelerates harder with it’s bigger motors.  Anyway, it was an interesting test that I think translated into an interesting video.

Saturday night we watched our Netflix rental, Downsizing, with Matt Damon. The plot is science discovers how to shrink humans down in size to a half foot tall or less.  The result is grossly less consumption of resources.  The first half hour of the movie was interesting but after that the movie just got real stupid.  The story seemed to have no flow whatsoever and bored me terribly for most of the movie. The film oscillated between being a comedy and serious in a way that was aggravating and non-sensical.  Don’t bother renting it, C-.

Sunday morning Cindy and I headed to the Greenway to ride.  We brought the Dualtron for Cindy to ride as well as the Backfire all terrain skateboard and the KingSong 18L.  With four new tires I wanted to see how the Backfire would feel on the varying terrains the Greenway offers.  The answer was, great.  Cindy wound up riding the skateboard too, a lot.  In fact she took it on the mulch trail and did really well, likely better than I could hope to do myself.  We had a lot of fun on the ride.

Sunday afternoon I found myself feeling lazy.  I even laid in bed and watched the original Iron man movie from start to finish.  I felt sort of like a slug for not accomplishing more throughout the day.  It takes a very short period of inactivity to bring about those feelings of being a bum. I even ate an entire box of Reeses Pieces.

This morning first thing I had a breathing test, a follow up to my mystery ailment that started late summer last year.  I never had a breathing test before, it’s not a great time.  They give you a device to pinch your nose shut while you wrap your mouth around a tube.  The tech then leads you through a bunch of breathing drills.  She has to be part cheerleader as she uses hand movements and “cheering” to guide you to perform the tests properly.  Most of the tests involve you doing prolonged exhales and inhales to the point where you feel like you have nothing left to give, which is sort of uncomfortable.  Luckily it didn’t take more than 15 minutes to complete.

I asked the tech how I did.  She didn’t give me specifics but she said if I would have scored below 70% in any of the tests she would have given me an inhaler to use to retake a test.  Since no inhaler was used I guess I at least scored a C or above.  I have a follow up with the pulmonologist on Thursday where I will see the results and talk about what happens next.