Archives March 2024

Last night I once again harvested red and romaine lettuce from the garden for my salad. Once again I appreciated being able to do so. I loaded up Elsa for a quick run over to Home Depot to pick up a few items including a second bar LED light, the same one that I used to light the upper ledge in the great room. This time I am hoping to use one to provide some cool ambient lighting in my office. I haven’t quite figured out how I am going to do it quite yet.

I received my new 8TB SSD yesterday and was able to get it installed and running in 15 minutes or less. I now have massive, fast storage that will be helpful in video production.

After dinner I got an urge to do two things, do a random live stream and work on consuming the massive bottle of plum wine I had left over from Dawn’s visit. I found a mount for my phone so I did not have hold it the entire time and sat out on my lanai to chill out. I only expected to stream for maybe an hour or so. Instead it went on for a massive three and a half hours, crazy.

The subjects covered were incredibly diverse. Later in the stream a couple of the NYC EUC guys dropped in, including Micky who I have not talked with in ages. He and I sort of had a falling out a couple years back and lost touch. It was cool to have him in there and I opened the door to him to come down and hang whenever he wanted. It was good. I managed to go through almost 2/3 of the bottle of plum wine myself, a minor miracle.

This weekend will be my first one without company in a couple weeks. I have some loose ideas about what I would like to get done for tasks and fun. We will see how it all comes together.

Last year I swapped the washer and dryer between the two houses. In the process I managed to snap the water line at my old house which turned into a huge fiasco. It was one of the many, many hurdles I dealt with during the move.

My leg that had the procedure done was feeling better yesterday although I still had the full leg compression stocking on. I even went to pickleball although I was only there as an umpire for my buddies. I am planning to play as I always do tomorrow.

Last night I once again tried to get the new pedals attached to my Patton but was unable to do so. These were first run pedals that I was basically a guinea pig for. I discovered one of the areas that was milled out appears to be off in position, preventing the pedals from working as they should, oh well.

I also took another shot at getting my Mten3 tire inflated. I failed at that as well. It appears the tire slime I injected into it to prevent flats has hardened and created a blockage that prevents the air valve from depressing. Unfortunately the fix is going to involve me ripping the thing apart and popping the tire off, should be fun.

I also was in WoW for a bit where I gained another level on one of my characters. After doing so I hopped on the Patton which I reinstalled the stock pedals onto. I did three laps around the adjoining neighborhood to burn up some battery on the wheel. After a firmware update the wheel has this extremely annoying behavior of beeping like a banshee after charging the wheel fully and doing anything beyond gentle braking.

I have been celebrating my tax relief with buying things, as I often do. I grabbed a new helmet for riding which seems like the perfect combination of safety and versatility. It has a chin bar that flips up out of the way to drink coffee, a windshield, flip down visor and more. The best part is it is relatively light, something my Scorpion Exo is not.

I also pulled the trigger on buying an 8TB SSD for my PC. I have an 8TB platter drive that is slow and annoying. I have wanted to upgrade it to a SSD for a couple years. That time has come. I think this will be enough to scratch my impulse buying itch for now.

I got to take a full shower this morning after removing the compression stocking and bandages covering the two insertion points for the catheter. The hole up on my thigh was nasty enough that I applied a conventional bandage over it to allow it to heal more. The puncture on the back of my calf was less severe. To be sensible I am going to skip sand volleyball tonight although it pains me to do so.

Last year I closed on the sale of my new house and had begun the preliminary stages of relocating my existence. What a task that was….

Yesterday I tried to be a good patient, following doctors orders to walk, a lot. I got out and walked the campus at least 5 or 6 times as well as more walking last night. Today the leg feels more normal than yesterday.

After work I got a haircut which felt necessary. The high and tight skin fade normally will have strangers asking me if I am military or law enforcement. Always has, always will.

For dinner last night I harvested some greens from my garden to make a salad. The taste and quality is noticeably better whenever I eat from my garden. I really should do it more often.

Last night I did an impulse buy and picked up a Mten Mini, a tiny EUC that is designed for fun, agile riding in small spaces. It’s so small I can take it with me almost anywhere, maybe even my office….

I also posted a long live stream last night, somewhere around the three hour mark. I had a ton of participation from the audience. No matter how quickly I tried to work through the comments I just couldn’t catch up. It’s a good problem to have.

Trying to take a shower last night was a challenge as I was supposed to keep the leg that was worked on dry. I wrapped it in a trash bag but was only mildly successful at maintaining dryness. I can’t wait to go back to normal.

Last year at this time I was buried in the chaos of preparing to move, packing an entire house by myself while trying to figure out the logistics of how I was going to make it all work. I am very glad to be on the other side of that mountain.

