Archives June 2017

So we have not really gotten any appreciable break from the rain this week which means that our property has remained a miserable marshland.  I have always hated when this happens since I have lived here but since we have adopted chickens I really hate it.  The back area behind their coop has basically been underwater for around a week.

Last night after work, despite having the Prius, I stopped at Home Depot to pick up another 500 pounds of sand to further raise the ground level in the coop run so the birds at least had a spot to hang out that was not submerged.  The process for getting the ten bags of sand to the coop was rather inefficient, requiring me to pick up and move each bag five times. (shelf to flatbed, flatbed to Prius, Prius to truck, truck to coop yard, coop yard to coop run)  By the time I dumped the new sand the run at least had no more standing water visible.

Later I decided to do something more drastic and ordered a high volume submersible pump.  My plan is to plop the pump in the middle of the back yard, connect a long hose to it leading to the ditch at the edge of the property and pump all the damn water out of there.  In theory this should work, we will see how it turns out in reality.

Today our new 3D printer is scheduled to arrive.  I have wanted a 3D printer for quite awhile but never pulled the trigger.  I had a nice pile of Amazon spiff points saved up so I used them to almost entirely cover the cost.  I opted for a PLA only model which is more suited for beginners.

Everything I read about 3D printing is there is a LOT to learn in order to get good at making consistently good prints.  Cindy is excited to learn it as well and will likely be using the printer as much if not more than I will at least at first.  She is hoping to be able to create some parts for the costume she is creating for SuperCon.

The good thing about being late to the 3D printing game is the community is very mature at this point and there are TONS of resources out there both for education and plans to print countless numbers of objects.  I look forward to seeing what we can create.  It also will be another avenue the YouTube channel can expand into.

Having the three dogs in the house has been lots of fun.  Lucky is just such a sweet, sweet, dog.  We can tell Elsa is a little bit jealous of the attention Lucky has been receiving.  She peed on his dog bed the first day we left them alone.  She does seem to be warming up to him a bit and has played with him several times.  Sadie of course just goes with the flow, putting up with Elsa’s annoying habit of face and leg biting.

The weekend has multiple potential projects available.  We will have to see which way the wind takes us.

After work last night my buddy Don from work brought out his dog Lucky for an extended dog sitting visit while he visits family out of state.  We had watched Lucky twice before but the last time was probably close to four years ago.  Once we got chickens Don was hesitant to have Lucky out at our place because of the potential interaction.  Now that the hens are behind a four foot fence full time he felt better about it.

So even though I only see Lucky rarely, he always seems to remember me.  He also seemed to remember Cindy despite not seeing her for years.  He is such a calm, friendly and well mannered dog.  Of course Elsa was freaked out but Lucky more or less ignored her and let Elsa be the one to come to him.  By the end of the night Elsa was cautiously interacting/playing with Lucky.  I am hoping by the end of the day today she will fully accept him into the inner circle.

To make things even more interesting we are picking up Sadie today for an extended visit so we will have three dogs in the house through the weekend.  Sadie just goes with the flow as well so I am sure all three will get along just fine.  Really our only concern is restricting Lucky’s activity.  He had his back leg in a cast for over two months due to an injury.  He LOVES to run and play but the last thing we want is for him to re-injure himself in our care so we need to either have him outside on leash or constantly monitored to keep him from going nuts.  Lucky is very well disciplined and responds to voice commands reliably.

I wish we could say the same about Jeff Sessions. I’m not sure if you could get a more typical example of what a stereotypical dirt bag politician is than Sessions.  His testimony yesterday was nothing short of a joke.

I just ordered a 3D printer, I am excited to see what sort of creations Cindy and I can come up with.

So Cindy came up with a good idea for our Saturday morning run.  She suggested since I had to go to the office to do some server work, we get up early and run at nearby Sugden Park.  It sounded like a good idea to me.

When we woke up it was very dreary outside with steady rain. The rain we had Friday had already placed some mild standing water on the property.  Well I had to go to the office regardless so we still dressed to run with the hopes that there was a break in the rain by the time we would get to the park.   On the drive there we went through bands of rain of varying intensity.  By the time we got to the intersection by the park entrance it was once again raining steadily so we bailed on the run portion of the trip.

