Archives April 2021

My skin cancer surgery went down yesterday morning as scheduled.  At my last visit he sliced the top of the affected area off for the biopsy.  Since then that area has healed and looked almost normal.  When I sat in the chair I pointed out to him that what remained seemed very small.  He said he could still see from the texture on the surface that there was still cancer cells there.  Since the spot that remained was very small, about the size of a couple BB’s, I figured this would not be a tough MOHS procedure and it wasn’t in regards to the cutting out portion, which didn’t take that long.

After waiting roughly 30 minutes I was told they got all the cancer cells and I should return at 11AM to get closed up.  During that two hour hiatus I played some Hearthstone on my phone, got coffee, dropped off some packages at the post office and even had time for a brief ride on the One Wheel.

The closing procedure took longer than I expected, I felt like a football having it’s laces pulled together.  Later in the evening when I looked at the incision I was surprised to see a curved line that was at least 3 inches long, way bigger than the small spot that was cut out.  I suppose this is done to minimize scarring and have any lines sort of melt into what is already there.  The dermatologist has done a good job before with minimizing the end result of the multiple removals of flesh from my head so I am confident the end result of this again will be good.  I was just surprised at just how big the incision line wound up being.

I had orders to take it easy the rest of the day as anything that would get your blood pressure elevated is not a great thing right after surgery.  I decided that mowing the grass was not one of those things.  I put a buff awkwardly over my head like an oversized bandana to keep the bandaged area covered and then put my oversized hat on top of that.  I zipped through the mowing in maybe an hour and a half.  Unfortunately the high temps had me sweating which in turn resulted in the bandages coming loose.  Technically I was supposed to leave the original bandage on until today but they were useless by bedtime.

Showering was annoying as you weren’t supposed to get the area wet right away either.  I used a combination of weird head angles and a wash cloth to clean my hair and face the best I could.  Cindy then redid the bandages before bed which thankfully stayed in place through the night.  Walking around with a wound to the head is never a great time but it’s happened so often now I almost used to it.  I guess anything, when it happens enough, can become routine.

Tomorrow at this time I will be getting skin cancer cut out of my body for likely the 10th or 11th time.  I lost count awhile ago.  It seems like I am on a gerbil wheel sometimes or a game of whack-a-mole.  They cut out a patch and a new one forms shortly thereafter.  They left a message giving me an estimate of what my portion of the bill would be after insurance, acting like they expect me to pay that up front.  If they try to enforce that they will get major push back from me, guaranteed.

It’s funny in the world we live in how quickly vast stereotypes are cast on people simply by who they voted for in the presidential election.  If you voted for Trump you are a gun loving, bible thumping racist and if you voted for Biden you are socialist, entitled, give me everything for free, snowflake liberal.  The truth is although there are certainly a lot of people that do exhibit those qualities in both parties, there are far more who have a mixed bag of beliefs.

I have said countless times how I am very much a “greater good” person where I try to support ideas with big picture, long term benefits like recycling, green energy, less meat consumption, acceptance of differing races/belief systems, and many other “liberal” ideas. However I am also a firm believer in personal responsibility, hard work, and not rewarding laziness, which some people claim liberal agendas promote. I get very irritated with entitled individuals who expect the world without putting in anything resembling hard work.

You would think with most people having a mix of both red and blue ideals that it would translate into an ability for our politicians to leverage that into compromise to allow our society to move forward as a whole.  The reality is keeping harsh and unwavering red and blue lines is good for the business of political power where the division is useful to keep stalemates in place where nothing significant can change and instead we just keep circling the drain towards our own extinction.

Since I stopped running last year my replacement hard cardio has been using Cindy’s Echelon spin bike after work on Fridays.  I actually did a LIVE class this past Friday and it kicked my ass.  It was a Tabata style working out where you have quick 20 second all outs followed by 10 second recovery.  It kicked my ass, maybe a little too much as both of my knees were aching afterward.

I set the alarm Saturday morning since I had to go to a branch.  I set it early enough that I could go out to the chickens and clean their water containers before I left so Cindy wouldn’t have to do it.  I got to the Immokalee branch about 8:30 and was out of there by 10.  It’s a small branch and things went smoothly which I was pleased with.

