Yesterday I got the report from my stepmom that my dad’s first of two knee replacements went well. He has already had his one hip replaced, twice and after this knee surgery he is already booked to have the other replaced later this year. It’s hard to say the exact cause of his joint issues other than the cumulative effect of long term abuse and/or damage.
Dad used to be pretty active as an adult. When I was younger he was a pretty regular runner. After my parents divorced he played rugby for a number of years. He also liked to ski which resulted in a bad knee injury where he tore his ACL. As the aches and pains accumulated over time you would notice his gait developing more and more of a limp. The problem is as you compensate for pain on one side you can often be negatively impacting other parts of your body as well. Dad has also been carrying more weight on his frame as he has gotten older which never helps your joints out either.
I myself have had two knee surgeries on my right knee which originated from a meniscus tear while playing indoor volleyball in my early 30’s. I remember my knee surgeon telling me that if I wasn’t careful I could need a knee replacement by 50. He counseled me against impact activities like running as they could accelerate the problem. Of course I still run to this day, some 20 years later. My continued focus on healthy lifestyle where exercise, stretching and conscious eating are the norm has served me well as I descend into mid-life. I am hoping the same holds true as genuine old age sets in.
Earlier this week my sister and brother in law finalized plans to come visit us in early March. It’s sort of last minute but we had nothing pressing on the schedule and the dates worked for them as well. The last time they were in Florida was well over a decade ago, it’s kind of crazy. I am looking forward to seeing the gang, especially the kids who should find lots of things to entertain them on our property and at the beach.
The last time we saw my sister’s family was during our last winter road trip to PA when they still lived in State College. It seems hard to believe that maybe 4-5 years have already passed since that visit. The acceleration of time as you age is a real thing that never slows down.
Last year was the first year of the LA EUC Games, an event organized by some of my online EUC buddies where a number of riders got together to hang out, ride, and compete in various events. By all accounts it was a lot of fun. A couple weeks ago the main organizer of the event, Rama, asked me if I would be interested in attending this years event which has now been stretched from one day into two. When he told me the event was towards the end of October my knee jerk reaction was to dismiss it since in the past that was the crunch time leading into property tax season at my job.
However the more I thought about it the more I thought it would be really cool to attend the event so I checked with my boss yesterday. Since we redid the back end of our tax system a couple years ago the amount of work we need to do in preparation for tax season has been cut dramatically. We used to have to print, pack, and mail over a quarter of a million tax bills every year. Our on premise cashiering platform also was less than robust and could be problematic under the heavy loads of tax season. Both of those former hurdles have now been eliminated.
I was given the all clear to take the time off if I wanted so the ball has been set in motion. I did a little price checking of flights which seemed reasonable. Of course I can’t attend EUC games without an EUC, the problem is you can’t fly with one. Luckily my buddy Marty has over a dozen EUCS and said he would be fine with me borrowing one of his fleet to ride. A lot of stuff can happen between now and October but as of now I am excited about the prospect of joining in with a huge group of like minded EUC enthusiasts.
Yesterday I received a new addition to my PEV collection,a Gotway MSX 100V. This EUC is currently recognized as the fastest on the planet with many documented cases of the wheel going over 40MPH. Now I have no desire to reach those types of speeds on a single wheeled balancing device. I have been interested in getting the MSX to help round out my fleet for the YouTube channel. The MSX is one of the most popular wheels in the the US, having one would be beneficial for channel content. It also allows me to have a real life model on hand for possible future 3D projects which is cool.
I hosted a live stream last night to reveal my purchase which I had hyped on recent videos. A YouTube audience always seems to love when you get new stuff. I had almost 50 simultaneous viewers at one point during the 75 minute stream, far more than when I used to do a scheduled stream. This stream had no real prior notice but still pulled in some nice numbers.
After finishing the stream I hopped on the new wheel briefly for a spin down the side streets. I got a little taste of the power between my legs. It will be fun to explore some capabilities I have not experienced up until this point on an EUC.
