Archives 2017

Over my adult life I seem to have hobby or interest phases where I get very focused or interested in something and dedicate a LOT of time to it.  Some things totally fade away, others just see less time dedicated to them. Some of the things that have rotated on and off that list are volleyball, cars, bar fitness, WoW, race timing, RC planes/drones, and electric unicycles.  Well it seems that 3D printing may be officially on that list as well.

After buying my FlashForge Finder a few weeks ago CIndy and I have been on a 3D printing tear. The majority of that printing has been stuff for Cindy’s Widowmaker costume for Supercon but I have made a lot of other cool things as well.  There is something very satisfying about being able to create an object out of nothing.

Well I expanded my 3D printer collection by ordering a printer that is taking the 3D printing world by storm, the CR-10.  It is so popular because it is able to produce HUGE prints in multiple materials with very good quality.  There are lots of printers that make really nice prints however what makes the CR-10 so crazy is it is only $400, $100 less than what I paid for my FlashForge printer.

This printer does require some minor assembly and is definitely not as targeted to the 3D printing novice as much as the Finder is.  I did a decent amount of reading and researching on the CR-10 and unlike so many things in life, it actually seems to not be to good to be true.  It’s a high quality, huge volume printer for a very affordable price.  I’m really looking forward to digging into it once it arrives and see what I can do.  I expect some more technical challenges with this type of printer but nothing that I can’t handle.

Speaking of 3D printing, Cindy has been busting ass getting the dozens of 3D parts I printed assembled for her rifle.  She is almost there and it looks great.  It amazes both of us that we were able to create something of this detail and realism ourselves, as complete 3D printing novices.

So I wanted to do a different kind of EUC ride for the 4th of July.  I suggested to Cindy we drive all the way down to Marco Island to ride around the hilly area, something we never tried before.  Cindy was enthusiastic about the idea.  The drive took between 45 minutes and an hour so it was significant time investment.

We parked at the same spot the Marco Hill Run is based out of, a race I timed for years.  I was initially frustrated when I turned on my GoPro and realized I left my micro-SD card in the reader at home.  However I was able to run into the Publix and grab a 16GB card to save the day.

The ride was really fun, scenic, interesting, and challenging.  I have NEVER ridden any EUC on hills that big.  I have seen a number of videos of fellow riders on the internet pushing their wheels up and down big hills and having the bot overheat or implode.  As we were riding I was using the app on my phone to make sure both the Monster and Msuper were not getting too hot from the added load.  Both wheels stayed safely in the normal operating range thankfully.

Riding hills requires a different technique.  Depending on the length and degree of climb you have to really pitch your body forward and shift your weight to your toes to keep the wheel going.  It also feels weird going down steep declines as your speed can very quickly ramp up to uncomfortable levels.  Cindy got a bunch of seated riding in too, despite the terrain.  It was a great ride and I hope we can take the wheels down there again to explore other parts of the island.

So when we got home after lunch I went directly outside to mow the back yard, the area I missed on Saturday due to a downpour that submerged the yard once again.  I gave the back yard a matching  haircut and finished up just as it started to rain, again.  By the time it stopped the standing water was back again.

We spent a lot of the rest of the day doing stuff we enjoyed, me playing WoW and Cindy working on her gun.  We were trying to estimate how much time in total we have spent on the Supercon costume/gear but it would be too staggering to add up.  Despite all the work, it’s something Cindy really enjoys doing so the hours don’t really matter.

I forgot to mention I have now put up a a web site for my EUC Army moniker that I established on YouTube awhile ago.  I took down the running club website that I still had alive in one of my WP hosting slots on GoDaddy and installed eucarmy.com there instead, a much better use of my resources.

My thought process is when we are asked about the wheels we can simply say, “go to eucarmy.com to find out more”  The site explains some of the basics as well as links to more information, a forum, and recommendations on where to buy EUC’s.  I like the visuals of the site, it will be interesting to see how much traffic it will generate for me.

Our 4th of July celebration was a minimal as you can imagine.  When we took Elsa out for her final walk of the night we each lit a single sparkler that was waved around for a few seconds.  I had no desire to go fight traffic and crowds to witness the fireworks at the Naples Pier and there were plenty of backyard firework shows going off all around us.