When I got home Cindy and I headed out immediately to pick up a big load of castle stones and rocks at Home Depot.  Cindy was redoing yet another landscaped area in the back yard, combining an area with a couple cactus with the banana trees.  We bought 40 castle stones for the job which turned the Tacoma into a low rider for the drive home.  During Saturday afternoon Cindy was busting it out there getting stuff rearranged and planted.

While she was out there I was busy in the hobby room doing some more cleaning, organizing and purging.  I was in there a couple weeks ago doing the same thing but it was on items on the tables and wall shelves.  This time I dealt with things on the floor as well as the closet.  I again filled up the trash can as well as having items to recycle.

One of the things that I am going to finally part with is the medium sized box filled with old stuff from my mom’s file cabinet.  I held onto it just in case there was a chance I might need something in there. We are closing in on seven years now so I finally felt comfortable letting it go, at least the papers that is.

I also got out for a brief ride Saturday.  Brief rides seem to be all I have been doing lately and it’s a bit depressing.

Saturday night Cindy and watched Godzilla vs Kong, something that we just saw not so long ago.  It’s hard to imagine that they can keep coming up with plots to put these two super creatures together but they did it again, and I liked it.  Sure you have to disengage the part of your brain that appreciates thoughtful dialogue, deep story lines, and top level acting.  However once you do that and just enjoy the movie as it is, huge monsters fighting, it’s all good.  I’d give it a B+.

Sunday was forecast to have some strong storms but you wouldn’t have known it in the morning with clear blue skies and rapidly escalating temperatures.  I wound up working on a few impromptu projects like attaching legs to the pallet we had the castle stones on and splicing in a piece of wood in the border around the lanai opening to replace a rotted portion by the ground.  The splice requires a lot of wood putty to fill the gap but it should turn out ok once sanded/painted.

Late in the afternoon the storms rolled in with a vengeance, dropping more rain than we have had in months.  I used it as an opportunity to play the most WoW I have in several months as well, probably getting a good 5 hours of play in.  I enjoyed it of course but always have some degree of guilt about not being more productive during that period of time.

On Wednesday I have yet another skin cancer surgery which is never fun.  I am somewhere around double digit surgeries at this point and I am sure it won’t be the last.

This weekend through the first of May will be a string of shorted weekends due to a push to get the remaining branches converted to the new drivers license system.  That means I will be losing Saturday morning for the rest of the month, putting me behind on chores , retarding everything else in the process.   It’s inconvenient to work on weekends but compared to many in the IT profession I do it far less often than the norm.

After chores I am going to have some labor on my hands.  Cindy is going to need a bunch of castle stones and pond pebbles to convert one of our old landscaped areas into a larger, mostly succulent space.  It will be a lot of lugging and hauling but I think the end result will be worth it.

I don’t really don’t have much more to say other than I hope the portion of the weekend I have left to enjoy is indeed, enjoyable.

Once a Trump presidency became a scary reality there have been countless examples of just how inept, broken and dysfunctional of a human being the man was on so many levels.  Well you can add password security to his long list of flaws.  This story came to me via a podcast I subscribe to, Darknet Diaries which talks about a variety of IT hacking incidents and scenarios.  The last three episodes have told a pretty terrifying story of just how clueless and lazy our former Big League leader was/is in terms of password best practices.

Back in 2012 LinkedIn had a data breach that exposed millions of users personal data.  Some of that data included password hashes. When the breach was revealed of course LinkedIN eventually notified users and advised them to not only change their password on LinkedIn but also on any other sites that they use the same password on as it was now potentially exposed.

Several years later, in 2016, somebody had cracked a bunch of those password hashes and published it on the internet.  A group of ethical hackers in Denmark  called the Guild of Grumpy Old Hackers was looking at this data that was released into the wild.  They searched for various people and one of those people just happened to be the then presidential candidate, Donald Trump.  Donald did indeed have a LinkedIN account at the time of the breach.

So these guys for the heck of it went to Twitter and thought they would try the password that was exposed in the LinkedIN hack on Donald Trump’s Twitter account.  Yes the Twitter account that he cherished and bragged about to the world.  Imagine the hackers faces when they entered the 2012 LinkedIN password in the @realdonaldtrump sign in page, and it worked….   The guy was using the same password from the 2012 hack, which he surely used elsewhere as well.  The cherry on top was just how stupidly simplistic the password was, “yourefired”  I kid you not.   The ethical hackers after a lot of effort did eventually make US authorities aware of this gaping hole in basic password security and it was addressed.  So whew, crisis averted, I am sure Donald learned his lesson, right? Wrong.

