Archives November 2018

So the last day of my three day weekend started out with another ride, this time on my Meepo skateboard.  The video was more of a vlog than just a riding video.  I had a fun time as usual on the Meepo.  I talked about on the ride the biggest disadvantage to the electric skateboard, the need for smooth, flat terrain.  With that in mind I talked about a possible future idea of swapping out the Meepo for an AT (all terrain) board in the future.  The AT style boards have larger, rubber tires, a wider stance and more ground clearance, allowing for more flexibility in riding options.  Even normal debris found on a road or even sidewalk expansion joints can be problematic for a standard E-board like the Meepo.

While I was out I grabbed stuff to change the oil in Cindy’s Ioniq.  As I was getting the car up on the ramps I saw my neighbor was out in his front yard, trying to cut palm fronds with his pole saw.  I told him he was going to really struggle doing it that way based on my experience.  He joked and said that since Cindy and I trimmed all of our trees his wife was giving him a hard time about how overgrown their trees were.  His two cabbage palms in the front have not been trimmed in years.  I assured him that a ladder and a sawzall is the way to go.  He said with his knees climbing a ladder is pretty tough but he would give it a shot.  I told him if he can’t manage it I would do it quickly for him.

So he got his ladder out but when I glanced over just before removing the drain plug I saw he was back to the pole saw.  I went to the garage and grabbed my leather gloves and DeWalt sawzall.  He said he just couldn’t do the ladder, he also had concerns with him exceeding the safety limits of the ladder since he weighs well over it’s rated capacity.  I told him I would knock it out for him, thinking hey, it’s only two trees, should be a piece of cake.

Wow was I wrong.  Because the trees have not been maintained it was a cross thatch rat nest that was extremely difficult to work through.  The first tree was bad, the second tree was even worse because it was about five feet taller.  The ladder my neighbor had was too short so I wound up having to go pull my 20 footer out of the shed.  In total I bet I spent damn close to an hour working on just two trees.  I emerged from the canopy with a fresh set of cuts and scrapes that were all coated in tree organic matter and insects.  Of course my neighbor was very grateful for my help.  There was absolutely no way he was going to get anywhere with his pole saw.

So I returned to work on Cindy’s car much dirtier and sweatier than before.  I completed the task just as Cindy got home from teaching class.  I felt like I had put in my work quota for the day.  The rest of Monday was more chill.  As the sun set Cindy, Elsa and I hung around the new RV spot.  I had my Mten3 out there which I rode backwards and forwards on the grass surprisingly easily.  Once the sun went down I got to finally play my first extended WoW session of the three day weekend.  It was a very labor filled three days but it feels good to have the most hated household chore I have to do behind me for the next year.

So I looked with trepidation at the annual tree trimming task as the weather forecast was not agreeable at all.  With forecast temps in the high 80’s I knew it was going to be rough going.  I wasted no time Saturday morning, I was out in the yard shortly after 7, hoping to enjoy at least a couple hours of temps in the 70’s.  It didn’t take long until I was sweating through my shirt.

This year Cindy was home to assist me with the task and it was a tremendous help .  So although there wasn’t much she could do to help me avoid hundreds of trips up and down the ladder or me putting myself in perilous positions to reach the branches on the very tall trees, she still saved me tons of time.  She used the tractor and the yard cart to take debris back to the fill pit as I kept cutting.  Her doing so made phase two of the project for me MUCH less lengthy.  I only had to make about a half dozen trips to the fill pit with the Tacoma and we were done.  As expected I was beat but all in all, Cindy’s help made a huge difference.

We even had enough energy left over to move Cindy’s RV to an entirely new spot in the yard, behind the small shed.  We are still actively trying to sell the RV but thought the new location closer to the house would be a nice change of scenery.

Saturday night I wanted to thank Cindy again for her help.  I took her to Pelican Larry’s where we enjoyed a nice meal while college football was on all of the tv’s.  When we got home we watched our Netflix rental, Tomb Raider.  It was definitely a film I would only rent but it was entertaining enough for a B grade.

