Last night I did my first real ride on the Inmotion P6 that I picked up on Sunday for testing. It took very little time for me to feel why this wheel has gotten the amount of accolades that it has. Despite being a very heavy wheel at 112 pounds it feels light on it’s feet once you start moving. It feels like a high end sports car with the best feeling suspension I have ever experienced on an EUC. The video will tell the story. The great thing is I am off work until after Thanksgiving so I will have a lot of opportunities to ride the wheel and get a true sense of what it is about. My only concern is I will love it so much that I will feel compelled to buy one for myself.
I had yet another 3D printer impulse buy yesterday, buying the new Bambu Lab P2S that became available. It is the upgrade to the P1S which I currently own. It has a bunch of improvements over it’s predecessor yet costs the same. My plan is to sell the P1S to offset some of the expense while upgrading my 3D printer farm at the same time.
As I mentioned I am off until the Monday after Thanksgiving. I have no worries about having a multitude of things to keep me busy, entertained and content. I may pop in here a couple times during that hiatus, I may not. If not have a great Thanksgiving!!
Yesterday the last component of my kitchen repurposing arrived, a cabinet to place on the wall under the newly installed TV. This came in a box and required a little less than two hours of assembly. It will add a nice chunk of storage to the kitchen and helps fill that wall under the TV. The TV itself might get upgraded to something bigger if I see a sweet Black Friday deal.
I had the TV on while working on the cabinet last night watching ABC programming via the new antenna I installed in the attic. I even saw some of Dancing With the Stars. I had no idea that show was still on. I think I last tuned in a decade ago. I like this revised version of the large kitchen area. It’s more warm, functional and homey, in my opinion.
I did a very brief ride around the neighborhood on the P6 last night. It was brief because I had no gear on. I quickly zipped above 30 MPH without any effort. The wheel feels like a one wheeled luxury sports car to me.
The weather this weekend was simply great. I took advantage of it Saturday morning getting a pickleball session in that was close to three hours. Despite the long session I could have played again Sunday but chose to not push it physically.
My kitchen has had a lot of unused space in it since I moved in. It’s a space that would normally be used for a small table and chairs. Instead I have had a workmate in the space which has been used for various wheel projects. I never really cared about the odd use of space. Well the space has been rearranged over the weekend.
I now have a small table in that space. There also has been a rearranging of cabinets in the area. I have the free standing pantry and other high cabinet from the old house side by side. The old cabinet was in front of an existing kitchen wall mount tv hook up the old owners utilized. I am now utilizing it as well. It works out well because that is also the coax segment I have the HDTV antenna connected to so I get OTA content as well as all of my streaming options on that set. Things are setting up to be a little different around my household in the upcoming year.
Sunday afternoon I embarked on a three hour drive north. I was offered the opportunity to pick up and test the new ultra-high performance wheel from Inmotion. They had done two days of open testing on the wheel and said I could have it afterward. Even though it’s a long drive it’s an opportunity I felt I should take advantage of.
I didn’t get up there until a little after 6PM. There were still a number of guys hanging out. Some I knew, some I didn’t. I got to meet Albert, someone I have communicated with repeatedly over the years but never met in person. He was the one that reached out to me to see if I wanted to test the wheel. It was cool to meet him in person.
I hung out there for around an hour and a half. They were going to go to dinner but I couldn’t join them since I had to drive all the way home and charge for 45 minutes before doing so. While I was up there I did take the P6 up and down the street a couple times. I immediately fell in love with the suspension. It was the most plush and comfortable I have ever felt in a wheel. I plan to be doing a lot of testing and content on the wheel over the next couple weeks. My head did not hit the pillow until close to midnight.
It was a a great weekend. Based on this sunrise I am hoping this upcoming week follows a similar trajectory.
Oh yea, the Eagles won another defensive struggle against the Lions. I did not see/hear the game but was happy for the outcome. All of a sudden their defense which was rather porous during much of the season suddenly has become a strength of the team instead of weakness.
Last night I had a few simple things to do/fix. I have a small salt lamp in my bedroom. The E12 bulbs it uses burn out stupidly quick. On Amazon I found LED replacements which should last much longer. In addition I addressed the smart switch it was connected to which lost it’s configuration. The end result is the lamp will now work day in and day out as originally intended.
