Archives September 2019

It was overcast Friday after work so I decided to go get my run out of the way.  Somehow I hoped that since it was my second consecutive week of running that I would feel at least a little better than I did the week prior.  That hope was not realized.  I had my Apple Watch on so I got some stats from the run that illustrated just how much of a struggle running has become.  My average pace was an awful 10:26 per mile for the roughly three mile run.  For some perspective, when I ran my last half marathon six or seven years ago I averaged 8:30-8:45 per mile for 13.1 miles!  The thing is, I am running that slow because my body feels like it is working really hard.  My average heart rate, despite the slow pace was 155 beats a minute which is what I would expect if I was running much, much faster.  Part of the drop off obviously is my age, part of it is lack of consistent running, and part of it is running at 188 pounds instead of 178 pounds.

In addition to the slow pace and high heart rate, my body just felt like shit overall.  It used to be just my IT band or knees that I had to be concerned with.  Now you can add the lower back to that list.  The first three or four laps sent a little jolt of pain up my back with every stride until I fully warmed up.  Despite the near endless stream of running setbacks I refuse to let it die from the list of consistent physical activities, something Cindy thinks I should do.  I told her that as soon as you start shrinking your perceived box of physical capabilities it starts a vicious cycle where you keep doing less and less.  I need to keep pushing out on the box to keep it from shrinking too fast.

Saturday morning I did a thorough cleaning of the chicken coop, something that was way overdue.  The reason it hasn’t been done that often is it is a royal pain to unhook all of the tech I have out there between solar power, wifi, smart switches, cameras, and security dvrs.  It was time to work through the pain.  The inside of the coop was gross with black dust that is a combination of dirt, sand, feces, feathers, and dander.  The two shelves in there had a later of this scuzz on them as well as the walls.

As I slowly pulled items from the coop I tried to clean them at the same time.  Things like the two fans were especially gross but even stuff like extension and power cords had scuzz to be removed as well.  Once I got everything out I pulled the fresh water hose from the house down to the coop and started blasting away at the walls, shelves, and ceiling.  Waterfalls of black liquid were everywhere.  I also brought in a brush, bucket and soapy water to scrub some of the especially nasty parts.  All in all I spent two and a half hours cleaning and reloading the coop.  It was a good exercise because it allowed me to throw out, organize, and rewire stuff in a less messy way.  This is something I need to do much more than every couple of years.

During the afternoon I did some more work on prepping the one hobby room bench for more printers, attaching three 18″ x 18″ pieces of plywood to the shelf in order to adequately support an I3 Mega printer.  I also did more organizing, condensing, and throwing out.

Later in the day I got out and washed the Tesla.  I wanted to do a couple projects to it on Sunday that requires the car to be clean.  While I was doing so I rolled video where I talked about whatever Tesla related things came to mind.  Evidently I had a lot of thoughts.

My Sunday was very busy with two things, shooting video and then editing video.  I produced a total of three videos during the day, two regarding PEV rides and one with small Tesla projects.  The one PEV ride was me trying again to ride from DD to home on the One Wheel Pint, something I tried to do once before and failed.  When I tried previously I got 8.4 miles before the battery was empty.  This time I was actually successful, getting over 10 miles.  I pulled into the driveway with 1% left of the battery.  Feel free to check out the blow by blow if you have time.

Cindy and I did a tag team effort for mowing the grass.  I mowed the front half of the yard and Cindy followed by doing the rear portion.  We had not had a ton of rain last week so things weren’t too hairy.

I stayed up and watched the Eagles game.  The Birds play was very frustrating at times but they still had a legit shot to win at the end until Zac Ertz came up about a foot short on a fourth and long pass.  The more concerning thing was the amount of injuries that sprung up in the game.  DeSean Jackson, Alshon Jeffrey, and their second tight end all went out early and stayed out.  Wentz even missed a few snaps because of concussion protocol.  He also took a painful looking shot to the ribs.  Last year the team got crushed by excessive injuries, they were the second most injured team in the league.

I suppose all of those injuries last year was the reason the Eagles sat a ton of starters through the majority of pre-season, hoping it would curb the injury bug.  If this is a pre-cursor to another injury filled roster it’s going to be a long season.

I’m not sure if the was the excitement or frustration from the game but I slept like absolute shit last night.  No exaggeration, I bet I woke up at least 30 times.  I’m not quite sure what the explanation is but hopefully it is a once and done event.