Fast forward to October of 2020.  This same group of hackers were curious just how secure Trump’s Twitter account was leading up to the election as it had been weaponized to unleash disinformation at a torrid pace.  They had heard on the message boards that at Trump rallies they offered free wifi.  The password on that wifi was posted as “maga2020!!”  So the hackers first tried to verify if the account utilized 2FA (two factor authentication), a pretty standard safety practice present day that requires secondary verification by SMS or email when a logon is detected from a new location.  Surely the Twitter account of the president of the USA would have 2FA turned on.  It did not.

Once they confirmed 2FA was not on they tried variations on that wifi password that was posted on the internet.  It took them only five guesses until they guessed right, “maga2020!”  Yes, Trump’s Twitter password was “maga2020!”  The hackers were flabbergasted that four years after they found just how insecure Trump’s Twitter was, it still was, with another weak password and no 2FA.  They notified authorities and initially were not responded to.  They got frustrated and posted news of the breach, leaving out specifics, which finally got them a phone call from the Secret Service.  Trump, reacted as you would expect.  An inquiry by the Dutch authorities, surely pushed for by the Trump administration, was launched against the Grumpy Hackers who have documented over 5000 ethical hacking cases where they find vulnerabilities and report them so they can be fixed instead of exploited.  The investigation found the Grumps innocent of wrong doing, thankfully.

As I began with, unless you are a MAGA worshiping cultist, you already knew the level of incompetence that was circling around the White House for the last four years.  However I am thankful that we have groups like the Grumpy Old Hackers to protect us from lazy, sloppy, ignorant, yet powerful individuals that don’t know/care enough to do the basics to help prevent a cybersecurity breach.

Last night I plowed through the last four episodes of The Walking Dead, a show I have watched since it’s inception damn close to 10 years ago.  Like most of America I was amazed by the show the first few seasons.  It was well written, well acted, and terrifying.  When Rick “died” (but not really) the show sort of went off the rails for me.  It almost felt like all of the original writers for the show had left and what they were replaced by was not good, at all.  Sometime last season Cindy said she didn’t even care enough to watch the show anymore, leaving me alone to trudge ahead.

Some of the episodes are actually decent, like two of the four I watched last night.  Much like WoW, I feel I have so much time invested in the story that I just can’t walk away, a personal tendency that is not always a positive one.   I have not heard if there is a conclusion for the series on the horizon yet but I certainly would welcome it.  Until then I will continue to watch, because I have no choice.

The episodes from the second half of this season were all disjointed, each dealing with scenarios that never came back together at the end.  I did enjoy seeing the back story on Neagan at least although his evolution moment into super villain was a bit of a stretch.

I find myself thinking more existential thoughts lately but they seem to quickly dissipate and I return to focusing on the here and now.

Last night Cindy and I tried another VR experience, Walk About Mini-golf.  We had heard good things about it from a friend of ours and we both like RL mini-golf so we figured it was worth the $15.  The controls were intuitive, once you realized you only needed to hold one controller to play the game.  The environments were relaxing, diverse and challenging.  The physics of the game really felt nearly identical to what you would experience in miniature golf.  The game seamlessly supports the Oculus “party” feature so Cindy and I were able to voice chat the entire time which was a big plus too.  The game just felt very polished.  Cindy and I played two full rounds of 18 holes on two different courses.

There are five or six courses but you can unlock higher degrees of difficulty as you play.  I think I also read you can design your own course.  We both liked the game a lot and I think it will become one of our regular plays.  I was even par on the first course and -2 on the second but Cindy had the putt of the night where she sank the ball from three tiers up and probably 50 feet away.

Today was my dentist appointment.  I was looking forward to hearing the story from my normal hygienist who wound up getting stuck in Paraguay for over 6 months because of the covid lock down.  Because of some sort of scheduling mistake I was handled by one of the newer hygienist that I had last time.  She is fine but I have a strong feeling she has a MAGA hat sitting around somewhere.

