Archives 2026

I thought that I have pretty much dog proofed the main living space through trial and error, the errors being pointed out when Elsa or Mia do/destroy something they shouldn’t. Toilet paper is stowed away, hand towels are placed out of reach and all doors to the bedrooms and office are securely closed. Well yesterday they made me aware that leaving a paper plate that I had Mia’s food on unattended was a chink in my armor.

When I got home I saw small pieces of blue cardboard scattered about both on the floor and on the sofa. It took a few seconds to click as to what it could be. I then realized the paper plate was blue. After consuming whatever food was left on it the plate then became a chew toy which they surely ingested some of. I was annoyed and frustrated but the fault ultimately was my own. Mia’s food now will only be on a normal plate if it’s going to be left unattended. I have two Ring cameras monitoring their activities. When I reviewed the footage I could watch the paper plate carnage transpire in real time.

I saw the massively cringe inducing clip of Trump making a call to the astronauts that had just completed their historic circle around the dark side of the moon. After Trump made some odd rambling statement that was supposed to be complimentary to Canada by name dropping Wayne Gretzky the astronauts just sat there and stared at the screen. They say sat there without speaking on mic for around a minute, it was extremely awkward yet obviously intentional with that intent to let the entire planet know their feelings about the man on the other end of the line. What an embarrassment.

So cringe is one thing, stating a “whole civilization will die tonight” is outright heinous and something that nobody should be excusing/condoning. This is not locker room talk where you joke about sexually molesting women. This is describing genocide. The guy has lost any remaining thin tendrils of connection to reality. The fact that this has been allowed to continue to escalate to this point without somebody stepping in blows my mind. Many adamant Trump supporters have woken up and realized that this is a genuine four alarm fire going on in the White House.

Iran however is not running scared and appears willing to call Trump’s bluff. Doing so backs him into a corner. If he would actually destroy civilian infrastructure he would be committing war crimes at a level that Russia would only hope to aspire to. If he does not follow through he is once again exposed as the loud mouthed, ignorant, insecure, weak, thin skinned paper tiger that he really is. The guy needs to be grabbed by the scruff of his neck and dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming like the tantruming 79 year old child that he is.

Instead of playing pickleball Saturday morning I went on a 15 mile ride on my Veteran Patton while my girlfriend rode the F7 E-bike for the first time. We rode from the house all the way to the beach and back. We went at a slow and steady pace as my girlfriend preferred to ride mostly on sidewalks where as I am accustomed to riding in bike lanes with traffic nearby.

There was a funny incident where we had to go through a tight section that leads to the pedestrian underpass. Evidently the hotel there has had too many issues with people going through that section on bikes and having accidents with either other bikes or possibly pedestrians.

In an effort to curtail this they put two large speed bumps at the entrance and exit to this area along with a sign that tells bikers that they must walk their bikes. I have ridden through this spot for years and never saw this before so it must have occurred recently.

So although I saw the sign, I ignored it. My EUC is maneuverable and has suspension so the speed bumps didn’t provide that much of an obstacle for me. Once I got through I waited for my girlfriend who walked her bike through as indicated. When we got maybe a half mile further toward the beach we were stopped when she told me the one hotel employee was very angry that I just rolled on through. She said he asked her if she was with me, she said she was. He thanked her for walking her bike through the area but that she should tell me to fck off. LOL. I weighed the idea of riding back that way and riding through the obstacle course again to piss off Mr Fck Off but I didn’t. My girlfriend would have not endorsed that idea either.

Should I have gotten off and walked through that spot? Probably. I have had incidents where clueless pedestrians stop abruptly in the twisting tight corners which could definitely cause an accident. Still, going straight to FCK OFF was more than was necessary IMO.

The rest of the ride was very nice. The E-bike seems pretty great for the money. The thing can go over 30 MPH although my girlfriend barely went half that speed. It has a full color display, LED headlights and tail lights, front suspension and evidently gets great range. After doing 15 miles the battery indicator was still showing full. I look forward to doing more tandem rides with her going forward.

My Easter was very mundane. We went to the gym Sunday morning where I did a more condensed version of the HIT circuit. Instead of 400 total reps it’s only 150 and it’s only pull ups and push ups. The goal is to do 50 pull ups and 100 push ups as quick as you can. I opted to do 10 sets of 5 pull ups and 10 push ups. Even though the total rep count is way less I was still sucking major wind with the only difference being I was only doing it for 15 minutes instead of 40. I have a considerable amount of shoulder pain right now so I thought dialing things back a little made sense.

