So Hurricane Laura, which was originally forecast to impact Florida instead smashed into the northern gulf overnight. Having been through several hurricanes now I am familiar with the fear and anxiety a strong hurricane brings before it even arrives, the terrifying sound of 130mph winds battering your property, and the zombie-like state when you finally step outside to see the carnage the storm has left behind. I’m curious if the storm surge numbers were the crazy 15-20 feet they predicted or not. Residents of that area have a long road ahead of them.
I haven’t talked about the latest case of police violence on here. To be quite honest the depth of my disgust of what American society has morphed into makes not even want to discuss it. As everyone else, I saw the video of Blake trying to get into his vehicle while an officer was holding onto his shirt with one hand while having a gun drawn in his other hand. My assumption was the officer for some reason thought Blake was reaching for a weapon, despite knowing he had multiple armed officers around him. The end result was not one but seven shots being fired at point blank range into the guys back.
I’m surprised Blake survived but at this point he is paralyzed from the waist down from his injuries. His shooting sparked a fresh wave of protests that had it’s own disgusting outcome when a 17 year old armed with an AR-15 shot three protestors, killing two of them.
I remember when I was younger thinking about atrocities throughout history and feeling relieved that we as human beings had evolved into more rational, intelligent, accepting, and peaceful individuals for the most part. The new reality is the de-evolution of American society that has been fostered and cuddled by the most divisive president in US history. When I try to recall just how many horrible, racist, ignorant, fraudulent, and flat out dangerous situations have come out of the self appointed Stable Genius’s mouth/actions, I lose count quickly. Every single day he gives us something fresh to be ashamed of.
Last night after work I climbed back on the Echelon bike to do a half hour ride. The class was designated as a “recovery ride” yet by the end of it I was still a sweaty mess and had burned over 300 calories. I think I really have found my cardio replacement for running which doesn’t come with the same potential pain penalty in my knees, hips or lower back.
I seem to be in one of those patterns where I can’t find any free time to just sit down and veg out in WoW for awhile. It feels like other things are always commanding my attention. Hell as soon as I get up each morning my ritual has become immediately heading into the hobby room to feed the printers and address any issues that could have popped up overnight. Sometimes as I am eating my breakfast at my desk I am packing up a stand for an order at the same time so I can get it turned around and shipped out asap. I realize that all of the stuff that commands my attention are decisions I make. Maybe I am just yearning for less decisions.
For the last few weeks our street has been getting these monster sized metal utility poles which will be replacing the conventional wood poles that are on the other side of the street, I assume. The wood poles are not all that hurricane resistant as after Irma there were a bunch of poles leaning at steep angles. Even so, usually massive poles like the new ones are normally relegated to major roadways, not side streets. I’m not exactly thrilled with their addition from a visual standpoint but if the end result is more stable and reliable power in our area I am ok with it.
We did luck out in one way, we don’t actually have a pole on our property. Both of our neighbors on either side were not quite as lucky as one of them got poled yesterday and by the time I get home today I expect a matching pole will be erected on the other side. It’s amazing thinking how much things have changed in our area now. When I first moved out there in 2001 we couldn’t even get cable TV. Now the amount of homes off our street have at least doubled with more and more being started every month.
During my adult lifetime there have been somewhere around six presidents. Obviously I have liked some more than others. Some of the negative words I have used in the past were unflattering for sure, ignorant, idiotic, puppet, and dishonest were applicable to many of them at one point or another. However I was thinking to myself that I never would of characterized any of them as a tyrant, not until present day that is.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like tyrant was the perfect word to describe Donald. For him it is nothing new, if you read accounts of his business dealings throughout his lifetime, the word tyrant would be thrown about generously. What is sad and surprising is how quickly the boot lickers in the Republican party embraced this lunacy. I can only hope when karma comes around it smacks them in the face, hard. Hell even Kelley Ann-Conway is jumping ship, whose lips have super glued to Donald’s rear end this entire time. I can only hope that more people are seeing the writing on the wall and want to get out of the way before our rotund, big league leader comes crashing to the ground.