Sunday morning Cindy got out on the tractor to do a quick speed mow while I paid the bills.  I also went out in the garage to work on resuscitating our inflatable spider which died on Halloween.  I was able to find a replacement blower unit but it had some wiring differences for the accessories.  I wound up having to swap just the motors and cut/splice the wires between them.  At first I was nervous that it would work but with some persistence I got everything swapped and connected.  I plugged the spider back in and was pleased to see him quickly spring to life, complete with spinning red lights and his articulated head movement.

Late morning Cindy and I pushed out for a ride at the Greenway.  I brought my One Wheel.  I decided to take a shot at one of the off road trails that I have tackled before on my EUCs.  I had one fall into some fountain grass when I encountered a narrow gully.  I also jumped off right before entering a large muddy area.  The ride was cut a bit short due to the path that connects to downtown Naples being under construction for six months as a park is constructed.  For whatever reason Cindy and I were in silly moods as you can tell by watching the video. We stopped at a sub shop on the way home and enjoyed a couple really good sandwiches.

I had one more task to complete Sunday afternoon, greasing the fittings on the front end of the tractor.  I am embarrassed to admit that I have only performed the important task only once before.  I think I neglected the job because my grease gun didn’t fit the angles I needed to get on the fitting well.  I bought a flexible hose to make the task less of a headache.  I could almost hear the front of the Craftsman sigh in relief as I injected copious amounts of black grease anywhere I could.

I had another live stream last night.  It was a disaster.  Once again I had problems with Marty’s audio where he was almost inaudibly low.  After scrambling for awhile we gave up and Marty dropped off.  I continued streaming solo until a little after 9.  I was/am very frustrated since I put a lot of effort into figuring out the problems in the past.  Despite using the same settings as I had previously, it just wouldn’t work.  You can see the mess for yourself below.

Speaking of mess, that was the Eagles game last night against the hated Cowboys.  The Eagles were big favorites based on their strong performance against Jacksonville, the Cowboys bad recent performances, and the fact that the Eagles were playing in Philly.  What we got was the defense once again being a doormat, allowing the Cowboys, who have struggled massively on offense, to steamroll them up and down the field most of the game.  The team just doesn’t have it this year, especially on defense.  With the hardest part of their season yet to come I am thinking a sub .500 record at this point is a very real possibility.

So I ordered a replacement battery for a UPS that failed at the house.  It arrived early in the week.  Replacing a battery is pretty easy however when I put the new battery into the unit it acted like it was dead, I got no battery indicator on screen.  I f’d around with it for awhile with no luck, finally arriving at the conclusion there was something else wrong with the UPS. I removed the brand new battery and plopped the old UPS by the door to be recycled.

Well for some reason, a few hours later I got motivated to take one more look.  It didn’t make sense to me why the battery wasn’t showing up.  I retrieved the UPS and started doing a more thorough inspection of both it and the new battery.  The APC replacement batteries are in a cartridge of sorts, you just slide them in and two contacts engage inside the body of the UPS.  As I examined the contacts on the battery I noticed one of them was pushed back abnormally.  Well that would certainly cause a problem.  I tried grabbing that terminal and pulling it forward but as soon as I would insert it into the UPS it would just get pushed back.

I was surprised the replacement battery would have such an issue.  I was disheartened when I logged into Amazon and saw that the battery was not a returnable item.  However I still requested a replacement which to my surprise was granted within a half hour via email.  The second new battery arrived yesterday.  I installed it without issue and the UPS is back in commission, saving us from the all too common power glitches we routinely experience.

So after Tuki died Cindy was thoughtful enough to hand craft and paint a memorial stone for him that has been sitting on the cut off remains of the coconut palm that went down during Irma.  Unfortunately the brutal Florida sun and rain had done a number on the memorial, it was now cracked into pieces and badly worn.

I decided I wanted to get a durable piece made to honor Tuki, the funny but cantankerous bird that entertained us for so many years.  I found a place online that allowed you to upload a picture and design a simple layout.  I selected a 6 x 9 piece of granite and uploaded one of my favorite pics of him eating a peanut, one of his favorite past times.  I included his name, dates, and “Night Tuk…” which is what he would say most nights after I would turn out the lights and head to bed.