My Bambu Lab A1 had been sitting dormant for awhile. It had an issue feeding filament which I did not dig into until last night. I was able to use my unclogger tool to clear the filament path in the hot end and then printed a speed benchy to verify all was well. Getting these two small wins made the entire night feel better for some reason.
Yesterday there were reports of ICE being active in our area stopping work vans and buses transporting farm workers. The effort resulted in a number of immigrants being detained where they may or may not be offered due process. I think this is ridiculous. Targeting these individuals that are doing jobs that are undesirable, grueling and low paying as deportation priorities makes zero sense. They threaten no one.
You hear these bullshit talking points that these people are costing the country a fortune as they get free health care and other entitlements. All it takes is a 5 second Google search to disprove this lie. Illegal immigrants are not entitled or eligible for federal benefits. The same applies at a state level, for Florida at least. However an illegal immigrant IS providing cheap labor to many industries which benefits all of us with lower cost of goods. In addition everything these people buy is subject to taxes which adds to the coffers as well. The truth is most illegal immigrants have a net positive impact on our society from a financial perspective. If you believe anything other than that you simply aren’t willing to look at actual numbers instead of accepting talking head speaking points as gospel.
Sure, target the bad guys. Nobody wants criminals, drug dealers or other nefarious characters here illegally. We have plenty of legal citizens already to fill those roles. But leave the hard working people that are trying to carve out an existence for themselves or their families alone.
The most significant cold front of the fall rolled through during my long weekend that dropped the lows into the upper 40s in my area. The cool weather felt good but it also meant it was time for me to finally take on a project I was waiting for such temperatures to complete. The area where I have the raised garden had a border that was made out of landscape timbers which were rotting severely. It’s something I had mentally noted as a to do since I moved in and has gotten progressively worse over the last couple years.
The prior owner didn’t install the timbers in a way that kept them all that secure or connected together. I have a decent amount of experience building these type of borders as I made a few at the old house. I utilized my heavy iron post bar to pop out the old border. The old owner also never totally closed off the old border in the back corner for some reason that I did not know until Tuesday. There was a large rock in that corner so instead of removing it he just stopped the border there. Through a combination of the post bar and lifting the heavy rock out atlas stone style I cleared the way to build a complete enclosure.
The project was not hard but was laborious, probably the most work I have done since repairing the fence. Even with the high temperatures in the 60s I still worked up a sweat when it came time to throw 30 bags of mulch into the back of the truck and then unload/spread it around. I pounded two foot rebar into each side and connected each section with metal straps to keep it secure. Wooden borders definitely have a shelf life in Florida. I am hoping my efforts will hold up until I reach retirement age.
I played pickleball twice during my five day weekend, getting out on Monday and again yesterday. The weather has been glorious to do so. Since I started recording a lot of our lunch time games I have picked up on a lot of bad habits I am doing on the court that I am trying to correct, an added benefit.
I took the time to produce a promotional video for Inmotion during my time off to promote the great discounts they are running for Black Friday. I shot tons of footage for what turned out to be a 4 minutes video.
The Eagles played Monday night and I totally forgot to watch/listen to it. They managed to squeak out a 10-7 win against the Packers in Green Bay, a nice accomplishment.
Ever since I dropped Comcast I have been messing around with using an antenna to get over the air network channels. You can get a surprising amount of stations, if you have good signal. I bought two different indoor antennas and had disappointing results. I only pulled a couple channels and the reception was awful. I knew I needed better solution. I came up with an idea, how about mounting it in the attic?
So yesterday I attached the indoor amplified antenna to a roof support in the attic, orienting to face the north where most of the towers are. I then connected the antenna to one of the coax lines which I connected to a tv. To be quite honest I did not think this would work either as I am at least 40 miles from the transmitters. Imagine my surprise when I saw 47 channels pop up when I did a scan, sweet. Now the issue is the coax lines I have identified in the attic are one that goes to the kitchen and my office, neither of which is ideal. My goal is to identify the line that goes to the master bedroom and get the signal pumped in there. I love when a plan comes together.
Yesterday we had another lunch pickleball session and I again used the Swing Vision system to record it. This time I kept score utilizing the integration of my Apple Watch with Swing Vision. After each play I quickly swiped up or down to indicate who won the point. The app then takes that information to create a real time scoreboard in the final footage, it’s great.
