Archives April 2018

So my final weekend of my staycation was just like the rest of it, enjoyable.  On Friday I got weeding and mowing out of the way, making the weekend as chore free as possible.  I had a good time concentrating on doing whatever I felt like working on.  Have I mentioned that my staycation made it absolutely clear that I could retire tomorrow and be absolutely content?

Saturday night we finally got to see Infinity Wars, a movie I have been anticipating forever.  I was fearful of being let down like the last Star Wars movie where mountains of anticipation is met with a lackluster actual experience.  Thankfully, as is most often the case with Marvel movies, they got it right.  The movie was epic and exciting with the just the right mix of drama and humor.  Until we were ordering our water before the movie, I had no idea that there was a part two to Infinity War.  After watching it the reason for a part two was obvious.  Despite a MASSIVE cast of heroes, I thought they did an amazing job of making the movie feel balanced where everyone had their moment to shine in different ways.  There was only one scene where I thought to myself “This is a really dumb way to accomplish this goal”, otherwise I just held on and enjoyed the ride from start to finish.  A+

My last day of staycation on Sunday was just like the rest of it, fun.  We went out for an EUC ride, well I rode while Cindy walked with Sadie and Elsa at North Collier Regional park.  It was a short but enjoyable time in the beautiful weather.

During the afternoon I spent at least a couple hours digging hardcore into my new 3D printer, something you don’t normally expect to have to do when you buy something.  The end result was positive although I went through a lot of negative to get there.

Late in the evening Cindy and I headed out for a quick ride across the street, her on the Segway I2, me on the Msuper.  It was cool cruising during a different part of the day.  I used to do a lot more late day riding but it has tailed off during the last year.

It was a great week off and I look forward to the time where working becomes an option and not a requirement.

Yesterday I used my Monster to go pick up my Tacoma which was in for it’s 20,000 mile service. I hitched a ride with Cindy who had to go to work which got me two thirds of the way there already.  I originally wanted to just ride all the way from home but Cindy felt less worried if I did it this way.  The ride only took around 15 minutes and left me wanting more.

My new 3D printer showed up yesterday.  I took a good chunk of the afternoon setting it up and testing it out.  I was disappointed when I discovered a Z coupler was stretched out and needed to be replaced.  Luckily I just happened to have a spare that I never used.  Swapping it in wasn’t too tough.   The printer has a large build volume which is one of the big reasons I was interested in it.  It has some quirks as well that I am trying to get figured out but I think it will be a great addition to my 3D printing farm.

Today is Friday already meaning my staycation is winding down.  I am planning to front load today with a couple chores that normally would be relegated to the weekend.  I really have enjoyed having a full week off without a MASSIVE project dominating my time.

Yesterday was my first day of the staycation without a to do list hanging overhead.  After our early morning run we cleane dup and headed out mid-morning.  I actually stopped in at the office for about a half hour to say goodbye to a co-worker that was retiring after 36 years.  She and I always have had a funny relationship where we pick on each other like brother-sister.  It will be sad to see her go but she is still young enough to enjoy her retirement which is cool.

We stopped for lunch on the way back at Fuzzy Taco’s one of our fav eating establishments.  It was nice to be able to live like a retired person for the day.  Later in the afternoon we had to head back out to drop the Tacoma off for it’s 20,000 mile service, even though it is about 500 miles short of that mileage.  When you buy a Tacoma they give you free maintenance for 25,000 miles or two years, whatever comes first.  I did not realize that I am actually a few days past the two year mark.  Since I have been daily driving the Prius, the Tacoma has been seeing a lot less mileage.  My service advisor said she would still be able to get me the work done for free since it’s so close but this will be the last freebie.  On the way back to the house we picked up Sadie for another long weekend.

Last night Cindy and I worked on stuff, with my attention being mostly on solving an odd 3D printing problem which turned out to be a bad SD card.  I also dove into WoW hard core for the first time during the staycation.

This morning when I was cleaning the coop I saw this thing on the floor that almost looked like a hardened egg yolk.  Upon researching it later I discovered it is a “lash egg” which appears to have come out of Kristen, our only white chicken.  A lash egg is not an egg at all as you can see from the words on the picture.  It is a symptom of a serious and potentially fatal infection in the bird’s reproductive system.  There is a chance a chicken can recover on it’s own from such an ailment but I read that it is more common for this to be the ultimate demise of the animal.

I am going to see if I can find some sort of antbiotic we can give Kristen as well as getting liquid yogurt to try to help boost her immune system as well.  I am crossing my fingers she can recover.  She is a sweet hen, one of my favorites.  She is still acting normal otherwise but that is often the case with chickens, they will hide ailments until the very end.

Yesterday the roofers were again back bright and early with a reduced workforce since there was only the front facing side of the roof to strip and prepare.  After doing the chicken chores and a few other things Elsa and I headed out to Home Depot.  I wanted to get a new timer for the pool pump.  The old timer switch was so stiff that it actually bent the tabs that are used to turn the pump on and off.