The stone arrived yesterday.  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  They took the picture and zoomed/cropped it perfectly.  As I pulled it out of the box and inspected it with Cindy standing there it made her tear up which made me emotional as well.  I still think about Tuki’s demise and if it wasn’t for my carelessness he would likely still be with us swinging away while holding a peanut like a hoagie.  I quickly designed a 3D circular holder for the plaque that I hope to still sit on the coconut tree.  The stone should last longer than I will, that’s for sure.

Speaking of me lasting, yesterday I submitted the form to officially switch my retirement benefit from an investment plan back to a pension.  I was waiting for the stock market to rebound a little bit before doing so.  Making the switch means I should hope to live well past my official retirement age of 62.  If that actually comes to be, no one knows, but if I do make it to my 60’s and beyond it’s nice to know I have a substantial lifelong income stream secured as well as a lump sum 457B account that I will continue to fund. If it’s still around, I also have my social security benefit to pay for some groceries.

I have been struggling at work the last couple days trying to act like a web developer.  I am trying to get our website to pull data from a vendor site using the REST API pulling JSON data.  It is a world I have next to no experience with but thanks to Google and a lot of trial and error I am slowly making some progress.  I have faced this scenario many times over the years where I become involved with things I am not all that well equipped to do.  More often than not I manage to navigate myself to an eventual solution, even if it takes much longer than it should have.

Tomorrow I plan to be outside as early as possible to begin the misery of the annual tree trimming task.  Unfortunately the weather is forecast to be about 10 degrees warmer than I would prefer but I will barrel forward anyway.  My prep will include downing CBD oil and Advil to help hold off the aches and pains that will come at least until the last branch is thrown in the fill pit out back.

Another mass shooting went down this week, a headline that just never seems to go away.  Another angry white man was behind the trigger once again.  It’s a good thing we are focusing on all those angry white men that voted for Trump, um I mean that commit mass murder. Oh wait, I mean the muslims, minorities and immigrants that are the REAL problem, according to Donald.  The world is wobbling off it’s axis, soon to fall flat on it’s face.

Cindy and I spent a good portion of last night watching election coverage.  Early after the polls closed both of the major races in the state for governor and senate were close but had Gillum and Nelson ahead by a slim margin.  Well somewhere between 8 and 9 that reversed with Rick Scott and DeSantis grabbing a 1% or smaller lead that they evidently held all the way to the end.  I found watching the coverage too aggravating so I just checked the Politico website periodically as I played WoW.  I held out hope that the blue counties on the state map that had not fully reported would be able to overcome that slim margin.  As we fell asleep neither race had been called officially but I closed my eyes feeling assured that once again I was let down by my foolish expectation that enough people would wake up and realize the short sighted and self destructive path we are being lead down.  I have heard many times that expectations of others are the seeds of future disappointment.  Damn is it true today.

There were other areas of disappointment across the nation.  I would have liked to have seen that woman win the governor’s race in Georgia.  I would have loved to see boot licking Ted Cruz lose, who absolutely railed against Trump in the primaries but since relegated himself to acting like a Trump fanboy, just to hold on to his seat.  His opponent, Beto O’Rourke was such a beacon of light.  If you took five minutes and listened to the guy speak on any subject you would be hard pressed to not immediately like him.  However once again, bad behavior was rewarded and Cruz won the race by another razor thin margin.

So although my state doubled down on it’s commitment to our current era of insanity, the only substantial good news from the night was that democrats flipped the House of Representatives, meaning that there is at least some ability to curtail further bleeding at a legislative level.  If I am being honest, the result last night doesn’t give me a lot of hope for 2020 either.  I mean with as crazy as these two years have been with a president that has basically turned the office into a mockery of what it once meant, the general populace still backed a lot of candidates who toed the Trump line.  I find this incredulous, disappointing, and a sign that more dark times are on the horizon. When you have people regressing to the point where they think that discrimination, racism, sexism, and ignorance is all excusable as long as they get a tax break and the ability to buy more AR-15s, there is nowhere to go but down.

