Archives 2021

When I went home Friday I was planning to take my road bike with it’s brand new front tire out for a 10 mile ride.  Of course hard rain once again washed that plan away.  I am so tired of oppressive precipitation at this point.

On Saturday part of my mental list included weed whacking but at some point I talked myself out of it.  The ground was still waterlogged making mowing a bad idea, why weed whack if the grass in the main lawn is going to be shaggy anyway? I gave myself a rare pass on a household chore that was on the LIST.   Elsa and I ran some errands which included stopping over to see Cindy to do a PEV swap.  I brought her the Minipro and picked up the Dualtron to be brought back home and hopefully sold.  If I sell it I’ll use some of the funds to get Cindy a PEV that works out better for her.  I also dropped off a laptop that I redid for her to use.  It’s modern enough to comfortably run Windows 10.  I also got her on a VPN since the WIFI where she is at is wide open, and dangerous.

I did tackle one annoying list item, finish painting the spare bedroom.  Cindy had started the task but the ceiling needed to be done as well to better blend with the walls.  I was hoping there was enough paint left to get the room completely done.  If I haven’t mentioned it before, I hate painting.  I really hate painting ceilings.  To save paint and cut down on mess I decided to use a 4 inch brush for the work instead of a roller.  I worked slowly, bringing in an auxiliary light to help me identify where I did and did not paint since the two shades of white were not that far apart.  I was happy that I not only had enough paint for the ceiling but also to go over a few places on the walls where the coverage was a bit light.  When everything dried it looked good enough.  It felt good to have that room cleaned up and ready for whatever use I have for it down the road.

I had a bit of an incident as I boiled pasta on Saturday night.  I heard the unwelcomed sound of water hitting a hot surface.  The pot was boiling over badly, creating a huge mess on the glass top stove.  The good news is the pasta still came out well.  The bad news was I spent a lot of time getting the stove cleaned up later.

On Saturday afternoon I also got a chance to do my first day time ride on the Z10.  I took it to the nearby DD for some afternoon coffee.  I really am enjoying the wheel, the style of riding it is unique because of the way it was put together with an extremely low center of gravity. In the video I talked about how the upcoming holiday season is going to be a struggle for me.  I am not really sure if I should act like they don’t exist or act like it’s business as usual.  Both options have their own unique challenges.

Sunday felt pretty casual since I did not have an Eagles game on the schedule that consumes 3-4 hours in an afternoon.  In the morning I installed my new wheel cover delete kit for the Model Y.  This was the last real “mod” I had left on my immediate list.  I prefer exposing the good looking alloys on the car.

Mid-afternoon I loaded up the Z10 and my camera gear to head down to the Greenway, a venue I have not ridden in many months.  I brought the 360 camera, thinking it would do a good job of capturing some of the beauty that ride contains.  I had a great ride of over 90 minutes.  When I got back home and started editing the footage I was angry when I discovered that somehow I put the camera into the incorrect shooting mode.  I had no appreciable footage, just real tiny video files.  There was nothing I could do about it other than be frustrated with myself.  I still made a video out of the dumpster fire anyway, trying to make some lemonade out of a bunch of lemons.

The rest of my evening was pretty chill.  My biggest hope for this week is it just stops, raining….

On Wednesday evening I briefly took my new Z10 out for it’s first ride after 8PM.  The darkness emphasizes the cool light treatment the wheel has.  This weekend I hope to get one if not two decent rides in on the wheel if I can somehow make it work time-wise.

Yesterday I worked from home all morning as I waited for a Tesla remote tech to show up to install the Homelink kit into my Model Y, which gives it an integrated garage door opener.  The install window was 8:30-12:30. It was nice to have a more casual pace in the morning instead of the Chinese fire drill a normal morning contains.  I also wish management was more open to letting me work from home occasionally, I can do pretty much anything I do at the office at home.  The tech showed up somewhere close to 11:30 and was done in record time, I am not sure if it even took him 15 minutes to complete the work.  I packed up my stuff and backed out of the garage, having the car autoclose the door based on my geo location.  My inner nerd was happy.