I wound up getting stuck late at work on Friday evening so that scrubbed my plans to get a run in. Instead Cindy joined me Saturday morning at the track. The temps in the low 50’s were chilly but typically good for running once you get moving. The air felt even brisker because of a steady wind that was smacking us in the face for about half of each lap. For whatever reason I never felt like I got to enjoy the benefit of cool air running. My legs felt more or less like cement for the entire run. I was relieved when the 12th lap had been completed.
After doing chores I went out and ran some errands with the dogs. Cindy usually accompanies me on these trips but she was in the middle of cake prep. I decided to take both dogs inside Rural King with me. Trying to wrangle them by yourself while pushing a shopping cart around takes patience and persistence. The dogs seemed to appreciate the effort.
Saturday afternoon Cindy was still in cake world so I decided to take advantage of the glorious weather with temps in the mid-70’s by doing a late afternoon DD ride on my big Gotway Monster. The ride had several funny moments in it highlighted by some woman yelling her approval as she passed me on Immokalee Road and my screaming in sarcastic approval of the lawn mower sounding Mustang that rolled by late in the ride.
Saturday night we watched One Night in Hollywood a Quentin Tarrantino movie starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo Dicaprio. Cindy was excited to see this movie based on it’s Oscar nominations. My excitement level was much less but I typically always like film Brad Pitt is in. After watching the movie, I may have been confused about large portions of the plot and why certain things happened but I did think Brad did put on a great performance. I can’t give the movie overall anymore than a B grade but hey, maybe it’s just me.
Sunday morning we got out for another ride, this time with Deb. We rode the Oakes loop which is pleasant albeit harder on Cindy because she isn’t able to utilize the scooter cruise control much. The weirdest part of the ride was when we came across an obviously drunk man that wiped out on his bike on the sidewalk. He insisted he was ok. Cindy had a theory that not only was the man drunk but that he also stole the bike as his appearance did not seem to match up with the very expensive bike he was riding.
When we got back we didn’t have much time until we had to head back out to attend George’s party, where the cake Cindy has worked hour upon hour on was going to be center stage. The cake was huge, three tiers, totaling close to 30 pounds, not including the standalone rice krispie sneaker she made as well. Transporting the creation was sketchy and I did my best to have minimal G forces applied to the cake sections which were in their own boxes.
Once we got on site the sections were carefully brought inside and Cindy stacked them precisely. Everyone was blown away by the detail and artistry of Cindy’s design, it really was an amazing accomplishment. Not only did the cake look good, it tasted great as well which was resonated repeatedly by the 50 or 60 people in attendance.
The party was attended by mostly people we know from the running club, a crowd that I used to be immersed in deeply, but now have hardly seen for four years or more. It was nice catching up with the people that I spent many an early morning hour with setting up for races. I miss the people but I definitely do not miss what came along with the race timer title.
I drank five beers at the event, more than enough to help my social skills. However even with the alcohol I found myself walking out in the empty courtyard area a couple times just to escape the crowd. George seemed to have a great time which I was happy to see. Just like the good old days, Cindy and I were one of the last to leave as we helped clean up the party goods and load up the car. In addition to the cake I made a couple lithophanes for George, one of him running in a recent race and him and his wife Susan, both of which he appreciated.
Cindy drove the Tesla home as she stuck to non-alcoholic beverages during the party. We stopped at Katie’s place to drop of a big chunk of uneaten cake and then headed home. I was beat, probably most likely due to the combination of alcohol and sugar overload. I will focus this week on burning some calories to compensate for the abuse.
I had a hard time falling asleep last night. It was an odd sensation I was getting in my arms. I just could not get comfortable, it almost seemed like restless leg syndrome, with my arms. I eventually fell asleep after turning on my side but I bet I laid there at least an hour until I drifted off, despite feeling utterly exhausted.
