Last night the rain stayed away allowing me to complete phase three of the weeknight lawn maintenance project, mowing the back yard. Doing so required roughly another 90 minute of tractor time which is not bad. If we are not consistent mowing back there and it gets very high the job takes even longer. Although it consumed a lot of hours, I’m glad the lawn care is done and can be excluded from the weekend to do list.
For several days my right ear has felt weird. It coincided with what felt like drainage going down my throat at times. I have had a long history of ear infections so I was hoping to avoid that scenario. For the past couple days I had been using alcohol drops in the ear to try to disinfect/clean the ear but I noticed little difference.
Last night after my shower I went a different route, putting a 50/50 solution of peroxide/water in the ear and let it sit there for a few minutes. I laid on the bed until the peroxide stopped bubbling and then headed to the sink. I grabbed the rubber syringe and shot more of the solution into the ear at a high velocity. After a few shots I was somewhat shocked when I saw a small marble sized ball of gunk pop out of my ear. It was nasty. I assume that was the source of my problems. I need to proactively be hitting my ears with this solution on a regular basis to prevent a repeat performance.
This weekend will likely be busy as the kids close on their house today and plan to move stuff in shortly thereafter. Not only do I expect to be helping with moving but also assembly of some of the new items they bought for the place. It’s exciting for them of course. I am of course looking forward to getting full use of our house back as well.
Last night on the way home I had the GoPro once again mounted to the glass roof of the Tesla. I wanted to shoot video of some of the changes I have noticed with the most recent software release for the car, specifically Auto Pilot. It seems in certain situations the car is making better decisions than it did in prior releases. Learn all about it here.
My plan was to mow the yard last night when I got home. The skies looked very menacing but I still was unwavering in my resolve to get the chore done. When I pulled in the driveway I saw Cindy, who knew of my intent, already out on the mower, she was almost done. The only thing she left for me was the chicken area which I started but did not complete due to a massive deluge of rain opening up. I will try to finish it up tonight.
Of course I greatly appreciated Cindy’s effort. It’s one of the things that I love about her, that she is willing to show her feelings via actions, along with words. I have been in word only situations before and that just doesn’t work for me. Just saying you appreciate something takes zero effort and means next to nothing to me. Showing true appreciation through tangible action is where it’s at, at least in my mind.
So much like last week I decided I wanted to try to make productive use of my midweek night by getting some lawn maintenance done. This time I wielded the weed whacker as I spent over an hour and a half trimming the yard. Despite it being after 6PM when I started, it was still melt your boots hot. I was sweating like a pig. It felt good to get the work done but tonight part two takes place as long as the weather cooperates, mowing with the tractor. There may even be a part three Thursday night if I feel motivated enough to mow the back yard.
So my buddy and volleyball partner extraordinaire Rich reminded me yesterday that we are now 20 years past our most historic volleyball win ever, the 1999 Pottstown Rumble. In 1999 Rich and I were a nearly unstoppable force in the BB ranks of amateur volleyball in the Reading/Lancaster area. We won several tournaments that year and had a very favorable win/loss record overall. However no win was bigger or more memorable than the 99 Rumble.
The Pottstown Rumble is the biggest grass tournament in the northeast and the BB division that Rich and I were playing in had the most teams, around 125, yes I am not joking. Now those of you familiar with volleyball may laugh and say BB is a lower skill division. I would normally agree with you. However the Rumble was such a big tournament that players routinely dropped one or even two skill levels down to play because the competition level was so elevated.
The day was simply amazing as we faced adversity time and again. We played a ton of teams that were more experienced and more skilled but managed to find ways to take them down one by one. Rich and I had very opposite roles in our dynamic duo.
Rich was a more cerebral player and hustled his ass off all the time. I was the type that got the most satisfaction while hitting. Rich was the type that got the most satisfaction by being able to make plays on opposing players hits, running down corner shots, and digging hard driven balls, that was his thing. I can’t tell you how many times I thought points were over but Rich’s rabbit like speed kept the play alive.
I was a very one dimensional player most of the time. Yea I could do the basics like passing and bump setting moderately consistently but my thing was attacking the ball. I loved being able to get a good approach and just swing through a ball cleanly driving it to the ground or off some part of an opponents body in a violent way. When I was unsuccessful it just made me angry and that anger often fueled me to be even more aggressive the next time. Of course many times that anger could be detrimental as it would make me lose focus.
But on that hot and muggy day the chemistry between Rich and I was perfectly in balance. With over 120 teams in our division it took forever to complete play. Our finals match was actually completed on center court under the lights, long after most teams had already gone home.