Yesterday I had a Facebook memory from 11 years ago pop up. It was me doing an extended one arm plank, a difficult move. 11 years ago I was still pretty seriously into calisthenics and was in good shape. Seeing this picture made me wonder if I still would be able to pull this move off today, at 56 years old. There was only one way to find out.

I tried to find those same Adidas track pants but I think I may have tossed them out. I did have my blue pair still so that had to do. I put my phone camera on a timer and had at it. The move puts a ton of stress on your shoulder and core. I heard disturbing pops in my lower back as I got into the hold.

It felt like I had the hold in good form but when I checked the picture I was too high. I wound up having to try the hold a number of times before I felt I was close to what I showed 11 years prior. My right shoulder was heavily fatigued by the end of it. I did give myself a little imaginary pat on the back for pulling it off, even today.

Last night I also hoped to install new pedals on my Veteran Patton. These were prototype pedals sent to me by a guy that makes a lot of EUC accessories. The install didn’t go as planned. The pedals had a couple issues that prevented me from getting them on there unfortunately. I might try to see if I can Jerry rig it somehow.

This morning I had my vein ablation process done. The procedure went well. I was sweating profusely at certain points as I could feel things up inside my thigh as the RF device super heated the inside of the defective veins to close them permanently. I then had to flip over so they could close a vein on the back of my leg as well. The good news is this is the worst of the procedures in this process. I now have a compression stocking on my right leg that has to stay there for two days. In addition I need to get out and walk at least 10 minutes every hour to prevent blood clots.

It feels good to have this procedure behind me. There are several more procedures to go but this one was the worst one. I have been and always will be the type of person that likes to get the most challenging or difficult things handled first, not last.

Troy and Jess flew in Thursday morning for their brief Naples visit, they were scheduled to fly back Saturday night. They were here for a work function for Jess. I worked Thursday but left the office early to go pick up Troy at their hotel.

This was the first time Troy had been in Florida in a very, very long time. We were trying to figure out the last time he came to visit and estimated it was damn close to 12 years ago, wow. I took him back to my place to see it, he liked it. Obviously it is a huge change compared to where I lived before.

I was playing volleyball Thursday night so Troy and I made plans for him to drop me off in my truck and he could grab dinner while I played. Play for me went well but I once again volunteered to play doubles all night. Playing doubles subjects my body to additional demands that just are not that easy to deal with nowadays. I played with Andrew, a great player whom I get along with well. Unfortunately he is moving out of the area this week. He also is literally half my age. Despite this he and I managed to win most of our games, including the games when it was us two against teams of three. I was beat up by the time Troy arrived to pick me up.

We went back to my place and promptly fired up a private livestream for the fantasy football league Troy runs. We run a funny tournament that loosely follows the format of the NCAA basketball tournament and had to go over all of the “teams” involved.

After we finished we made plans to meet up with Jess at a bar that was several miles from my house. She had a long day of entertaining people so she was already tired. This was combined with both of them getting up around 3AM to make their flight. We didn’t stay that long before I suggested I drive them back to their hotel so they could get some sleep.

I took Friday off and wound up spending most of the day getting things done around the house. Troy was invited to a couple events with Jess and spent most of the day with her which was fine. When Dawn was at my place she pointed out several oversights in my guest accommodations. Two of them got addressed when I installed a 24 inch towel bar in the guest bathroom as well as a full length mirror on the back of the guest bedroom door.

Friday evening I picked up Troy. I took him to Mercato, one of the “happening” places in Naples. We drank and had dinner at The Pub. It started out mildly crowded and then became packed and very loud once the DJ fired up. It made for some interesting people watching. Jess came out later and met us there. We wound up going somewhere else eventually and stayed until last call. After dropping them off I found myself driving home in the wee hours of the morning.

I had to get Troy and Jess to the airport later Saturday afternoon. I made the suggestion that I pick them up from the hotel and then we could go to the Miromar outlets which is on the way to the airport. Jess likes Lululemon who recently opened an outlet there so I thought she might like to see it. We also decided to grab lunch there. As we were waiting for our food Troy and Jess got a text that their flight was delayed a couple hours. Evidently there were some bad storms covering much of the northeast. Within a half hour a second text came in saying their flight was canceled, oh shit.

This set off a mad scramble of Jess and Troy trying to find alternatives which were slim because a ton of people were in the same boat. They wound up booking a flight for Sunday evening. I told them it was no big deal, they were welcome to stay at my place. Jess felt bad about it but I assured her it was no big deal. I had already freed up my weekend so it was not a big inconvenience to me.

I took them down to Tin City where we had dinner at Riverwalk, a nice establishment on the river that I had been to before with Christine. They both seemed to enjoy the chill experience. We then walked over to the Cabana, the outdoor bar that I frequent regularly on EUC rides. We had more alcohol and people watched for a while.

