Archives March 2021

My entire adult life I have reaped the rewards and paid the price for part of my personality, the part that puts high value on doing what you say you are going to do.  On the positive side, I am very much built on not just giving lip service.  If I verbalize intent that normally means that intent will be followed through by action.  For people that have employed me over the decades that has been a positive trait which has resulted in favorable results no matter if I was cutting meat at Weis Markets, driving truck for Goodwill, or my 29 years in the IT field.  The short and sweet summation is I get stuff done.

On the flip side, my hard wired, I do what I say I am going to do, philosophy causes conflict when I interact with others that do not have a similar mindset.  As anyone that exists in the same world that I do knows, people don’t do what they say they are going to do all the time.  The end result is I have found myself getting frustrated and angry often when this behavior impacts me.  Admittedly it is far easier to just say things with little intent of doing them, perhaps why it happens so often in the path of least resistance society we live in.

Another side effect of this scenario is my feeling the need that I need to take on more and more myself as that is the only way I can be assured of the outcome.  Some people would call this classic “control freak” behavior, I prefer to call it minimizing the margin for error, lol.  Whatever you call it, it has always caused some degree of conflict in both my professional and personal lives. I am self aware of how it can seem to others but the bottom line is it has allowed me to get to this point in life with most of my ducks in a row.

Much like I talked about yesterday with how my anger and aggressiveness while driving has dulled with age, the same is true with my reactions to this scenario.  I know people will not follow through on things like I do more often than not.  I know that placing expectations you have for yourself onto others causes conflict so I make conscious efforts to not do that as much as I can.  I even find myself releasing more control to others, allowing the outcome to be what it is, even if it isn’t my ideal.  Getting through life is always a work in progress, there is no endgame, there is no point where you declare you have it all figured out.  You just keep trying to adapt, resolve and grow each step of the way.

I pulled the dash cam footage of the Irate Karen Volvo SUV driver yesterday for your enjoyment.

So over the years I have become a much less aggressive driver.  Things that used to set me off just don’t anymore as I have resigned myself to the fact that there are tons of idiots on the road.  So this morning on my commute to work I was set off.  I was on a section of the commute where three lanes condense into two.  Since I drive this route every day I make sure I am out of the merging lane early.  Ahead of me was a white Volvo SUV that stayed in the lane that was merging, a behavior that is annoying of course, those that know a merge is coming but don’t do it until the last second to get ahead of other vehicles.

Still, I was calm and slowed my speed to let her merge in safely.  So we were both in the left lane at this point.  I saw the traffic on the right side was moving better so I signaled and got over.  All of a sudden the Volvo swings over into my lane with the right turn signal on and slams her brakes, my reaction was she realized she wanted to make a right turn somewhere.  So to avoid hammering my brakes hard I get back over into the left lane.  The Volvo then whips back into the left lane and brake checks again. Wow, this person is one of those full blown road rage idiots that I have seen so many YouTube videos about.

So now my anger switch was turned on, I wanted to get beside this person to congratulate them on being a big enough idiot to get me pissed off.  The Volvo after trying to block me another time or two then takes off snaking back and forth between cars with me not having enough space to follow.  After a couple miles when the road widened again I finally got a good look at the person driving the Volvo, a dumpy middle aged woman who obviously has something missing in her life that makes her react irrationally on the road.  I gave the Karen a big thumbs up out my window even though she was not willing to glance my direction.  I need to remember to try to pull the car camera footage to demonstrate just how awesome this woman is.

If you aren’t familiar what it means when a woman is referred to as Karen, here is a quick Google definition – Karen is a pejorative term for a woman seeming to be entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal. The term also refers to memes depicting white women who use their privilege to demand their own way.

Saturday was an ass busting day in almost it’s entirety.  After starting out with normal Saturday morning chores Cindy and I grabbed supplies at Home Depot for another project, although that was primarily Cindy’s baby.  During the afternoon it was almost summer-like warm with temps in the upper 80’s.  My first task was to put another coat of waterproofing paint on the bar park, something we try to do annually.  The wood supports for the pull up and parallel bars are definitely showing their age but I hope I can extend their lifespan as long as possible by keeping up with this maintenance.

