Archives 2020

I totally forgot to mention Sunday’s Eagles game, the first NFL start for Jalen Hurts as Carson Wentz carried a clipboard.  They were playing the Saints, one of the best teams in the NFC so I already assumed the Eagles were going to get beat down, no matter who the QB was.  Instead the Eagles defense came up big while Jalen Hurts and his ability to avoid pressure gave the Saints trouble all game.  At one point the Eagles were up 17-0.  The Saints came back towards the end but the Birds held on for one of the biggest upset wins of the week.

This scenario was Wentz’s worst nightmare. Now Pederson has no choice but to start Hurts again.  If he continues to win there is a real possibility that Carson becomes expendable in Philly which seemed like an impossibility at the beginning of the season.  Without a doubt the huge amount of injuries on the offense negatively impacted Carson but the fact is with that same rag tag offensive line Hurts did not get sacked a single time.  He made quick decisions and ran for over 100 yards.  I don’t care how we win, and Wentz has not equaled winning for awhile now.

So now that the countless legal challenges have failed and the electoral college has made it official Mitch McConnell crawled out from under a rock and officially recognized Joe Biden as the next president.  Big Don on queue immediately attacked Mitch, just as he has anyone that has not been willing to participate in Trumps role playing game where he actually won the election.  The scale of lunacy just keeps expanding daily as the country is forced to endure the antics of a tantruming man-child that has no parent around to give them the spanking they so deserve.  No worries Don, that big smack on the ass hopefully will be coming shortly after you vacate the White House.

Trump continues to farm dollars from his rabid supporters.  All he has to do is say that he won a few hundred more times and they will happily continue to donate dollars to the biggest conman of my adult life.  I feel badly for them and truly hope that somehow they manage to find their way back from the black slime covered well of hate, lies, brain washing, and self promotion that has been the foundation of the Trump presidency.  He has truly damaged the core of our country for generations to come.

So our governor, one of those hardcore Trump supporters, has steadfastly refused to reexamine some restrictions based on the covid 19 numbers rapidly escalating everywhere.    When the pandemic first started he seemed more willing to act based on data. That willingness has evaporated as he is too fearful of angering the Trump voters in the state.  When you look around our area you see very casual adherence to what is now well established precautions to minimize spread of covid.  You see social events popping up more and more regularly with mask usage and distancing haphazardly applied or ignored altogether.  My favorite are the people that wear a mask but do so with it under their nose, like that actually accomplishes anything.

Now I am not a crazed zealot when it comes to covid fear.  I mask up indoors in situations where I am around others for prolonged periods of time but I don’t do it while walking outside.  I make efforts to keep my distance from others but don’t freak out if someone enters my 6 foot bubble. But I still find myself getting very frustrated with people that say “I’m not worried about getting sick so I don’t wear a mask”  How we could be going on 9 months of this shit and have people that don’t actually understand what wearing a mask is about is amazing. It doesn’t prevent you from getting sick, it reduces your ability to get others sick.  We do live in Trump times where ignorance is touted and repeated ad nauseum so I guess I really should not be that surprised. Half measures and token efforts are the reason our country is the world leader in covid failure.

Today is my birthday. 53 years on the planet, I doubt that I have 53 more remaining.

I had a very enjoyable three day weekend overall even though I found ways to load it with more chores than originally planned.  On Saturday it was pretty normal fare, doing chores and running errands in the morning.  During the afternoon I got around to assembling my new printer, the Creality CR6SE.  I ordered this printer via a Kickstarter campaign at the beginning of June and it just now showed up last week.  The long wait ensured I will never order a printer that way again.

The assembly of the printer was very straightforward and took less than an hour, even with me filming the process.  I have had it going non-stop since Friday on stand parts and it has performed flawlessly so far.