Since my left knee got injured running two months ago I have mentally crossed that off the list of viable cardio activities for myself for the foreseeable future. I have been using Cindy’s Echelon cycling bike a few times to get my cardio in and I like it more than I expected. When paired with the app which allows you to do both recorded and live rides lead by a trainer I find myself pushing myself to levels near my exertion level while running. I also like the element of the live scoreboard which ranks your overall watt output to other people that have done the same ride. Despite my overall lack of cycling experience I almost always manage to get myself into the top 20% of riders.
On Saturday I knocked out a good chunk of the to do list before setting up to do another live stream at a very odd time, 3PM. The time selection was intentional as I was streaming with Ulf who lives in Germany which is six hours ahead of us on the clock. He has a broad technical knowledge of EUCs and I was talking about streaming with him way back in 2018 but we never got our schedules coordinated. The two hour plus stream went well, people really seemed to enjoy having a more technical viewpoint on the stream.
After the live stream I was right back outside, this time modifying the chicken perch in reaction to us losing ANOTHER hen from a fall off the perch. At this point we lost three or four hens this way, they lose their balance for some reason and break their neck during the fall. When I was thinking about these scenarios, every time it occurred the hens were on the left edge of the perch, where the small round dowel is, that we now know is not well suited for chicken perching.
The first thing I did was rip the round dowels from either side of the perch. On the one side I put a 2×4 with the wide side up to give them a nice flat surface to perch on. On the other side I left the 2×4 which is on it’s side so it would be smaller if the hens preferred it but still flat so they could maintain balance easier. The other change was I added two more 2x 4 to fill in space between the perches . When we watched the video from Dot’s fall she lost balance on the round dowel and then fell back towards the middle of the perch. When she fell it looked like her head hit one of the perches on the way down which likely broke her neck. With the additional cross supports a chicken should not be able to fall through that spot which hopefully will prevent a similar scenario from happening again.
Saturday night Cindy and I watched Official Secrets, our latest Netflix rental. It was a true story regarding the deception and arm twisting the US participated in to try to get the UN Security Council to approve a war resolution against Iraq. It reinforced my already firm opinion of just how dark and slimy our government can be behind the curtain. We both found the movie very interesting, B+.
Around noon on Saturday Cindy and I did something we had not done for a long, long time, conventional brick and mortar shopping. I wanted to hit the Jockey outlet at Miromar to refresh my undergarments which were getting pretty beat up. Cindy needed some stuff too. We even ate lunch there, albeit at the Subway at the food court. Of course we wore our masks the entire time outside of eating but it wasn’t a big deal. Cindy and I both commented how it felt nice to do something we had not done since Covid 19 became a household word.
I had been contacted maybe a month ago by one of my YouTube channel subscribers. He was from the Philly area and was coming to Marco on vacation with his family. He had asked me if I would be willing to go ride with him and his 9 year old son when they got here. He emailed me Saturday night that they had arrived and we worked out that I would meet them down in Marco about 4PM.
I arrived a little before they did so I rolled around on my One Wheel until they showed up. I parked in the Publix shopping center, my normal launch point for Marco rides. I was quite surprised when I saw the Publix was no longer there, just a big fenced off construction area. They evidently knocked down the building to build a new, modern Publix since I was last there, crazy. I also noticed the old Burger King that was an out parcel in the same shopping center was now nothing but an empty patch of grass.
Igor’s son’s name was Landon who is only nine years old. He and his dad only started learning EUCs back in May. When I pulled out my MSX and 16X Landon was able to ride each of them stupidly easy, the gift of youth. We rode around the mostly empty parking lot for awhile before heading onto a few of the small hilly regions nearby. Igor really liked the MSX and I expect him to be buying one soon. His family moved to the US in 1989 from the former USSR which I thought was interesting.
Landon was was a really cool little kid. He even has a YouTube channel which I posted in the description of the video I made to hopefully get a few subscribers thrown his way. I think they really had a good time which made me feel good in return.
When I got back Cindy was babysitting DJ for a bit which was a nice treat for me. I always enjoy having the little guy around.
