Archives July 2016

So yesterday was Prime Day, a self serving event that Amazon invented a year or two ago as an excuse to have a large sale.  Early in the day Cindy and I took advantage of the combination of Prime Day pricing and an Amazon Echo voice ordering spiff to get a second Fire TV stick for 15 bucks.  However later in the day a much larger purchase occurred.

When the hoverboard craze hit last year I thought they were pretty cool however I never jumped on board, no pun intended.  In retrospect I was relieved I didn’t as the stories of shoddy workmanship as well as reports of the boards catching on fire when their lithium batteries burst into flame surfaced.  They were yet another example of a long list of sub-par Chinese products.

Well when I was browsing Prime Day deals I stumbled across the Segway miniPro.  First I was surprised to see the Segway name on a new product.  I had thought they went out of business years ago.  When I did some brief research on Segway I found that the company was actually sold a couple times, the last time to a Chinese company named Ninebot.  Of course seeing it’s Chinese ownership did not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling however I saw that Ninebot sort of has followed the Lenovo blueprint.

Lenovo is a Chinese company that took over the IBM PC business.  They have managed to maintain a high quality product over the years.  I have actually owned a few Lenovo PC’s.  Ninebot has the reputation of doing much the same, building high quality, well engineered products instead of the typical knock off Chinese junk.

The miniPro has been available in other markets for a few months but only has been released in the US recently.  It is somewhat similar to hoverboards in appearance but there are a lot of differences when you look closer.  The base specs of the unit are impressive being able to support riders weighing up to 220 pounds.  It has a maximum range of 14-15 miles and has a maximum speed of 10 mph which is way faster than I could run for anything beyond short bursts.

The steering of the Segway differs greatly from hoverboards as well.  You still go forward and backward by adjusting your weight in either direction but the steering is not done with the feet.  Instead you use the thing that looks like a seat which is positioned between your legs.  By applying slight pressure you control left and right turns.  All the reviews I saw of the Segway indicated it felt like a superior control method to the foot pressure other hoverboards utilize.

Instead of the solid, unforgiving tires that other hoverboards use that cause traversing anything other than smooth sidewalk a bone jarring experience, the Segway has rubber pneumatic tires which absorb bumps much better.  I saw a video of a guy off roading on a trail with the miniPro and having very little difficulty doing so. It was pretty impressive.

The Segway has some other flashy features like Bluetooth integrated with a phone app that gives you lots of information about your rides as well as a bizarre remote control mode.  The miniPro can be driven around without a rider by a phone, having no issue keeping itself upright.  It also has very cool LED lighting and a status panel that lets you know exactly how much juice you have left in the battery.  Unlike the cheap boards, the Segway is UL certified and has a higher end battery charging system that will not potentially ignite the battery if left plugged in for too long.  You can completely charge the unit in four hours. Ninebot actually has some bigger plans for the platform, demonstrating a “robot” add in that utilizes the miniPro as it’s base at the most recent CES.

So anyway, enough of the sale pitch. The whole reason I did all of this investigation was because Amazon had them on special for Prime Day for over 40% off what they normally list for.  Now if I did a logical analysis of my need for something like this the end result would of course be no, I do not.  However being an adult approaching 50 with no kids I have more disposable income than my child bearing counterparts so I decided to bite the bullet.  I only did so once I got Cindy’s enthusiastic approval for the idea.  It will be fun, plain and simple.

I also noticed that there is rather gaping black hole of US based real world YouTube videos with the Segway miniPro.  I hope to help fill that void in the near future.

Yesterday Bernie officially endorsed Hilary for the democratic presidential nomination.  Within milliseconds the criticism started rolling in.  Of course I thought this was ludicrous if anyone took a moment to look at his options.  If Bernie decided to run as a thrid party candidate he would probably do better than any other third party candidate in history, but still lose. The end result of his run would be siphoning off mostly HRC voters which would surely make a Trump presidency a reality.  Even if he simply withheld his official endorsement out of principal, once again all it does is give Trump more opportunity to succeed which the majority of the country clearly does not want.  To me it is Bernie being a realist and sacrificing himself up for the greater good.  In my opinion this election is clearly a “who is less bad” scenario which is sad and depressing but it’s the choice we will be given.