Elsa had her normal up and down Home Depot experience.  She is perfectly content as long as everyone ignores her.  The second someone stops to interact with her she panics and tries to hide.  It’s a weird aspect of her personality that we have not been able to cure with time.  Cindy and I both wonder what happened in her past to make her so fearful of strangers.

Mid-afternoon I replaced the switch.  The design is cool.  I was able to remove the guts from the case mounted on the wall and simply insert the guts from the new Intermatic switch.  I felt a wave of relief when I flipped the switch and the pump fired up as it should.  There was secondary relief as the repair meant that I officially had finished the 15th and last item on my to do list, meaning the rest of the staycation can have a lot more of my doing what I want to do as opposed to what I feel I need to do.

During the day I did a lot of futzing around with the CR-10 which again was being problematic.  I finally got it printing again, cranking out more EUC stand parts.  While Cindy was teaching a class I fired up my web cam for a YouTube live stream.  I wound up streaming for over 90 minutes to only a handful of people but it was still fun for me.

I made an appointment to get the Tacoma in for it’s 20k service although I am about 500 miles from that number.  I figured it made sense to get it out of the way while I’m off.

I’m looking forward to a pleasant Wednesday where I can once again simulate retired life.  Cindy and I started the morning right with a three and a half mile run departing from and returning to Dunkin Donuts.

Yesterday was a good day.  The roofer arrived bright and early and got to work.  It was a large crew of at least a dozen guys.  Before long the inside of the house was filled with the noise of a shingle roof being removed which was a lot of scraping and banging.  Later in the day it was supplemented with a lot of banging and hammering as they re-nailed all of the exposed plywood to bring it up to code level strength.

The workers seemed very efficient and meticulous, laying tarps everywhere to catch any debris, which there was a lot of.  By the time they wrapped up for the day around 2PM three quarters of the roof had been stripped, renailed, and covered with the new rubberized underlayment.  All that remains is the front face of the roof that they are actively tearing into as I type.  After this we have around a week to wait until county inspectors check things out before the metal can be attached.

I flew my drone overhead twice yesterday to get a unique high perspective on the work and the transformation as it occurs.  It may be the first time I had the Mavic in the air since the hurricane.

I busted ass on more list items yesterday.  At this point out of the 15 items on my staycation to do list, only one remains, fixing the pool pump timer.  I plan to look at that issue today and hopefully be able to cross it off as well.  Don’t get the wrong idea, once the list is complete I won’t be sitting around doing nothing the rest of the week.  I always have something to do that either needs to be done or I want to do for entertainment, always.  Extended time off at home always makes me feel confident that I could retire tomorrow and not be bored at all.

Late in the afternoon yesterday I found some time to go cruise on my little Mten3 wheel, riding more backwards than forward.

So I hit the ground of my nine day staycation with both feet, literally, starting off early Saturday with 13 laps around the middle school track.  My legs felt dead and heavy for most of the run.  I also had a sharp pain that gradually mellowed in that same spot on my right side that hurts during dragon flags.  I finished the distance, which is all that mattered.

When I got back Cindy had already cleaned the chicken coop which was nice.  I jumped right into weeding the property.  After finishing up I ate breakfast and started on the first of many small projects of the day.  I wanted to set up my new Pentair Dorado pool cleaner.  I made a video out of it although there wasn’t really much to the process.  The most impactful part of the video is the appearance of the pool at the start and how it looked three hours later.  The bristle design of the vacuum scrubs as well as sucks, something my Hayward Navigator could never do.

I also shot a video outlining the install of my super cheap $28.99 security camera I bought to replace a dead one.  The camera mounting hardware sort of sucked and only allowed you to adjust the angle of the cam EITHER left/right OR up/down, but not both.  In some situations that could be a real problem but with where I was putting the camera a downward angle was all that was required.  The 1080P picture quality was good, superior to the 720P camera it replaced.

So AFTER I finished these two projects I constructed my to do list which had a total of 15 items on it.  Once we got back from a late morning Home Depot/Dunkin Donuts ride with the dogs I just started digging into projects left and right.  None of the projects were massive, it was just a collection of things that I have been on my “need to get done” list for awhile but had not for one reason or another.

I changed the oil on the Prius, installed new seat covers on the Tacoma, did some 3D printing work and a number of other things.  By the time Saturday ended I had knocked 6 or 7 things off the list.  I thought that was a good total for one day.

Sunday morning Cindy and I did our second Dunkin Donuts ride in as many weeks.  However this time Cindy was on her road bike instead of the Segway and I was on my Msuper.  We carried a FAST pace for most of the ride, averaging over 20 mph for a lot of the time and even touching 25 mph briefly when Cindy wanted to race.  It was a fun ride for sure.

