Archives October 2019

Last night was another busy one. I spent time doing 3D store order processing, stand building, and started building the prototype for the skateboard display stand.  I think it looks pretty good, I am hoping the small changes I made to the support placement will make it stable enough.

For the first time in a few years we aren’t doing a PEV ride through Victoria Park during Halloween.  Since baby DJ arrived it isn’t easy for Katie to go riding.  Plus if you recall, it was a nightmare and dangerous trying to ride through the hundreds of trick or treaters jamming the streets last year.  The end result is we will be spending this Halloween at home, with the porch light on for trick or treaters that will never come.

Cindy got most of the remaining items that were displaced for the carpet work back where they belong yesterday.  It felt good to come back to a house that was more or less back in order, I never feel good when piles or clutter are around.  One of the things I did last night was edit the video I shot documenting the fun process.  (spoiler, it wasn’t fun)

I forgot to mention yesterday that someone finally took me up on an EUC trade offer that I have been putting out there on social media and YouTube videos for awhile.  I offered to trade my like new Nikola Plus for a King Song 16X, the wheel I demo’d a couple months ago.  When I demo’d the wheel I found myself liking it more than the Nikola, a wheel I liked very much already.  I have been trying to be a bit more reasonable in my PEV buying habits recently so instead of spending another 2K for a new 16X, I threw the trade offer out there.

From a dollar perspective it was a good deal for someone as a Nikola Plus cost roughly $500 more than a 16X.  Despite this, I couldn’t get anyone to make a deal.  Finally this weekend someone agreed to the trade. His 16X has roughly 150 miles on it, my Nikola only had 120 miles so it was pretty close.  We both shipped our boxes out on Monday and by the end of the week we both should have received our wheels.  To me the Nikola was better than the 16X in only two ways, it’s top speed which pushes 40 mph, (which I would never ride at), and it’s LED lighting is more visually interesting.  In every other way I prefer the 16X.  It should make for interesting video content.  A few people think I’m crazy but most seem to agree that overall the 16X is a better wheel.

Last night after work I had the cousin of the guy that detailed my truck stop by.  He brought one of the skateboards he sells so I could use it to prototype a stand that he could use to display his boards in a store.  Matt was extremely nice and seemed like a very genuine person.  I put the board in the stand I made for my Meepo and it stood upright albeit in a little tipsy manner.  I need to do a few modifications to make the stand a little more stable and also include their logo into the design.  If this works out it could lead to yet another avenue for additional 3D printing work which is good and bad at the same time.  The amount of my time consumed by this hobby turned into a side business is growing at an accelerating rate.

A good portion of the three day weekend was spent doing all of the work required to clear four rooms in the house for carpet restretching.  The carpet guys had their work done in about an hour, between Cindy and I we spent 12-15 hours doing all of the required work to prepare and recover.  Home Depot has very clear instructions on what you need to do properly prep the room, basically EVERYTHING comes out but the up to six furniture items per room that they will move.  However those furniture items need to be cleared of any items as well.

The clearing work resulted in a bag of trash and several boxes of donated items.  Overall it was a positive experience as not only do the rooms no longer have raised ridges in the carpet, we also got to use better judgement when filling them back up.   I wound up having four or five left over power strips that I no longer needed after connecting things in a less haphazard fashion.  There were a lot of things that are now cleaner, more organized, and more efficient at the end of the arduous process.

While I was waiting for the carpet installers to show up I had the detailer that I contacted out working on the Tacoma.  He spent over three hours on the truck, going over it inch by inch.  He cleaned the wheel wells, the engine bay, and seemed to vacuum up every single strand of dog hair that littered the interior.  He really did a great job and I felt he certainly earned his money.

I talked to him about also doing the Tesla down the road.  We also talked about the 3D printers I had running in the garage which he found fascinating.    For the carpet work I also had my PEVs in the garage on their 3D printed stands.  This caught John’s interest as he and his cousin also have a small skateboard business. He saw the stands I made for my one e-sk8 and Cindy’s conventional skateboard.  He said they were opening a store at the mall and thought a stand like this would be great for them to display their boards.  He asked if I had any interest in designing/making a few of them for him.

I told him I was very busy but I would be open to coming up with something on a limited basis.  I told him the main thing I would require is one of the boards that can be used to prototype with, making sure it fits well and is secure.  Supposedly after work tonight the cousin is going to drop off a board to do exactly that.  I surely don’t need more work on the 3D front but this will be a fun little challenge that could lead to more opportunities down the road.