Prusa announced their new product back in October 2019, the Prusa Mini. I ordered it on the first day possible and it supposedly was going to start shipping the beginning of November. That ship date came and went with the wind with reports of various production delays and bug fixes. The end result was a three month delay which culminated yesterday with my Prusa box finally arriving on my doorstep.
Last night I assembled the printer. Luckily it was mostly built, I had everything put together in about an hour, a fraction of the time I spent when building my MK3S. I got right up to the point where you go through the configuration steps and first print which I will tackle this weekend. So far the little printer seems cool. I am going to have to do some thinking about how I want to arrange my printers in the room to accommodate the new addition.
Today the roofers are coming to replace all the metal on the front of the house. Just like the west side roof, some of the metal panels on the front have a different appearance, making the roof look bad. After spending 20K to replace it I am not ok with it looking bad.
This issue was apparent from day one and I brought it up to the project manager. He assured me over time the metal would “weather” to look the same. Well we are now closing in on two years and the difference is as noticeable as ever.
I find myself annoyed that I have to even deal with this. I told them that I thought the installers should have spotted this defect as the metal was being put on. I was told that when they are up on the roof it wasn’t apparent. I remember asking if that meant that once they were back on the ground nobody looked at the roof??
When I got them to come out to replace the west side panels I should have had them replace the front as well. I’m not sure why I didn’t push for that. However again, I feel that if your business really cares about doing it right, they would have proactively fixed it all as there was an obvious consistency problem with the metal that was used. It felt like they only want to do the bare minimum required.
So I initiated getting the front panels replaced back in November. It’s taken this long with repeated reminders from me to the company that I wanted the work done. I have been more patient and less vocal than I normally would be because my contact at the company is the husband of a co-worker so I don’t want to drop the hammer too hard. So the metal was dropped off earlier in the week and a crew is at the house right now finally doing the work. I am crossing my fingers the work is completed to my satisfaction so I don’t need to get frustrated every time I pull up in our driveway.
This weekend I have lots of smaller projects to tackle, standard fare, mostly.
Yesterday was pretty shitty at work due to someone pulling the plug on the building not once but three times. The biggest casualty was one of our virtual servers that I had to restore from the previous back up. There have been some scattered collateral damage as well but at this point things seem back to normal. The bad news is the UPS tech is supposed to be back today to replace whatever component burned up. I am hoping this procedure completes without incident.
The senate officially ended the impeachment trial without calling any additional witnesses or requesting any new documents, despite clear evidence that both of these things would have further solidified an already overbearing case against Trump abusing his power to gain potential political advantage. There was never any doubt that it would be impossible to get a super majority to go against Donald yet the process was carried out.
I was touched by Mitt Romneys speech where he explained that his sincere commitment to God made it impossible for him to toe the line that he was asked to stand behind by Trump apologists. He swore to be impartial and if anyone that heard all of the evidence was truly impartial going in, they would almost certainly reach the same conclusion. He will certainly be the object of now standard bullying and mockery which is a staple of American politics, brought to the foreground by our glorious, extremely stable, perfect, super sized, big league genius president who has an IQ so huge that he blocked release of his school records to obscure it.
The realist in me wonders what was the point? If the big picture goal was to get big dummy out of office, did this process help or hinder it? The idealist in me agrees that even if it’s obvious that ultimate removal from office is unreachable, ignoring abhorrent behavior only encourages more of it to occur. We see this every single day in all aspects of life. Rewarding bad behavior is becoming the norm in our society and it leads nowhere but downward.
So my morning began with a Chinese fire drill. There was maintenance scheduled on the building UPS that provides back up power to our office in the event of a power failure. In order to take the UPS offline for service we fire up our huge diesel generator which is designed to power the office for days in case of a prolonged power outage. Once it is running the UPS is able to be taken offline to be serviced. So this switch happened early this morning as planned. However in the middle of the work disaster struck, the generator turned off.