This morning I had yet another MOHS skin cancer procedure to remove the small spot at the base of my neck that tested positive for basal cell. Compared to the big and troublesome area I had last cut out on my forehead, this spot was a piece of cake. I don’t even need to come back to get the stitches removed and he said if I wanted I could resume playing pickleball as early as Saturday if I wanted. I was in and out of there in roughly an hour which may be a MOHS speed record for me.
If you have not seen House of Dynamite yet on Netflix and wish to see it (I advise you don’t) you may want to skip this entry. This movie pissed me off and based on a quick online search pissed a lot of other people off. It is based on the premise that there is an incoming nuclear missile that we aren’t quite sure where it launched from. The movie builds suspense leading up to 60 seconds before impact from three different perspectives which are distinct chapters in the film. So finally the third perspective, the one of the president himself is played out you feel like finally the carrot of what is going to happen that has been dangling in front of you the entire movie will be within reach. Instead you hear what sounds like a distant boom and it goes to the credits.
You are left holding a huge bag of unanswered questions which was quickly teamed up with piles of frustration and annoyance that you just spent two hours waiting to see an outcome that was never revealed. I was legitimately angry. There have been a few movies the last couple years that have followed similar scenarios where they tease you the entire time of finding out the truth yet it is never actually revealed. I have no desire to watch movies with subjective/unclear endings. Tell me what happens, idiots.
Last night I did my first live stream in nearly a month. Monday night is not an ideal time to do so but I had a free evening so I figured I should get it in. The stream went over three hours, the longest episode in quite awhile. A very wide amount of topics were covered in that time frame, including answering the question of if I thought I was drifting away from the EUC hobby.
Barely over a year ago I bought a dwarf mulberry tree from Amazon of all places. When it arrived it was basically a twig with a few tiny leaves on it. It reminded me of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, it was sort of pathetic. I bought it shortly after my EUC accident last October where I somehow managed to escape serious injury after falling into three lanes of traffic. So I bought some dirt and a pot and planted this tiny tree with no expectations other than I would do my part to make sure it was watered regularly. Evidently that was all the tree required. Over the past year it has grown exponentially requiring me to transplant it to a bigger pot while the tree became as tall as me.
This weekend the tree took the next step in it’s growth when I removed an unattractive bush in the corner of the yard and planted the dwarf mulberry in it’s place. I repeatedly have thought about the correlation between the changes I have seen in the tree when compared to how my personal life has evolved during that time period. The change in my headspace from where I was last year at this time to present day is nearly as drastic. I hope the tree takes root and flourishes in it’s new spot. I will do my part to give it an opportunity to do so.
This weekend also marked the first time in well over a year where I played pickleball both days of the weekend. The fact that my lower body is resilient enough to allow me to do this again is encouraging. Much like the tree I need to keep doing the right things that allow me to be active like stretching and strengthening on a regular basis to insulate me from the pitfalls of being an old man.
On Friday I used my new Swing Vision set up to record our lunchtime games. The tracking of the game and the automatic cutting of dead space between points is pretty cool. I have to get more familiar with it’s functionality but so far I am a big fan.
On Friday, Halloween night I walked the neighborhood with my girlfriend and the dogs, who were in costumes. Even though we didn’t have kids with us the owners of the homes we passed seemed anxious to hand out candy to us, my girlfriend collected several pieces. On the way back to the house we walked down the other side of the road. We stopped at the last house that had people sitting in front, an older couple. The wife commented on how cute the dogs were. The husband had the candy in a container on his lap. He looked at me in an odd way and didn’t offer me candy but I assumed he would be ok if I grabbed a piece. I was wrong.
As I reached towards to bowl I asked my girlfriend if she would like a Kit Kat. The old man looks at me with a face of disgust and says “candy is for kids!” which caught me off guard. I said oh, sorry in an awkward way as I did not realize I had offended him. As we walked away my girlfriend and I laughed at how it was just my luck that the only person I approached was very strict with his candy guidelines. I thought the scenario was funny enough that I asked Sora to try to recreate it.
Unfortunately I received some pretty shocking news as well over the weekend that my old boss of nearly 15 years had passed away. She was only in her mid 60’s. She had retired in 2014. Since retirement I have not had much contact with her but the news of her passing still carried weight. Unfortunately at my age people that either were or are in your circle of reality are going to drop off with more regularity. She was a good person that came through some real struggles in her life. Rest in peace.