I was sort of dreading the carpet project so it feels good to have it in the rear view mirror.  Having the work done now should buy us another couple years until we decide what to do with the flooring in those rooms next.  I have had a pretty constant feeling of being behind the curve of what needs to get done for awhile.  I can deal with that feeling in short bursts but it is not viable long term.

Last night we had DJ.  When we babysit him in the evening it can be rough as many times he gets grexy that time of day it seems.  He was a little better last night which was cool.  As he gets older he becomes more and more interactive with the world around him which is neat.    He seems to like me, usually I can get a smile out of him with a funny face.

I am on the doorstep of a three day weekend.  Unfortunately it isn’t for fun, it’s to clear out all of our carpeted rooms so the ridges can be pulled out.  I am hoping all of this effort is worth it.  When it comes time to redo the carpet the next time I think there is a good chance the office and the hobby room will become hard surface flooring. I have so much 3D printing demand that I plan to continue production even after the hobby room is ripped apart.  My hope is to set up the benches in the garage and let the printers continue in there during the work.

Last night after dinner and tending to 3D store orders I started working on clearing off the bookshelves in the office, prepping to empty the room for Monday’s carpet restretch.  This wasn’t just relocating stuff to a temporary space, this was also a clean up operation.  I wound up throwing out tons of old CD’s, parts, and other paraphernalia I haven’t touched in years.

Those shelves also contained both boxes and albums of photos.  I took a time out to flip through an album that I believe Ali made for me a loooong time ago.  It contained a number of throwback pics.  I took a picture of the pictures with my phone and posted them online.  Some are pretty funny but all brought back memories of those different time capsules of my life.

Last night gave me a good taste for what a good portion of the weekend will contain, moving, cleansing, purging, moving back, followed by organizing.  It’s not particularly hard to do, just time consuming.  Having the house in a state of utter chaos for a period of time never makes me feel great mentally but I’ll get over it, just like Mulvaney said I should.

Speaking of the Trump administration, wow, this has become just an incredible shit show.  To me the irony is the charges they are investigating regarding impeachment are likely very small potatoes compared to the things they don’t know about, yet.  The walls are closing in on poor Don, his head may explode.

I forgot to mention this in this morning’s post.  I was at Planet Fitness yesterday doing my leg routine as usual.  Typically when I do leg extensions and curls I do them in the “30 Minute Workout” section of the gym, the equipment in there is better than what is on the main floor.  This section is supposedly designed so a person goes from one machine to another through the entire circuit to achieve a full body workout in 30 minutes.  This feature was added probably 5 years ago and pretty much no one ever uses it as intended, people hop in there, do a couple machines they want to do and hop out.  It’s just another example of one of the fail concepts that “no lunk” Planet Fitness leans heavily on.

Just like front desk staff, this Planet Fitness location rolls through trainers like toilet paper.  In the last year I bet there have been at least five of them that have come and gone.  However the last few make me lol as they were clear examples of individuals not buying what they are selling, they were/are terribly overweight, perhaps part of PF’s brilliant no intimidation policy. The only good thing is you pay for their help what they are worth, zero.

So the current young guy that is the “trainer”, who likely has a BMI approaching 40, spends almost every minute I see him at the gym circling the floor.  It seems like he is desperately looking for someone to interact with or wanting to ask for his assistance but those requests never seem to come so he continues to circle.  Well yesterday he actually had a woman that he was “training” back in the 30 minute workout area.  They were doing the circuit per his direction, probably because it was written on the wall on how to do it. I doubt the guy has many formalized training plans in his head otherwise.

I was over on the leg curl machine when I heard the guy address another older woman who was in the area.  Like me, she had come in to use one of the machines but not do the entire circuit.  The guy scolds this woman and tells her how this area is ONLY for people doing 30 minute workouts.  She told him she was just doing one set and leaving but he said that it wasn’t true as he had seen her doing sets on other machines in there too, GASP!!!  This poor woman actually followed the fake trainers directive and left the 30 minute workout area.  Keep in mind besides the woman that this genius was training, there were only two other people in there so a total of 3 people for roughly 15 different machines.

So when this went down I had only completed my first set.  I was amazed at the stupidity of this guy and I wondered if he had the balls to come over and accost me for blatantly ignoring the circuit only sign on the wall as well.  Perhaps he read my body language, perhaps he is only comfortable reprimanding older women, but for whatever reason he said nothing to me as I completed my two additional sets on the leg curl machine before leaving the area.