Regardless, for people to take shots at Bernie, who may be the most honest and committed presidential candidate I have seen in my lifetime, is low class and serves no useful purpose.

I made a last minute vacation request to take Monday off.  My work anniversary date is approaching in mid-August and I have a week of vacation I need to use up before then.  I used the day to mostly chill, only helping Cindy do a few chores around the house and little else.  The rest of the day I mostly did whatever I felt like doing which included watching YouTube videos, playing Overwatch/Hearthstone, and reading a few more chapters of my third Warcraft novel.  I felt a bit uncomfortable not accomplishing more during the day but I survived.

Unless you have been living under a rock you have probably heard about the latest craze, Pokemon Go, a game for your smartphone.  It basically uses your phone’s GPS and camera to superimpose a Pokemon universe onto your surroundings.  The end result is people wandering around the streets, staring at their screens trying to capture virtual “pets” and discover other stuff.  I have heard proponents of the game say it is great because it gets an increasingly sedentary society to get off their ass and walk around outdoors, delivering an exercise benefit to the end user.  The caveat is the person is experiencing the outdoors while staring at their phone which seems contradictory and dangerous as people ignore their surroundings.

I can say with 100% certainty that I will not install the game out of principal alone.  I hear it is “fun”, I hear it is “addicting”, but that does nothing to influence my decision.  Anything that requires me to walk the streets staring at my phone like a screen zombie just is not the sort of entertainment I will ever be looking for.  If I see you walking down the sidewalk flicking Pokemon balls at virtual beings just know that a little part of me is hoping you walk face first into a pole.

I got a very sad email last night from my dad that one of his three dogs, Charlie, had died yesterday.  Charlie was found by my dad and Teresa a little less than 4 years ago wandering around.  He was in rough shape and Dad assumed he had a pretty difficult life up until that point, more than likely living outside full time.  He also had a bit of a mean streak that would come out unexpectedly.

When we met him during our last winter PA trip he was a little sketchy when he first met us but by the time we left he was much better, letting me pet him as much as I wanted.  Sadie and he got along as well, playing a bunch along with Dad and Teresa’s other dogs, Maggie and Clara.

Well in recent conversations I had with dad he said that Charlie was having some mobility problems with his back legs, something I was very familiar with because of what Nicki went through.  In the last few months dad had taken Charlie to the vet a number of times.  Yesterday while dad was outside doing stuff Charlie was out there hanging around, trying to be part of stuff like he normally did.  He got tired and was cooling off in the shed.  A little later my step mom found Charlie dead in the yard.

I know how much dad loves his dogs so I knew he was crushed by Charlie’s demise.  I waited until this morning to call him although I knew not nearly enough time had passed to soften the blow.   As I expected Dad was in rough shape.  I tried the best I could to make him know I understood how he felt based on what we went through with Nicki.  I said Charlie was lucky to find a loving home like he and my step mom provided, even later in Charlie’s life.  Most of the conversation I spent just listening, allowing dad to get out some of the painful emotions that surround the death of a loved one, it’s all you can really do.

The only other thing I could offer was that with time the pain will slowly subside although the sense of loss will always be a part of you.  I still think of Nicki and my mom quite often. When I do it still will glass over my eyes with tears in a matter of seconds.  Death, pain, and loss is all a part of life.  The older you get the more frequently you are reminded of it.  R.I.P Charlie, you will be missed. I am glad he got a chance to give and receive love the last few years of his life.

Saturday morning Cindy was doing a spin class so I decided to go into old school chore mode.  I was outside in the brutal heat and humidity until almost 11:30 weeding, weed whacking and attending to other outdoor to do’s.  After lunch I went back outside to apply the chocolate colored stain/waterproofing I used on the rain shelter last week to other wood structures in the yard that were in need of it like the small shed ramp, dog deck frame, and the jump table in the bar park.  In total I changed my shirt three times during the day after I sweated through them.