Last night while I was catching up on DVR content I was also working on replacing the front tire on my road bike.  I noticed a few weeks ago that somehow I picked up a tear on the side of my existing tire.  I have been riding on it still but it’s not a great idea, considering the very high PSI you run road bike tires at (100+)

I received a new tire over a week ago but had not had the motivation to tackle the tire swap as typically they are a big pain in the ass.  There was definitely a little pain this time around.  After winging it unsuccessfully I watched a quick video to give me a refresher on the best practice for swapping the tire.  Ideally you pop the new tire onto the rim using just your hands to minimize the chance of damaging the tube but I had to use the pry tool at the end as the new tire was a tight fit.  I was happy when I inflated the tire and saw it held air at high PSI.  If the weather this evening is ok I hope to give it a 10 mile road test.

This morning I evidently heard and then turned off the alarm, followed by immediately falling back asleep.  I awoke 20 minutes later, turning my normal morning dash into an all out sprint.  I saved time by swapping out my normal egg and toast breakfast with two cold Pop Tarts and a glass of almond milk.  I got to work about 10 minutes late so it could have been worse.

As mentioned earlier I hope to get out on the Z10 this weekend.  My yard maintenance this weekend is going to depend upon it staying rain free the next couple days as there is still standing water in many areas.  I will at least weed whack for sure.  I do have 3-4 more hours free this weekend since the Eagles do not play until Monday night against the hated Cowboys.

I forgot to mention I spoke to my Dad Wednesday on my ride home from work.  He was asking me about what cellular carrier I have as he has now added Consumer Cellular to the long list of companies he refuses to deal with.  Unfortunately, I have ATT which is a company that was already on his no-fly list.  Dad has a long history of getting very angry with companies over things that in the grand scheme of things seem minor like billing errors.  In this newest case the issue was related to him insisting on paying them via check because he hates the idea of any company having his credit card on file.  He likes the control he feels he has by writing a check.  Unfortunately in 2021 that control also lends itself to potential complications, such as what he is having.

I get being pissed off about being charged unfairly, Indian based help desks, infinite phone menus, long hold times and all that jazz.  However I do feel lucky that these things do not inspire me to take on a crusade like determination to spend large amounts of time and frustration on routinely.  Sure I will do it from time to time but I will not often take a cut off my nose to spite my face position like my dad often will.  As I get older I find less and less battles worthy of spending that time, anger and frustration on.

All of my whining about the excessive precipitation in our area over the last week apparently was laughed at by Mother Nature.   There was widespread hard rain once again yesterday afternoon that went on for hours.  Once everything is already covered in water I guess it’s all the same.  The only thing that changes is how high it goes above my ankles. The chickens are the ones I feel the worst for when the property gets like this.

I did get my new used Z10 yesterday and did a two and a half hour live stream to celebrate.  The topics covered were very varied, many of which had nothing to do with EUCs.

When I picked up Sadie at Ali’s new place last Thursday she gave me some old electronics to do with as I please, the list included an original Ipad 1, another newer Ipad, and an original Amazon Kindle.  The newer Ipad appears dead and does not respond to charging.  The original Ipad actually appears to be in good working order however it is so old that if you connect it to the modern app store all you get is a whole bunch of “too bad so sad” replies if you try to load any apps.  The hardware and software on the device is incompatible with modern apps.

I did do some research about potential workarounds, it looks like the only real solution is to jailbreak the device and then find older versions of the apps somewhere.  It became quickly apparent it would be more trouble than it is worth to try to do anything useful with the ancient Ipad that was bought somewhere around 2010.  It’s too bad, I originally hoped it may be something useful for DJ to screw around with. The original Amazon Kindle still works as well.  However after letting it charge overnight until the light turned green the device ran all of 10 minutes before it said the battery was low.  It was on long enough for me to at least de-register the device from Ali’s Amazon account.  Sadly I think all three devices will wind up in electronics recycling.

Once again the house was inundated with rain last night that was accompanied by violent lightning that scared the crap out of Elsa for a good portion of the night.  The property is the most flooded it has been this year, which makes me feel wonderfully shitty.  Wet season really, really sucks.

My used Z10 is supposed to arrive today, if it does I will be doing a Live Stream to talk about it.