The next task is one I was thinking about for awhile. Every time I would look down the length of the fence I would see portions that had pulled away from the posts.  The heat and moisture over the last 15 years or so had caused a number of the fence staples to loosen or pull out completely.  I finally wanted to do something about it.  I started what I knew would be an arduous task, hammering back in the loose fasteners and hammering in new ones when none remained.  Even if a post had all of it’s staples I added at least one new staple to it, just to help keep things in place.  I have a lot of fence posts, at least 75 of them, probably more.  By the time I was done my back was killing me and my right hand had a nice blister on it from hundreds of hammer swings.  It felt good to finally address what was a visual annoyance for a long time.

I wasn’t done.  The area Cindy was working on needed to have the layer of mostly ratty sod stripped off.  She would have tried to do it but it would have been a major suckfest, it sucked enough for me.  The area is going to be another spot for Cindy’s succulents, which she has an excess of.  Before I called it a day I also redid the fasteners on three plant stands she has.  All of them were wobbly due to loose bolts.  I added small star lock washer to the nut and then cranked them down tight.  The stands felt much more stable afterward.  That completed my outdoor work for the day, I was beat, and then some.

Saturday night we watched 1917, the epic one shot movie that got a lot of press when it came out.  This wasn’t the first film to use a single continuous shot but it probably was the best example of it being done seamlessly.  It was extremely well done and depicted just horrific the reality of World War I was.  I’d give it an A.

Sunday seemingly flew by.  During the afternoon Katie and Dj came over.  I hopped on one of my wheels and met them over at Vineyards park.  They have a small children’s splash pad that they thought DJ would enjoy in the warm weather.  I actually got to the park only slightly behind them since they made a pit stop at Taco Bell along the way.

DJ seemed to be more into the playground than the splash pad for some reason.  Cindy snapped this funny photo a split second after he started to lean forward for Cindy to pick him up.  It looked like I was more interested in posing for the pic than watching the kid.

After hanging out at the park for awhile I hitched a ride back as I was feeling pretty beat up from the work of the previous day.  By the time I got done editing video it was almost time to  head to bed, which I did after a brief WoW session.  The weekends just all blend together.

Last night we went to the county fair, which is something that I thought a month ago would not happen.  Cindy and I met up with Daniel, Katie and DJ, who had never been to a fair.  That was the big reason we went, to see DJ react to the funny fair environment.  The fair advertised they were taking covid precautions but as I expected it was mostly a token effort.  We kept our masks on outside of eating some fair food, we were in the clear minority in choosing to mask up.

DJ did indeed like all of the visual stimulation.  He had fun looking at all of the sights and sounds as well as interacting with the animals. We took turns carrying him which gets more challenging everyday as he is growing rapidly.  The weather conditions were very unusual for us.  Most years at the fair we wind up being cold as the temps drop into the 60’s.  Last night it was very warm, we had highs pushing 90 degrees yesterday.  As a result shorts and t-shirt were all that were needed and I was sweated through the back of my shirt after carrying the little guy around for long periods of time.

We got there relatively early before big crowds rolled in which was good.  The only time I felt we were truly crowded was in the petting zoo tent, again with mostly unmasked people.  Despite the lax adherence to covid safety protocols, overall we had fun although in a way different than years past.  When you are there with a child the experience is all about them.  Although I didn’t do/see things I would have on our own, I still wouldn’t trade it for watching a new set of eyes experience sights and sounds for the first time, ever.

Yesterday was Joe Biden’s first official press conference.  For the most part it contained solid, if not overly long winded at times responses to questions.  Being a realist myself, I appreciate that Joe, unlike Trump is not willing to come out and blatantly lie to people about what is and is not possible.  Nor will he put a shining beacon on himself, taking credit for everything and anything he possibly can, regardless of merit.

Sure there were a few bad jokes and awkward moments but that is something you can find from Biden throughout his political career.  It’s nothing new, although talking heads will tell you that Biden already has one toe over the edge of full blown senility.  I didn’t see that at all, knowing it’s just par for the course.  It’s ironic that despite him opening with good news about covid vaccinations and how they are obliterating his original goal for vaccination pace, there was not a single question regarding covid from the press, reflecting what is a growing sentiment in the country, covid is old news.