Late in the afternoon I decided I wanted to tackle the only remaining project on my mental list, installing a shelf over the big tv.  This is actually something I did once before around 2003 when I had the 61 inch Sony projection tv.  At that time it was used to house the AV equipment.  When I bought the 73 inch DLP TV and the tv stand for it to sit on I had to rip the shelf out because it was too low.  When I pulled the shelf I actually put the boards in the large shed toi be used again on a rainy day.  Well that day came Saturday, some 8-9 years later.

The reason I wanted to put a shelf up was to have a good spot for the center surround speaker.  With the 73 inch tv and now the 70 inch 4K set I had that speaker on the surface of the tv stand in the middle.  Well with the new TV if I put it in the center it blocked the IR receiver for the set.  I thought I would be creative and place the speaker behind the tv.  The problem was since the speaker was partially obstructed, the dialogue for shows, which usually comes through the center speaker was somewhat quiet, requiring me to turn the volume up higher, making loud portions of a movie/show overwhelming.

Having that speaker right above the set seemed like a much better option, plus it would help fill up that gap of dead space to the top of the nook.  When I tried to explain my plan to install the shelf to Cindy she was a bit unsure of how well it would work.  I assured her I did it once before successfully and I could do it again.  Having the shelf and trim board from the old shelf still available meant I didn’t have to worry about measuring or cutting new ones.

Cindy used the palm sander to clean up the old lumber.  Sitting in a storage shed for that long had made the wood dirty and dingy.  I used 2×4’s as the side supports for the shelf.  Getting the shelf to look right is all about getting it even so I did a lot of measuring and leveling to ensure the boards on either side were right where they needed to be.

After a couple hours of work the new shelf was in place and looking good.  Having the speaker up there was definitely an improvement, I could now hear the dialogue coming from the tv without cranking the Yamaha surround to concert levels.  It was quite a busy Saturday but I felt good getting so much accomplished.  Of course I shot video of the work.  If you would like a more detailed view of how it went down, look here.

On Sunday morning I bugged Cindy about going out to run.  It wasn’t because I loved the idea of running in the miserable heat and humidity.  I just did not want to lose the small amount of progress I have been making with my running.  Last weekend with Supercon and construction projects I did not get out to run at all.  If I missed a second consecutive week I felt like I would be back at square one.

We did not start our first lap around the track until after 8AM so the sun was already high enough in the cloudless sky to start broiling us.  I felt pretty miserable the entire run but I expected to.  We completed 13 laps around the track at a 9 something per mile pace.  I was beyond drenched with sweat by the end of it but I glad I put the time and effort into getting out to run.

Sunday had a definitely more relaxed pace to it.  I did a few things including washing the Tacoma, during which I recorded two videos.  One regarding a shift delay I sometimes experience going between reverse and drive and the other being a 2500 mile review of the truck.   It seems like anything I post regarding the 2016 Tacoma is getting a lot of views on YouTube.  The one video has almost 500 views already which is a TON for the first day.

Speaking of my YouTube channel, things have really been accelerating since I crossed the 1000 subscriber line.  While the first 1000 subscribers took me some 8-9 years to accumulate, I have gotten my next 100 in about a month.  I also am less than 20,000 views from a million total on my channel, another big milestone for a small time YouTuber like myself.  My content may not be universally popular but it definitely does fit a certain niche.  I am following the advice of Casey Neistat, a very popular You Tuber when it comes to how to grow your channel.  Just keep uploading.

Sunday night we watched the Peanuts movie.  I have always been a big Peanuts fan all of my life.  The holiday specials and the cartoon strips were some of my favorite things growing up.  Seeing the way they animated the characters for the film was odd.  Most everything in the film was 3D rendered which honestly looked disturbing in some ways, like the hair on Charlie Brown and Linus’s head.  However the facial expressions were done in an old school way like the old specials.  For the most part it worked and did not mess with the feel of the movie.  I thought they also did a good job of getting voice actors that could perfectly replicate the characters as they sounded in the 60’s and 70’s, something that was not the case with some of the more modern Peanuts specials that were produced.

