Pegged the Productivity Needle
Some weekends you just get shit done, this was one of those weekends. A good majority of the day Saturday was consumed trying to make the water logged and ratty looking yard look half decent. Cindy got on the tractor and mowed the non-mucky areas for me. I was on the weed whacker forever. Not only did I do the normal tasks but also used the whacker as a hand held brush hog more or less, walking through the back of the chicken yard and knocking down the 1-2 foot grass in a large open area. It sucked. The end result was the yard looking decent outside of the black mud trails from the tractor in the low lying spots.
After jumping in the pool to cool down and remove a layer of grime I turned my attention to the AC air handler. I had a second UV light kit to install. I was putting it where the original light was, in the supply side of the duct, right above the air handler. As I mentioned previously, this is where my old AC contractor put the bulb which is not ideal if you only have one light. The best spot is inside the air handler, shining directly on the coils and drip pan where shit is most likely to form. However adding a second light up top gets the other side of the air handler giving the entire unit a UV bath.
Installing the kit was pretty straight forward since I just helped Daniel relocate the other light the week prior. All I had to do was connect the ballast to the transformer and stick the light into the existing hole. I did drill a second hole in the duct and inserted a view plug, making it easy to tell if the light is still working or not. All in all I spent maybe a half hour putting the other light in.
On Saturday I also received the 16X demo wheel for testing. When I pulled the EUC out of the box I immediately noticed the tire was flat, weird. Even weirder was when I looked for the valve to add air there was none, just a hole in the rim where it is supposed to be.
Evidently while the unit was in NYC for two months KingSong sent a different tire to be put on. When one of the guys up there tried to swap it he wound up puncturing the inner tube. Instead of putting a new tube in he was told to just ship the wheel to me and that I would take care of it. This was very interesting since none of this was communicated to me by anyone. I immediately sent an email to the owner of Ewheels asking what the deal was and if he planned to ship an inner tube to me. Sure I have the ability to change a tube on the 16X but I just thought it was bizarre that I would be tasked with the job without asking first.
I still have not heard anything back from Ewheels so I just laid out my own money for a new tube which should be here mid-week. I then get to pull the wheel apart, change the tube, and THEN hopefully get around to the business of testing it out. I’m still scratching my head over the situation and lack of communication.
Saturday night we watched Vice, the movie depicting the rise to power of the puppet master and scum of the Earth, Dick Cheyney. It was fascinating that Christian Bale played this role, the combo of his real life weight gain and incredible make up work transformed him into a very believable version of the most diabolical VP in history. I learned a lot of back story on Cheyney that I did not know before and despite me despising the man, the movie was B+. The way the story was told and who was telling it was very unique, which you will understand if you see the film.
Sunday morning I wound up doing a solo ride as Cindy was in the queue to do her first census road work. I opted to take the Pint out to Ave Maria to ride, a perfect place for low speed and scenic cruising. I had a great time putting over 7 miles on the board. I love the One Wheel Pint, a lot.
Cindy did get census assignments in our local area. She thought it would be efficient and easy to use our PEVs to do the work. She first did a few on the Minipro which was convenient to hop on and off of but too slow with only an 11mph top speed. She came back and instead got on the Dualtron which can go 30mph plus.
The extra speed was nice but the big scooter was not as easy to jump on and off of. However the bigger problem was the heat with temps in the low 90s. Cindy was burning up. She eventually came back and got her car which I think will be the way to go from now on. Not only will it give her cool AC to retreat to, it also will allow her to charge her Census laptop on the go which appears to not have fantastic battery life.
So a good chunk of my weekend and a couple hours Thursday and Friday night had been spent working on assembling the Prusa MK3S 3D printer kit. This is a TRUE printer kit where you get a box full of a couple hundred parts and you put EVERYTHING together yourself. I once did another printer kit but it was not nearly as involved or as granular as this kit is.
The good news is that Prusa includes what may be the most detailed and well written assembly manual of anything I have ever seen. It is simply amazing. Equally amazing is the part organization and labeling, each step of the process has it’s own parts bag. On the bag is a picture illustrating each part with accurate size depictions so you make sure you are using the correct size bolt or nut. When I glanced at the instructions at first the task seemed daunting, if not almost impossible based on my past history with very complex, tedious, tasks. But I had no choice, it had to get done.
On Friday night Cindy jumped in and helped me get the X and Y axis built. The stuff after that was really only a one person job so I trudged through the remainder solo. Despite the complexity, I tried to just focus on whatever the task was at hand. Thanks to the great instructions with pictures I kept making steady progress. I finally fired up the printer a little after 9 PM last night. After going through the set up routine I embarked on my first print which actually failed about halfway in but I think that could have been avoided with different settings.
I awoke at 4:30 AM this morning. As soon as I did I thought about how I could get more shit done like relocating the printer which was sitting on a foldable table in front of my desk, starting another print, and editing the video of the process. I actually got it all done, including a sweet two color bottle opener print before heading to work.
Being productive feels good, real good.