The team we played had just steam rolled their opponents in their semi-final game. This team looked so good that before we even started I recall us talking about how second place wouldn’t be bad. ( I don’t think I liked that talk) The championship match was epic. We just ground these guys down who started to short circuit as we won a few points. The one kid had a horrible temper and booted the ball off the court a couple times after they lost a point.
We actually sort of wound up dominating them, winning by a comfortable margin. I remember the moment clearly when the ball dropped on their side the final time. The feeling of accomplishment, exhaustion, and excitement that followed was a once in a lifetime, lightning in a bottle moment. I think it was damn close to 10PM before we got out of there. It was truly an amazing day that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, my greatest sporting achievement ever. Thanks to Rich for making it possible.
I quickly redubbed (copyrighted music) my 99vball video which includes some footage of the 99 Rumble in it. Yes the video quality is horrible and it was one of the first videos I ever produced so please excuse the cheesiness. If you would like to read my detailed recap of the day that I posted back then, here it is.
When I look back at the first decade of blog authoring (started in 03) there is a definitive difference to present day, I was more mean. I used to openly complain about people and situations much more frequently and in many examples, in a less than tactful way. Hell I used to basically weaponize the blog in my second marriage, using it as a way to complain about facets of the relationship instead of dealing with them more directly, and privately. Although at the time I never even thought about it, now as a half centurian plus, I try to think more before I pop my emotions like a full zit all over the blog pages.
Some people may regret the change as more opinionated, angry, and frustrated words generally are more entertaining to digest. I was having a convo with a friend of mine last week that was somehow trying to tie the fact that I used to watch the Apprentice on tv somehow made me a hypocrite for not supporting Trump as president. My response was very simple but true, “assholes are entertaining” There are lots of entertaining assholes in the world, however that isn’t the dominant personality trait I am looking for in the President of our country.
The reason this popped into my head was today at the gym I was exposed to more idiotic behavior that I would have called out in the past. But since I am now older and wiser I’m not going to talk about the idiot that sings to himself as he ties up a Smith machine for 45 minutes, the gaggle of old men that use weight equipment as park benches to discuss breaded salmon recipes, or the lazy pieces of shit that can’t put stuff back where they got it from. Spewing negative energy like this out into the world is something I try to do less of nowadays, sometimes unsuccessfully.
So despite the thermometer reading something stupid like 93 degrees with humidity levels that rivaled that number, I headed over to the track after work on Friday to run. Cindy decided to follow my dumb lead. I need to rethink doing runs on Friday evenings during the summer. It was a tradition that started in the “cool” winter months. Doing it now is borderline suicidal.
So anyway, I hit the track and felt nearly as miserable as the week before. The two bright spots were I completed full 5k distance and I felt less like death Friday night although both Cindy and I were pretty wiped out. It was the first time she has tried running in forever. So anyway I think I will once again start hitting the 6AM alarm to do this on a Saturday morning when it is 15-20 degrees cooler. It’s lunacy otherwise. My pace on Friday was almost two minutes a mile slower than what I used to consider “normal”. It’s frustrating.
Saturday I kept busy around the house outside for a good portion of the morning. As soon as the sun gets 10-15 degrees off the horizon it’s like someone turned the broiler on. I was sweated through my t-shirt almost instantly. We did a late morning errands run that included DD, gas, Home Depot, and Pinch-A-Penny.
Some of that gas was used to run the generator that I had hooked up to the RV to run the AC for a few hours. Both the generator and the AC in the RV need to be used periodically to ensure things keep working as they should. The RV has to get sold somehow. It has been for sale for more than 6 months with only minimal interest. We have it priced aggressively but we live in the RV and boat capital of the world it seems. Trying to sell a used unit is not an easy task as we have found out. The big problem is once wet season starts to hammer us and the back yard becomes a lake, it is going to be very tough to try to move the RV around.
Late Saturday afternoon I headed out solo to grab a couple groceries and look for Smirnoff Triple Black Ice. Miller-Coors decided to not do a limited summer release of Zima this year so people have been looking for substitutes. Several have said that this Smirnoff variety is pretty close to the Zima experience. Online we found that Total Wine supposedly carried the flavor so that was where I headed. Of course they did not have Triple Black but they did have some other varieties, I grabbed a six pack of grape, and one of the original flavor. I tried both over the weekend, they were very good but neither was an exact match for Zima flavor. My search for Triple Black will continue.
