Archives July 2025

Last night when I left my house to go play volleyball it was raining steadily at my house. Luckily at the courts which are maybe 8 miles away it only rained briefly before stopping. I had an odd night. I personally played some of the best volleyball I can remember in a very long time. I was pretty consistent in all aspects of the game. Despite this my team was 1-5, there was some inconsistency elsewhere, let’s just leave it at that. Even though losing never makes me happy I was pleased with my play and most importantly that I again walked across the parking lot to my truck without a limp although I can definitely feel some soreness and pain this morning.

Recently Amazon released the AI upgrade for their Alexa smart home assistants. I was one of the very early adopters of the tech when it first came out around a decade ago. It has always been “smart” but nothing like the AI you see today. Well that has changed. The voice is now like modern AI and the interactions are as well. You are no longer required to say Alexa prior to every inquiry or command. Instead you say it once to get it’s attention and then it will continue to listen to you for a short period of time where you can ask it anything in a much more natural way as you can with ChatGPT or Grok. I am digging the upgrade although I am sure that some people will be wary of letting AI into their home in this manner.

I took Monday off so I have my second extended weekend in a row. I have a number of things on my want to do list. It seems my hobby room/office and my desire to get it more cleaned up and organized is an eternal list item. I make some progress but then I start a project that makes it a mess again.

I am in the middle of a big 3D printing project of a shelf which will allow me to stack two AMS units on top of one of my printers, allowing me to access 8 rolls of filament at once. However this print job is taking forever. I have already gone through two full rolls of expensive PETG-CF filament and I am still not done. I would LOVE to get that shelf built and the AMS stack complete. Right now I have piles of parts I have already printed for the project scattered about the room.

Last night I saw F1 the new Brad Pitt movie about Formula 1 racing. Like Tom Cruise it is a rarity that I see a Brad Pitt movie I don’t enjoy. F1 felt like a throwback where everything wasn’t CGI generated although I am sure there was still plenty in there. Even if you aren’t a racing fan I think you would enjoy the movie, a lot. Brad, who is now 60 years old I believe gives me an example to shoot for where you can be still be viable, active and fit well past the half century mark. I’d give the movie an A-

When I arrived home last night there was quite to commotion with trucks and heavy equipment gathered around the entrance to my development. On my way back from walking Elsa I asked one of the men working what was up.

For the last couple weeks there have been some utility contractors laying conduit for fiber optic cable. They pissed some people off as they spray painted yards, the street and planted flags indicating underground utility locations without any prior notice/permission. My neighbor across the street was really pissed because the drilling machine was on his pavers and spilled oil on them during the process. I saw the 84 year old man out there trying to scrub the oil off for quite awhile over the weekend. Well this mess at the entrance was due to them as well.

Evidently the underground drilling machine they use broke a sewer pipe near the entrance. Luckily it only affected one house in the neighborhood as far as the sewer connection but it still required a ton of work to address. I am sure the contractors responsible will have a huge bill from the county coming their way.

In theory having fiber in our neighborhood should be a good thing, it’s just a matter of how much speed it provides and at what cost. If the numbers are good I could see myself dumping Xfinity. It costs me over $220 a month for their service which is ridiculous IMO.

I have been hooked into a YouTube channel called Cart Narcs for a week or two. The premise is simple, a guy politely gets in the face of people that do not return their shopping carts to the collection points in parking lots. If they ignore his request to put the carts back he drops a magnet sign on their vehicle indicating they are a “lazy bones”. The reactions he gets from people he confronts range from good natured to violent.

My first job ever was a stock man at K-mart in the 80’s. One of my tasks was collecting shopping carts. Ever since then I had a strong dislike for individuals that were too lazy to walk a cart to the corral. Hell I have a strong dislike for lazy people in general now that I think of it. I recall that mostly miserable job at K-mart paid a whopping $2.75 an hour.

The other day as I was driving my Tesla Model Y Performance I had a random realization come into my head. When I bought this car last year I thought upgrading to the performance model of the car was something I wanted. With 0-60 times of 3.5 seconds the car is a true rocket, faster than most conventional performance or muscle cars. My rationale was I could get this performance while maintaining my payment because of the 1.99% financing I got on the car. The reality is I hardly ever utilize that performance I paid more for.

Every Tesla is relatively fast already. Sure the performance version adds some other things like cooler, bigger wheels, better brakes and a rear spoiler but the visual change is not dramatic. In retrospect I think I would have been better served if I held off until the Model Y refresh came out which adds features that matter more to me than leaving cars in the dust during stop light to stop light drag races that I never really have. It’s just another example of how my priorities have shifted and mutated over the years.

Here is the first of several videos I will be making regarding the V12S

My three day weekend passed quickly as always. My 4th of July was pretty calm. I stayed home with Elsa, giving her a couple hemp calming treats to get through the night of fireworks, her worst nightmare. She spent most of the evening in the guest bathroom. I left the loud vent fan on the entire time to help block out some noise.

On Saturday I finally got around to refreshing the mulch in the landscaped area, something I originally wanted to do over the winter when temperatures are 15 degrees lower and the humidity isn’t oppressive. Luckily this house has a lot less areas that need mulch than my old property so it was done in around an hour. I spent time out on the new V12S wheel for a nice 20 mile ride. I also shot a bunch of content around it, something I haven’t done a whole lot of lately.

There are lots of blanks I could fill in about the weekend but my mind is not in the thought sharing mode today for some reason.

Last night I got out to see the latest Jurassic Park movie, a franchise they have stretched across three decades at this point. Unlike some of the previous films they didn’t lean into the past pulling in characters from years ago. I think this cast stood well on it’s own, I really enjoyed the movie, enough to give it an A-. If you are a dinosaur fan you will want to see it.

With July 4th falling on a Friday this year it translates into a long weekend. As is usual my 4th will involve trying to minimize the amount of terror for Elsa from the fireworks through a combination of CBD calming treats and a lot of background noise in the house. The rest of my weekend will likely involve a combination of work and play, hopefully keeping the ratios at acceptable levels.

Pardon the abrupt segway but I have come to realize that I am far, far better off focusing on things that I can directly influence or control than spend large amounts of energy on situations that I can’t. Banging your head against brick walls is not good for your physical or mental health. I certainly have done my fair share. Everyone is responsible for the reality that they create/accept for themselves. If you don’t like it, change it. No one is coming to save you.

As I have referred to previously my time as an HOA board member has been more eventful than I thought it would be. The HOA has existed for over 30 years and has always been run in a casual fashion because all of the people that lived there more or less got along and nobody was unreasonable. Well that reality has shifted in the past few months and in order to be proactive we are looking to make changes that will make our tasks as board members much simpler yet make the HOA itself much more formal and organized. Of course you never get something for nothing so there will be an increase in our annual fees which is nominal. Our HOA fees are very, very low so although residents will never be happy about paying more, in the big picture it’s still a fraction of what most associations charge. I’m all for it as this change will insulate all board members moving forward and allow us to let any squeaking wheels get greased without it causing major headaches. In the big picture I think this will wind up being a great thing, ironic it has been set in motion by a not so great thing.

I have still been printing up a storm in my newly rearranged office with mini print farm. I bought a second air cleaner to put in the office as some of the stuff that is a byproduct of the printing process can be bad for you. Almost all of my printing is done in PLA which is not bad but I have been printing a project in PETG-CF and I can definitely feel there is stuff in the air after those prints.