Despite the pressure of it being a feature length film, I think they did a good job of making the story authentic, touching, and fun in a similar manner to what made the characters so endearing to us as kids.  Although I had no desire to spend theater type money to see Peanuts on the big screen I was quite happy it arrived in it’s Netflix envelope.  I pity kids today that have no modern day equivalent of Peanuts to look to.  Most are far too busy being mesmerized by their portable screens to appreciate someone like Charlie Brown or Snoopy.  The movie is a quality B+ addition to the massive Peanuts collection.

We started watching The Preacher on AMC, another comic book based show.  AMC did great with this formula with The Walking Dead and it appears they have another winner on their hands.  It is bizarre, crazy, and cool.  Check it out.

When I flipped on my computer this morning I was immediately stopped by the headlines regarding the shooting of 11 police officers in Dallas, five of whom tragically died.  The police were on site for a peaceful rally regarding the recent killings of two black men by police.  In each situation it appears the shooting was not justified.

The attack on the police appears to have been well planned and orchestrated, seemingly carried out by individuals that had some sort of formal training based on the video from the incident.  They were stationed high above their targets in an ideal position to inflict the most damage possible.  The assumption was they had prior knowledge of the route the march was going to follow ahead of time.

The latest info says there were four suspects in the shooting, three of whom are in custody and the fourth killed during the incident.  What is strangely missing is more information regarding the shooters, including their ethnicity.  I have a feeling there is a lot more to this tragedy than simple eye for an eye retribution.

I have no answers.  Human beings are hard wired to hate.

So I have been getting notices about my free trial of Sirius in the 2016 Tacoma expiring soon.  My plan all along has been to simply migrate my existing plan I had on my stand alone unit to the radio on the truck.  I have been putting off the call for awhile because I normally have a bad experience when dealing with Sirius/XM customer service.  Today I figured I may as well get it over with.

So I called in and was helped by a pleasant woman.  I explained what I needed to do and she said it was no problem.  She said in order to make it work she would need to cancel the subscription I currently have and apply the credit from it’s remaining time to the subscription for the radio in the Tacoma.  She said I would not actually be billed for the Tacoma service until the promo runs out July 21st.  Everything sounded great and I agreed to the terms of the new radio verbally.  I hung up very surprised that the call went so smoothly.

I had another surprise waiting for me when my web streaming session of Sirius, which I normally play at work, stopped about a half hour later. Hmm that’s odd, when I tried to refresh the page it brought me to a sign in screen.  I entered my credentials and they didn’t work.  I then reset my password to see if that would make a difference.  It didn’t.  I reluctantly picked up the phone and called Sirius back.  I knew it couldn’t be simple.

So this time when the phone is picked up instead of being greeted I hear the male phone rep talking to others around him.  Only when I said “Hellllooo” did he acknowledge me.  I told him I had just called in to transfer my service to a new radio but now my internet streaming no longer works.  He took my account information and then told me “just a moment” no less than 6 times, each spaced 10-15 seconds apart.  He said he was waiting for his “screen to come up”  After the last “just a moment” I tried to give him some other details regarding my previous call.  He instantly got aggravated with me and told me “JUST A MOMENT” once again.

Well that turned off my nice switch.  I told him he had no reason to give me attitude as I was trying to give him more information.  He said he needed to wait until his screen came up.  I asked him if he was unable to listen to me while his screen came up?  Of course he didn’t like my attitude either.  Finally his screen came up, some two minutes after he first told me to wait, just a moment. It was just in time as I was seconds away from asking for his supervisor as I grew tired of his bullshit.

So evidently the nice, pleasant woman I spoke to earlier wasn’t very thorough.  Without asking me or telling me, she downgraded my plan during the transfer from “all access” which includes streaming to “select” which does not.  The phone rep asked me in a condescending tone “So you are saying you want to be upgraded to all access?”  I told him no, I want the SAME plan I have had all along at the number I was quoted.  He grumbled something and had me wait a few more “just a moment’s” until he made the change.  He gave me the most snarky and disingenuous “Thank you for being a Sirius customer since 2004” you could imagine before I hung up.  Dipshit.