Over the weekend I got my monthly deposit notice from Google for my AdSense revenue. It was a milestone as it was the first time I had crossed the $400 mark. After having my monthly revenue waffle around for quite a few months, the Tesla was the impetus for a sharp increase in channel activity and subsequently ad revenue. Once I get the Tacoma paid off I am hoping the YouTube revenue will more than make up the difference in my automotive budget column.
Sunday morning Cindy and I decided to give Marco hill riding another try. We attempted it the week before but got washed out in a big way. Luckily yesterday was bright and sunny. Not so luckily it was also incredibly warm. Despite the heat Cindy and I had a lot of fun cruising up and down the only hilly region of Collier County for about an hour.
Later in the day I decided to take on another Tesla project, installing rim guards on the exposed alloy wheels. For whatever reason the rim on these wheels sticks out unusually far from the tire, making them a prime candidate for curb rash. The rim guards act as a barrier to this damage with the side effect of adding a cool color accent to the wheel/tire combo.
Installation of the guards was a little tricky and as is almost always the case, I made a few mistakes along the way. However overall I am happy with the resulting visual. The instructions stated that you should not drive the car over 50 mph after installing the guards so the adhesive can set properly. It worked out ok as I had to drop off one of my old EUCs to Fed Ex that I sold so the Tacoma was a better fit anyway.
Sunday afternoon out of the blue Cindy got inspired to make some decorative fondant cakes. When I walked in from the rim work she showed me the first of several PEV based designs. They were very cool and surprisingly detailed.
You never know when Cindy is going to come up with these random acts of creativity but they are always fun to bear witness to.
As I have been walking around the house the past week or so I have been making mental notes of tasks that I want to knock off during my extended staycation around the fourth of July. I need to keep the list manageable as I don’t want to just work during the time off, some fun would be appreciated.
Yesterday I bought our tickets to Florida Supercon, an event we skipped last year. Two years ago we went to two cons and it was a bit crazy. For both of them Cindy invested incredible amounts of time and effort making elaborate costumes for the events. When we went to the shows people appreciated the effort as we were constantly being asked to have our picture taken, which was cool, at first. After awhile you realize that you get to see very little and with my costume at least, it was very uncomfortable due to heat.
With Cindy being wrapped up in new grandma glow she doesn’t have the time or energy to worry about making special costumes this year which won’t be the end of the world. We plan to make it an out and back day trip, leaving early in the morning for Miami in the Tesla and then driving back across the state that evening after a super charging session. Doing it this way alleviates the need for trying to find a reliable chicken sitter, something that we desperately could use.
After work today I plan to make another trip to the track to attempt another running session. As described in the blog, last week I felt absolutely awful both during and after the run however the hope is each time I go back it gets just a little bit easier. I know it’s an odd thing that I keep subjecting myself to an activity that I don’t particularly enjoy that makes me feel like shit. The only draw is the sense of accomplishment when completing this arduous task, something I don’t want give up on. So many people as they age just accept the path of least resistance. I want to keep doing the hard thing because that is what forges your intestinal fortitude.
As planned I got out to mow after work but before I did I had to see how the replacement metal on the roof looked. I went out that side of the house but didn’t look at the roof till I took another 20 steps or so. I was somewhat worried I would look and still see a degree of mismatched metal. When I finally turned and looked upward I was relieved to see nothing but visual harmony. All of the panels matched perfectly, like they should have from day one.
Despite my efforts to get the mowing done as quickly as possible I still spent nearly two hours out there on the Craftsman YT4000. I always feel like I accomplished something when the shaggy landscape once again takes on a manicured state, as fleeting as it is. I have been considering making a big investment in sod to raise some of the chronic low areas around the yard. Buying it at Home Depot is an expensive and slow way to accomplish this. I am looking into buying a full pallet from a sod company and have them deliver it to the house.
Our property has a lot of rabbits that we see. Typically they keep their distance, instantly running off if you take a step in their direction. Well for a few weeks there has been this adorable baby rabbit hanging out that for some reason is not afraid of people. I have gotten within 5 feet of him/her many times and it stays put. The baby also does not adhere to normal nocturnal rabbit behavior as I would see it out during daylight all the time.
The other day Cindy gave me the bad news that there was a dead animal in the front yard and from a distance it looked like it was a rabbit of a similar size. This news was coordinated with my not seeing the baby rabbit for a couple days. I ran scenarios through my head where it’s trusting nature was it’s demise as a predator, likely a hawk, was able to swoop in and kill the rabbit. The idea of this made me very sad.