Ironically I have had multiple instances in my circle of existence with people coming down with covid in the last week.  It hasn’t gone away, although you would think it has by the thin half measures that many people make (yes chin strap mask wearers I’m looking at you) with even more not giving 2 F’s at all about it.  I am in the queue to get the J&J shot when it’s again available.  You have to wonder if there will ever be a time again where NOT wearing a mask in public will become second nature, just ask Japan.

This weekend I have a couple as motivation dictates projects I want to work on.  One of them will be tedious for sure as a ton of staples securing the outer perimeter fence have pulled out of the posts due to years of abuse from the elements.  I want to go around and redo them which will take a long time and exact a painful toll on my body for sure.  The bar park could use some work as well, if I feel up to it.

I have been working on a new 3D printed EUC accessory.  I made a quick and admittedly bizarre video demonstrating an early prototype.  Despite the weird demo, it may be something that I could actually sell on the store, I have more testing to do.

Since Joe Biden became President there have been a lot of moves in a positive direction along with some that are less than spectacular.  The one change I appreciate the most is simply the absence of near daily inane, ignorant, immature, hateful, and self serving tweets by Donald Trump.  Unfortunately what has not been removed is the residual cult effect that Trump has cultivated over the last four years.  All of those people that he manipulated are still out there, not looking to solve problems, but mostly to just blame others for them.

A lot has been said about the large amount of unaccompanied immigrant children that are now showing up at the border.  Trumpists are screaming “I told you so!”, meaning the fact that Biden is seen as less strict on immigration is encouraging more activity at the border.  That impression is based on the truth that Biden, unlike Trump, is not feeding into the racist and misleading notion that most of these individuals are rapists, drug dealers, murderers, or other bad people.  Then the cry is “look, kids in cages, they are putting kids in cages which they cried about with Trump”

Of course this is not accurate either.  Under Trump the outrage was that families would come across and the children were stripped of their parents, some never being reunited.  In this scenario children are being presented by themselves.  They are not being put in “cages”, they are housed until they can provided for by other means.  What exactly is the alternative here, throwing the kids in the back of a truck and dumping them back in Mexico? Just let them fend for themselves in America? No, you have to try to help them, it’s a basic human need.  To somehow twist that politically into a negative thing is pretty sad, in my opinion.

You remember Sidney “Release the Krakken” Powell? She was the lawyer that Trump supporters hung on her every word as she told of these fantastic fairy tales of Dominion voting machines being secretly manipulated for Joe Biden.  She was their messiah and they believed her whole heartedly .  Now that she is being sued for her false claims you won’t believe her defense.  She said  that no reasonable person would believe her voter fraud lies were “Fact”.  I shit you not.  If you are a Trump supporter I just can not fathom how this admission could not cause you a moment of reflection to consider this and the countless other lies you accepted as truth over the last four years.  If it makes you question your judgement, good, it certainly should.

Hey people get mislead in large numbers all the time by both parties in American politics.  However burying your head in the sand and refusing to acknowledge when this occurs is just silly, unproductive, and ignorant.  It just saddens me that there are so many in our country that are all about bitching about problems instead of working on the greater good of society as a whole, not just the portions of it you identity with/benefit from.  I just don’t know if the toxicity that has been created in American society can ever be diluted at this point.

As promised I followed up with the Fort Lauderdale Tesla sales/service center yesterday.  I decided instead of leaving another message in the abyss which is the delivery team voicemail box I would instead go for sales, where someone is much more likely to answer the phone.  I did indeed have a woman answer.  I quickly explained my back story and within a few minutes she was able to verify that my registration has finally been switched and I could now put my own plate on the car.  She was also able to email me a copy of the updated registration I can use until my real version arrives.  It felt good to have the issue finally resolved.

Last night Cindy and I went out to dinner for our eight year anniversary.  We went to Brooks Burgers a place we have enjoyed a couple times prior. They have good food and well spaced outdoor seating.  As we exited the Model Y Cindy realized she forgot to bring a mask.  I told her she could wear mine but she didn’t like that option.  Instead I walked into the Pet Supermarket next door and bought a dog themed mask for Cindy, which she liked.