Cindy and I started off the weekend with a track 5K.  I forced myself to do it even though as recently as Friday night I was walking around gingerly due to hamstrings still sore from deadlifting on Tuesday.  Much like the week prior, the run felt like a struggle pretty much the entire time.  The temp almost being 80 degrees with high humidity at 7AM didn’t help matters.

I wanted to get all weekend labor out of the way on Saturday and I worked diligently to make that happen.  Weeding was a particularly large pain in the ass.  The frequent rain combined with steaming temperatures provides the perfect conditions for weeds to pop up everywhere.

It was bright and sunny for most of the day Saturday, so much so that once again the dreaded standing water had dried up.  Around 3 o’clock I decided I should take advantage of this and jumped on the tractor as I saw a few gray clouds starting to form.  Well as I was about half way into mowing the first front section when it started to rain lightly.  Since the tractor has a sun canopy it also does a decent job as a rain canopy so I pressed on.  By the time I called it quits after finishing the front of the house I was mowing in the middle of a monsoon.  Of course the recently dried up sections of the yard were now back under several inches of water…..sigh.

Another thing I got out of the way on Saturday was my weekly bill paying session.  I actually had very few bills to pay this week so a wave of inspiration hit me.  My primary 15 year mortgage was real close to being paid off.  I had planned to pay it off in a couple months but I decided I would dip into one of my other budget columns and pay the sucker off now.  I have been overpaying a little bit each month ever since the house was refinanced  which has allowed me to get to this point roughly a year ahead of schedule.

A looong time ago I had set a goal of having the house paid off before I was 50 so it feels good to accomplish that.  However when I initially set that goal it was the intent for the house to be COMPLETELY paid off which it is not.  I still have my home equity loan which was opened almost as long ago which was used to pay for things like the pool, the two terrible land investments in Lehigh Acres, divorce settlement funds, and home improvements.  Now that the primary mortgage is cleared out I can attack the HELOC as well as having some extra funds to both save and do some other things with.  I would like to open up a Roth IRA to give me a third retirement account to lean on when I am old, gray, and feeble. (if I make it that long)  So anyway, yes, it feels good to have the primary mortgage satisfied, it’s something a lot of people never get a chance to do in their lifetimes.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched Aftermath, a recent movie I never heard of with Arnold starring in it based on a true story.  I was somewhat surprised that the movie was missing pretty much any of the classic Arnold physicality even though there is a weird, twisted, revenge plot going on.  I thought it was well done although extremely sad and tragic.  It gets a solid B but don’t expect to be jumping for joy afterward.  I think this movie never hit theaters and went direct to Blu-ray.

Sunday morning Cindy and I got out on the wheels, riding directly from the house over to the high school roughly three miles away.  The wide open and traffic free roads are great for practicing.  I did more seated riding on the Monster and Cindy worked on a number of skills as well.  Her comfort level on the wheel is approaching mine.

It felt like I was wasting time not having my 3D printer building something so over the weekend I printed Arthas the Lich King, a big character from World of Warcaft lore. It was a very complex model and I was skeptical of how it would turn out.  When it was done printing it was encased in support material but after a lot of careful clean up by Cindy this was the end result.  Cindy will also be the one to take on the very intricate task of painting the model when she has time.

The reason Cindy’s time has been taxed is her relentless work on her cosplay costume and props.  She has been spending a ton of time assembling the 3D gun that we printed the parts for.  Putting all the parts together and making it look pretty is a far greater task than the printing of the parts.  It’s exciting seeing the gun come to life bit by bit. Hopefully by the end of this week it will be more or less done.

While she was plugging away on her stuff I was plugging away in WoW having a good time rotating through my various characters and getting stuff done in a virtual manner.  I always feel somewhat guilty after prolonged gaming sessions but I enjoy them all the same.

I have a weird week where after a day at the office I am treated with another day off.  Cindy and I have no definitive plans for the 4th but I am sure EUC riding, gun building, and WoW will be part of the itinerary.