Last night after work I spent some time in the hobby room.  As I mentioned the 3D store sales have been increasing steadily.  I decided I wanted to make accommodations for future expansion so I dropped the shelf that is under the work bench about 4-5 inches.  Doing this will allow me to have a row of the I3 Mega printers down there and whatever else up top, effectively doubling my capacity.  I have a lot more work to do, cleaning up, organizing, throwing out, and condensing what is in there.  Last night I sold another couple stands.

Yesterday I did complete my first non-store related print in awhile, a huge Oreo cookie.  I printed the cookie portion on the Prusa.  The filling is actually made of two pieces that screw/unscrew which allows you to keep something hidden inside, hopefully real Oreos.

In case you are oblivious, today is the 18 year anniversary of 9-11.  I struggle to realize how almost two decades has already passed since that awful day.  Despite all of the time in between I can still clearly recall the intense feelings of disbelief, horror, sadness, and anger that were part of that day.  Even now I question the actual circumstances and official explanation of the events but that doesn’t mask the human tragedy that 9-11 will always be remembered for.  It was my generation’s Pearl Harbor.

The 3D printed EUC stand business has really been picking up speed.  It seems that it’s all mostly from word of mouth as I don’t actively advertise at all.  I was just contacted by an EUC dealer from AUSTRALIA that wants me to make some stands for him as well, it’s sort of nuts.

In order to help me in the short term I ordered another cheap AnyCubic I3 Mega to help me crank out some parts.  I still have plans to get another Prusa as well but that will come as more money is saved.  I am also considering modifying my work benches in the hobby room to allow double decker printer configs.  If I lower the shelf under the bench a few inches I would be able to run the I3 Mega’s down there without a problem.  I then just need to find some alternative way to store completed stands which shouldn’t be too hard to do.

When I started this endeavor last year on a whim I never expected it to grow like it has.  I still enjoy doing it and it seems to be appreciated by the community so it’s a win/win.  From a purely financial standpoint I have never exactly figured out how much money I actually make on the sale of a stand because there are a lot of material, equipment, shipping, and electricity costs that take big bites out of the bottom line.  Regardless, I make enough for it to be worth my while.

It’s funny, when I quit race timing a few years ago I was walking away from the money I made doing it which wasn’t fantastic but helped pay some bills.  Now, between the growth of my YouTube channel (almost 7k subscribers) and the sales from the 3D store, I have surpassed what I used to make race timing, by a considerable margin.

Friday night I once again worked on my ripped apart AnyCubic I3 Mega.  After another frustrating session where I determined my X axis stepper motor was trashed I decided to pack it in.  It would take a long time for me to get another X stepper and I doubted with as much shit that I had to go through to get it apart, if it would ever print well once put back together.  I instead decided to give up on the repair, something I normally don’t do very easily.  My plan became to keep this printer for parts as I have two more I3 Mega’s in production.  I then furhter realigned my plans, setting a goal of filling the empty workbench spot with ANOTHER Prusa printer, I love my MK3S that much.  Yes it’s a bit scary that I could buy five I3 Mega’s for the price of one pres-assembled Prusa but I don’t plan to do so until funds from my 3D printing store can cover the cost.

Saturday morning I headed to the track to reboot my running program, again.  It seems like I can’t string together more than 2-3 weeks before something starts hurting that derails me again.  This time Cindy and Elsa came with.  They walked the track while I ran around it, slowly.  I finished the 12 laps and was a sweaty mess to prove it.  The only good news is I didn’t have much residual pain afterward.

Despite doing the weed whacking during the week I still wound up spending 4-5 hours outdoors on Saturday doing tasks.  Most of that time was spent on the mower.  We have had an extended few days with little to no rain which resulted in all of the standing water disappearing.  I felt I had no choice but to mow everything while I could.

Saturday night we watched Glass, the follow up to Unbreakable, a movie made years ago, when M Night Shamalan actually made movies people liked.  I didn’t think the movie was bad but it certainly wasn’t great. I’d award it a B, pretty good by M Night’s low bar standard.

The weekend also included me wrapping up my testing of the 16X.  I made a couple videos as part of the process, both of which seem to be well received.  My EUC videos have been getting more traction with a lot more views than I had been getting in the past.