So after at least 5 years, I finally ordered a replacement PC for my office.  We had been tied to Windows 7 with our old cashiering platform.  Now that we have migrated away from it there was no reason to not update to a current Windows 10 set up.  The last time I upgraded my PC years ago I simply moved the data and programs across intact.  With going to Windows 10 that is no longer an option so I am doing some major virtual housecleaning.  There are at least 10 years of stuff on my old system that I need reevaluate to see if it is still needed or not.  Thus far I have found a ton of it is obsolete.  Once I migrate to Windows 10 I will keep a safety net by keeping my Windows 7 workstation up and on the wire in case there is something I missed.  Starting fresh with a new PC is something I used to experience every couple years.  Now like most things since getting older, that cycle has slowed down.

Last night I wanted to complete the construction of my Raspberry Pi gas station skimmer detector.  When I was trying to finish it on Sunday I noticed one of the solder points had broken loose.  Last night as I was futzing around I broke another one loose so I had to fix it as well.  Finally I got everything buttoned up.  I did the final changes in the OS so that it loads the skimmer detector code automatically when the device boots up.   The Pi can operate headless with just a power connection for skimmer scanning but I can still attach a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to it if I want to have a micro pc on demand.

So two years ago I recall the incredible shock and disappointment as the majority of the nation did when the most under qualified, divisive, smallest vocabulary possessing candidate in American history was elected president.  Since that day the number of outrageous, illogical, and downright stupid things coming out of the White House has become one big blur.  As a populace we have become numb to Trumpism because it bombards us each and every day.

Well today (if you were smart you early voted) is the day we all need to wake up from the haze and send a clear message that we are not a nation of isolantionist, racist imbeciles, that there are consequences for bad behavior, and that two years of utter madness and chaos is where the line is drawn.  There are far more non-fanatical Trump voters, if enough get off their ass and vote victory would be assured.  Hopefully tomorrow is a day with a bright light in the distance and a new direction.  I need a reason to feel some sort of restored faith in humanity and common decency.  Please vote.

Friday night on the way home I stopped to pick up Sadie.  She had just been at the vet hospital during the day having a CT done to look at some masses she has had for awhile.  It seems like the place that did this subscribes to the same tactic used by the vast majorities of vets I have dealt with in my lifetime, predatory.  These businesses prey on the emotions of pet owners and charge insane amounts of money for care.  In our case we are still carrying pet insurance on Sadie so it should cover most of it, but still it just made me sick to my stomach when I saw the bill.  I could tell Sadie was still a bit tired from the sedation but later on Friday night she was playing with Elsa like normal.

So the lack of rain meant I didn’t really need to mow the grass which was nice.  Cindy was in one of these modes she gets into where she just wants to organize, clean and throw out.  I wanted to take advantage of it so I encouraged and helped the process.  Over the weekend the spare bedroom, the hobby room, the laundry room, the small shed, and the garage all received varying degrees of attention.  The end result was less piles in the house and more stuff in the trash or on the curb to be given away.

Another thing I gave away this weekend was my old TroyBilt generator.  It still works fine and now outputs more accurate voltage levels thanks to the work I did on it a couple weeks ago.  I gave it to our neighbor across the street after Cindy asked her if she was interested.  I drug the heavy generator across the street and then gave Mary a quick lesson on it’s operation.  I even had the receipt stapled to the instructions.  I evidently paid $700 for it back in 2004.  Mary was very grateful but at this point in my life, when faced with selling my stuff versus giving it to someone that could use it for free, I will likely choose the latter option most of the time.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see a movie she was excited about, Bohemian Rhapsody.  It’s a film I would likely choose the Netflix route for normally but Cindy is agreeable to most everything I want to see in theaters so it wasn’t a big sacrifice.  I had very minimal knowledge of the Queen story and all I really knew about Freddie Mercury was he was a gay man that died of AIDS.  The actor that played Freddie Mercury did an amazing job and the film depicted a back story about him and the band that I never knew about.  Cindy loved the movie and I enjoyed it as well, despite being well over two hours long.  I’d give it a strong B+

I got my Raspberry Pi Zero W gas skimmer project fired up and working.  It’s amazing to have a full fledged computer in something half the size of an Altoids tin.  Unfortunately when I tried to snap it into the 3D printed case I made I broke one of the solder connections off.  Trying to reattach it will require a magnifying glass and a steady hand.