I forgot to mention a call I had with my insurance agency the other day.  The call was inspired by the revised monthly car insurance bill I received after adding Cindy’s Prius to my policy.  Specifically, that the monthly bill more than doubled adding a 10 year old vehicle that was worth probably 10% of the Tacoma.  I explained the scenario to the phone rep on the other line and how it did not make sense that my policy would increase so much more for a vehicle that is worth a tiny fraction of what the truck is.  I asked him to explain to me how that is logical.

He said that the higher costs has to do with the additional safety features the Tacoma has that the Prius lacks.  He said the collision portion of the policy for the Tacoma is indeed higher than the Prius but the comprehensive portion is less due to these additional safety features.  I turned the discussion to the big picture cost of car insurance as for these two vehicles I am paying over $2400 a year despite being nearly 50 years old and NEVER having an accident claim or speeding ticket since moving to Florida.

I told the rep the way it used to work was as drivers get older their insurance goes down.  Instead my insurance has steadily risen, despite my squeaky clean driving record.  The rep said the blame for this is almost entirely litigation, specifically the mega-settlements you see TV lawyers bragging about.  I told him that despite this it is very difficult for me to feel sorry for insurance companies when I read about the incredible profit margins and CEO salaries associated with them.

The rep understood my frustration and told me he was paying almost exactly the same as I was to insure his two vehicles as well.  The end result of this was my dropping the collision coverage on the Prius to save a few bucks.  He also said that if I opt to pay the six month premium in a lump sum instead of monthly there is a 10% savings.  I did not realize the savings was that significant else I would have done it that way for a long time.  I hung up not feeling particularly better about the situation but at least I got to voice some discontent I suppose.

I picked up my Tacoma on the way home last night.  The recall work on the differential went without a hitch.  The truck was ready to go as promised.  Dealing with a different service advisor at the dealership has made my experience there much more enjoyable.  I shot a video about the differential service of course.

When I got home I completed two other videos.  One was me cracking open the side case of my Gotway Monster to make sure all of the wiring and electronics looked ok.  The reason I did this was a rash of Gotway failures where wires and/or electronic components inside their wheels failed causing rider injury.  I was happy to see the inside of my wheel looked pristine.

Finally I ripped the video of the time lapse print of the 3d lamp cover I made in Fusion 360.  It was my coolest print to date, until I printed a 3D mesh skull yesterday. 🙂

The property is back to being water logged after a week of afternoon storms.  I have the pump back up and running, trying to somehow stay ahead of the steady stream of water from the sky.  It’s frustrating.

This weekend we will have Sadie which will make Elsa VERY happy.  It makes the entire household better when Sadie and her happy go lucky attitude is rolling around the house.

This morning I dropped off my Tacoma at the dealer to get the official recall work done on my rear differential that is seeping fluid slightly.  The official fix is the same thing I read when they wanted to confiscate my truck a few weeks back, replace the gasket and re-torque the bolts.  I guess they just got the parts in to do the work.  I was given a loaner Rav4 so I hope the entire thing is a non-issue.

Now that the gun parts are 3D printed I have been printing some more cool/useful things.  The Iphone 6 phone stand took FOREVER to print, something like 18-19 hours.  The reason it took so long was it utilized a .1 millimeter resolution height (gun was printed at .3 mil) and 100% infill (gun was 30%).  These settings make the files huge and the prints slow but it results in a VERY strong end product.  The stand will work perfectly to keep my phone ideally placed and angled at the office.

The other object was a 3D lampshade that was my first ever Fusion 360 project that I made from scratch.  Now of course I made it from following a YouTube video step by step but I hope sometime soon I can get comfortable enough in the software to bang out my own custom objects to a degree.

So after a one year road trip hiatus Cindy and I officially are heading back on the road in early August.  We are doing something rare in my road trip history, an entirely east cost route that will take us as far north as Portland, Maine.  Hugging the east coast during summer is less than ideal because of the summer vacationers but we wanted to try it at least once. One of the stops we have planned along the way is Rehoboth Beach where we plan to finally spread my mom’s ashes at the place we all enjoyed many fond memories.