So last night as I was approaching the shed to get the tractor out I stopped dead in my tracks as I looked down and saw the baby rabbit a few feet away, staring up at me as it chewed on grass. It brought an instant smile to my face. I quickly went back to the house to call Cindy out to show her the baby rabbit was still around which of course made Cindy happy as well. My attachment with living creatures other than human beings is hard to explain at times but it’s just the way I am wired.
As mentioned yesterday I worked at a branch last night bringing them online with our cloud based customer queuing solution. This was the fourth branch that we have migrated and it showed. Everything went pretty much without a hitch and we were all wrapped up by 6:15. I love it when a plan comes together without a hiccup, it doesn’t happen very often.
We have had three days of more or less steady rain due to a tropical depression. It looks like the precipitation has finally cleared out. The grass is now in it’s summer growth pattern. I want to try to knock out mowing the grass after work to knock it off the must do list for the weekend.
Today we have the roofers showing up. Ever since the roof was installed, the panels on the west side of the house have appeared mismatched, especially once the sun hits them later in the day. I pointed this out to my project manager shortly after the install. At the time he said that the panels should weather quickly and the difference should fade away. Well 8 months later and they looked exactly the same. After spending 20k on the roof I wasn’t willing to just shoulder shrug it away.
I contacted the company and sent them a new picture which looked just like the old picture. They said they had to contact the metal manufacturer to authorize new panels. I had to keep contacting them to nudge the process along over several months but finally replacement panels were delivered on Monday which are supposed to be installed today. I can only hope the end result is worth the wait.
Last night after work I was buzzing around tending to things until almost 9PM. We had our second gray and rain filled day in a row, a rarity in SW Florida. Rainy season has definitely commenced, I am just hoping we can minimize the amount of days where we have large areas of standing water on the property this year. I was working on 3d printed stuff, video production, sale of one of my electric unicycles, podcast publishing and a few other odds and ends. I did manage to jam in a half hour or so of WoW at the end of it all.
I had my dental check up this morning. As is usually the case, no problems were found. My visits to the dentist are now so care free and uneventful. For the first 20 or so years of my life the trip to the dentist was something I feared intensely. As the date approached on the calendar I remember significant feelings of anxiety as I recalled past trips where the creepy dentist inflicted massive amounts of pain to my mouth. Of course it was all due to poor mouth hygiene, something I eventually realized was easier to correct than to suffer in the chair twice a year.
Tonight I have another round of after hours work at a branch. I am hoping it goes smoothly. After we get this behind us there should not be much off hours work required in the near future.
I made up my mind that I wanted to try to get back out on the track and run on Friday evening, something I have not done for several months due to on and off fatigue issues. I still didn’t feel particularly great but I got it stuck in my head I needed to go out there and try, despite very hot and humid conditions, something that makes running even when I feel normal, feel miserable.
So as expected the first two laps were really unfun. It was almost like I could hear my body crying out. “wtf are you doing…” Despite a slow pace, every stride felt uncomfortable. To make things shittier, there were swarms of gnats at various points of the track that required me to look down or even close my eyes to pass through them. So once I got past the first couple laps things got slightly less terrible but I never felt anything much above mildly shitty.
I walked onto the track with the intent of running the same 13 laps that I had been doing in the past. As the run progressed and I felt progressively more exhausted that target started moving backwards, first to 12 laps, but then I gave up after 10 laps, something normally my inner taskmaster would absolutely forbid but I just had no gas in the tank, I needed to stop.
When I have been doing my weekly rowing sessions I am winded but after 15 minutes or so I am pretty much fully recovered. Well this running session absolutely wiped me out the rest of the night. I was lethargic and was ready for bed by 9PM. So despite the miserable experience and the consequences afterward, I really want to try to do it again this week to see if I can build myself back up. Running, just like lower body weight training punishes you if you don’t do it consistently.
Saturday morning, despite still feeling beat up from the run I got out to do my normal chores. When I was doing the chicken stuff I noticed that Kristen, our sweet white hen was not acting normal. She was separating herself more than normal from the other birds and not eating normally. She also was shaking her head a lot. I looked up the symptoms online and one of the first things suggested is de-worming the bird so Cindy and I manually gave her a dose of Valbazen. It is tough to make sure she actually gets it all down her throat. As of yesterday she still was not eating regular food much but she at least showed high interest in some watermelon slices we put out there. We are hoping she bounces back soon.