On Friday when I got home it was raining lightly so I opted for indoor riding instead.  However instead of doing an instructor lead session I just did a manual ride where I set the resistance to 20 and maintained an 80 or higher cadence for around a half hour.  Doing it this way allowed me to multi-task, catching up on some recorded DVR content. I was not thrilled when Friday night the already soaked property was subjected to yet another downpour, making it swampier, if that is even possible. I swapped out the heated bed on one of my Prusa’s during the evening as well, just to knock that off the potential tasks for the weekend.

As I was finishing up weeding the property Saturday morning I saw Jeremiah roll up on his EUC.  I had said something to him about the possibility of selling a couple of my PEVs, my S18 and OneWheel Pint.  We had talked about him borrowing them to go show his wife who was skeptical about the purchase.  So he rode the S18 back to his house while carrying the Pint.  An hour or so later he returned with his wife Emily, who was riding the Pint.  Jeremiah was carrying the S18, evidently I gave it to him in a low battery state unfortunately.  His wife LOVED the Pint and it seems she liked the S18 as well, they decided to buy both PEVs.  They gave me cash for the OneWheel and took the Pint with them.  Jeremiah said he would come back with a check later for the S18, I told him I would throw it on the charger awhile.

After finishing up I took Sadie and Elsa for an errand run which included DD, Pinch-A-Penny, Sam’s and Walmart.  After getting home I decided that despite the underwater sections of the property I was just going to mow around them.  As I completed the task I thought to myself that a month from now the drudgery of wet season should finally be behind me.

After mowing I decided I wanted to try to complete the low battery behavior test on the V12.  This was the third ride I have done since charging the battery, trying to get it’s charge level low enough to do a proper test.  I wanted to grab some afternoon coffee so the timing worked out well.  The V12 did surprisingly well in this test, once I turned off the feature that babysits you at low battery levels.

I also did a video regarding my latest Vroom appraisal on the new Model Y.

On Sunday after tending to the chickens and a prolonged bill pay session I loaded up the dogs again, this time for a DD, Rural King, and Home Depot route.  At Rural King I had a rather annoying check out experience that I documented on Facebook, it went like this:

Last night after I got home I quickly tended to the chickens before loading up Elsa in the Tacoma and heading to Ali and Shuggs new place to pick up Sadie for the weekend.  The drive was not awful, around 45 minutes, which is what my daily commute takes many days.  Their place is a mile or so away from the new Tesla dealership that I just picked up my car from a couple weeks prior.

The apartment complex is new, very new.  Ali is the first person to live in the brand new one bedroom unit they are renting.  The space is small as you can imagine, but nicely equipped with high quality surfaces on the floors and counters, as well as nice appliances.  The amount of contraction they had to do to move from the 3/2 town home to this was massive. She does have a storage space rented which is holding a lot of her stuff until their long term living arrangements are worked out.

Elsa was very nervous at first but once she saw Ali, Shuggs, Sadie, and Ferdie excitement took over.  After getting the brief tour of the space, we walked the grounds with Elsa in tow.  The pool area this place has is massive and looks like it belongs in a high end resort, it was really nice.  There are a lot of perks at this place, which may be expected with what they charge for rent.  One of them is Thursday nights they have a food truck on site which provides free meals to residents, a very cool arrangement.  This month it was a taco truck.

We ordered our food and then hung out drinking a couple Bud Light seltzers as we waited for the food, which took quite awhile.  The residents that were hanging out there seemed youthful and high energy, it was a fun scene.  Elsa did well in the environment and received lots of praise for how pretty she is, as normal.  Once we got the food we walked back to the apartment and ate it there.  The food was good, made even better by being free food.  I didn’t hang around long afterwards as it was already past 8:30 and I had the drive back home.  I loaded up Elsa, Sadie and some tech devices Ali didn’t want anymore to be repurposed if possible.  I got home about 9:30.  I was glad to see Ali and Shuggs seem more or less content with their new accommodations.

Man my weekday morning routine is tight, very tight.  There is no longer any time at all for deviation or delay in the routine.  Gone are the days of laying in bed an extra 5 minutes to let the cobwebs clear or watching a short YouTube video as I eat my breakfast.  I get up with the alarm like an electric probe was stuck up my ass, step on the accelerator and keep it pressed until I sit in the seat of the car, it’s a bit stressful as you can imagine.

This weekend has a solid block of to do’s stacked up.  I’ll keep chipping away at it like a jackhammer.