On Saturday night Cindy and I watched Papillon, a movie based on a true life story of a French penal colony in the 30’s and 40’s.  It depicted the journey of a couple main characters and their attempts to escape the horrid conditions.  It wasn’t the type of movie I would normally seek out but I found it interesting all the same.  For a human being to survive such torment is amazing. B+

On Sunday I got out for my longest single segment EUC ride ever on my new Veteran Sherman, 47.5 miles.  The ride was not supposed to be that long.  I added almost 15 miles to the trip after doubling back to find the seat that blew off the wheel.  I did eventually find it thankfully.  The wheel is amazing, most of the time I was cruising close to 30MPH and even after riding that far I still had over 30% of my battery remaining.

On Sunday I also decided to get on the tractor and mow the back of the property for hopefully the last time in a few months thanks to dry season.  As I was circling the yard I kept observing the weeds/high grass around the fence line, ditch , and under the solar panels.  I decided to give myself another unplanned task on Monday of weed whacking all of that, which took more than an hour and a half.

On Monday I did a few other things in the 3D hobby room as well as digging into Cindy’s old computer, which was my computer, two computers ago.  I hooked it up to the big TV and reloaded it from scratch to hopefully serve as part of my virtual reality capture set up in the future.  It’s hardware was less than needed for this task.  I threw a video card I pulled from another system in there and I have some memory and a USB 3.0 board coming as well.  The total plan is still being formulated in my mind but I am hoping to do stuff like this, just in a much cleaner manner.

I only have a few gift cards to purchase yet for my Xmas shopping and I should be good to go.  As usual a lot of dollars were spent but I budget for the expense throughout the year so it is less impactful to my bottom line.

Since the election has been over I have been trying to do my best to focus on the opportunity for brighter times ahead sans King Big League and all of idiocy that his presidential dumpster fire tenure has created.  However I still find myself getting sucked back into the pathetic and downright disgusting manipulation he continues to inflict on his brainwashed base.  All of the failed election lawsuits have been nothing more than a smoke screen which has been utilized to wring every last penny possible from Trump lovers in a very Scientology-esque manner.  As long as the narrative is “there is still a chance Trump can win” the dollars keep getting deposited into his “election defense fund” which he can use for whatever the F he wants to use it for.

The thing that also disturbs me today, perhaps even more than it has for the last four years is just how many of my ex-classmates have gotten swept away by this tidal wave of psychological manipulation, hypocrisy, and fraud.  Not a single one of these people have been able to free themselves from the ironclad grip of Trumpism where wrong is right, hate is love, bullying is cool, and greed is good.  The only cure I have found for myself is to release these people from my virtual circle of existence in social media.  Seeing the end results of what Trump has done to them serves no useful purpose in my life, it only incites depression and sadness.  I either drop them completely or just block seeing anything they do.

Well today I discovered I missed one of these individuals and saw he responded to this ridiculous post made by someone with access to Trumps social media.

  Now that the Biden Administration will be a scandal plagued mess for years to come, it is much easier for the Supreme Court of the United States to follow the Constitution and do what everybody knows has to be done. They must show great Courage & Wisdom. Save the USA!!!

This is the same stuff he has been posting for weeks to extend the big lie which continues to make his wallet fatter and fatter.

So anyway this person chose to respond and did so in a manner that made it seem like he thought Big Don would actually read his response out of the more than 200,000 that already did.  It went as follows.

Sir, if the election results are not corrected, and biden assumes the office of President of the United States, could you spearhead an independent watchdog group to oust corruption from our great country?

The hypocrisy, the lunacy, the insanity of not only this person but anyone that insists on playing this charade is representative of just how broken our society is after four years of being ruled by the closest thing to a dictator that our country has ever seen.  The man has done permanent damage to the minds of so many Americans I just don’t see how recovery and healing can ever be achieved.

Getting Trump out was step one but the real end game is winning those two remaining Senate races in Georgia so we can finally remove Mitch McConnell, who is one of the most bought and paid for politicians of my lifetime, out of a position of power.  He has single handedly been holding up the new Covid package because he refuses to move on any bill that does not include a clause to give corporations legal covid immunity so employees are unable to sue an employer if they are knowingly put into risky situations.  Mitch does what he is paid to do by his corporate puppet masters.  He does so in plain sight with no apologies, and we allow him to do so.