I did get to talk to my normal hygienist after I finished up (no cavities).  She told me me about the military style lockdown in Paraguay.  There was a zero tolerance policy for breaking the rules.  She said at one point, a few months in once they were allowed to actually go outside to exercise, she was stopped by police because she was only walking, which was not classified as exercise.  It sounded like a total nightmare but she got through it and is happy to be back in the states.

The weather this weekend was damn near perfect with lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s.  I found myself more than once feeling remorseful knowing that this was going to be a very fleeting circumstance as heat and humidity will soon become the status quo again for the next 6+ months.  On Saturday I kept hopping, doing abbreviated weed whacking and spot mowing as well as a number of smaller chores around the home.  Cindy was over at Katie’s for most of the afternoon so it allowed me to surf between tasks quickly.

On Saturday evening we met up with Deb for dinner at Brooks, which is quickly becoming our new hang out spot.  We had a fun dinner catching up with lots of laughs along the way.  It does feel nice to have some feelings of normalcy.  I still wore my mask when ordering from the bar and using the restroom but I was in the large minority by doing so. This does segway into a sobering fact however.

Currently our office has had the most people come down with covid since the pandemic started.  It is proof that the continued advised caution is valid, despite vaccinations rolling out.  A couple of the cases are serious.  This “it’s over” mentality is going to be damn near impossible to jam back into the bottle.  People are sick of anything and everything related to covid however I am seeing first hand that a lack of care or precaution does have consequences, it is not lip service.

Saturday afternoon I installed my second set of mudflaps on the Tesla in as many weeks.  When I posted my original video outlining my install of the official Tesla flaps, which are front wheels only, I got a comment from someone telling me of a better option that has a more molded appearance to the body lines and includes rear wheel guards for symmetry.  The kicker is they cost the same as what I paid for just front flaps from Tesla. Of course I documented my mistake.

Saturday night we watched Birds of Prey, the Harley Quinn standalone movie.  I was quite tired so my focus was a bit in and out.  If you like seeing women kick ass you will love the movie however for what I recalled, it didn’t quite meet my expectations and would give it a B or B-.  The new Suicide Squad trailer does look sort of awesome though.

Our Easter Sunday was enjoyable.  After stopping at DD we headed over to Katie’s place to visit.  We brought Elsa along so she could play with Tank and Bowser, which she did in large quantities.  DJ was on the move constantly, not playing or doing any one thing for more than a couple minutes at a time.  We stayed outside almost the entire time enjoying the pleasant weather while hanging out with out favorite nearly two year old.

My Easter afternoon was very busy as I did some frustrating work on my Sherman that wound up turning the hobby room into a small disaster area before I cleaned it all up.  One of the videos was about the “exo-armor” I have been working on for a couple weeks.  I am still up in the air if I want to print/sell the parts exclusively or if I want to put the models on the internet to allow others to print for themselves.

After I got stuff cleaned up I suggested to Cindy we take our mountain bikes out for a ride, something we had not done in a long time.  Our 7.5 mile ride to the swamp entrance and back was tougher than I expected.  Mountain bikes are heavy and pushing them into the headwind on the return trip had both Cindy and I breathing hard.  I wore a chest strap mounted GoPro which didn’t work out as well as I hoped.

By the time I got done editing video the Easter weekend had basically expired.  As is most often the case, I just could not find a time period where I felt like I could just relax.  I likely will not find that until I either retire or three day weekends become a full time reality.

I have been tweaking and test printing various iterations of a rail guard for the Veteran Sherman for awhile now.  I bet I have come up with close to a dozen different tweaks.  I think I have something that will work but I just don’t know that is feasible for me to make/sell them myself as they take awhile to print, especially if I do them in flexible TPU filament.  I plan to send a set to Mickey up in NYC since he will be a good test subject.  I don’t normally put my wheels into scenarios where that area would be taking impact however there are a good portion of riders that do.

Today it was in the mid 50’s when I left the house, a pleasant surprise.  I only wish the cooler temps would stick around for awhile which is a pipe dream.  In the blink of an eye 90 degrees and 80% humidity will be the norm once again.

I have a few ideas rolling around my head for the weekend.  I was recalling my nearly decade of doing race timing for the running club.  I can’t remember how I managed to get things done in addition to all of the time commitments that race timing required.  Present day it seems like my weekends are so short as is.  I guess I have just managed to backfill the time timing used to eat up with other to do’s.