He assured me streaming should now work but of course it didn’t under my normal credentials.  I had to go into my profile and create a new account name to use for streaming before I could get back online.  My blog is littered with various issues I have had over the years with Sirus ranging from price gouging, to charging for things that were once free, to just good old fashioned bad customer service, so I guess I am not surprised today was just another example.  When I got my customer satisfaction survey I was sure to check the 10+ button in the question , “How many people have you shared your negative experience with?”  In reality the number will be much, much higher…

I saw the clip of the bizarre shooting aftermath in Minnesota where the girlfriend of a man decided going on Facebook Live was the best course of action after an officer just shot her boyfriend four times.  The way she interacted with the officer and communicated during the broadcast seemed more like she was a news commentator as opposed to a loved one. It was really strange.  I did not watch the entire clip but it appeared to me the driver, her boyfriend, dies in the seat while she is broadcasting on social media.

The description I have heard of the events leading up to the shooting seemingly places all the blame on the officer.  Supposedly the driver of the vehicle declared he was a licensed gun owner and that he had a weapon in the vehicle.  He then declared to the officer he was reaching for his license in his back pocket which was when he was shot, 4 times.

Evidently the officer had no body cam on him to provide further information about the incident although I would assume he did have a dash cam which is pretty much standard equipment nowadays.   If things went down as the woman described it is impossible to understand why the officer would have fired.  It will be interesting to see how it unravels in the next few days.

This is yet another chapter in the long book of controversial police shootings that seem to be heavily weighted by the color of the victim’s skin.  The reaction of the woman to “help” the situation by broadcasting on her smart phone as a reflex reaction is a testament to the twisted mentality in modern society.  It seems today the reflex reaction of most people when they see a situation is to race to get out their smartphone to record it instead of trying to help.  It’s a f’d up world.

I got a rather thick envelope in the mail yesterday from none other than Donald Trump.  I was surprised since I had not written him any letters recently.  I was disappointed the envelope was stuffed with a campaign donation request form and a promotional letter that I am sure Donald penned himself.  The material was responsibly recycled.

Last night after work I got out in the bar park to do a circuit workout.  I also shot a video of the session.  Shooting bar park videos was something that used to occur  on a very regular basis, probably once or twice a week.  That has not been the case for quite awhile, I can probably count the bar park videos this year on one hand so far.

The weather conditions were punishing with temperatures in the mid-90s and high humidity.  I decided to do a type of circuit unlike anything I did before where I inserted a nearly 1/4 mile run around the back yard as part of each of the five rounds.  Each circuit included the run, 10 pull ups and 20 push ups which I thought would be challenging since I have done no pull ups or push ups in close to a month because of the skin cancer surgery on my deltoid.  Instead of challenging I found it to be back breaking hard, leaving me gasping for breath by the end of it.

The workout gave me a good sense of my current fitness level.  The sense I got was it is bad.  Regardless it was good to get out there after work and get some reps in.  It’s something I need to do more regularly.  Hitting the gym over lunch hour is sufficient to maintain but if I want to improve I need to put in the time at home as well.

I figured a long 5 day weekend needed to be recapped now instead of later to conserve brain cells.  The main reason I took Thursday and Friday off was Cindy needed a ride to the Cape Coral VA hospital because she was having a MRI done.  She was going to take a valium to ease some of the anxiety the MRI process can cause so with me being there we could head home without first waiting for the valium to wear off.

I brought my Warcraft book and also had a Kindle version of Lenny Dykstra’s book I could read.  Instead I wound up playing Hearthstone the couple hours I was waiting while watching the Buzzr channel which is nothing but old game shows.  I forgot just how much I enjoyed shows like Match Game and Family Feud in my younger days.

Cindy emerged from her procedure intact and only a little fuzzy from the valium.  By the time we got home it was mid-afternoon.  Cindy was really tired and tried to nap.  I putzed around the house doing a few things, including removing the dealer emblem from the back of my Tacoma.

I designated Friday as the day to get the rain shelter built on the side of the house over the water equipment.  I have had most of the raw materials to do the project in the shed for a couple of weeks and I was ready to get it out of the way.  I got outside relatively early.  I had some grand delusion that I would have most of the shelter done before the heat of the day set in.  Yea, right.