I headed to the office and migrated a server used for routing and ftp access from ancient Windows Server 2003 to new hardware running server 2012 R2.  I had done much of the legwork ahead of time so I was only in there for roughly an hour to move some wires around and add some routes. So when we got home both Cindy and I felt we needed to still get our cardio work in.  I plopped myself on the rower in the bedroom for a half hour session while Cindy put in the same amount of time on the treadmill.  It felt good to at least get some work in.

So in the couple hours we were gone in the morning there must have been near apocalyptic rain at the house.  The property had as much water in the yard as I had ever seen, including hurricanes.  When I looked at the security cameras in the chicken coop it was amazing and terrible.  The entire fenced in area behind the coop was underwater.

Cindy and I tag teamed the coop work.  I moved stuff like the chicken tractor to the front of the coop where there was still some high ground remaining.  The chickens of course were drenched but they don’t seem to care all that much.  What I cared about is the chickens lack of caring about drinking the disgusting standing water.  I yelled at them to stop drinking the dirty water, like it was going to matter.  Their run was half underwater as well, turning the surface into a mucky cesspool.  The chickens spent the majority of the day huddling on high ground as well as spending much more time than normal on the perches in the coop run.

With the crappy weather Cindy and I were content to just hang at the house during the rest of the day.  Cindy has started prep for her new SuperCon costume so she was happy to start digging into it hardcore.  I was happy to dig into WoW, doing whatever I felt like virtually accomplishing.

Saturday night we watched Patriot’s Day, the Marky Mark film about the Boston Marathon bombings.  It was powerful and emotional at times as you can imagine.  It seemed like they modified the events somewhat unless I totally missed some parts of the news coverage.  B+

Sunday morning it once again looked overcast but at least it wasn’t raining.  We threw the wheels in the truck and headed to the Greenway.  Cindy did some more work on her seated riding on the Monster and did quite well.  At the end of the ride I again attempted seated riding and did better than the week before.  I hope to get over to the school this week to work on it some more.

After riding we stopped at Home Depot to grab ten 50 pound bags of sand which I immediately spread in the run when we got home.  I filled in the low spots that were puddles to hopefully give the chickens at least a small area they can stay dry if they want to.

Our Sunday afternoon followed much the same course as Saturday with both of us doing our recreational activity of our choosing, Cindy doing costume work and me back in WoW.  We avoided rain on Sunday which was nice although we need at least three our four rain free days for the water to seep back into the ground.  The weather forecast does not seem amenable to that plan.

This will be an interesting week.  Not only will we be getting Sadie for an extended visit, we also will be getting my buddy’s dog Lucky at the same time, meaning several days of triple dog shenanigans.  It should be entertaining.

So I saw/heard a good chunk of the James Comey testimony yesterday.  To me it seemed pretty clear that he is an honest, experienced and intelligent man.  When an individual of his character testifies that he started documenting his conversations with the president because of a “gut feeling” regarding the type of person he was dealing with, that says a lot.  How Trump could hear all of the Comey testimony and spin it into some sort of vindication for him because he was not officially under investigation, while ignoring the mountain of other damning details is typical of how he operates.  It’s just insane that things are to the point where I would prefer that a guy that thinks you can “ungay” people through therapy would make a better President than the man-child who is occupying that chair right now.

Today we dropped off Cindy’s car to get it’s windows tinted.  Coincidentally my boss/buddy had decided to have work done on his car at the same place on the same day.  Cindy drove the Ioniq while I drove the Prius with Elsa riding shotgun.  We then all met there so we could carpool to work in the Prius.

It was the first time Don met Elsa.  She was cautiously friendly towards him which is rare.  We actually are going to be dog sitting Don’s dog Lucky next week so Elsa will have fun.  We had watched Lucky a couple times before we got chickens.  Now that the birds are fenced in Lucky should not be a threat to them, something Don was worried about. We are going to have Lucky for almost a week so he and Elsa will have plenty of time to become dog buddies.

This weekend I need to run into the office briefly to do some server work to be backed up by work around the house as always.  Hopefully we can have more normal levels of precipitation compared to the deluge of last weekend.