Saturday afternoon Cindy and I did something we had not done in ages, a road bike ride. Cindy’s bike had been sitting so long that the tube in the rear tire had gone bad. So after a tube change we were ready to go. My Trek which actually has sat even longer appeared to be 100% good to go, despite the long layoff.
It was warm and humid but luckily the sun was mostly behind clouds for most of the ride. Since we had not ridden in so long we wanted to be conservative, we rode up to Everglades Blvd and back which is almost exactly 10 miles. Cindy lead the entire ride although I offered to pull up front so she could draft me. She did well and our speed actually was better on the second half of the ride, carrying around 18 mph. Despite my overall apathy about road biking it felt good to get on the road together. I am hoping we continue to work it into our weekend routine.
Saturday afternoon we did something else out of the ordinary, went to the Miromar Outlets. We had not been there in at least a year, maybe longer. We pulled up to the outlets in the midst of pretty heavy rain. I dropped Cindy off at the curb and then parked the Tesla in the back row. I’ll sacrifice wet clothes for less Tesla door dinger risk.
I wanted to go to the Oakley outlet to get some decent sunglasses. I have been rocking shitty $20 sunglasses got awhile that dont’ fit or don’t last. I also was looking for another pair of Oakley flip flops. We wound up scoring a pretty good deal as the glasses I got were on clearance already and we got another 50% off by buying Cindy a pair of glasses as well. We also grabbed me some new undergarments from the Jockey store and wound up our visit splitting some soft serve ice cream. We had a fun Saturday including things into the day that are not part of the normal same old same old.
For Father’s Day I had hoped to drive down to Marco Island with Cindy to ride around. Despite foreboding skies at home and a weather radar that showed rain over Marco, we pushed out with my hope being the line of rain would pass by the time we got there. Well it never passed, the area of rain just expanded in size. The trip just wound up being an extended coffee run, which I briefly documented on video.
When I got home I was a bit bummed out, the rain was forecast to last all day. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, if I sat around and worked on nothing I would feel like shit. I sat down and called my dad first. I was interested in how they are doing adjusting to life after the move across state, something I hope I don’t have to do in my 70’s. It seems like they are making steady progress but I could tell dad is already getting the project itch as he told me about various things he wanted to improve or fix. Hopefully it doesn’t become the black hole of projects as most of his previous properties did.
After hanging up with dad I decided to tackle a Tesla project I initially was not going to do on Father’s Day because of it’s frustration potential, applying a wrap to the center console. From the factory the console surface is a bright glossy black finish that shows fingerprints the moment you touch it. Unless you feel like cleaning the surface daily, it always looks dirty. A common solution to this is applying a vinyl wrap to the surface, in my case I chose a matte black finish.
When I watched the install video from the wrap company and saw it was 45 minutes long I knew I was going to have a fight on my hands, hence why I was unsure if I wanted to wrap up my weekend taking it on. I decided to jump in and get it done. I did the most tedious and troublesome section mostly myself, the cup holder area. Cindy, who unlike me really likes tedious, detail oriented stuff like this, came and helped me do the rest of the work which was much appreciated. I really like the end result and it felt good to have the project out of the way.
I followed up with a quick video about the autonomous summon feature my Model 3 has, specifically how it can be a bit quirky at times. I was doing the tests into an empty garage with Cindy’s car pulled out in the driveway. Even with a lack of obstacles summon was acting odd. Ironically at the end of the video I did one more test with Cindy’s car occupying half of the garage. With less space available the Tesla actually performed better, cleanly pulling all the way into the garage, centering itself between Cindy’s car and the wall.
Sunday night I had another live stream and it will likely be the last one. Despite more efforts by me to promote the broadcast ahead of time the real time attendance was low. With the single person format, if I don’t have enough real time audience participation it makes it difficult to fill the time once I get through the notes I have for the show. The broadcast was only an hour, about half as long as what had become normal. Afterward I just felt like I was sort of wasting my time putting the effort into making content that not enough people were viewing. So as I closed the mic I had already made up my mind that I was done with regularly scheduled live streams. Sure I will pop one open now and then if I feel like it.
It’s a bit odd to me that the live stream numbers kept going down since overall the channel numbers have been getting progressively stronger. I would be lying if I didn’t say the decline in numbers was disappointing. I have put a considerable amount of time, money and effort into putting the show together. Shutting it down is without a doubt an admission of failure, and failure of any type never sits well with me. On the bright side, it will be nice to not have to worry about doing the production on a Sunday night which was always an awkward time and somewhat inconvenient anyway.