It quickly became an all day affair with me laboring away in 90+ degree/ 90% humidity which is just pure misery.  Of course I had to go to Home Depot to grab some extra stuff I hadn’t anticipated which is nearly always the case with my home improvement projects.  At least it gave me a reason to take Sadie with.  Home Depot has quickly become one of her favorite places since we discovered it was dog friendly.

I was working on the shelter until almost 5PM and by the time clean up began my ass was dragging big time.  Despite drinking throughout the day I felt majorly dehydrated and exhausted.  Thanks to Cindy’s help I got the frame in place and stained.  The only thing that remained was attaching the roof panels but I needed some additional parts to make that happen so it was going to have to wait until Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.

Cindy had spent a good portion of Thursday evening and Friday working on her costume for Supercon.  She had decided late in the week she was going to go as Tracer, one of the heroes from Overwatch.  Of course the easiest thing to do when it comes to costumes is to simply buy one.  The problem with that is then you look just like everyone else that just bought one.

Cindy has always been good, very good actually at making costumes by hand.  She has an uncanny knack to just be able to take a bunch of raw materials and make very cool costumes out of it.  She uses a similar process in costume making as I do with home projects, start with a general idea and tweak it as you go.

She was stressing out late Friday, not thinking she was going to be able to get t all done.  She actually did not get it all done Friday, she did the finishing work Saturday morning, right up until the time we were heading out for Florida Supercon in Miami.  I opted to not do any special costume, declaring my Under Armour Spiderman shirt as festive enough.

We took the Prius across state opting for gas savings over the more comfortable cruising the 2016 Tacoma offers.  The drive went relatively smooth until we ran into some pretty serious traffic coming into Miami which is normal.  Our plan was to park in a garage that was in between our hotel and the convention center, both within walking distance.  The walk to Supercon was a few blocks which didn’t feel great in the heat and humidity.  We could tell we were getting close as we saw more and more people in costume going the same direction.

Cindy had planned for us to go to Supercon for a bit and then go back to the hotel for her to do her costume, hair and make up in the afternoon.  Once we saw so many people already dressed up and the long security line we realized it may have been better for us to be in full costume from the start instead of having to come, go and come back again.  It was our first time at an event like this so we had much to learn.

Like I mentioned the security line to get in was very long but luckily they had a lot of staff there so the line moved quick.  The time went quickly since everywhere you turned there was someone in an interesting or funny costume to look at.  It didn’t take long till I regretted not doing any sort of more formal costume.

I had never been inside the Miami Convention Center before.  I was impressed at how big it was.  Once we got inside the main show floor it was just wall to wall exhibits and people.  It was a nerd’s fantasy without a doubt.  We met up with our friend Kim and her two kids who also were over from Naples, we spent a good chunk of our time at the con with them.

Walking around was just amazing with one amazing visual after another.  It sort of reminded me of how I feel when I go to Vegas but in a different way.  If you wanted to, you could easily spend a few paychecks on merchandise.  They had anything and everything you could imagine.  Luckily I am not much of a collector so I didn’t buy anything.

You could also easily spend a small fortune if you were interested in getting an autograph or a photo with the diverse cast of B and C list celebrities that were there.  It seemed like the absolute minimum you would spend to get anyone’s autograph was $25 and another $10 if you wanted to throw a picture of you with the person as well.  The whole thing was a bit of a turn off to me although you were allowed to at least walk up and say hi to any of them without opening up your wallet.

They had two levels of celebrities there.  The upper tier was against one of the walls where each person had a roped off waiting area.  The not so famous people were plopped behind normal tables where you could just walk up to them.  I thought it was funny that even though this was “Supercon”, the array of celebrities were definitely not just from the super hero/comic book realm.  There were WWE Wrestlers and even cast members of Sesame Street signing autographs.

Ironically the one autograph we actually paid for was for Emilio Delgado from Sesame Street.   He was extremely friendly and down to earth.  He seemed to be a genuinely nice man.  It was amazing that the guy has been on Sesame Street  his entire adult life.  I clearly recall watching him on the show as a kid helping me learn my abc’s and 123’s.

