Archives November 2017

So a week or so ago my dad reached out to me pitching the idea of my coming up there for my birthday next month.  The reason was this will be my 50th year on the planet, something I would honestly be fine let pass by like any other day.  Anyone that knows me knows that aging is something I typically have no interest in celebrating. However in this case it was more about the appeal of getting to hang out with my family and the animals for a couple days.  It’s also fun to expose myself to true winter-like weather for brief periods of time.

I was amazed at how cheaply I was able to secure a flight via Spirit Airlines who evidently recently started flying Fort Myers to Pittsburgh.  My TOTAL fare was something like $98.  Not only is it cheap but it’s a direct flight with no layovers.  Now of course there is a catch.  Spirit nails you heavily for luggage fees, even for carry on items so it is likely my total cost will be more than double the base fare, but even so, it’s still affordable.

I also seem to be making some headway into getting my insurance claim upped to more closely match the estimates I have received.  The adjuster I talked to on Tuesday said they would agree to pay the difference in their initial offer and my estimates but I had to send them signed contracts for the work on the roof and the pool cage.  It was another annoying hoop to jump through.  I was further annoyed when they said the supplemental checks would have both my name and the contractors name on them meaning in total there would be three different checks with each check requiring a secondary co-signer.

I guess I can understand why this practice exists.  Putting both names on a check is a way to cut down on fraud from individuals that would otherwise cash the check and never do the repairs or do them in a half ass way to save money.  On the other hand I feel it is my home, my insurance policy that I pay the premiums for.  I would rather be cut a check that I deposit in my account which I dole out funds from as I see fit.

I am off tomorrow for Veterans Day.  Just like last year I am going to consume that day high up in the trees, doing my hated annual chore of branch trimming.  The task takes a greater physical toll on me each and every year. I feel both dread for the work but anticipation for it’s completion.  If there is one bright spot about Hurricane Irma was it did some of the branch trimming for me ahead of time and even removed several trees from the equation altogether.

I ordered another 3D printer, a Dagoma Neva.  It is a delta 3D printer, a different type than either the FlashForge Finder and CR-10 I already own.  After fighting with my CR-10 for over a month the Neva, which I just happened to stumble across on a 3D printing YouTube video, was very appealing.

It makes 3D printing extremely simple with a single button on the unit.   The circular build area is larger than the Finder with a 7 inch by 8 inch capacity.  The print platform is stationary so there is none of the bed leveling hassle that plagues many 3D printers.

I initially will of course play with it at home but I have ideas of bringing it to the office so I can be extra productive, creating 3D objects as I do my normal 8-5 duties, we’ll see.

It felt quite odd to be driving home yesterday and have it be so dark.  It was my first workday since daylight savings changed meaning the light is pretty much gone by 6PM. It sucks for me because it means I no longer have any daylight to do anything outside if need be during the week.  I still can take my EUC out for a ride if I feel so inclined at least.

Yesterday was another day of frustration in my hurricane remediation efforts.  For nearly a week I have been trying to get my closing scheduled to reopen my home equity line.  During that period I have called in at least three times, talked to someone who said a closer will be calling me back and then had no action.

I am going through almost an identical but even more egregious example with my homeowners insurance.  I am now going on my third week of trying to get an answer regarding my request to adjust the amount of my claim based on the estimates I have received.  It is no wonder people hate insurance companies as much as they do.  It seems crystal clear that the clear objective here is to stonewall and frustrate the customer until they give up and accept whatever was offered to them, regardless of fairness.  Unfortunately for them, I don’t give up that easily.

I had a bizarre case of good luck with this weeks fantasy football game.  I went into last nights game with a comfortable lead of almost 40 points but my opponent had the Detroit QB and WR.  When I woke up today and and saw Stafford had 38 points I thought once again I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  However I happened to have the Detroit running back Riddick playing.  He had his best fantasy game of the season, scoring 7 points, giving me a nail biter one point win 89-88.  The win kept me in solid position in my division with a 5-4 record.  There seems to be a lot of teams floating around .500 this season with no truly dominant roster.

Yep I have not mentioned the latest mass shooting because it is just the same scenario played out again and again.  Gun activists freak out at people suggesting some minimal actions like removing gun permitting loop holes and banning automatic weapons followed by brief periods of name calling back and forth.  The end result is we just keep circling, never moving forward.

I apologize for going dark for the latter half of last week. We finally completed the second half of our renovation at the office and I worked my ass off getting our department moved from our temporary building back to our renovated space.  There were movers scheduled to come on Friday to move our furniture but I didn’t want to wait.  So starting on Wednesday I used my Tacoma and hand trucks to move tons of heavy metal desks and tables.

I worked straight through each day with no gym/lunch break.  I had no need for supplemental exercise as I got plenty of it hauling everything around.  My body was beat to a pulp by the end of it.  Both of my arms are heavily bruised from having the furniture wedged against them.  My lower back was one big knot of pain as well.   To me the pain and soreness was worth it as by the close of business on Friday I was more or less situated back into my original office.

I used the final move as an opportunity to rearrange my office.  I turned my desks into an L configuration and lost a couple pieces of furniture to give me more space.  The end result was the window in my office is now in my field of view all day long instead of to my back.  I like the configuration much more.

On Saturday I was busy buzzing around the house.  After weeding the yard I had to get out the ladder to address a couple things.  The rig job I did on the OTA antenna finally failed.  The partially snapped center extension broke all the way and was laying on the roof of the shed.  I went up there and undid the dog leash and wash line that held it together after the hurricane.  I hoped what remained would still get us some TV.  We do still get channels albeit fewer than we did when the antenna was in one piece.  It will do in an emergency which is all it is for at this point.