I neglected to mention that a couple days ago I was able to trim my Facebook friends list a whopping 38% in no less than 10 minutes.  In that time span I was able to drop roughly 180 individuals off the list bring the total to a still hefty 300 members.  I really didn’t have to make any hard choices, the majority of the trimees were people in other countries that friended me from my Bar-barians affiliation.  I never had any real direct communication or interaction with them so for the most part I doubt they will even know they are gone.  There is some more trimming that could be done where I would have to do so more in depth thinking and evaluation of pros/cons but I will save that for another day.

Today is C Day, the day James Comey testifies in front of Congress in what could potentially be yet another bombshell for the Trump organization.  It appears that the testimony will further cement the fact that we have a man that has no fcking idea which way is up or down and is woefully unequipped to be in the position of power that the fine citizens of our country put him in.  It’s looking more and more like President Pence could be a reality and to be honest, I think Donald might actually be happier that way.

It has been a pretty incredibly wet last few days which has manged to turn a severe drought into flooding conditions in some areas of the county.  There was a report that Everglades City has received nearly a foot of rain, not snow, rain!  I don’t think we got quite that much out at our place but we got a ton.  We have a very unwelcome early return of standing water all around the yard. I was fine being indoors most of the day, mostly leveling my paladin in WoW.  It is the first that I played this class since the expansion was updated. I really like the changes.

So a couple weeks ago I had routine AC maintenance done on the house.  During that work it was brought to my attention that the blower in my air handler was covered in mold.  I am sure it is related to when the overflow kill switch was defective, allowing water to puddle in the bottom of the system last year.  So anyway, it was recommended that the blower is pulled, completely disassembled, and cleaned thoroughly.  They also mentioned that a UV light kit could prevent this scenario from happening in the future as it blasts the entire air handler with UV light which kills microorganisms like mold.  The idea of mold existing in my AC system made the decision easy, even though it wouldn’t be cheap.

The work was done today so I just took the day off, giving me an odd 1-3 work week.  The tech showed me the inside of the blower assembly before it was cleaned, it was totally black.  To think that shit was getting circulated in the system is pretty gross and potentially hazardous to your health.  They also showed me the same parts after the cleaning and it was night and day.  In total the work took about two hours and even though I am out about $700 I feel better knowing my HVAC system is not a petri dish any longer.

After the tech left I loaded Sadie and Elsa up in the Prius to take Sadie home and return Ali’s computer to her which I finally got working again.  Ali’s boyfriends dogs were excited for the unexpected visit.  Elsa was scared, submissive, and excited all at the same time, it was very funny to watch.  All four of them slept up in Ali’s office as I completed the work, it was very cute.

I plan to veg out most of the rest of the day, an appropriate course of action since we are mired in a several day rain event.  I started leveling a new character in WoW so that can keep me entertained for as long as I need.

So with a new Nvidia card in hand I stopped back at Ali’s on my way home Friday to hopefully fix her video/monitor issue for good.  I was 80% sure a different chipset video card would solve my problem.  It didn’t.  Instead I fought with her system for another hour or so.  Not only did the new card show the exact same behavior (driver crashing) I eventually lost IP connectivity as well.  I was pissed.

Thankfully I came up with a temporary remediation plan.  Ali still had her old pc I replaced in her office.  It was left online in case there were any files on it that she still might need.  I hooked it up to the monitors and it still worked fine.  I just had to update a few settings and refresh her Dropbox so she was able to work again.  I took the computer I was fighting with me so I could continue battle in the comfort of my own home.

I f’d with it for a couple more hours until I gave up and just did a Windows 10 “reset” where it reinstalls the OS but leaves the user files alone.  It meant I had to reinstall some applications but overall it was not bad to recover from.  I wished I chose that option earlier.  After completion the video driver finally loaded normally and the IP/internet connectivity had been restored.  It was a huge pain in the ass overall which I think all began with the installation of the Windows 10 “Creators” update which never installed correctly.

Saturday morning we again went out for a run first thing.  The temps in the low 70’s with HIGH humidity were not comfortable to run in at all.  Cindy and I hardly said a word during the run.  Afterwards I told her that it felt like I was uncomfortable from the first stride to the last stride.  Sure it’s nice to endure one of those types of runs but I sure wouldn’t mind one that felt psuedo-enjoyable once in awhile.