Sunday morning Cindy wanted to go to a car show/food truck event we attended last year.  I wanted to get a decent ride in so I suggested to Cindy that I will ride my big Monster to the event and she could meet me there.  I put the MiniPro and the smaller Mten3 in trunk, thinking I could ride the smaller more nimble wheel there.  I actually wound up riding my Monster around instead because it’s easier to mount and dismount quickly.  The event was crowded and in retrospect it isn’t a great idea for me to be riding a single wheel in such conditions.  I think when I first started EUCing I wanted to ride the wheel at stuff like this just to show I could, now the more mature part of me thinks in really crowded conditions I am better served just walking like normal human beings.

Although it’s only Monday I am already thinking about next weekend, specifically the huge, shitty task of trimming all of the trees that I have scheduled for it.  I can only hope for relatively cool conditions for the work but thus far the long term forecast is not looking agreeable.

I believe I mentioned here that I was getting a new video card, or actually that was on my live stream from the other night now that I think about it.  Anyway, I noticed during my last stream with Marty that my Nvidia GT745 card was working quite hard to keep up according to the streaming application.  The card was probably at least four years old at this point if not older.  I figured it was time to get a modern card.

When I shopped for a new video card on Amazon I was shocked at just how expensive they had become. I had read about how prices have skyrocketed since the cryptocurrency mining craze has started.  Those systems use high end graphic processors to do most of the block chain validation work.  I was looking at current generation cards costing $900 or more which is way more than I was willing to plunk down.  I wound up getting a slightly older Nvidia 1060 for about a third of that.

Last night Cindy had to go into work in the evening so I determined that was the time to install the new card.  The first thing that shocked me was just how big the new card was and just how small the card was it was replacing.  The 1060 is a full length card with two monster cooling fans on it.  It even has an auxiliary power port which luckily my power supply had a connector for.

At first I was worried if I could get the massive card into the space allocated.  After some less than careful manipulation I got it in there.  I was confident in my install so I put the case back together (always a big mistake), reconnected everything and turned it on.  The power light came on but I saw no activity otherwise, great.  I then ripped everything back apart and reseated the card, making sure it was firmly in the slot.  This time I left the computer apart and only connected the power and video cable to see if I had any action. I didn’t.

Ok well it wasn’t time to panic so I wanted to establish a baseline of functionality.  I grabbed the old video card and put it in there. Surely this will work.  Nope, the same unresponsive behavior.  So I am not good at a lot of things but troubleshooting is something I have a lot of experience with.  The fact that the old card was no longer working pointed me towards something else not being right.  I pulled the old card out and started to examine the system board. Ah hah, there it was, one of the memory chips was unseated as a result of the jostling I had to do to get the massive card in place.

I put the dimm back in place, reinserted the new card and bang, I had video!  I only allowed it to go to the post screen before I turned it back off.  Finally I could reassemble and reconnect everything.  After completing that I fired up the system, excited to have a lot more video horsepower under the hood.  However that excitement was curtailed when I got the Windows was unable to boot message that brings up repair options.  Again, I didn’t panic.  My initial thought was the hardware change was just throwing Windows 10 for a loop.  I figured an automatic repair would sort it out, it didn’t.

I found myself in a never ending loop of failed repairs.  During one of those failed repairs I chose the option to open a command prompt.  I thought it was odd that I had a c:\windows directory but it was empty, WTF?  I also had been noticing one of the repair options was “Exit and boot to Windows 8.1” which was odd because I have been on Windows 10 for years.  At that moment the light bulb went on.  I bet the system is trying to boot off the old SATA hdd.

Years ago I added a 512 GB SSD hard drive and made my original 3TB drive a secondary unit for storage.  It seemed like the system was not seeing the SSD drive.  I confirmed this by booting into the BIOS setup screen and seeing the SSD drive missing from the list.  Son of a bitch, this meant I had to open up the case for a third time.  When I did I saw the SATA cable for the SSD drive disconnected, another casualty of the video card install.  Through some tedious finger jamming I was able to get the cable reinstalled without ripping the video card out again.  Once I did that the system booted right up like nothing was ever wrong. Whew.