It seems that in recent months I have been staying up later and later which is the opposite direction the bell curve normally goes as you descend into old age.  Once again last night I found myself not closing my eyes till around midnight.   With the alarm clock going off daily at 5:55 AM that is not allowing for an optimal amount of sleep.  I historically have been a 7-8 hour kind of guy.  I just find that doing work for the 3D store, playing WoW/Quest games or other random projects just keep pushing me deep into the evening.

This weekend I again have a number of smaller tasks to keep me hopping.  I’d like to get Christmas shopping wrapped up, pun intended, besides a few very minor things I can do right up until Christmas Eve.  Next week is my birthday which is something not worthy of celebration in the mind of someone like me that has despised the reality of aging ever since his late 20’s.

Ever since Monday morning my solar system stopped reporting it’s status to the internet.  I contacted the installers and they referred me to Enphase, the company that produces the brains of the solar system to help me troubleshoot it.  Last night I was out by the control panel in the dark with their support on the line.  They had me remove a cover panel to access the cellular modem.  After shutting down the system I disconnected the modem, removed the sim card, wiped it off and put everything back together.  After a few minutes the system came back online and the cellular system was communicating.

While I had the tech on the phone he mentioned how the system can also be connected to wi-fi.  Doing so allows the monitoring data to be updated every 15 minutes instead of every 6 hours.  I remember asking the installers about this and they indicated it wasn’t feasible for some reason.  Well I had the tech send me the instructions on how to set it up that way in email, I will take a shot at it this weekend.

So my EUC buddy Marty posted a video the other day talking positively about the EUC stands I sell as well as talking about our history together.  I didn’t know he was going to do this but I appreciated it.  He linked the video to one of the EUC Facebook groups as well which I saw yesterday.  As I looked at the comments I found myself getting annoyed by one particular individual.  He said that he bought some stands from me and he thought that they were weak.  Well for emphasis he actually said WEAK!!  I told him that I have had wheels on these stands for over three years.  I continued, saying that if he had some issue with his stands he never contacted me about them and I didn’t appreciate that the time he felt was appropriate to complain was on a post that was saying they were good. I referred to his action as “trolling” which anyone that spends any appreciable time on the internet is familiar with. It’s basically another name for antagonist.

So the guy didn’t react well to my calling him out and said that I can’t take criticism and I shouldn’t be selling stuff if that is the case.  I corrected him again, stating criticism is fine, it was his choice to post his complaint without ever addressing it with me, on a post praising the stands no less.  I hastily threw together a video demonstrating just how “weak” the stands are by standing on one of them.  My body weight is over double that of the heaviest EUC in production.  After I did this the guy deleted his original post, perhaps seeing the error in his judgement.  Normally I ignore or joke at/with people that do such things but for whatever reason I felt last night further remediation was needed.

I watched the longest SpaceX Starship test flight to date yesterday where it shot up about 12 KM, belly flopped downward using it’s fins for control and then reignited the rockets for landing.  Everything worked great except the landing part, the rocket evidently had inadequate fuel pressure to generate enough thrust to slow it down sufficiently, causing a massive fireball on landing.  Despite the crash and burn at then end, overall the test was a huge success in proof of concept.

Elon said something crazy like he thinks there will be a manned mission to Mars within 6 years.  He is infamous for inaccurate timeline predictions but hopefully he isn’t too far off.  I have always hoped that before I die or become senile that I would see the day we go to Mars, rooted in my lifelong fascination with space and all things associated with it.

This morning the temperatures at the house were in the low to mid-40’s which I enjoy, in short bursts.  Elsa LOVES the cool temps.  She runs around outside like a maniac when it is like this.  She also enjoys when we put her sweater on her.  She stood there very patiently while I put it on her this morning before taking her outside.