The trip is on the short side as my work schedule the next several months sort of sucks with many weeks requiring my attendance, this was literally the only week I could sneak in before December.  It looks like the mileage each way is roughly 1600 miles so the distance compared to our 6500 mile western trips is not bad. However the fact that we are covering 3200 miles in nine total days while trying to allow ample time to sight see and explore via one wheel is going to make for some very full days.

So after having pretty much all standing water dried up/pumped out by Saturday afternoon we are back to a submerged state from some rain Sunday followed by a deluge from a strong storm last night.  This morning before work I was outside in my boxer shorts and boots reconnecting my submersible pump set up.  I am sure it looked fascinating.

As far as we can tell all of the parts for the Widowmaker rifle have been printed so overnight we started on another 3D cosplay piece, head gear.  The piece consists of three 3d printed parts that are attached to a head band sort of thing.  The biggest part was printed first and it came out pretty damn well.

So I had a LOT of stuff I wanted to get done this weekend.  I gave Cindy my potential list and she busted ass on Friday getting a number of the indoor components of the list knocked out which I greatly appreciated.  Friday had been bright and sunny for the most part and the forecast was for Saturday to be much of the same. I was hoping to be able to get a pretty comprehensive mowing session in to take advantage of the receded water.

The weather forecast was accurate for the most part and the end result was a monster chore day on Saturday.  Not only did Cindy and I mow and weed whack the normal portions of the yard, I also took the tractor out back and cut everything back there as well.  There were a handful of other small projects we threw in the mix.  The end result was my not coming back inside until after 4PM.

When we ran to Home Depot earlier in the day we also stopped at Walmart for Cindy to grab some Zima, yes, Zima.  After around a decade hiatus Coors has decided to bring back Zima on a limited basis which was awesome news to me.  You see when I started drinking at 24 years of age Zima was my alcohol of choice.  I had not acquired a taste for beer as of yet and the smooth citrus taste of Zima made them go down very easily, possibly too easily as I had MANY Zima induced stupors in my mid-20s.

We had several bottles in the fridge getting cold during the afternoon.  After a long, hot, sweaty day of work I couldn’t imagine a better time to give Zima 2.0 a taste test.  I thought the moment was important enough to capture on video.  The ridged side bottle was exactly as I remembered 20 years ago.  When I cracked open the bottle my first taste was not a sip, it was a guzzle, I was so thirsty.

I immediately was in a taste time machine, transporting me back to the 90’s.  The clear beverage tasted exactly as I remembered and that means it was goooood.  Cindy somehow missed out on the Zima craze back then but she was more than willing to give it a try this time around.  She was quite pleasantly surprised, she really liked the taste as well.

About halfway into her bottle she added some chamborg to it. By the time she finished that she was full blown drunk.  I finished my first bottle before the video was over and followed up with three more bottles in short order.  It was the perfect reward for a day of hard labor.  I can only hope our hardcore patronage of Zima over the summer is enough to make Coors carry the magical drink on a permanent basis.

My Zima induced mild drunkenness helped me enjoy our Netflix rental, The Great Wall a little bit more.  Cindy said the movie had gotten awful reviews and it didn’t take me long to see why.  The story and plot was just silly and I was really surprised an accomplished actor like Matt Damon would have agreed to be a part of it after reading the script.  It had good action and visually cool cinematics at least to keep it in the C range.  Cindy stopped watching about halfway through and worked on her gun instead.

Speaking of her gun, at this point we have pretty much all of the individual parts 3D printed and they look cool.  However this was only the first and possibly easier portion of the gun creation.  Assembling the dozens of pieces in a clean way is not going to be easy at all but I am letting that part of the process completely in Cindy’s hands.  The gun is held together by a combination of glue, metal rods, and magnets.

Over the weekend I also downloaded and installed Fusion 360 which is software that allows you to make your own 3D objects from scratch.  I played around in it a little.  It seems very complex but powerful.  It will require a lot of time of mine just playing around in there to get the hang of things.

Sunday morning Cindy and I set the alarm to get in a run, hoping an earlier start time would help minimize the oppressive heat and humidity.  Despite taking our first stride around 6:45 it was still a miserable slog.  There were many times I felt like stopping during the 5K but I had designated the run as a psuedo tribute to Tuki in my mind.  Everytime I felt like stopping I just thought about Tuk and the anger I feel towards myself about it. The physical discomfort I was feeling was only a small portion of the punishment I felt I deserved.