You can tell people are getting more and more dismissive about covid.  Despite it being a weekday evening the restaurant was pretty full.  We had to wait close to a half hour until an outdoor table opened up for us.  We spent the time just enjoying the weather, people watching and me sipping on a Miller Lite.  Once we sat down we discovered Tuesday night was also trivia night.  Although we didn’t participate officially it was fun trying to come up with the answers to the questions anyway.  We both enjoyed our meal and the opportunity to just get out and sort of live life like we used to.

I recently received some stickers I ordered, NSZR which stands for No Skill Zombie Rider.  The term is a mutation of two negative descriptions a rider in NYC came up with for riders in LA.  He described them as having no skill and also zombie riders.  I put those two terms together and have jokingly described myself as a NSZR for awhile.

When I paid the guy on Fiverr to design some emoticons and badges for my YouTube channel membership, the NSZR logo was one of the things that came out of it.  I received a 100 of them in the mail.  Last night Cindy was able to get her vinyl cutter to cut the outline of the sticker on the 4″ x 4″ sheets they come on, for a much cooler and unique look when applied.  I put one of them on my helmet and posted the picture online, telling people that one of these stickers was included with every order.  People must like the design as I woke up to three orders this morning.  It’s a cool logo and I have ideas of using it other ways in the future.

Well despite assurances from Tesla early last week that I would have my updated registration in hand before it expired yesterday, nothing arrived in the mail, meaning technically I am now driving a car with an invalid registration.  I had reached out to the local Naples Tesla sales rep I dealt with when buying my Y on Friday.  He told me if nothing arrived by Monday to call his store and they would get another temp tag overnighted to me to hold me over.  I called yesterday afternoon and of course my guy was off.

I reexplained my situation to the sales guy who answered.  He seemed less motivated to help.  His advice was to call the Fort Lauderdale location where I picked up the car and select the delivery team from the phone menu. I told him my past experience was it is near impossible to get someone to answer the phone there.  He said he would also send a message over the Tesla platform to that group as well about my situation.  The hope was one of the two of us would be successful.  Well the day passed without any further contact from Tesla.  Today is the day I apply full court pressure to anyone and everyone I talk to.  I need it resolved yesterday, literally.

Yesterday I got an unexpected package in the mail from my uncle.  He was cleaning out his old picture collections and found a bunch of old pictures of our family which he included.  Many of them were at my grandparents house but some were not, quite a few I had never seen before.  Going through them was a trip down memory lane.  Seeing pictures of my family from 40-50 years ago feels bizarre.

Of course it was impossible to thumb through these pictures and not feel sadness as well, seeing relatives that are long gone.  The most painful as you would expect was the various pictures of my mom, some of them dating back to her high school photo.  The passage of time is something that sneaks up on you, silently pushing memories into your rear view mirror, not to be thought about again until something like old pictures pulls those moments of time out of the cobwebs and back into focus.

Today is Cindy and my eight year anniversary.  That passage of time thing I just mentioned applies here too.  It seems crazy that we have already been together eight years.  During that time we have had so many memories created, laughs exchanged, and fun had that counting it all would be literally impossible.

The tree we bought/planted is our official anniversary gift to one another but we will do a dinner out tonight or this weekend, whatever works out.

This weekend was gone in a blink of an eye or so it seemed.  Saturday morning I had to come into the office for another conversion.  The work itself only took about an hour but when you add in the round trip closer to three hours was burned up in the task.  When I got home the next few hours included many different chores around the property, culminated by mowing the yard which despite it being only a little shaggy in areas, still takes the better part of two hours.

Saturday night we set aside four full hours to watch the Zak Snyder cut of Justice League.  When I first heard they were re-releasing the movie I was skeptical about just how much they would actually change.  The answer is, a lot.  This version is over an hour and a half longer than what was released in 2017. It almost felt like a brand new movie to me, there was so much stuff that was either totally new or changed.  Despite it’s crazy length both Cindy and I enjoyed it.  They dug much deeper into character stories that were just skimmed over in the original, and I appreciated it.  I’d give the reboot an A, seriously.