When we got home I jumped right into an all morning yard session that started with weeding and ended with mowing.  I was very thorough in my efforts and the yard looked great at the end of it but man, I was pooped.  Adding the secondary chicken fence definitely has tacked some time onto my normal yard maintenance schedule.

Saturday afternoon we took Sadie and Elsa to Rural King for a few things.  Elsa was back to acting very skittish for some reason as we walked the aisles.  You just never know what is going to freak her out.  After we got back the skies absolutely opened up.  Torrential rain came down for hours.  I did not see an official total but I bet we got at least 3″ of it dumped on us. Saturday night we stayed home and watched the most recent Huntsman movie which was pretty good, B+ in my book.

Sunday morning despite the skies still being overcast Cindy and I headed to North Collier Park to ride.  I brought the new seat for the Monster I was sent by Jason from ewheels.com

We had a fun conventional ride first before we got out the seat.  I wanted Cindy to try seated riding first as she messed around with it the week prior without a seat and did half decent.  After a pretty brief acclimation period Cindy was zipping around the park on the Monster in the seated position like a pro.

Cindy’s biggest complaint about EUC riding is the foot pain she experiences.  Riding on the seat totally alleviates that pain.  She said the feeling of seated riding was weird.  It reminded her of the same position she had on her motorcycle and scooter, without handlebars or a second wheel of course.  I was really impressed with how well she did seated.  I later tried myself and had only minimal success.  Feel free to check out the fun below.

Sunday afternoon we went to a rare matinee showing of Wonder Woman.  The movie looked pretty epic from the trailers and I was looking forward to seeing it.  Like all DC super hero movies, I liked the movie but didn’t love it.  (Cindy loved it)  I thought the first half of the movie was particularly slow and that was exaggerated by the overall length of the film, something like 2:20.    Some of the stuff that was revealed in this origin story was news to me so I am not sure if it is all true to comic book story lines or not.  By the end of it Wonder Woman seemed to have basically transformed into Supergirl.  Anyway, it was enjoyable overall but reaffirmed when it comes to super hero movies, nobody does it like Marvel. B+

It was a good way to close out another fun weekend.

Yep I am not overlooking the latest terror attack in the UK but really, what I have said before is all I would say again.   Who wants to be a broken record….

The Trumpster hammered another pin into his quickly growing legacy of dumbness by pulling the US out of the Paris agreement regarding global warming.  I know being a memorable president is probably very important to Donald, unfortunately he will likely be remembered as the worst president in US history.  That is a hell of a claim to make after less than 150 days in the hot seat.  The three ring circus since he stepped into power has been nothing short of incredible and historic.  Who cares about global warming, we can always water the crops with Gatorade.  Let’s bring back the glory days of coal! It makes perfect sense to look at the primary power source of the early 1900’s to propel us into the future!

This weekend the yard is going to need a full maintenance effort with weed whacking and mowing on the agenda.  Other than that, whatever else comes to mind.

So yesterday was big day for the Prius, crossing 200,000 miles while Cindy was driving it.  I have owned a lot of vehicles with more than 100,000 miles on them but I think the Prius is the first to ever make it to the double century mark.  I have to say despite the big number on the odometer the car is still performing quite well.

Yes there are a few things that I need to do it, first of which will be replacing the front and rear struts.  Since we bought the car at around 132,000 miles we have had to do very little to it repair wise.  We went through a set of tires, I replaced the trunk switch, the rear hatch struts and I think that is pretty much it.  I am sure there will be some maintenance and repairs to come but the heart of the car still feels rock solid.

The Prius has been a part of a couple epic western road trips and has been a reliable daily commuter from day one.  If someone is looking for almost the perfect used car for daily driving, a 2004-2009 Prius is hard to beat.  I am hoping it will continue to serve us well for several years to come.

The other night (actually two separate nights) I went outside after the sun set to try to get some video of the new Tacoma lights.  The first time I tried using the GoPro and got nothing but distorted starburst footage.  The second time I used my Canon camera and got some better but not great results.

I started the video with a funny clip of me counting the amount of sections of the grille I did NOT cut out.  As expected I caught some shit from the YouTube world about my decision to cut out a couple spots on my grille to accomodate the lights but overall the reaction has been pretty positive.