Tonight after work I am picking up Sadie for a visit while Ali is out of town.  This is the first time I am doing so since Ali sold her place and moved to Fort Myers to live in an apartment until she figures out her next move.  The process of Sadie exchange used to be pretty easy as Ali’s old place was sort of on my way to and from work.  That is no longer the case.  Ali said it works out to be almost an hour drive from my place to theirs so the convenience has been yanked out of the equation.  We still will make it work but it’s going to require more coordination with us meeting at halfway points or something like that. Tonight however I am driving all the way there so I can see their new place and have dinner.

I can already see my pile of to do’s for the weekend growing from here.  I wish I could mow the grass on a weeknight but standing water and the rapidly diminishing amount of daylight makes that impossible.

Remember that new office we are building that is scheduled to open later this year? It’s big, really big.

It looks like I am going to try to sell 2 and possibly three PEVs in my collection to justify/help pay for two more.  The Dualtron scooter that I bought for Cindy is crazy powerful and crazy fast but is also crazy heavy, making it difficult for her to manage on her own so that will be on the block soon.  I also intend to sell my KingSong S18, a great suspension wheel but I will be replacing it with an even better suspension wheel, the S20.  Finally I think I may sell my OneWheel Pint.  I love riding the thing but the reality is I hardly ever do ride it so the more practical solution is to just sell that as well, I still will hold onto the Big Daddy OneWheeel XR.

The other wheel I am adding is the iconic Ninebot Z10.  I am buying a used one.  This wheel is so unique with it’s fat motorcycle-like tire.  I reviewed one when they first came out three years ago and always had an itch to add one to my collection, despite it’s specs being average at best compared to today’s crop of wheels.  I am scratching that itch now.

My PEV collection is just one of a ton of things that will be reflecting significant change in the upcoming months.

The new spotlight I installed in the chicken yard has really helped me with early AM cleaning duties.  It’s so bright that even the chickens are willing to step outside a little bit instead of being still like statues in the run.  I have been able to be back inside making breakfast a couple minutes after 6.  Things went pretty smoothly this morning, I was out on the road by maybe 7:10am, early enough to get to work on time, normally.

I was maybe 10 miles into my commute when I hit backed up cars.  After determining things were moving at a snail’s pace I made the command decision to backtrack 7 of those 10 miles and go down Immokalee Road.  Almost like it was planned, as I approached Immokalee I saw multiple emergency vehicles going past, bringing traffic on that route to an absolute halt as well.  I was very frustrated as you can imagine.  The commute wound up taking me an hour and a half.

I forgot to mention that on Friday for the hell of it I submitted my NEW Tesla Model Y to Vroom for an appraisal number.  I had no intent of actually selling it this time but I was curious if Vroom was still buying Teslas for more than they cost new.  The answer is, yes.

The list price on my second Model Y was $52900.  The Vroom straight buy came back at $58,000, $5K more than the list price of a new Y.  However when you allow fiscal reality to creep in, adding Tesla’s $1200 destination charge, tags, and sales tax in, there is no appreciable gain to be had in this scenario.  However the old rule was the second you drove a new car off the lot it lost 20% of it’s value is certainly no longer the case, at least not in the Tesla universe.

My weekend was quite busy as I continue to try to find my way to whatever the new normal is.  When I got home Friday I slapped on my bike pants and headed out for another 10 mile ride.  I like riding the Echelon for sure but I get more of a sense of accomplishment from being outside in the elements dealing with head wind, traffic, while enjoying more visual diversity.  I continued the Friday pizza night tradition, albeit solo.  It wasn’t all bad, the leftover pizza made for an easy lunch on Saturday.

On Saturday I had a long list of things I wanted to get done.  Just weeding the yard took me well over an hour. That is one task I need to find a way to optimize, it just takes too damn long and is too demanding on my lower back.  I then headed out with Elsa for errands.  Two of the stops were Lowe’s and Tractor Supply.  At Tractor Supply I saw this massive CAT toy dump truck that I thought DJ would love so I snap bought it.  At Lowe’s I bought a motion floodlight for the chicken coop and a bunch of black mulch.

The black mulch is one of my initial efforts at better weed control.  Some of the areas Cindy built had this mulch but only a thin layer of it which has decomposed and now has become a weed haven.  I applied a thick layer which should stop weed growth, at least in those areas for awhile.