I do sometimes think about what it would be like to have a weekend where the things I need to choose between doing are reading a book or going to the beach. Until I am able to hire staff to maintain the grounds or my living situation changes I just have a hard time ever seeing that coming to be.

So a couple weeks ago I recalled seeing an email from my accountant saying my tax year summary packet was on it’s way in the mail.  Late last week it occurred to me that I never saw the packet but I thought I would give it a couple days.  Yesterday,after still seeing nothing I decided to dig into it.  I emailed my accountant and told her I never received anything.  She looked up the tracking and USPS claimed it was delivered to my mailbox on March 25th. That definitely did not happen.

So I brought up the tracking information on USPS myself, it did indeed show the mail was supposedly delivered on the 25th however I immediately noticed one important detail.  The package was supposedly delivered to the 34119 zip code. Our zip code is 34120.  I double checked the To: address was correct on the envelope, it was.  When you look at the tracking each step indicated it was going to the 34120 area code, until the final destination.  Someone f’d up.

I filed a lost mail report with the post office although I have very minimal hope it will result in anything.  The fact that all of my tax information was delivered somewhere else is a huge problem.  It basically gives a dishonest individual access to tons of PI of mine which could be used in all sorts of criminal manners.  It’s frustrating to not have any realistic recourse at this point.

I got a call from my dad yesterday, the topic of which was quite surprising, he is going back to work.  My dad has been retired for somewhere around 17 years which in itself seems a bit hard to fathom.  During that time he has moved four times which has taken him all the way to New Mexico, western PA and now back in eastern PA once again.  He and my step mom have racked up countless experiences and adventures during this time.  The biggest one I was part of was the family trip to Ireland of course.  He has accumulated farm animals by the dozens and moved them across state with him during the last move from Marienville to Lenhartsville.

I never saw the first house they lived in briefly but the home in the canyon and Marienville contain the most memories for me personally.  The epic western road trips to New Mexico to visit them contain some of my most special memories.  Marienville and it’s brutally cold winters, as a town was trapped in the 50’s but the house they lived in and the grounds it sat on were epic, peaceful and beautiful.   I again had a bunch of really special times there.  Their new place is less unique but geographically made more sense so they could be closer to family and have slightly less upkeep to maintain and I stress SLIGHTLY as all the animals are still there.

This 17 year time period also has seen dad spend massive amounts of money renovating every place they lived except for the first model home in Las Cruces.  The amount of projects and improvements he has bankrolled over these 17 years would fill a small novel, perhaps part of the reason that after nearly two decades he is going to rejoin the workforce.  Maybe the other part is just to give him some more structure to his schedule, I’m not 100% sure.  Personally I think going from doing whatever you want whenever you want to a more conventional job is not going to be all that smooth of a transition.

The job however is only part time and is actually with the same company he retired from back in the early 2000’s.  He is going to be an independent consultant that is going to help them with a new branch location they are launching.  It seems like dad’s main role is to pass along the immense amount of waterworks knowledge he had accumulated over his 40+ years in the business to the staff at this location.  Having first hand experience with how slim his patience can be at times, it will be interesting to see how he adapts to this mentor role.

The reason he needed to talk to me was to get some smart phone advice.  Because a big portion of communication nowadays is handled electronically, dad is going to need a smart phone as part of the job requirements.  I advised him to get something with as much screen real estate as possible as I know he is going to struggle massively with the typing on a virtual keyboard. I fully expect to get multiple calls from him regarding getting the tech integrated as time goes on.

I hung up from the conversation feeling a little in shock.  I never expected my dad to unretire, he always has seemed so content in not working.  It gave me a second to appreciate that unlike my dad whose retirement funds have been a big block of cash that he has tried to manipulate through the stock market mostly, my pension will give me reliable income for as long as I am around.  I also have a conventional retirement account that will give me a block of cash as well but nowhere around the level of what he has/had.  Dad has had a lot of that money in the roller coaster stock market, which is something that is very stressful and not normally advised for people in his age range. The tolerance for risk goes down as you count on that money to get by when retired. It sounds like he pulled back after the big 30% drop last year so at least he doesn’t have to get pissed off losing 10’s of thousands of dollars in a blink of an eye, of course he can’t gain it in a blink either.

My hope is the added income, structure, and responsibilities will be a good thing for him in the big picture.  We all just want to be happy, whatever that means to each individual.