The most interesting celebrity sighting for me was Henry Winkler, aka. The Fonz from Happy Days, one of my favorite shows growing up.  Henry looked about as far away from his famous character as you could imagine.  He is old, overweight and was wearing plaid pants with a pink untucked oxford.  I don’t think Henry has ever come out as being openly gay for whatever reason but it seemed pretty obvious to me that is the case.  He was nice enough to come out and greet people waiting in line and allowing people to take his picture without paying for it.

Cindy had a funny conversation with Bruce Boxleitner who she evidently met randomly when she was in high school.  Cindy thought he was the bomb and evidently gave him a flower way back when.  Cindy got red in the face as she told the story and Bruce laughed out loud as she told it.  It was pretty funny.  He is old now too.

So we decided it was time for Cindy to put her costume on.  We walked first to the parking garage to grab our stuff and then a few more blocks to get to our hotel.  It was admittedly a pain in the ass to walk there and we had to take a detour into a back alley due to construction that made Cindy nervous.

During check in I found it annoying that even though our room was supposed to be “paid in full” already, they tack on another 20 buck resort fee.  WTF, since when does PAID IN FULL not mean paid in full.  Our reward for the resort fee was two vouchers, one for a complimentary drink that we never used and another for the continental breakfast, yippee.

The room was nothing spectacular but fine for our needs.  While I laid on the bed and chilled out Cindy began the long process of doing her hair and make up for her Tracer costume.  Even though she estimated earlier it would take her 30 minutes to get ready I knew it would take much longer based on experience.  It wound up taking close to 3 times that. We thought it would be interesting to have the GoPro rolling to document the transformation.  I took the 75-80 minutes of video and condensed it down to around 14 minutes through the magic of editing.  Check it out if you have time.

The combo of the make up and outfit really made for a convincing visual.  The fact that we saw no other Tracer’s earlier made me think Cindy was going to get a lot of picture requests.  My prediction turned out to be very true.  To get back to the convention center we decided to dip our toe into the world of Uber, something we never tried before.  We figured walking 6 or 7 blocks with Cindy in full make up and costume would have sort of sucked.  Plus we were handed a card at the center to get an Uber ride for free so it made sense.

Being an Uber virgin I had no idea just how efficient it was.  After installing the app and requesting a ride we literally had a car waiting for us outside in a couple minutes.  We didn’t expect it to be quite so fast and had to haul ass downstairs to the lobby.  Just as we were walking out my phone rang with a call from the driver letting us know she was there, wow.  Now one of the big perks you hear about Uber is you don’t tip.  Even though I knew that, old habits die hard and I pulled the few singles I had in my wallet and gave it to the driver.  I was amazed at just how smooth, efficient and clean the service is. It was so impressive that I suggested to Cindy she should look into doing part time Uber back home.  Her personality and schedule would be a great fit for it.

So once we got to the convention center it took absolutely no time until the fruit of Cindy’s labor became apparent with people asking to take their picture with her.  Her costume was pretty damn spectacular.  We didn’t keep official count but I estimate she had no fewer than 50-75 people that asked to take their picture with her.  There were some other people dressed up as Overwatch characters that made for some good photo ops as well.

I was mostly a passive part of the experience and was happy to be so.  This was Cindy in her element, with a smile and happy words to share with anyone that wanted a picture.  She said her face literally hurt from smiling so much by the end of the night.  It was pretty crazy but in a good way.

We had an unfortunate incident during the afternoon when they evacuated the building.  Evidently a smoke alarm was tripped from something other than a fire. It did give us a chance for Cindy to get a funny picture with a guy dressed as one of the crazy guys from Mad Max.  We were only outside for maybe 15 minutes before the all clear was sounded and were allowed back inside.

Cindy posed for a 3d rendering of herself that was set up.  They basically take your picture from something like 40 cameras simultaneously and can stitch it into a 3d model that you actually have produced into a statue.  Cindy got the GIF version of it for free.

