Ding dong, Hey asshole, Salon, RR, a win!, Re-Vined
Saturday morning Cindy and I headed out for the nearby track to do some running. Last week I logged 8 laps around the track, this week I increased it by 25% totaling a little more than 2.5 miles, big woop. We got out a little later than normal meaning the temperatures were a little warmer than I would have preferred.
On the way back to the house I did a double take when I saw this sign by the side of the road on our street. I stopped and backed up to take a picture of it. Evidently somebody was really fed up with residents in our area using their car window as a trash can. I too have always been annoyed by it but I never had the brilliant idea to post a public service announcement about it using some sharp language to punctuate the point. I thought it was pretty hilarious.
It immediately made me think of a number of similar signs that would be appropriate on our street like, STOP SPEEDING ASSHOLE, STOP DRIVING ATVS ON THE ROAD ASSHOLE, KEEP YOUR DOGS IN YOUR YARD ASSHOLE, and STOP HITTING MY MAILBOX ASSHOLE. I think the signs could easily scale to a national level as well. Imagine how effective GET A JOB ASSHOLE, LOSE WEIGHT ASSHOLE, or STOP TEXTING ASSHOLE campaigns could be. I was disappointed that later in the day somebody had stomped the sign down. I may have to fix/resurrect it.
Cindy and I took advantage of the couple rain free days we just had to get the entire yard mowed. The front drainage ditches still had some water in them. I got the tractor stuck in a particularly muddy section. As I was trying to push it out solo some old guy towing a trailer stopped and helped me push, proving not everyone that lives around me is an asshole. A lot of the ditch had too much water to mow so I had to knock down a large rectangle of high grass using the weed whacker which is never much fun.
After we got done outside and ate lunch we headed out to go pick up the dogs for a weekend visit. When we got back I had two projects I wanted to work on. The first one was installing my new Ring doorbell. My existing doorbell, which I had replaced a couple years ago had already developed a hole in the button.
We had already played with the doorbell on Friday night to test it’s capabilities. It is basically a doorbell mated with a networked web cam and infrared sensor. It works like this, someone walks up and presses the big illuminated button. Once they do an instant alert is sent to whatever devices you have tied into the service. You are then taken to a live feed of the front door where you can see/hear whomever is there and they can hear you as well. It allows you to be virtually home from anywhere in the world more or less, able to interact with front door visitors at anytime.
The Ring also has advanced motion detection capabilities which you can tune to your liking. It not only tracks motion but also heat with it’s infrared sensor to differentiate between inanimate objects and living beings. Of course cars throw heat so you need to make sure you adjust the set up so every vehicle is not setting off an alert. If the Ring detects movement it sends you a different sounding alert. If you accept it you are taken again to the live feed so you can see what is going on. Even if you miss the notification, when you sign up for Ring’s dirt cheap cloud monitoring ($30 a year), you have recordings of any of these events which you can review whenever. The Ring has a very wide angle camera inside which offers you a GoPro sized field of view in HD resolution. The two way sound quality has been very good so far in our testing as well.
Installing the Ring was not difficult. I opted to use a left over piece of 1″ x 6″ as a mounting platform, the uneven surface of stucco wall would have been problematic. You have two options for powering the Ring. You can simply pull it off periodically and charge it’s battery via it’s USB port on the back. You can also use your existing doorbell wiring to power the device which is the option I used.
Of course cool tech is rarely cheap and that is the case with the Ring which sells for $199. Luckily I had $100 in Amazon bucks to help soften the sticker shock. Even if I didn’t, for me, it’s worth the two Franklins if you have similar geek bloodlines as I do.
The other project I started was the LED projector in the SSR thing. I totally was improvising the entire time I was out there. I found a hole in a cross support that is not a perfect spot but the only workable one without cutting into the supports with industrial strength tools that I do not own. The plan involved snipping out a small piece of sheet metal, drilling the proper size hole in it and then mounting the projector through that. Before I finalized the physical install I wanted to verify that tapping into the back up light circuit would work. The tap connector I bought earlier did not seem to work well for what I needed. I was unable to get any juice to the projector. I stopped the project until I could try a different splice connector, similar to what I used on the other side to fire up the back up camera.
Sunday morning we backed up our Saturday run with a Dunkin Donuts bike ride, the first time I paired a run/ride on a weekend in forever. The westbound ride to DD was especially treacherous, the bike lane was filled with debris. It was bad enough that when we got back I sent an email to the road maintenance department asking if they could use their street sweeper more regularly on that section of roadway. Even with me staying back several feet from Cindy I still wound up hitting a couple things. Luckily none of them hit the tire at the right angle to flat me.
As I watched the Eagles game Cindy was busy running a dog care salon. She gave Nicki a pretty thorough hair cut with the pet trimmers we bought awhile back. She then gave both dogs a bath. It seems like both dogs actually fuss less when we give them a bath outdoors with the hose instead of throwing them into the bath tub.
I was surprised at the way the Eagles game turned out. In the first half when Sam Bradford threw not one but two interceptions in the Saints end zone, I thought it was the perfect set up for yet another Eagles implosion. Instead they came out in the second half and put a hurting on the Saints. The offense all of a sudden seemed viable both on the ground and in the air. The biggest difference I noticed was the team seemed to be working at a more normal pace, not the Chinese fire drill hurry up style that Chip has built his career on. Maybe Kelly has realized that proper execution trumps time between plays in the long haul? If the Birds can keep forward momentum against the Giants next week maybe I will start to believe that Chip actually is capable of changing up his style if circumstances demand it.
Yesterday I posted my first Vines since January. You may recall when I started Vining a couple years ago I went on a tear, pumping out 7 second videos at a torrid pace. For no particular reason I can recall I just simply stopped doing them. Well I popped out a few yesterday. I am now just short of 200 total Vines, a minuscule amount when compared to regular Viners but a decent number for an old fart.