It was quite the ordeal, keeping me busy for well over an hour and a half.  It reemphasized to me how not panicking is one of the key components of effective troubleshooting.  I did a little testing of the new card’s capabilities later last night.  It’s a nice upgrade that I will see the most benefit from in WoW and during my streaming sessions.

This weekend I have tasks to do but one of them won’t be mowing the grass.  The regular rain has subsided meaning yard growth will start to slow greatly.  Of course I have other things to concentrate on.  One of those things was unexpected, just as Halloween came to an end our awesome inflatable and animated spider in the yard died.  It appears the fan unit may have taken a shit as the rest of the decoration has power.  I love that thing so I am going to spend some time taking it apart to see how doable a fan swap would be.  Normally a situation like this would send the decoration into the trash can but  not this time.

So after eating dinner last night we pushed off towards Victoria Park.  In the back of the Prius we had my 18L and Cindy’s MiniPro.  We have ridden Victoria Park before during this time of year but I am not quite sure that we did it on Halloween itself.  Eh, how bad could it be?  Bad.

We parked about a half mile away as we normally do and headed in via sidewalk.  We had various obstacles along the way, namely people that weren’t willing to step to a side and vehicles that parked in the grass and pulled in far enough to obstruct the sidewalk.  But hey, it’s Halloween, we knew this was part of it.

Once we turned into Victoria Park it was just a mass of humanity, the type that typically makes me want to just head the opposite direction.  The Halloween music I was playing through the speakers in the wheel was immediately drowned out by thousands of people jammed into a small area.

Cindy threw together last minute a cute unicorn costume for herself.  My costune consisted of black make up around my eyes and my Soldier 76 jacket.  I thought with the temps in the mid 70’s I wouldn’t be too hot.  I found myself sweating through my shirt within the first 15 minutes.

I brought the 18L with me because I thought it would be fun to play music as we rode.  I didn’t really give much consideration to how it would be navigating the large and heavy wheel through a sea of people.  It got very tiring very quickly trying to ride slow along with having to stop and start countless times due to a lack of space.  Cindy had a much easier time of it on the MiniPro than I did.  The crowd was so thick in spots that I really got to see nothing except the bodies all around me that I was trying to avoid.

At one point I dropped the wheel when a little girl was walking at me while looking the opposite direction.  I immediately stopped but as I was dismounting she bumped into me, causing the wheel to fall on it’s side.  Luckily unlike Gotway wheels, which will immediately spin up and bounce around like a bucking bronco in that situation, the KingSong immediately shuts off once it crosses 45 degrees.  Nobody was hurt and of course my immediate reaction was frustration at the kid but I quickly corrected myself, knowing that I was the one riding a wheel in conditions that were not good.  People in large quantities are always going to result in these types of situations.

Eventually we got into some streets that weren’t quite so congested which was nicer, allowing us to roll more freely. As always we got countless comments about our vehicles.  Most people have just never seen an electric unicycle before and are simply amazed by them.  Unlike years past, I made no fuss when Cindy asked if I was ready to leave around 45 minutes after we got there.  It just was not that much fun.  We both agreed that in the future, riding there sometime the week prior to Halloween is the way to go so we can actually enjoy the experience without having to focus all of our attention on avoiding human pylons.

Donald swooped into SW Florida last night, ruining Halloween for all of the unlucky kids whose parents felt being in an arena with the Supreme Big League Leader was more of a priority.  As always he basked in the chants of his fanatical followers and got them riled up with his anti-immigrant barbs.  His most impressive statement was calling the part of the constitution that deals with our laws regarding immigrants as “crazy”.  It’s awesome when individuals cherry pick what parts of doctrines they embrace.  While these people hold the Constitution up as the holy grail when it comes to the second amendment, when the same document offers protections for immigrants, you know the people that founded our country, the Constitution no longer is sacred.  I swear even though I have no memories of the decade I was born, in many ways it feels like a large portion of society has regressed back 50 years, courtesy of the most awesome, incredible, awesome, I mean really, really awesome President this country has ever had.