Whenever I get a call from Cindy during my drive into work my first reaction is always, what’s wrong? So when the phone lit up in the car today my assumption was it wasn’t good news. Unfortunately I was right. Cindy walked into the coop this morning to find another chicken dead on the floor, it was Dot, one of the two white Delaware hens we got in our last batch of chicks a couple years ago. I have not been able to review the coop video yet but we are assuming she fell somehow and broke her neck when she hit the ground. We have now had several hens apparently die in a similar manner and it is very frustrating.
When we first saw this happen I dramatically reduced the height of the perch but even after doing that we still have had birds fall and die. One issue we have is under the perch we have rubber mats which make it easy to clean daily. Most perches have some sort of material under them like wood shavings which you change every week maybe, a much messier and smellier solution. The negative is a rubber mat provides no cushion if a bird falls.
However as I did some Googling this morning I have discovered something I never knew, despite owning chickens for well over 5 years at this point. Chickens typically sleep flat footed and don’t grasp a conventional rounded perch, instead they just would sort of balance on it. This revelation all of a sudden made a lot of sense. The hens have always seemed to favor the back of the perch where there is wider flat surface as well as the sides which are made of 2×4. Dot was found in the middle of the floor, where the conventional smaller, rounded perches are. I am somewhat angry at myself for not finding this out earlier. This weekend I will be doing a perch overhaul which may include lowering it further but definitely covering all of the rounded perches with flat wood that is easy for the hens to rest on. We are now down to 5 birds, it’s crazy.
So all of sudden yesterday news of a potential storm threat popped up in our area. At this point the thing is still only a tropical depression but the cone of uncertainty projections were all that was needed to get people’s attention. The “good” news is strength-wise it currently isn’t projected to be a monster. Also the projected path has consistently been shifting westward, now off of Florida’s west coast as of this morning. However if I have learned anything from living in Florida the last 20 years, it is that hurricane forecasting is a fuzzy science, at best.
To make matters worse there is another tropical system towards Mexico that has the possibility of reaching hurricane strength by the time it impacts Texas/Louisiana. The idea of having TWO hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time is an extreme, terrible rarity.
Of course my weekend plans are going to need to be malleable based on how the storm predictions progress. Regardless of path I don’t see it as being a board up level of storm for us but there still would be a TON of things that would need to be secured/put away for safety. Chicken perch rework will be high on the to do list as well.
I headed over to the school after work to see if I would have any more luck trying to learn the Leiftech skateboard. Unfortunately I didn’t have time last night to edit the video of the session because it was funny to be sure. I managed to stay on the board a little bit, my longest ride was maybe 100 feet but most rides were much shorter than that resulting in me bailing off the board once I lost my balance. I remember similar feelings of “I’ll never figure this out” when I first started trying to learn EUCs and again when I started trying to learn to ride them backwards. The fact that I did eventually get it through perseverance makes me think that with enough time I could get the hang of this board.
However there is another factor at this point in my life, the rash of physical issues I have been having recently, in this instance my left knee and lower back. Running off the board after bailing just does not feel good, at all. Last night my lower back was making all sorts of crunching noises in protest. It’s rather depressing. I plan to rotate and reverse the wheels and tighten the trucks to see if it helps at all. Part of the issue with this chronic state of injury is it makes me very quick to bail off the board the second I feel even the littlest loss of control which is going to make the learning curve even steeper than it already is. I’ll give it another session or two of practice but if don’t see any notable progress I’ll just return the board and accept the sense of failure, something that doesn’t sit well with me.
I have been deluged with an absolutely ridiculous amount of emails asking for money for the two presidential campaigns. I guess since I have donated a couple times to Bernie I got put on the list as a good target to squeeze for more. Hey of course I want Biden to win by default but hitting me up for money multiple times EACH day is just flat out annoying. I need to start a massive unsubscription campaign to these various email lists. Don’t make me regret donating in the past, you make the prospect of getting future donations from me very slim.
We had two consecutive days without driving rain so I figured I better get my ass out on the mower last night to get already high grass knocked down. Although I didn’t have to mow across any standing water areas I did roll across very soft and wet ground at times which left my brand new tractor looking pretty cruddy. I asked Cindy if she would mind hosing the Husqvarna down today. It’s getting more and more difficult to knock out mowing during a weeknight as the amount of daylight is steadily decreasing. I was relying purely on the headlights for the last 15 minutes or so.