I also had to put the spline back in for my haphazard temporary roof screening repair.  The wind had managed to partially pull it out.  I am looking forward to having the cage rescreen professionally, whenever that may be.  I am hoping to complete one piece of the puzzle to make that happen this week.  I am supposed to close on reopening my home equity line this week which allows me to more conveniently fund whatever part of the repairs that won’t be covered by insurance.  Of course coming to an amicable agreement with my insurance is an entirely different issue which I am still in the middle of fighting.

During the afternoon I spent a bunch of time replacing pool cage screws with the new ones that I bought that are designed to look much better and last much longer.  Specifically I was replacing the big concrete screws that are used to attach the cage to the deck.  Each support had a minimum of four screws attaching it to the cement.  In every support but a couple, half of those screws were corroded to the point where the head snapped off.  The screws that went through an L bracket directly into the cement remained intact but pretty much every screw that went through an L bracket and then through the 1″ x 2″ piece of cage frame into the cement were destroyed.  In those situations roughly an inch of the bolt was left exposed to the air/elements.  Evidently the bolts were not designed to hold up in that situation.

So now I have to either drill out the roughly four inches of snapped off screws in each hole (probably at least 20 of them) or install another L bracket which allows me to relocate that hole elsewhere.  Either way it’s going to be a pain in the ass.  The screws that I did manage to replace look great.  They install on top of a nylon washer and have a weatherproof cap that snaps into place on top.  The combination looks clean and seals off the fastener from the elements.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the new Thor movie.  We again saw it at the Prado theater which I think has now become our theater of choice since Coconut Point  inexplicably remains closed.  This time we paid extra to see the movie in their VIP theaters which have reserved seating in beautiful and comfortable power reclining chairs.

When I bought the tickets I thought I bought seats in the top row in the middle.  It turns out the theater diagram was the reverse of what I expected and we wound up being in the first row.  It was disconcerting at first but with the way the seats reclined it made viewing the film less than ideal but bearable.

The movie was not what I expected.  If I were to describe it, I would say it was a comedy first and a conventional Marvel superhero action movie second.  Don’t get me wrong, it succeeded in this role, I laughed out loud a lot.  The film still gets a shiny A rating from me, it just got there in a manner I didn’t expect.

So despite going to the movies AND this being a daylight savings weekend where you lose an hour of time, I set my alarm for 5:30 to go compete in my first race of 2017.  The race was an unheard of  FREE four miler held by a group that is trying to get a foothold into putting on events in our area.  The race was held at North Collier Park, a spot we ride the wheels at quite a bit and the place where Cindy and I did a lot of our tri-style training the first year or two we were together.

I arrived about 40 minutes before the 7Am start time.  I could not believe that our free entry to the race also included a free, high quality dri-fit t-shirt as well.  Hell they even had finisher medals at the end.  As far as how the actual running part of the event went, I struggled.  It was the only the second time this year I ran four miles so I was not in a position to try to push pace, I just wanted to complete the distance.

Early on I had some of the old familiar struggles where I saw people that shouldn’t be ahead of me, ahead of me.  However as is often the case, a lot of those people slowed down or stopped to walk, allowing me to take the spot in front of them.  For the last half of the race I was the one doing the passing, except for once case where a teenager girl whom I passed was able to return the favor as she had more gas in the tank than I did as she pushed towards the finish.  My finish time of 38:30 was about 45-60 seconds per mile slower than what I could do comfortably 4-5 years ago but to be honest I really didn’t care.  It just felt good to get out there and still prove to myself I could endure.

Mid-morning Cindy and I pushed off to ride EUCs with a twist.  Cindy saw they had a food truck/autoshow event going on on Vanderbilt Beach Road.  We parked the Prius and rode the roughly mile to the event.  We did a good job of maneuvering our wheels through the crowd which was pretty dense at spots.  We got TONS of comments and double takes as we rolled around the event.  We saw a lot of sweet cars and enjoyed a nice lunch from a food truck that wheeled over all the way from Miami.  It was a good idea by Cindy.

We got home shortly after the Eagles game started.  The game quickly turned into a blowout, so much so that much of the second half was not televised locally.  The big win left the Eagles sitting at an unbelievable 8-1, going into a bye week.  Maybe, just maybe, I am starting to think the team has the chance to go deep into the playoffs.  Their recent acquisition of Ajayi from the Dolphins paid immediate dividends after he had a long TD run and ran hard.

I have a short four day week thanks to Veterans Day falling on Friday.  I have a lot to do in those four days but look forward to the three day respite.

So last night we made arrangements for me to meet Cindy after she taught her evening spin class down by her work along with Katie and Daniel.  I wore my old spartan helmet as well as carrying my 4 foot long sword on my Msuper.  Daniel wore my old Jason mask and Katie wore a full body dragon costume which was very cute.  We wanted to ride the wheels through Victoria Park.  We rode through there last year although it was not on Halloween itself.  That made quite the difference.

This development gets mobbed at Christmas with people driving through to look at the the over the top decorations the community is famous for.  Well that did not compare at all to the amount of people jamming the streets last night, it was incredible.

Luckily all of us are skilled enough at riding that we could weave in and out of the crowd pretty easily.  As we rode around we heard a constant stream of comments ,What’s that??”, “a NEW hoverboard”, and “soooo coool” were some of the most heard.

There were some pretty sweet halloween decorations to see as well as all of the costumed kids and adults roaming the street.  If it were up to me I probably would have stayed longer than we did but it was getting late and Cindy was cold as the temps dipped into the 60’s.  The experience made me anxious to take the wheels back there during the Christmas season.  I shot video of the ride which hopefully turns out well.