Late last week all of the devices on my home network that were hardwired stopped communicating.  It was odd, all of the devices had link lights and were showing activity but none of them could communicate out to the internet or with each other.  The only thing that made sense to me was to replace the main network switch which fixed the problem.  Switches rarely fail so I am wondering if some sort of surge caused the failure.  Everything is back up and talking once again after the swap.

I did my bills as normal on Sunday morning.  The session did include a big event, paying off the Tacoma.  The funds from the sale of the RV finally cleared Cindy’s bank account after nearly two weeks.  It’s sort of ridiculous how banks hold your money hostage like this.  While they are waiting for it to “clear” what the are really doing is floating that money for themselves to make a few bucks.  The process was further retarded by another restriction that only allowed Cindy to transfer 5K a day over so it took three days to complete that as well.

Regardless, it felt good to get the truck payment eliminated as it has not been fun floating a Tesla and Tacoma payment for around six months.  It also feels good to have a truck with less than 30k miles on it paid off already.  The remainder of the proceeds from the sale got applied to my HELOC balance which I will be working on knocking down at a more rapid pace from here on out.

So on Saturday I spent about 25 minutes trying to get the Sunday Ticket reactivated on my DirecTV account.  The level one, India based phone rep was clueless on how to do so even though I told her up front that she would need to get a supervisor involved and that there are notes on my account on how to handle this.  Because I do not have a normal programming package with Directv, the Sunday Ticket subscription requires additional steps to complete.  Dinner was ready so I told the woman I didn’t have more time to sit on the phone with her and hung up.

I then saw that supposedly Directv was offering week one of the Sunday Ticket free for everyone as a promo.  Great, I guess I will watch it for free on week one and then slog through the reactivation this week sometime.  Well 15 minutes prior to kickoff I switched to the channel and had the 721 error which means “too bad, so sad”.  Evidently the free spiff was only for those people that had a base subscription.  I called in but hung up shortly thereafter when I got the message about “unusually long wait times”, f it.  Instead I just listened to the broadcast on my computer which was not the same as watching the game, but tolerable.

Early on I felt fortunate to not see the disaster on the field with the Eagles falling behind 17-0.  They sounded very rusty, perhaps from the strategy of very little real playing time for their starters during pre-season.  Luckily in the second half the team woke up and won 32-27.  DeSean Jackson had a HUGE homecoming for the Eagles, putting up big numbers.  Having a legit speedster in the WR position I think is going to really help Carson open up the field.  The end result of the game gave me a good feeling about the potential this team has, if they can stay healthy.

Speaking of staying healthy, I could not believe Nick Foles lasted less than one half before getting injured in his game.  He broke his left clavicle after a big hit.  I was really pulling for Nick to prove he can be good for another team besides the Eagles.  Who knows when he will get the chance to do so now.

Last night after work I changed and threw on my work boots to go out and weed whack the yard.  I wanted to get the roughly 90 minute task off my list of to dos for the weekend.  The standing water that has inundated the property for a good portion of the last month or two has finally dried up, allowing me to complete the job without being coated in mud. I didn’t return inside to eat dinner until almost 7:30.

After eating instead of playing Classic WoW, which I have done most nights this week, I instead turned my attention to the one I3 Mega that I had partially disassembled on a table in the hobby room.  My hope was to remove the X axis stepper motor that appeared to be problematic and then replace it with one of the brand new spares I bought a long time ago but never used.

Getting the motor off was ridiculous.  AnyCubic obviously never intended for this repair to be something most users would do else it would have not been so tedious.  After a ton of futzing I finally got the motor off.  The weird thing was it seemed to turn normally, both by hand and when hooked up to the controller wire harness.  To make things more frustrating, the brand new motor I tried would not spin when connected to the wire harness, it only buzzed.

I partially reassembled the printer enough that I could again try to move the X axis under power.  It did move back and forth when power was applied however when unplugged the print head carriage would stick repeatedly, requiring great force to move it which is not how it should be.  I have two other identical printers on the bench that I could compare against.

I turned off the light frustrated and came to the conclusion that it is probably not worth any further effort.  I can get a brand new printer of the same model for $200 if I wanted to.  However what I think I want to do is keep the troubled unit for spare parts and buy another Prusa (a preassembled one  this time) once I have earned enough money in my 3D store to pay for it.  I LOVE the way the MK3S prints and upgrading my print farm to include more of them in the future would be great.