I had a full diatribe prepared in my head if he dared say a word to me.  I was going to ask him if Planet Fitness was now going to actively enforce ALL of the rules they post on the walls.  Was Mr Rule Police going to apprehend all of the patrons that ignore the “Limit Cell Phone Use to the Lobby” signs aka everybody?  How about the gaggle of old men that use the exercise machines as park benches where they talk about breaded haddock and bowel movements?  Were they planning on dropping the hammer on the guys that use the Smith machines for 60 minutes at a time, disregarding the 30 minute max rule? What about the people that leave equipment covered in bodily fluids, ignoring the wipe down signs?  How about disregarding customer safety by allowing machines with frayed belts, stripped screws, and loose parts to remain in service because they are too cheap or lazy to do anything about it?  I could go on and on.

After asking the guy what training certification he currently held, I was going to top it off by letting him know I would be happy to share my thoughts with the owner, Mark, who I have known for about 15 years.  Luckily, for the fake trainer, he kept his mouth shut but if he ever tries to reprimand me in that shit hole gym I promise, I will make a scene that he is unlikely to forget anytime soon.  The reality is in a few weeks he too likely will be gone just like the rest of them.  The shelf life on most PF staff is 3-4 months.

My days and nights are typically filled with things to occupy my time, so much so that I rarely take the time to take a step back and just appreciate the good fortune in my life.  Despite dropping out of college after three months and drifting through several random, future-less, mostly physical jobs in my early 20’s I have wound up on stable footing with financial security, a roof over my head, and not wanting for much of anything.

As much as I bitch and complain about the trials and tribulations of aging, compared to most of my peers, I am holding up well, refusing to relent to “me too” mentality where being lazy and not caring about your health at this age is the de facto attitude.  Cindy and I have our own small but unique family element where animals literally accept and provide child-like love.  With the addition of baby DJ to the mix that love has only increased.  Cindy of course has had a lot to do with my good fortune.  Her energy and caring for me helps cancel out some of the negativity that is wired into my personality.  I appreciate everything she does to make our house a home and her efforts to be my partner in life.

I know most blog posts are filled with me recounting all of the stuff I am doing and not necessarily what sort of stuff I am feeling.  I just wanted to take a moment to clarify that despite whatever griping you may hear, in the big picture I know I am lucky to have landed where I have after all is said and done.

So now that’s out of the way, last night I found myself again busy building stands for sale.  I have a unique order that is getting shipped over to a military base in the Pacific.  I did not realize that you can ship worldwide to military bases for even less than what normal domestic shipping costs, that’s pretty cool.  I have had a lot of overseas interest lately, I have another order for the UK that I need to get working on next.

I booked someone to come out and detail the Tacoma on Monday, when I will already be off for the carpet restretch.  I have NEVER paid for someone else to detail my vehicles in my life.  However life changes as you get older.  I am shifting into a time period where in some areas my time is worth more than my money.  Sure, I could spend 3-4 hours doing the work myself but still winding up with a less pretty outcome than professional results. At this point I’d rather pay for a full detail once a year and I continue to handle normal hand washing duties.

This trend will surely expand as time marches on.  For example the ground elevation / sod project will be done mostly by someone that does it for a living.  The cost to do so is reasonable in my mental ledger.  No worries, there are still plenty of projects that will be paid for by sweat equity alone.  For example I want to redo the fencing around the chicken area.  I somehow bought and installed welded wire instead of woven wire fencing.  The welded wire stuff is garbage and is already falling apart at the areas where standing water lives in the summer.

This weekend I kept hopping.  I started off with a row after work instead of a run.  When teamed with the 400 reps of calisthenics exercises I did at lunch I felt I met my exercise quota for the day.  I spent a good portion of the night processing orders from the 3D print store.  My EUC buddy Marty posted a video about the stand I sent him to use and the end result was a rush of people buying more stands, cleaning out my store of several categories.  I sold something like 10 stands, making for my biggest drop off at the post office at one time, ever.

It was off and on raining most of the day Saturday, I still went outside and handled my normal chores outside of mowing which I didn’t wind up doing until late afternoon on Sunday.  Cindy and I did our errands run with Elsa, a favorite Saturday morning tradition with us.  One of our stops was at the medical marijuana dispensary, Cindy had run out of the stuff that helps her sleep.  After waiting awhile she came out empty handed and upset because she wasn’t allowed to buy more until her doctor reauthorizes it.