When we finally got back to my place we found ourselves out on the lanai, drinking left over plum wine from Dawn’s visit. We just hung out there and talked, using that space as I originally hoped it would be utilized for, a great hang location. Before I knew it it was once again early morning and I had a 6:30 alarm set to play pickleball on Sunday. This alarm became my arch enemy when I realized the clock change cut an additional hour from my potential sleep. I had to peel myself out of bed, I was exhausted.

I had a good pickleball session and met Troy and Jess back at the house shortly after they returned from a Dunkin Donuts run. We had no hard plans for the day. Early in the afternoon I took them to Seed to Table, a place they were told about at their hotel. Seed to Table is a grocery store/restaurant/entertainment center that is run by Alfie Oaks who is a Trump cultist, normally grounds for me to avoid an establishment. However the place is unique so I didn’t mind taking Troy and Jess there to bear witness.

They got a good taste immediately as I had to circle the parking lot for 10 minutes just to find a place to park. The place was jam packed, Troy had never seen anything like it. We walked the floor and wound up having lunch upstairs, overlooking the sea of humanity. We all enjoyed our meals. I think it was the first meal I had during their visit that did not include alcohol. I drank a LOT over these 4 days.

I also got a random text from a person that identified themselves as Rose. Normally I would just block this as it was an obvious scam attempt but since Troy and Jess were there it provided some entertainment. Rose told me she was looking for a friend and sent me a picture of herself, a beautiful asian woman.

She asked me about myself. I sent her a fake picture and a fake name, playing her game as all three of us laughed at the interaction. The goal was to figure out the end game of her contact. She was very interested in moving the conversation to Telegram which I played dumb about for a long time before agreeing to message her there. She then revealed her goal, to get me to provide her with information about any cryptocurrency holdings I had. I did a good job wasting as much of her time as I could before I told her I knew she was trying to scam me. Once I revealed that “Rose” became very belligerent, calling me an asshole among other things before I blocked her. It was mildly entertaining, if nothing else. It makes you wonder how many people actually fall for this shit.

Troy and Jess were getting a case of deja vu when they got a text that their flight was delayed an hour in the afternoon. Luckily that delay was the only bad news. I dropped them off at the airport around 7:30 last night. They did not get back to their place in Lancaster until after 3AM, ouch.

It was a welcomed visit for me. Having my friends in my own environment is not something that happens all that often in my world. To have it happen on two consecutive weekends is a solar eclipse sort of thing in terms of rarity. This week has no visitors on the schedule, instead it is the start of my vein procedures to collapse the defective varicose veins in my right leg. I am not looking forward to the procedure but I am looking forward to the end result. One of the drawbacks is it could be a crimp on my normal level of physical activities I jam into a typical week.

Finally, I received some good news on my income taxes. I had scenarios of me having to write a fat check to the IRS because of potential capital gains on my home sale. Instead I am getting a refund which is a huge relief. That potential tax liability has been floating in the back of my mind for the last year or so. The sky has now cleared.

Last night I tended to small odds and ends around the house. I got a stand put together and listed on my 3D store. I had zero inventory so I figured I needed to get something up there. I remember the days when I would have 20 stands made and ready to go. Now I just make them here and there. The stands I now sell are bigger and thicker, taking a lot more time to make. The total print time for one stand is close to 3 days of continuous printing.

I was messing around in Capcut and again found myself in the AI section. I discovered just how easy it is for AI to duplicate your voice. I read a short paragraph into the app and in a matter of seconds it generated an AI version of my voice that was pretty believable. It’s crazy and scary.

Troy and Jess arrive today. Since she is here for a work function we will have to be flexible as far as what the series of events is, which is fine with me. I took tomorrow off to hang with Troy and who knows what the weekend will bring. Regardless it will be good to see them.

Last year at this time I was doing the final walk through prior to the purchase of my new home. What a crazy time that was.

Late morning yesterday I was doing work and I noticed that suddenly noticed on my second screen that I had been forcibly logged out of my Facebook account. At the same time I saw I was logged out of Messenger on my phone. Instantly my thought was something was up. When I tried to log back in it said my password was incorrect. Now my thoughts were that somehow my account was just hacked and taken over, great. I use unique, complex passwords as well as 2FA so although I thought it would be tough for my account to be compromised the symptoms all pointed to it.

My feelings strengthened as all of my attempts to change my password failed as well. It would look like it was working and then just time out or throw a vague error. I was having visions in my head of some hacker running wild in my account, sending out malicious messages to my FB friends and doing whatever else they felt like.

Only after all of these failed attempts did it occur to me to take a look at downdetector.com, a site that will let you know if a site is having widespread issues. When I did this I saw a huge red spike in Facebook down reports. Well at least I knew I was not in the boat alone. When I tried to log back in an hour or two later all was fine once again, crisis averted. I changed my password, just in case.