I have been handling my Xmas shopping at a more casual pace this year.  Most of the time as soon as Thanksgiving hits I go full force and try to knock out the vast majority of my shopping within a 48 hour time period.  Now more than 10 days past that time period I have a good amount done but still a few boxes remain to be checked before I can call it good.

Last night after work I did something that I feared would be awful, go to Costco.  Typically heading into Costco anytime during snowbird season is a clogged mess of humanity that provides more frustration than anything else.  I did leave work a little early to increase my chances of less misery and it seemingly paid off.  The store was busy but manageable.  I circled the aisles looking for some Xmas gift inspiration but didn’t find a lot.  A couple times I picked up items that I returned to the shelf after having a quick internal discussion about the need and/or value of a potential gift.  I waited less than 5 minutes to check out and had no one ahead of me at the receipt checker station at the exit.

I know in the blink of an eye Christmas will come and go so I am doing my best to enjoy this brief moment of the year where I feel a little better about the world.

My list for the three day weekend was very light although I had a lot of smaller mental projects that I did not bother to put on there. Late Saturday afternoon I got out on my new Veteran Sherman for a quick ride to DD.  I wanted to see how the street tire I got unexpectedly with the wheel felt doing high speed open road cruising.  The Sherman makes it stupid easy to go fast, probably a little too easy.  My top speed on the ride topped out at over 35 MPH and I spent most of the trip cruising close to 30.

I forgot, on Friday night I did some experimenting with capturing mixed reality content.  MRC is when you mesh together VR footage with live footage of a person in VR.  I had some crude success doing so.  I just wanted to test the basic concept, I need to do a lot of logistical changes if I want it to look clean.  It’s still funny.

On Sunday I had made plans to meet up with Dan, who last visited in March.  Dan is a fellow EUC rider who visits Florida occasionally.  He said he was down with taking a ride into the swamp which is always interesting.  Well I had no clue just how interesting it was going to be.

The last time I went to the swamp a couple months ago there were a lot of wet spots but it wasn’t too bad.  During that ride I only went a few miles before reversing directions.  When we started the ride Sunday there was more water/muck in the beginning but not anything too horrible.  I said repeatedly I was surprised it was still that wet because we had not had significant rain in a long time at that point.  We also only saw a couple of gators during the first half of the ride.  Well both things were going to change a lot.

When we hit the second half of the trail loop things got bad, really bad.  The muck sections were replaced with long sections of the trail that were completely underwater.  There were also sections where the trail was washed out and a small river was flowing across.  We had no choice but to carry our wheels across these sections.  My V11 weighs almost 60 pounds so this got pretty challenging pretty quickly.

The gator sightings increased in number and proximity.  Several times we had to ride by full size adult gators with only a couple feet to spare.  Dan normally let me go first since I had experience with gator riding.  I told him that they will normally stay still like a statue or dash into the water, we had gators that did both.  The most ridiculous part of the adventure came at another submerged section where we had to carry our wheels past another full sized gator, again with only a couple feet to spare.  Even I had never had to do that before and was a bit nervous.

The video of the ride is over 40 minutes long but it is well worth it IMO.  It did a good job of capturing just how ridiculous conditions got.

I was exhausted by the time we got back.  I spent most of the evening editing the footage.

I awoke Monday morning and did a double take when I looked outside.  It looked like we just experienced a tropical storm, the yard was completely flooded.  Evidently the cold front that came through overnight dumped inches of rain.  Cindy said she heard the rain all night, I was so exhausted I must have slept through it.  I was in shock that I had to put on my boots to walk out to the chickens.  I am pretty sure that I never have had standing water on the property in December during the nearly 20 years I have lived there.

Katie and DJ were over for a good portion of the day yesterday.  As is normally the case, DJ wanted to spend most of his time with me which is cute.  I did try to buzz around getting what seems like countless small indoor to do’s done throughout the day since the weather outside was not great.  Before I knew it my three day weekend was over but it certainly was filled to the brim with adventure, love, and fun which is all you can ask for.