The flood light was mounted right above the doors to the coop.  When I am out there at 5:45 AM I was relying on the orange light inside the coop for illumination as I cleaned the mats which was inadequate.  This new LED flood throws stadium class lighting onto the area in front of the coop, making early AM clean up sessions much more doable.  Installation of it took a little rigging but that is my specialty. I did opt to forego mowing this week but I replaced that time slot with weed whacking instead which takes nearly the same amount of time.

On Saturday I also made my annual dreaded call to DirecTV to reactivate my Sunday Ticket package.  This has always been a nightmare because I have a non-standard arrangement where I just have the Sunday Ticket.  There have been times were it has taken multiple phone calls over a couple hours to get this done in the past.  This time it only required one phone call and ONLY 40-45 minutes to get it done.  This amount of time was consumed despite me telling the indian help desk rep exactly what needed to be done and that my account should have notes explaining it as well.  I patiently repeated myself until he believed that I could actually just get the Sunday Ticket with nothing else.  It’s funny that I felt good about hanging up after a 45 minute call.

Oh I forgot to mention that when I initially brought up the receiver I was getting a message that it could not detect a satellite signal, which was odd.  When I did a quick signal strength test the numbers looked solid enough but I wanted to ensure that signal was not an issue.  I went out front with my electric chainsaw and cut down a large vertical oak tree branch that was in the middle of the satellite path, I have had to trim this area before.  The branch was longer than I realized and hit the gutter and satellite dish when it crashed to the ground, luckily no damage was done.  I chopped it into smaller, manageable sections but left it in the yard to take care of Sunday, I was too tired to do anything else for the day. My signal strength was mostly in the mid-90s after the arborist work.

I did have a few beers Saturday night.  I don’t want to become a habitual “I drink alone” type of person but it did take some of the edge off after a long day of getting things done.  I made an impossible burger for dinner, watched some TV and played some WoW, what will likely be a reoccurring scene in months to come.

Sunday was less work focused which was good because I was a bit beat up, my lower back was aching from the jump.  After tending to the chickens Elsa and I did our DD run with a quick stop at Walmart.  When I got home I threw the cut up oak branches in the back of the Tacoma and hauled them to the fill pit.  I tended to a few chores around the house until the Eagles game started.  Cindy, Katie and DJ showed up about an hour into the game.  Once DJ was there I was only able to follow the game sporadically.  With the limited opportunities I get to see my little buddy he gets my attention when he is there.

He was very excited by the two new trucks, an orange pick up and the monster CAT truck.  We hung out around the house for a couple hours, moving from room to room.  He has this funny move where he will take my hand and lead me into one of the rooms and then close the door behind us, he just wants us to hang out with no interruptions, it’s very cute. Even though I don’t know that it was designed for it, DJ discovered he could ride the big dump truck around the room.  As always it was fun to have him around but also weird to have everyone leave, with me left to roam the empty house, with Elsa of course by my side.

I watched the end of the Eagles game.  Things went surprisingly well.  The Falcons marched up and down the field their first two possessions but settled for field goals.  It’s hard to believe those were the only points they scored.  The Eagles defense came alive and the offense was surprisingly effective as well, resulting in a dominant 32-6 win.  It was a great way to start the season.  There might actually be some joy in Mudville this year.

After the game I hopped on my V12 for a quick DD run.  It looked like it might rain and I actually was ok with that as a wet road test was one of the things on my to do checklist.  As I came out of DD it started to rain but as I rode towards home the rain stopped, so I did something you would not normally do, rode back to the rain.  The end result was me subjecting the wheel to wet roads enough to be a decent test.

I was so busy on Saturday that I did not see one second of 9/11 coverage.  This year is getting more attention than most since it was the 20 year anniversary of that horrible day.  The fact that two decades have clicked off already seems impossible.  When I think about 9/11 the crushing feeling of loss and sadness is bad enough.  I then think about how in the days and weeks after that the nation felt united in purpose, how magical that felt.  However in retrospect 9/11 also ushered in the era of the most toxic, partisan, and divisive times in american politics of my lifetime, something I never would have believed 20 years ago.  It’s tragic on so many levels.