The medical mmj implementation is a cash cow for everyone involved, including doctors.  In order to keep getting stuff Cindy has to schedule visits with the doctor every several months and pay a couple hundred dollars for him to sign his name on a piece of paper.  It’s quite frankly, stupid and a blatant money grab.  If someone has a long term condition that isn’t going to go away like MS, the patient shouldn’t need to keep handing over Franklins to the doctor to get the stuff.

I also took the time to make the famous chocolate cake for Cindy as a belated birthday celebration. The cake turned out great but I feel fatter with each slice I eat.  The recipe includes three or four cups of sugar and a half pound of butter but damn it tastes good.

Saturday night we watched BumbleBee, the most recent Transformers movie.  I didn’t realize it was actually a prequel to the movie series.  Cindy and I both really liked it more than the last several Transformer movies.  Less Marky Mark equals better movie.  I’d give it A-.

Sunday morning it was again very rainy which in the big picture is a good thing since we have had an unprecedented early end to wet season which has thrown us into an early H2O deficit.  I got a small break in the rain late morning which I targeted for a local ride.  It didn’t take long for the rain to return, soaking me in the process but I kept rolling along.

Cindy spent a lot of time doing initial clean up for the room clearing we have to do next weekend for the carpet restretch.  It will be a good way for us to cleanse, organize and purge.  I spent most of that time outside mowing grass during a break in the rain.

I watched the atrocious Eagles/Cowboys game last night, it was in a word, pathetic.  The team looked over matched in EVERY category.  I was just disgusted.  The defense was like a an open door, unable to stop the Cowboys on the ground or through the air.  After getting destroyed two weeks in a row and now heading to Buffalo to play the 5-1 Bills, the Eagles have a very real chance of reaching the halfway point of the season 3-5.  That is is sad when before the season the Birds were touted as one of the most talented teams in the NFC.  Carson Wentz, I just don’t know if he has “it”.  He isn’t alone, the team is underperforming in pretty much every facet of the game.

I went straight from work to Outback to meet up with Cindy, Katie, DJ, our friend Deb, Cindy’s mom and her niece.  We have celebrated many of Cindy and Katie’s birthdays there, it’s one of their favorites places to eat.  Of course baby DJ was the main star of the show but I think everyone had a good time and an enjoyable meal.  When we got home I gave Cindy her card and her last gift, a nice set of earrings which she was definitely not expecting.

Hopefully the roughly week long birthday festivities will be a lasting and positive memory for Cindy of her 50th year on the planet, just like mine is.

I have a feeling like there are so many things that need tending to at the house.  We are approaching the time of year that a full pressure washing needs to occur, the hated tree trimming project needs to happen, and a number of other smaller clean ups and projects are piled on as well.  We also need to start thinking about a plan for clearing the rooms for the carpet restretch that is due to happen on the 28th. It’s going to be a massive chore but hopefully it gives us a chance to clean up, throw out, and organize along the way.

My first day back at work consisted of me spending most of the day troubleshooting and monitoring a server that developed mystery performance issues suddenly.  It was the same server I was on the phone with the office for on Monday and Tuesday.  I have dug through endless pages on the internet trying to get a handle on what is going on but have not yet received a concrete answer.  Instead I have been doing the network equivalent of shotgunning parts as I disable or change things to see what sort of affect it has.  In a nutshell the problem causes slow performance for a number of systems at our main office so it’s a real issue.

The issue persisted all morning yesterday, despite changes I made.  Then all of a sudden right around lunch time things went back to normal and stayed that way the rest of the day.  This made me think that possibly the cause is something external of the server I had been working on.  I spent the rest of the day looking for unusual activity inside or outside of the network but again found no conclusive answers.  One side effect of this is I am working on building a second server to perform the same functions as the first so we have a way to recover quicker if need be in the future.

Today is Cindy’s 50th birthday, a big one by anybody’s standards.  The cruise was the big celebration of the event, I had hoped it actually would have occurred on her actual birthday.  Now, going out to dinner tonight seems a little anti-climactic.  We are going to Outback per Cindy’s request with her family and a good friend.    I always want Cindy’s birthdays to be special and of course a 50th requires more attention than most.

Despite how much I lamented turning 50, I’ll never forget the effort Cindy and the rest of my family and friends put into making it a special time.  I hope the last week or so does the same for Cindy as she deserves it.  I have never known someone so willing to invest herself into the happiness of those around her as Cindy does and I love her for it.