I haven’t watched one second of the virtual DNC. Some may say I should be since my goal like the majority of Americans is to ensure that the most inept president of my lifetime is not rewarded with a second term. However it isn’t like I need further convincing. I’m not thrilled that democrats propped up Joe Biden, weekend at Bernie’s style, as their candidate but hey it’s better than the alternative. At least if Joe kicks the bucket or officially loses his marbles Kamela Harris could slide in there and be more than competent. Hell anyone with a vocabulary bigger than 13 words would be a fantastically, big league step up.
So that weird contraption you see to the left is a Leiftech board which is now known as Summerboard. A person I talk to at the gym had this sitting around not being used and said I was welcome to give it a try since I have so many other PEVs already. If you look quickly you may think it is just another electric skateboard, which I have had two of already. Upon closer observation you will see there are actually two more wheels under the board, wtf?
Those hidden wheels are actually the propulsion system for the board and they are able to spin a full 360 degrees. The normal skateboard trucks/wheels are used for steering and if you are good, braking. The board is advertised as being the closest thing you can get to snowboarding on dry land and watching videos of skilled riders you can see why. They appear to slide around turns and can even do crazy shit like a 360 while riding.
I have been checking these boards out for 2-3 years. I have always thought it would be awesome if I was able to learn to ride that adeptly. Unfortunately the very high price of the hardware just did not make it feasible to take a chance on buying something I wasn’t sure if I could even ride. When I was offered up a chance to test out this style of PEV with no strings attached, even if it is an older and rather beat up version of the Summerboard, I was excited.
Last night I tried the board out for the first time in the driveway and it was an eye opener. The goal is to be able to keep your weight normally balanced on the two center drive wheels, only dipping onto the outside wheels as needed. I found this difficult. Hell I found just getting the board started difficult as you are supposed to kick start it before jumping on. The reason for this is you want the swivel drive wheels to be both pointing in the proper direction before applying power. My brain and legs were not synched up well and I struggled to do even this basic skill.
I was able to slowly go up and down the driveway in short bursts, lacking anything resembling control. A few times I “caught an edge” meaning the toe side wheels got leaned onto when they shouldn’t have, immediately sending me running off the board. I hoped my nearly 5 years of experience with various types of PEVs would have given me a head start on the board but I was clearly at step one. Right now it feels like a pretty high mountain for me to climb to get comfortable on the board but I will give it a solid try. The next session will occur in the wide open school parking lot.
Yesterday afternoon Katie dropped off the Prius. It was driving fine but the ABS, VSC and BRAKE warning lights were all illuminated. On Sunday before she left I quickly threw my code reader on the car but was unable to clear those lights. I did a quick Google search and found this is another weird Prius thing (there are a lot of them). It could indicate a real problem but it also could be a phantom code. The technique used to clear it involves a paper clip.
I had to crawl into the foot well awkwardly and jump together two pins of the ODBII connector. Once doing that you turn the car on and pump the brake 8 times, doing this combination of things throws the car into some special diagnostic mode. Once the three brake related lights start to flash you turn the car off, remove the paper clip jumper and turn the car back on. After following these steps the lights were off and the 10 mile test drive I took afterward went fine. The Prius has been a hell of a workhorse with 236,000 miles plus on the odometer but man it also is one of the weirdest cars I have ever worked on.
Speaking of fixing stuff, this morning I was relegated to a Pop Tarts breakfast instead of my normal egg/toast/oj deal because I spent 25 minutes in the hobby room fixing a 3D printer problem. At times my life feels like one big troubleshooting session.
On Friday I got busy working on the new list which included two carryover items from the prior week. I knocked both of those items out. The first was to install a new pump in the recently refurbished pond. The new kit includes a new pump, an enhanced filtration box and a fountain attachment to add some visual and audible flair to the feature. The second item was installing a wireless charging upgrade for my Tesla. I ordered this accessory way back in early May but it only showed up about a week ago. The pad integrates with another accessory, a USB hub that I bought from the same company about 6 months ago. It was annoying to have to wait so long but the end result was what I wanted, integrated wireless charging that looks like it came from the factory.
