New World Record, Long Way, Caraoke, Too much, Boom, Dumpster Fire Ride
I got up with my 6:10 AM alarm, popped two advil, slammed a pack of Pop Tarts and was out trimming the first set of trees out front before 7AM, likely the earliest I ever started. The temps weren’t as cool as I expected at 72 degrees but it was overcast which is perfect. What was even better was as the cold front advanced across our area it actually dropped a few degrees by the time we were done.
Every year when I do this job I have thoughts regarding if this would be the time my luck runs out and I finally fall while perched 20 feet high on a ladder. Luckily my string of good luck continued. That isn’t to say I was safe. The two tallest trees require me to be dangerously close to the top rung of the ladder with the only thing keeping me from falling being my grip on the tree itself while I try to cut branches with my DeWalt battery powered sawz-all with the other hand. As the cold front blew in so did the winds. As I was up in the tallest tree it was swaying back and forth substantially while I held on with a death grip.
Cindy started the branch pick up part of the job about an hour after I started cutting which worked out great. Because we went around and did all of the ground level tree trimming a few weeks prior we got done on Saturday quicker than ever, finishing up before lunch. We concluded just as a steady and cold rain swept in. I was very happy that we finished quickly and that I survived. I thought my bad back would be more of an issue than it turned out to be.
Before this task comes around next year I am definitely going to invest in a taller extension ladder of either 24 or 28 feet. It will make trimming the sky scraper cabbage palms a lot less dangerous. I almost felt like we did enough work in that morning to cover the entire three day weekend but of course that is never the case, at least with me.
We both showered and headed out to run errands, later than normal obviously. We discovered going later in the day equates to a bigger influx of annoying people. Both Rural King and Home Depot were congested. Despite the massive task that we knocked out in the AM, during the afternoon I found myself back outside doing more things like fixing the automatic chicken door and redoing the corrugated roofing on the moveable shelter so water drains off it instead of collecting in disgusting pools that the chickens would try to drink from.
Saturday night we watched A Dog’s Way Home. Pretty much any movie that involves dogs/animals will generate an emotional reaction from me. This movie was no exception. It was a sweet and touching story that connected to the inner animal lover in me repeatedly. Of course it gets an A.
Cindy got the idea to crack a bottle of red wine during the evening and somehow that transformed into us trying out one of the new features added to the Tesla, Caraoke. It turns your car into a $45,000 Karaoke machine. I didn’t think I had nearly enough alcohol to get me to participate in the fiasco but evidently it was. It is beyond silly and of course it’s on video.
Sunday morning I went for a simple solo ride on the 16X over to the school just to enjoy myself. I hoped to get out on something longer but I had other things to do. Before I left I heard a BOOM noise emanating from the garage. When I tried to open the door and it failed after a few inches I knew what was wrong, the garage door spring broke. I had experience with this problem as it broke once before in 2011. I guess 8-9 years is an acceptable lifespan for a high tension spring? We have the same company that fixed it the first time scheduled to come out this afternoon to fix it again.
The biggest of those things was to take on building/installing my Prusa MMU2S add on. I had done some light research into what was involved but not nearly enough in retrospect. I figured it couldn’t be anywhere near as tedious as what I went through building the one Prusa MK3S from scratch. Well, it was pretty damn close.
I started somewhere around 2:30 in the afternoon and was still angrily turning screws after 10PM. It was very aggravating. If all you had to do was build the MMU2S unit it wouldn’t be that bad. However installation also involved digging into the printer itself, partially disassembling, swapping parts and then reassembling. Unlike with the printer build, the instructions this time were not quite so bulletproof with some ambiguity at certain steps that lead to delays.
I followed up with another couple of hours of work on it on Sunday finishing up the build and configuring the unit. The good news is it does indeed work. The bad news is I have to come up with some plan to accommodate the layout I use with the spools mounted on the shelf above the printer. Because of how the unit loads and unloads filament on demand, you have to have something to address the slack of filament as it gets unloaded. Otherwise you get a tangled filament mess which will cause failed prints. If I knew just how much work was going to be involved in getting the MMU2S set up I probably would have passed on it’s purchase.
Sunday morning Cindy and I went to ride at the Greenway. Cindy wanted to see Baker’s Park which is now fully open, the playground and main building were recently completed. I rode my One Wheel XR while Cindy rode her newly improved Minipro. The ride felt a little rushed because Cindy was supposed to watch the baby again early in the afternoon. I was pissed when I got home to pull the ride footage and realized the external mic was not plugged in correctly, resulting in shitty wind noise filled audio. I did my best to throw something together out of the mess.
The rest of day was spent tending to things as they required. I did get to play a single game of Hearthstone which encompassed all of the gaming I had time to do over the three days.