This happening was like turning off a light switch for the entire building, including EVERYTHING in our network operations center. If you know anything about IT, you know that abruptly removing power from a server is a very dangerous situation that can result in data corruption. A guy from county maintenance who was in charge of the generator ran out there and flipped it back on but it was too late. We started bringing servers back up, crossing our fingers no major problems popped up as a result.
Just as we were in the process of logging them back in the power glitched again. I had a snap angry reflex yelling “Motherf’r as I flung the keyboard to the ground and marched outside. The county guy said the automation switch that is used to test the generator and bring it on automatically during power outages is what caused the first power outage. However the second power outage was caused by this guy switching us over to manual bypass. He was unaware that we had started powering servers back up already.
So despite TWO power outages, the servers seemed to have survived with only a few minor issues. The UPS service was completed and we thought all was good with the world, then the smell started. The distinct odor of electrical burn was coming from the UPS room. We called the maintenance guys back as well as the UPS tech who had just left. The county guy fired up the generator without verifying the UPS was still functioning to hold up the building during the transfer of power, it wasn’t. Because of the fried component the UPS was no longer supplying power so when the switch to generator occurred power was lost in the building for a third time, unbelievably. The first failure was due to system problem, the second and third were from a lack of communication.
The third power loss appears to have corrupted at least one server that I am trying to restore currently. The fried component in the UPS now has to be replaced meaning we will exist on generator power for at least the next 24 hours. We have not lost power in the NOC like this for at least five years. To have it happen three times in an hour is ridiculous and will change our procedures for UPS maintenance going forward for sure.
I wish I could just rip up the contract of the UPS company like Nancy Pelosi did with the SOTU speech on national tv last night.
I had some after hours work at a branch I needed to complete last night. The rats nest of wiring on the network rack needed to be ripped out and replaced with new high speed, shorter cables. The job is a bit tedious and attention to detail is important. I relocated one of the network switches between two patch panels to allow me to replace long 5 foot cables with much tidier one and two foot replacements. After about 90 minutes of work the rack looked dramatically better. Hopefully it will remain pristine for the foreseeable future.
I had my second 90+ kwh production day in a row out of our solar array. The high sun amount combined with low temps, which means light AC usage, creates a big surplus condition. I will need as much surplus as possible during the winter months to make up for the AC use in the summer.
Wow it seems like the Iowa caucus was a huge cluster f. They STILL don’t have any official results. I wonder if it will be enough to get them to trash the silly and gimmicky caucus system which makes little sense to me. Why are Iowans unable to simply cast a vote for their preferred candidate like the rest of us?
Tesla stock has been experiencing a meteoric rise the last few weeks, currently sitting at close to 900 dollars. As recently as June you could own the stock for $179. I now lament my decision to only buy a single share back in May for $226. If I would have dropped 10k on the stock instead I could have a good portion of my solar system paid off.
Sometime Friday afternoon I decided I wanted to try to resume my running after work. I made this decision knowing that rain was forecast to move into the area Friday evening. My hope was I would complete the run before this occurred. Instead the steady rain began before I even hopped in the truck to drive to the track. I was still determined to complete my mental goal.
During the run I ran in rain of varying intensities. The good news was the precipitation kept my body temperature down, the bad news was, well, I was wet. I completed the 12 laps and didn’t feel awful in doing so. I was unable to track my pace as the digitizer on my Apple Watch refused to register touches while it was wet.
Saturday was mostly a grey and rainy day, as a result most of my labors were of the indoor variety. Cindy and I worked on cleaning the floors, which doesn’t get accomplished nearly as regularly as it should. Cindy handled running the steamer on the hard surfaces and I manned the carpet cleaner. The black water I repeatedly dumped in the utility sink was reinforcement for the need to do the task more than a couple times a year.
I also swapped out the WeMo smart switch in our bedroom with a WeMo dimmer switch. The LED light on the new fan is pretty harsh at full brightness. With the dimmer we are able to tone it down when needed.