Although we just ran a 5K I had another type of endurance activity in mind for the electric unicycles, the 20 mile round trip ride to Dunkin Donuts.  When I suggested it to Cindy I sort of expected a knee jerk negative reaction but instead she seemed sort of into it.  She had never ridden much more than 10 miles before and never in a sustained high speed commuting type of scenario on main roads.  We strapped on our safety gear and headed out into the steamy morning air.

At first I thought Cindy would demand we stayed on sidewalk for most of the ride however she actually suggested we use the Immokalee Road bike lane for most of it instead.  The idea of criss crossing the six lane road multiple times to stay on the sidewalk did not appeal to her.  She did quite well maintaining a steady 18+ mph pace on the Msuper once we go into the long straightaway portion of the ride.  Having the seat for the Monster also was a big plus as it allowed her to ride probably 8-9 miles of the 20 in the seated position which she is really getting adept at.

There were parts of the ride when she was on the Monster that she was riding quite fast, fast enough that my Msuper gave me a “hey, slow down” warning beep a couple times.  It was a fun ride and Cindy pulled back into the driveway now much more confident in her ability to ride the wheels longer distances.

We had a nice rest of the day at home outside a brief run to Rural King to grab a couple things.  It seemed like an almost perfectly balanced weekend where we worked very hard on Saturday but worked hard on Sunday doing what we wanted to do instead of what we tasked ourselves to do.  Cindy wound up the weekend with a good dinner and an even better homemade chocolate cake. A couple more Zima’s helped put a happy exclamation point on the two days.

I have a good chunk of vacation time to use up before my annual rollover in mid-August.  I also have a bunch of small projects on my mental to do list that would benefit from taking a few long weekends.  I actually had hoped to either take today or Monday off to facilitate just that but can’t because of various work commitments both days.  Don’t get me wrong, having to find ways to jam in vacation time is a good problem to have but it is a problem nonetheless.

Last night in addition to cranking out more 3D prints I recorded a video about a recent safety issue with newly produced Gotway wheels.  Well actually I recorded the video twice.  The first time I neglected to remember that I had the camcorder set to time lapse mode so my 10 minute video got compressed into 10 seconds of footage.  The video talks about the very dangerous problem where going over a very minor bump can cause a Gotway wheel to oscillate violently back and forth, throwing the rider to the ground.

Marty, one of my online EUC buddies had just received a brand new Gotway Msuper and was filming as he took it out for it’s first real test ride.  As he crossed a small bump between the road and sidewalk ramp his wheel shook rapidly and tossed him hard onto the sidewalk.  He screwed up his wrist pretty bad as well as his shoulder.  Anyway my video outlines my thoughts about the whole ordeal and why I plan to get a Kingsong 16S for my next wheel instead of dipping back into the Gotway world.  I have plenty of ways to hurt myself already, I don’t need a wheel failure to do it for me.

This weekend has a lot of 3D printing and a lot of sweaty work ahead of it. Yay.

So Cindy and I have been 3D printing day and night, printing parts for her Widowmaker gun.  Yesterday a flaw in our set up was revealed when one of our frequent summer power blips killed a print that was over halfway done.  I immediately ordered a small UPS that should prevent this scenario from repeating.  I also ordered another Night Owl camera to add to the house security DVR that will be focused on the 3D printer so jobs can be monitored remotely. Otherwise we seem to have a good system in place.

We are pumping out parts pretty regularly, at least two per day.  My main job is getting the 3D models configured and printing.  Cindy has been doing the post print work which includes cleaning up the pieces after removing the support material and eventually assembling it all together. The printed parts look really sharp, I’m hoping for an equally sharp outcome.  At this point I have almost entirely consumed my one kilogram reel of silver PLA filament.  It’s a good thing I have another one on the way.

So once again there were some downpours yesterday at the house, retarding my battle against standing water in the coop yard.  The pump I have back there seems to be very good quality.  It has been running around the clock for close to a week without issue.  The forecast calls for roughly a three day break from precipitation which would be fantastic.  The combo of bright hot/sun combined with pumping water elsewhere should be able to empty out the water in that period of time. hopefully.