I spent a good portion of last night editing the swamp ride footage, there was a bunch of it. The final video was on the long side, clocking in at a little more than a half hour. We rode past so many gators it’s crazy. It was a great ride that Dawn enjoyed very much. Check it out yourself.

I didn’t get to bed until close to 11. I have only a brief pause until Troy and Jess roll into town tomorrow. We have not really laid out a solid agenda yet. They are staying at a hotel so I don’t have to go crazy resetting the house for another guest. Jess is here for a work function so her availability is going to be limited.

Last year I was still throwing shit out and came up with the idea of giving a lot of furniture and other items to the new owners to cut down on what I had to move. I wound up giving them thousands of dollars of stuff, and didn’t care.

My friend Dawn was originally scheduled to fly into town late afternoon on Thursday. Due to some plane issues her arrival got bumped back all the way until around 10 PM which was bad for her. For me it meant I had an opportunity to jump in and play with my Thursday night VB group. I wound up playing doubles all night. It was tough on my body. I played pretty well but walked out of there with a slight limp after I bent my knee further than it normally will go on it’s own.

I ran home, took a shower and then rolled back out to the airport to pick up Dawn. She was tired from the long day but still carried the same smile and high energy she normally does. She told me about the trip on the drive home which included her plane in California having to quickly get a fuel pump issue fixed and then her missing her connecting flight in Denver by mere minutes.

When we got to the house she unpacked as we continued to talk about the latest and greatest. I did not go to sleep until close to 1 AM. I left my 6:30 alarm intact for some dumb reason. Dawn was already awake as she is not a big sleeper. She was excited to get out there and start seeing things as she had never been to Florida before. The plan for Friday was to ride in the morning and then take her to the airboats in the Everglades during the afternoon.

The ride was fun and funny. For whatever reason Dawn and I bounce off each other well. I took her around one of the local routes I ride often. The video captures most of the silliness, which there was a lot of.

The airboat ride was fun as well. I took Dawn to Wootens, where I take all visitors. I have not been to the airboats in a number of years as I have had very few out of town guests in that time span. The ride was windy, loud and a little wet, just as I remembered. Dawn seemed to enjoy the experience. Later that night we grabbed dinner before hitting bed late, once again.

On Saturday Dawn had coordinated a ride with a group over on the east coast. We pulled out in the Tacoma with it loaded up with two wheels and all of the associated gear which there was a lot of. I knew a couple of guys involved in the ride as they had driven over to Naples years ago to ride with me. We had a hybrid plan for the day. The group wanted to ride all day and into the night. Because of Elsa that would not work for me so I was going to have to break away early and take a train back to our starting point. We met up with the group which totaled around 13 riders and rolled out.

Riding in the greater Miami area is a different type of experience. Most of the riders carried cameras as well as noise makers to alert drivers. Most traffic control devices were ignored. Evidently euc groups take on funeral procession rules where we would just roll past vehicles until our entire gang was past. Some drivers did take offense to the behavior. There was one really close call but luckily nothing bad happened. I tried to keep myself wedged in the middle of the pack wherever possible so I had bumpers in front and rear.

Late afternoon the group rode with me to a train terminal in Miami so I could get back. The group was filled with good and interesting people. I said my goodbyes and hopped on my train, with my wheel and gear. I received a number of side glances and double takes, as expected. Once I arrived at the Lauderdale station I had to ride another 8 miles to get the parking garage we started at. I was already tired but manged to complete the 1:45 hour drive back across. Dawn and some of the crew rode late into the night. Their ride in total exceeded 100 miles. Thank goodness Dawn was riding my Sherman S which has a big battery.

On Sunday morning Dawn came back across the alley with Wayne who was one of the leaders of the group ride. He was interested in doing the swamp ride. Dawn was extremely excited to try this. Recently the swamp has had flooding issues where you can only go so far reasonably. I was not really sure how this would go. It went long and crazy.

We manged to do the entire loop and saw a total of 78 gators along the way. A new record for me. Repeatedly we encountered gators on the path, some of which required riding right next to as you can see in the picture. Wayne was very freaked out by this at first. Dawn was not, she is rather fearless when it comes to these types of challenges. We did the entire 13 mile loop which takes a long time because you are riding so slow. Dawn LOVED the ride which I was happy about. I need to edit that video tonight.

Sunday night Dawn and I did a nearly 3 hour live stream. It was probably the most funny live stream I ever did, thanks to her. It was yet another late night.

Dawn was flying out Monday afternoon so we took it easy, sleeping in later than the other days and then having a late breakfast on the way to my returning her to the airport. I gave her a big hug and thanked her for coming. It was an action packed but fun visit for sure. Hopefully she comes back again someday to go again.

Monday after returning I had a whirlwind of things to do, including two of the ride videos. I didn’t get to bed until close to 11 and slept like a rock last night. I have another short week ahead as Troy and Jess arrive Thursday. Back to back visitors is something that never happens in my world, normally.