On Saturday I made my second trip to Home Depot in as many days. Both trips ironically included grabbing more sand and sod. This is a result of rather oppressive rain that we have gotten during the last week which has flooded parts of the property that were not elevated several months ago. I now have dumped somewhere around 2000 pounds of additional sand in the chicken run which seems to at least gotten it to a level where standing water no longer pools in there. I can’t do anything about the sand absorbing the moisture but at least the hens won’t be standing in water if they choose to hang in there.
The sod again was to address some standing water on the sides and front of the coop. The birds drive me crazy as they are very lazy when it comes to their drinking water. We have four clean drinking sources in their area but they insist on drinking disgusting, dirty, bacteria riddled ground water if it is right in front of them. I have been throwing sod in as many of those spots as possible but I keep finding more.
By the time Deb came over for a visit late Saturday afternoon I had pretty much all list items crossed off except mowing the property which was not going to happen because it was just too damn wet. If I still had the old Craftsman mower I might not mind plowing through the mucky areas but I was not about to do that to my nice new Husqvarna. I will mow once we get a couple days in a row without significant precipitation.
On Sunday morning after tending to the chickens I installed another Ring camera in their area on the back of the coop. The wide angle of the Ring camera covers nearly double the field of view of my shitty DVR cameras. My intent is to just use Ring devices for surveillance out there eventually. I have the front and back chicken yard covered so far. If I added three more I would be able to monitor it all.
Late Sunday morning I headed out for a quick ride where the focus was talking about some recent news in the EUC community. I published the video as a premiere in YouTube. Basically what that means is you schedule the video to be released at a certain time and subscribers to your channel get the notification. Then when that time comes a live chat is part of the video UI which allows the creator to interact with the viewers. Premieres have been around for awhile but I don’t utilize them much. I probably should rethink that because the video got a big surge in initial views from doing it this way.
Another change I have made is adding “Chapters” to my videos. Many people are too ADD nowadays to be able to sit through a 20 minute video. With chapters the video timeline is broken into segments based on timestamps. I think that helps with viewership as well since people can just view whatever parts interests them.
Cindy was working more on her green thumb this weekend. She was busy working on her huge collection of plants that have been collected over the last 6 months or so. She was especially excited that some of the poinciana seeds I brought home from work sprouted. Poinciana is one of Cindy’s favorite trees so she is hoping to be able to nurture the seedlings into the real thing.
Katie and DJ came over Sunday afternoon to hang out. Babysitting DJ has now elevated to an entirely new level. He can basically run at this point so he needs to be monitored/chased down at all times to keep him from getting into trouble. If you turn your attention elsewhere for even 5 seconds he could be gone in a flash.
I don’t have another three day weekend again until Labor Day, I miss them already.
I have been getting lousy sleep for pretty much the entire time my left knee has been injured. If I change position in my sleep the little jolt of pain always wakes me up. Once that happens it’s a dice roll if I will be able to fall back asleep quickly or lay there awake for an hour or more. I have felt pretty exhausted most evenings as a result. This morning after the alarm went off I fell back asleep for nearly another half hour, meaning my prep to leave for work was a mad scramble.
The rate of recovery of my left knee has truly been at a snail like pace. I’m now closing in on the two month mark since the injury started and only recently can I walk sort of without a noticeable limp. Any sort of side to side force on the joint will instantly wake the pain back up but I can go straight ahead at least. I plan to keep up what I have been doing which is stretching, low impact cardio and hanging around upside down.
I have my second three day weekend ahead of me starting tomorrow. I expect the blueprint to be similar as last weekend although I hope to have fewer list items to chew through this time around. In a couple more weeks it’s already Labor Day which seems just inconceivable. I say it often but each time I do it’s only more so true, the passage of time as you age feels like it increases at an exponential rate.
Six years ago on this date my mom passed away, speaking of time passing so quickly. It’s hard to imagine that painful and life altering event happened over 2000 sunrise and sunsets ago. To be quite honest, I try to not think about the days leading up to her death much as that time holds some of the darkest moments of my life. I instead try to think of memorable and fun experiences as well as wondering what Mom would think of how my life has turned out up until this point.