I took Monday off to give myself a three day weekend.  It was initiated because Dan, who also visited us last year is coming down on Sunday.  We plan to do another joint EUC ride, this time into the swamp.  I figured extending my weekend through Monday would help balance things out.  With the cold front and less rain weekly grass maintenance should not be required for a few months which is always nice.  I am looking forward to getting out on the Sherman for some extended ride time as well.  It feels like I have so many little things that I would like to have time to do recreationally that I just don’t manage to pull off.

The news is reporting that Donald Trump has raised an obscene amount of money since the election as part of his “Election Defense Fund”.  The number they were throwing around was something like 200 million dollars was scammed from Trump lovers that gobbled up the bullshit that was being fed to them.  The same article said if you count the money that came in in late October the total dollar amount approaches a half BILLION dollars.

This fleecing of individuals financially to this degree is something you normally would associate with TV preacher congregations who much like Trump speak loudly to gain influence, regardless of the amount of truth in their words.  I can hardly wait until the state of New York district attorney gets his opportunity to prosecute Big Don on his numerous criminal acts the day after inauguration.  Never in my lifetime have I felt like an individual was more deserving of any and all retribution against them than Mr Big League.  I can only hope it happens.

The last two days the temps have been simply delightful with below average number and abundant amounts of sunshine.  When you have 7-8 months of heat and humidity every year this type of weather is something I really cherish.  Elsa loves it even more, when she is outside she runs around like a maniac when the weather is like this.  This is the time to knock out any projects that require a lot of time outdoors.

Cindy has been learning some of the video editing process that I use to start making some of her own content.  Since she now has my old computer she has all the tools needed to make it happen.  Her latest video covered the daily chicken chores, I think it turned out well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVqmKox9u0o

So after two and a half months my Veteran Sherman finally arrived, the most expensive PEV I have ever purchased.  I unboxed the wheel on a live stream as that normally makes for somewhat interesting content.  After unboxing it I noticed shortly thereafter that there had been a mistake, the wheel had the wrong tire installed.  The Sherman normally comes with a large knobby tire but also can be ordered with a normal street tire if you desire.  I selected the knobby tire with my order as that was what was on the demo unit I tested several months back, and I liked it.  My frustration and disappointment in this discovery was captured on stream.

I emailed the dealer on stream as well, informing them of the mistake.  Others watching the stream reported that this was not an issue just I was having, others reported the same deal, ordering a knobby tire and getting the street version.  Jason from Ewheels emailed me back within a few minutes confirming the mistake not only with my wheel but with many others.  Evidently they were told that all of the wheels from the manufacturer were the knobby tire variety.  They assumed what they were told was true and shipped the units out without verifying.  It turns out about 20% of the wheels had the wrong tire.

So Jason asked if I would be ok with them just sending me a knobby tire.  I agreed, knowing that doing so meant I was signing up for the rather arduous process of tearing down the wheel to replace the rubber.  It wasn’t a scenario that appealed to me but the idea of going through the hassle and additional delay of sending the entire wheel back and waiting for another was even less appealing.  Plus swapping out the tire will make for good YouTube content so that is the route I am taking.

The stream went on for close to three hours somehow.  It spun off into various tangents along the way like VR, old gaming consoles and a bunch of other stuff.  After it wrapped up I did take the Sherman out for 5 minutes into the very chilly night air.  We have our most significant cold front this year right now, temps this morning were in the low to mid-40s.

I thought it was hilarious as Don has continued to spew “rigged election” everywhere he can, William Barr, who has ruined his reputation backing up Trump’s various sideshows came out yesterday and said definitively that there was NO evidence of widespread fraud in the presidential election.  I was rather surprised that a well established boot licker like Barr would make such a statement and I wonder how long it is until Trump calls him a loser too.  I guess unlike Republicans that are still in congress who have to continue to act like they support Trump else face repercussions from the lunatic fringe diehards, Barr doesn’t really need to give two f’s if he appeases the lamest of duck President anymore.  It really does sadden me that so many people continue to live in this hateful, ignorant, delusional world that Donald Trump has created.