Of course the long term solution to this problem is to raise the ground level in that area.  Trying to do it one 40 pound bag of topsoil at a time would be rather brutal but might be the eventual route I have to take.

So I have been doing better the last 48 hours or so with not dwelling as much on Tuki’s demise. However that changed after work.  We gave Tuki’s cage to Cindy’s ex-sister-in-law and niece since they have birds.    Having the cage out of my field view removed one large glaring reminder in the living space but at the same time it’s absence was also like a black hole in some ways.  Well tonight I was unloading the dishwasher and had the emotions kick back in which may seem like odd timing to most, unless you knew one of Tuki’s many quirks.

For some reason that will remain a mystery Tuki found the act of someone emptying the dishwasher extremely entertaining and enjoyable.  As you unload dishes he would say his name repeatedly in one of the many variations he could say (Tuk, Tuki, Tuki-Tuk, Tuk-Tuk).  He also would make some of his pleasant sounds instead of the bone chilling screech he was so fond of.  His absolute favorite part of the process was when the silverware went back in the drawers.  Perhaps the clinking noise was something he just liked for his own bird reasons.

Like I mentioned the other day, his contributions to the house environment were so established that it felt like they were woven into the very fabric of my day to day living experience.  I don’t want to overly embellish the relationship Tuki and I had personally because it was not great although we both learned to get along, more or less.

We used to have a hard time getting Tuki to go back into his cage at night but discovered that if I was the one to refill his water and food dishes he almost always would go back into his cage because he saw it as an opportunity to try to bite me as I pulled and reinserted his food crocks.  Most of the time it seemed like he was just acting like he wanted to attack me to establish dominance but a couple times he actually did bite me hard which I never reacted well to. He was always very fond of Alison and Cindy, letting them handle and pet him with far less consequence than if I would have tried it.  Hell he was more fond of pretty much every visitor we had to the house than he was of me.

I swear Tuki lived in a time vacuum.  He never seemed to look or act much differently from year one to year seventeen. He never had any health problems and likely would have lived for decades to come if not for my terrible judgement call which I will regret for a long time to come.

So due to a mechanical issue my buddy’s flight was postponed till today instead of yesterday so we had Lucky in the house for an extra night which Elsa definitely was happy about.  The contrast between how Elsa was when Lucky first came in the house till now is hilarious.  She now wrestles and plays with Lucky constantly and he has clearly been accepted into Elsa’s elite inner circle of trust.

Don will be coming to pick up Lucky around mid-day while Cindy is home so I said my goodbye’s to him before I left for work.  He is such a good and loving dog, it breaks my heart that he has to be associated with such a painful event like what happened Friday.  However I didn’t blame him then and I don’t blame him now.

So there again was a lot of 3d printing work last night.  Cindy and I are learning as we go.  With the gun I am trying to make for Cindy’s costume I came against a piece that was far too big to print at 100% size.  It was even too big to print at 80% scale like I did with the other parts I have made so far.  I found if I shrunk it to 67% it would just fit.

I started the print job but then realized it was sort of dumb for two reasons.  All of the pieces need to be printed at the same scale so if I print this piece at 67% it would mean I would need to reprint the other pieces I already completed as well to the same scale which would be a pain. Plus reducing the model size that much would make the gun look too tiny I think.

So I instead did my first slicing job.  I reset the big part to 80% scale which put a good portion of the model outside the printable range.  I then did a slice on the Z axis, lopping off about 25% of the top.  I then broke the bottom and top sections into their own print file.

I printed the larger section over night.  It took close to nine hours to complete but turned out well.  I am now printing the chopped off section which Cindy will clean up and glue to the first part to make it whole again.

I also figured out a way to finally print some parts that I failed at a half dozen times before.  I was able to separate the four parts and print them on their ends instead of flat.  Sure it used extra support material but the end product was pretty good.  I am happy that I am slowly understanding some of the basics so I can come up with ways to get around obstacles as they pop up. Since we have never done this before we are hoping it all turns out half decent.  The quality of the printed parts so far has been really good for a $500 device.