This morning I was back at the med center donating more blood and urine.  We are doing another heavy metal test to see if the high thallium level is up, down or the same.  They also are doing some additional testosterone testing and some other stuff which I don’t recall.  My medical procedures and testing of the last year have been so numerous it’s all one blur.

This weekend has various tasks on the agenda but for the next few months most Sunday afternoons will be consumed by Eagles football which starts this weekend against the Redskins.  Unfortunately that means part of my Saturday needs to be consumed by the annual headache of getting Directv to reactivate my Sunday Ticket only subscription.  I don’t think I have ever been able to complete the task in under an hour of phone time.

Two of my AnyCubic I3 printers that I use heavily in EUC stand production are in need of some TLC.  One of them can probably be fixed with a few adjustments, the other one seems like it has a bad stepper motor that I need to replace.  I tried to take a whack it it last night but could not figure out the proper way to remove the stepper motor.  Surprisingly there is next to no information online about how this is done either.  I will keep researching and attempting to resolve the issue.

Despite having a lot of time off in the last 6 weeks I have that overhanging sense that there are a lot of loose ends that are not getting tied up.  I never like that feeling and I know it is something that never can be satiated as there will ALWAYS be things that need to be done.  The funny thing is over time I have become MUCH less regimented than I used to be when it comes to making sure certain things get done on a schedule and I haven’t made a weekend list in 2019.  Maybe I need to start again.

So my long holiday weekend was not anything like I expected it to be several days prior.  It looked like we would be seeing some significant impact from Dorian as it was forecast to drift more into the middle of the state before turning north.  I figured we would be doing some serious hurricane prep, just short of putting up the plywood.  The entire area felt the panic as gas lines sprung up all over the place last Thursday with a ton of pumps running dry, it was crazy.

On Friday the forecast path started to change with the storm being more east and north.  SW Florida was officially moved out of the “cone of danger” and you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief.  The gas lines instantly disappeared and life pretty much went back to normal.  Our good fortune was more than offset by the Bahamas bad fortune.  Dorian has basically destroyed the place that we just happened to be scheduled to cruise to in October.  I have a feeling the destination will change.  The storm is going to be a factor all week as it crawls up the coast, the damage will be proportional to how far off the coast it remains.

Despite the lack of hurricane action, the chicken area has been flooded for a good portion of the last week.  As a result we had given the birds access to high ground in the rest of the yard.  It took them very little time to start digging up landscaped beds and holes into the ground, it’s what they enjoy.  I almost felt bad when the water subsided thanks to pumping.  The hens would stand at their fence line staring at us, waiting to be granted freedom again.  I am convinced I will be unable to bring in fill and sod until wet season is completely over.  My hope is this is the last year that the chicken area and other spots around the yard are flood zones.

I did a lot of testing with the 16X demo wheel over the weekend, going down to Marco Island on Saturday and then doing my longest ride ever on Sunday to Ave Maria, over 43 miles according to my tracking app.  It was the farthest I ever rode a wheel without charging, the amazing thing is I had almost 30% battery left at the end of it.  I have really been impressed with the 16X, I didn’t think any wheel could give the Nikola a run for it’s money, I was wrong.

While I was away WoW Classic was released.  For years there has been an underground of players that continued to play the original version of the game on private servers.  The modern game has gotten “easier” with time which a lot of people didn’t like.  A couple years ago Blizzard announced they would officially re-release the original version to appease this large sector.  Well that sector apparently was much larger than anyone anticipated.

The launch of the game has been huge with Blizzard scrambling to bring additional servers online to meet demand.  Even with them doing so the wait times to get into many servers is miserably long.  Last night I waited almost an hour before I could step foot into the game.  Blizzard has done an incredible job of recreating the classic WoW experience from 2004/2005, the good and bad.  Because of the increased difficulty of the old game, teaming up with other players is more or less of a necessity if you want to progress.  In modern WoW that is rarely the case.  The end result of this in Classic is a more social experience which was part of the original appeal of the game.

I have chosen to level a druid which I thought would be good because it can perform all three roles a player can do, DPS, healer and tank, instead of the one or two other classes allow.  This versatility comes with a price, being a jack of all trades means you don’t do any role great.  I have been having a hard time getting stuff done as quickly as some of the other high damage classes like mage.  Despite the slow progress, I have been having fun jumping back into a WoW time machine to play the game as it was meant to be played, interactively with others, many, many others.

This is my first day back at work after more than a week.  Stepping back into my daily routine is something that is good for me.