A short young girl approached Cindy and asked if she could take her picture as she was apparently a Tracer/Overwatch fan.  Cindy quickly realized it was Briana Hildebrand who was in Deadpool.  She was one of the celebrities at the show.  We thought it was kind of awesome she asked to take a pic of Cindy.

We spent the majority of the rest of the afternoon and evening just walking around and taking everything in between picture requests of Cindy.  It was just fun and the entire building was filled with a very positive energy.

The only formal thing we did was attend the costume contest (that Cindy should have entered)  It was not as much fun as I had hoped.  The theater was packed and I was seated next to a guy that had a definite creepy vibe.  He was easily in his 50’s but had his Nintendo 3DS in hand and was playing some stupid looking game that seemed targeted at 5 year olds for a good portion of the show.  He also seemed to clap the loudest for the costume contest participants dressed as or played by young girls.  I felt an repeated urge to deliver a sharp blow with my left elbow to his nose.

The contest was too long, running over two hours.  The majority of the participants were dressed as characters from games, shows, or comics that Cindy and I had no familiarity with.  Plus we were too far away from the stage to get a great view of anything.  I had a much better time checking out the costumes as we walked around the con.

By the time we got out of the costume show it was late, after 9:30.  The main exhibit area was closed at that point but we went upstairs were the video games were set up to hang out a little bit with the diehards before heading out.  We met so many great people during the Supercon that it actually made me eager to experience it again.  Like I said, just seeing Cindy so happy was worth the price of admission to me. We said goodbye to Kim and her kids before hailing yet another Uber to get us back to the hotel.  We were exhausted but glad we made the effort to get there.  It was something neither of us experienced before.

On Sunday morning we headed out after our decent continental breakfast. We hailed our third Uber in two days to run us back to the parking garage instead of us lugging the stuff.  I felt a bit lazy doing it this time but it had rained earlier and we didn’t want to get caught in the rain again while hauling our stuff.  After fueling up with some DD coffee we headed back across Alligator Alley towards home.  The drive was without incident.  Our Sunday once we got home was filled with mostly chores associated with returning from vacation, even short ones.  We always have anxiety about the chickens well being when we aren’t home.  I also worked on getting the long video of Cindy’s Tracer transformation ripped which took quite awhile.

Sunday night we watched my latest Netflix dvd, Creed, a movie we wanted to see in the theater.  I thought it was good but was curious why it wasn’t called Rocky 6.  Sure Stallone isn’t the fighter in this movie but I think the film totally revolved around him.  I thought he did a really good job and I liked the movie overall, regardless of how improbable the outcomes were. A-

This morning I knew I had the rain shelter project foremost on my plate.  Once again I hoped to be able to knock it out early and again I ran into complications that made that not happen.  I underestimated the amount of roofing screws I would need to attach the panels and had to go back to Home Depot for the third time during my extended weekend to get what I needed.  I finally got the project finished up around lunch time and had a nice hard downpour to test it with later in the afternoon.  Just as I hoped, the shelter kept the equipment dry.  When the sun came back out I verified the temperature under there felt a ton more bearable than when the bare sun is beating on you.

If you would like to see the rain shelter install process chopped down to a 24 minute time capsule, look below.

I also had a small side repair that was annoying me.  The pool filter has had a small leak for quite awhile.  In an attempt to stop it I bought a new lock ring and O ring for it.  When I installed both I was rewarded with a leak that was worse than before.  I then got some O ring lubricant, hoping that would stop the leak.  It slowed it down somewhat but it was still dripping.  I decided I would attach the top of the canister filter with it turned about 90 degrees from it’s normal front facing orientation.  That simple change addressed the drip.  Water no longer was running down the side.  It’s an unexpected simple fix but a fix is a fix in my book.

The rest of my day has been consumed with editing the rain shelter video you see above as well as writing this blog entry which has been fueled by three Miller Lites.  Yea sure I wish I had a couple more days where I had less to do but that always seems to be the case.  It was the first time in close to a decade that my 4th of July didn’t start off with timing a very hectic, hot, and humid 5K for the running club.  I can’t say I missed the experience even a little bit.