I dug back into the list, knocking off items as much as I could.  One sad task was cutting down the apple tree that has been part of our property for well over a decade.  Hurricane Irma partially uprooted the tree.  It was already not in great shape but it never recovered after the storm and was totally dead.  I had a tinge of sadness in my heart as I cut it to ground level and drug it to the fill pit to be unceremoniously tossed in with all the other organic debris.

By the time we left for dinner I had only three items left on my staycation list, all of which I hope to knock out today.  Sunday night we went to Cheesecake Factory for Cindy’s neice’s 18th birthday.  All of Cindy’s local family was there so it was me and five females.  I had a couple Miller Lites to take the edge off and the end result was a good time by all.  I don’t think I had patronized the restaurant for around three years, when Katie turned 21.

This morning the roofers arrived bright and early and are currently unleashing hell on our old roofing material.  The house is one big noise factory with somewhere around a dozen guys busting ass above us.  The company we are using is expensive but good, really good.  I am looking forward to a life under cool, durable, and reflective metal for the foreseeable future.

Time to get back to work!

So today I finished the last of my medical requirements for being a half century old, getting my physical at our on campus med center.  The visit included a urine sample, EKG, sex organ exam and of course the dreaded DRE, although out of the four times I have had it done this was probably the least uncomfortable session.  I managed to stay calmer than is the norm with most doctor visits, I didn’t detect any sweat building up on my back.  The nurse practitioner that did the physical was nice and we laughed our way through anything that could be potentially awkward.  I also had them give me a tetanus shot while I was there since with work around the house I quite often will cut or stab myself with metal objects.  I don’t believe I have had one since moving to Florida nearly 18 years ago so I was looooong overdue.  It feels good to have all required medical procedures behind me.  I should be in the clear for the next two years.

I am looking forward to my staycation which begins tomorrow.  I do not have rigid schedules for things I want to do but rest assured there are a lot of things I will be knocking out.  We also should have our old roof ripped off and prepped for metal by this time next week.

I shot another 3D printing video last night, enjoy.

So I get to jump through my last age required hoop tomorrow by getting a physical, the last requirement I have for our insurance program based on my age.  Of course getting the colonoscopy a few weeks back was the more invasive, disruptive, and disgusting requirement but I don’t enjoy physicals either.  Really pretty much any medical situation is something I would always avoid if at all possible.  I just don’t react well to being poked and prodded.

After tomorrow I am looking forward to taking an entire week off.  It will likely be the only extended time off I can do in the next 2-3 months because of our large application project at work.  We are basically ripping out the systems the office has run on for the last 20 years and replacing them with a cloud based solution.  I also picked this week because our roof replacement project is supposed to commence on Monday so I wanted to be around for that as well.

I look forward to the staycation.

On the way home last night I picked up my new pool vacuum cleaner from Pinch-a-Penny.  I didn’t set it up yet as I want to do a proper unboxing/review video for it.  You will find that once you have a YouTube creator mindset, every thing you do gets analyzed for it’s viability as content.  I’m not saying that is a good thing, but it is definitely a thing.

Speaking of content I also shot a video outlining my latest issue with my CR-10 that I am fixing with money instead of the time and frustration to troubleshoot it in depth.  I have been having symptoms of a partial clog in my hot end where a print will start normally but will fail after a short time period.  In the past I went through almost a month of f’ing with the printer until I finally fixed it by replacing the entire hot end assembly.

When I did it back then it was still annoying because I had to splice/solder the new part into place which I honestly didn’t do a very good job with.  They now have plug and play complete hot end assemblies where you just unbolt the old one and bolt in the new one, no soldering required.  I ordered two.

The CR-10 and the AnyCubic I3 are my only printers that are big enough to print the large side pieces for the EUC stands.  Having the CR-10 out of commission really limits my ability to make the stands so I wanted to make sure the problem was fixed, the first time.  I also pulled the trigger on ANOTHER 3D printer, no, not a Prusa I3 MK3, a Jguarora A5.

This printer has a print area that is the same size as the CR-10 on the X and Y planes and only a little shorter on the Z axis.  I like it’s sturdy frame and compact design where the control box is integrated into the main body instead of being it’s own stand alone box that consumes space.  I know a few people that have these and they have been very happy with them. It seems like a printer that is very similar to the AnyCubic I3 Mega which I love with a bigger build area. As part of this plan I will be moving my Dagoma Neva to my office at work where it can print projects and be a good conversation starter.

Yesterday a pile of metal showed up in the front yard, the new roofing material had arrived!  The work is scheduled to begin next week but if the timeline I was told is true, the metal won’t actually be secured to the roof for at least a couple weeks due to inspections having to be done by the county once the old roofing is stripped and the new underlayment is put down.  Either way it’s exciting to finally be taking the first steps to “untarping” our home.

I have been dealing with a situation that in some ways reminds me of my prosecution by the National Park Service via YouTube for flying a drone in Yellowstone a few years back.  I can’t say much else but rest assured I will have plenty to say in the future about it.