I neglected to mention the new guava tree we have in the front yard.  Cindy picked it up Friday morning and we had the same crew that trimmed our trees come and put it in the ground.  Yes I could have planted it myself but I wanted to give the tree the best shot at flourishing so I paid to have them do it.  It went in the spot where the poinciana went that didn’t do well.  Hopefully this becomes a prominent part of the landscape for  years to come.

Sunday I posted three videos.  The first one was me installing my new mudflaps on my Model Y and talking about some of the differences in the Model Y compared to the Model 3 that I was not aware of.  Ironically installing the mudflaps has lead to me buying new mudflaps.  Tesla only sells them for the front of the car which is a bit weird.  A commenter on the video told me of a 3rd party option for all four wheels which only costs few bucks more than what I paid for just the front. So I guess I can make ANOTHER mudflap video in the future.

Later in the afternoon I took my Veteran Sherman to nearby mostly empty side streets to do some high speed runs.  I wanted to see if I could match or eclipse my old top speed record of 42.5 MPH.  The first road I picked for testing was not good for high speed riding.  It had sections of small waves in the asphalt.  These waves actually initiated a high speed wobble that could have been really bad as I was going 30MPH+ when it happened.  Luckily I was able to ride it out without hitting the ground.

After that wobble I decided to try another road, looking for flatter terrain.  I found one about 5 blocks down which felt very flat.  After a few tries I clocked a run with a top speed of 42.9 MPH, a slight increase from my prior best but an increase nonetheless.  I had my Skydio 2 drone up in the air as well as a ground mounted camera so editing it all together took quite awhile.

By the time I was all done most of the evening had gone.  As I sat at my PC later working on some 3D designs I found myself wondering where the last 48 hours had gone.  It had evaporated in a snap.

I have had some new annoying pain out of my left knee which was formally known as my “good knee”, good as it had not been surgically operated on twice before as my right one has.  Any sort of side pressure on the joint is uncomfortable.  I can walk good enough, I’m not even limping.  But sitting, depending on the angle of the knee and laying on my side especially, makes for radiating pain in the joint.  Just like most aches and pains at this point, I assume it is a transient condition which will go away once whatever is loose  and causing irritation in the joint moves around, but until that happens I get to complain about the joys of aging some more.

I just came off a nice 3 day weekend but I will be rolling into a slightly shorter version this time around.  Once again I need to come into the office for a DL conversion project on Saturday.  Luckily there are only two workstations involved this time so if things go smoothly it should not take very long.  Still, it disjoints my normal weekend schedule somewhat but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The county fair is back this year.  Last year it closed after four days as Covid hysteria was spreading like wildfire.  It seems like this year it’s mostly business as usual although they are supposedly taking temperature checks at the gate, having lots of hand sanitizer available and encouraging mask use inside the buildings but not outdoors.  Knowing the typical fair goer I would not expect a lot of masks to be seen.  Without a doubt the “f it” mentality is firmly taking hold regarding diligent covid precautions around here.  Cindy actually said she may be open to going to the fair but we will see, I don’t want to go and have her feel stressed out the entire time.

Cindy had told me that the check engine light had come on in her car a couple days ago.  Our knee jerk thought was maybe it was time to take it to the dealership since it is approaching 50,000 miles.  However I told her I wanted to throw my code reader on the car just to see what is up. So when I turned the car on I saw the check engine light was indeed on and I also saw a brief warning pop up that the windshield wiper fluid was low. Wow it even lets you know that, cool.

I attached my code reader but it locked up before any details of the issue were displayed on screen.  I then thought I would try something, adding washer fluid.  Surely low washer fluid wouldn’t trigger a CEL right?  I only had a small amount of spare fluid left but I poured it all into the reservoir tank of the car.  I got back behind the steering wheel and turned the car back on.  The check engine light was gone, wow.  I laughed as I told Cindy the cause of the warning.  We wouldn’t have been laughing if we had just paid for a dealer service visit just to be told they added washer fluid.  Always check the simple things first.