I had Cindy buzz my hair during the afternoon. When I do a “full buzz” on my hair I attach the 1/8″ guard to the clipper blade and go to town, knocking all my hair off. Well this time Cindy accidentally forgot to attach the guard. Once she did the first swipe with a bare blade she realized her mistake but it was too late by then, it all had to be trimmed at the same height. It’s odd how an eighth of an inch felt so different both in touch and sensation. Instead of feeling like a stiff brush my hair feels more like velcro. I also felt like I had a draft on my head all of the time which was very weird.
Saturday night we watched a Stallone movie, Escape Plan: The Extractors, we had seen at least one other movie in the series. It’s classic B level revenge plot, non-stop action which I enjoyed.
Sunday morning after doing bills I also started to try to dig through gathering the information I will need for my taxes. With the increase of sales from my 3D store I have a lot more things to keep track of. I think I have a handle on them. It’s funny, when I stopped race timing I was walking away from the extra income it provided. However with the two new hobbies I acquired since doing so, I somehow turned them into their own revenue streams that has surpassed whatever I used to make timing, by a good margin, without all the stress.
Katie was visiting during the morning. She had told Cindy some of the warning lights were on in the Prius. It’s weird even though I gave the Prius to Katie, I still feel responsible for maintaining it. The red triangle of death had come back on but that has been happening for quite awhile. After I checked the battery cells and verified they all are within a couple tenths of each other voltage wise I cleared the error. I then added air to three of the tires that were low and then finally changed the oil to address the Maintenance Required light. By the time I was done the car was idiot light free. Katie really needs to be making some plans to replace the Prius. It has almost 235,000 miles on the odometer so it isn’t a matter of if but when something goes wrong that costs more to repair than the value of the car.
Unlike Saturday, Sunday was a nearly 100% sunny day. As a result my solar system hit a new one day production record, producing a tick under 92kwh, the first time I broke the 90 mark which was cool. I have hopes of breaking triple digits some day but we will see if that is possible with my array configuration.
I went for a 25+ mile ride on Sunday afternoon out to Ave Marie on the 18L. It was my first chance to test out the new motor I installed several weeks ago in a real ride. The wheel performed fantastic. The ride was so smooth that it didn’t feel like I was traveling 25mph or more for almost the entire trip. The long ride gave me a chance to talk about several topics along the way.
We did not do a formal Super Bowl party this year, we invited a handful of people last minute but only our friend Deb O wound up taking us up on the offer. Cindy prepared a small spread of food and made a cool football cake for our cozy gathering which was nice.
I was pulling for the Chiefs because I wanted to see Andy Reid, the longtime Eagles coach finally go all the way. As the coach of the Eagles he had the team on the doorstep a half a dozen times but never was able to win THE game. The game was competitive and exciting. I felt genuine joy for Andy as the clock ran down and he got a Gatorade shower. He has had a lot of tragedy in his life so to see him win the Super Bowl gave me the warm fuzzies.
The commercials were the normal mix of stupid to hilarious. I enjoyed the halftime show although I heard some people ranting about how it over sexualized women as the outfits were skimpy and asses were shaking all over the place. I really don’t quite get it, was there an expectation for Shakira and Jennifer Lopez to perform in evening gowns? Didn’t Adam Levine perform with no shirt during last year’s performance? I don’t recall any outrage as a result? I don’t really understand why there isn’t room for women to look/act sexy AND still be respected. I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive.
We didn’t get to bed till close to midnight. The good thing was because we only had one guest my drinking and eating was more moderate compared to full fledged previous SB parties. As a result I don’t feel nearly as close to death’s door as I may have in the past.
Earlier this week my sister and brother in law finalized plans to come visit us in early March. It’s sort of last minute but we had nothing pressing on the schedule and the dates worked for them as well. The last time they were in Florida was well over a decade ago, it’s kind of crazy. I am looking forward to seeing the gang, especially the kids who should find lots of things to entertain them on our property and at the beach.