We did an Easter brunch sort of deal at a local place which was the extent of my Easter celebration. It rained most of the afternoon so it curtailed plans we had to take the dogs out for an extended walk. Despite my non-celebration of the day the same cant be said for the hundreds of people that jammed the nearby catholic church. The cars exploded out onto the median and side streets for parking. I don’t recall ever seeing it so full.

It was nice to see a warm and encouraging message from DJT Easter morning. Of course I am kidding. Just when you think the bar has been set in embarrassing, childish, ignorant and blasphemous statements by Big D he goes and surprises you. I never thought I would see the day that a US President would do/say the things this man does. Just imagine the example he is setting for a generation of malleable young minds that see this garbage spewing from what is supposed to be the “leader of the free world”. I keep waiting for enough is enough sort of accountability to finally be administered to this man-child. I don’t know if that will day will ever come or instead we will just have to wait for the grim reaper to do it for us.

Last night after work I tasked myself with putting together the electric bike that showed up a couple days prior. For the past 10 years most personal electric vehicles I have purchased have only had one wheel with the exception being a couple electric skateboards and electric scooters.

The listing for this bike on Amazon stated the bike was 90% assembled. I was skeptical of that but once I opened the box I was a believer. Everything was very well packed and by the time I got all of the protective materials off I only had to put on the front tire, the pedals and a couple other small items. It was a total piece of cake. I will get the hang of how everything works this weekend before letting my girlfriend get on there so I make sure she is safe. It seems like a real nice bike for the money.

This Easter weekend will likely be a non-event around here unless we decide to do some sort of lunch/dinner on Sunday to mark the occasion. Easter in my lifetime has never meant much of anything except a possible meal with family members. I’m fine with it.

Oh Pam Bondi got blown out yesterday. That was fun news. Hopefully Patel is next. Soon Don will be out of sacrificial lambs.

I was locked in to watch the Artemis II launch last night. Cloud cover in our area made the possibility of seeing the smoke trail on the horizon impossible but watching it on TV was fine. The anticipation of the countdown was intense. The way the rocket accelerated off the pad was surprising. It practically leaped into the air at a pace much faster than the SpaceX Starship launches I have seen. They will spend a few days circling the Earth running a number of checks and tests before they hit the gas to accelerate to 27,000 MPH to escape Earth’s orbit and head for the moon. It’s going to be an exciting 10 days. Things have started just about perfectly, let’s hope it ends that way.

This morning as I was getting ready I saw this out my bathroom window. It was so beautiful that I threw on my pants and took a picture out of my garage. The skies in Florida are beautiful both at sunset and sunrise, one of the many reasons I never have regretted moving here.

Yesterday a large box was delivered to my place. In it was an e-bike I bought for my girlfriend. The thought is she will be able to use it to accompany me on some of my EUC rides. I need to put it together yet. From the video I saw it should not be a very difficult task to do so. It will be fun to have her along for the ride once in awhile.

Today Artemis II is scheduled to launch. Setting a launch date of April Fool’s day seems less than well thought out to me. This will be the first time astronauts will have circled the moon since the early 70s which is crazy. The program has been riddled with setbacks, delays and large cost overruns. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2016, yes, 10 years ago. The intent of the program is to establish a lunar base at some point, which again, was supposed to have been well underway at this point.

Much like the original Apollo program, the Artemis program is mostly motivated due to competition with another country. Back then it was the Soviet Union, now, it’s China who is pushing to establish a presence on the moon. There is a lot of pressure for this mission to go well. It’s been a long time since NASA has been in the spotlight. SpaceX has gotten almost all of the attention since the shuttle program was put to rest.

Being a space enthusiast I am very interested in this event however it seems like I am in the minority. In this 6 second attention span society we live in I bet you would be lucky to get 10% of the population that even knows what Artemis is. I think it would be amazing if we had a consistent human inhabited base on the moon. I hope today’s launch is the first step in making that a reality.

Happy April Fool’s day. I heard we were celebrating by having the biggest fool of all embarrass himself and the nation once again by doing a live address where he will explain how bigly we are winning the war. I saw a post on X from a former huge Trump supporter that not only voted for him three times but donated heavily to his campaign. Like many he is finally done with the circus and never ending stream of lies and broken promises. He ended his post by saying “The only ones left supporting him are MAGA always Trumpers who place the man above the policies and our country.” Amen. That is what cult members do, blind, undying obedience. Just ask Jim Jones followers that drank the poison Kool Aid.

I have a long history of working on my vehicles. I documented a lot of my trials and tribulations on my YouTube channel as well. Out of my 10 most viewed videos on the channel seven of them are vehicle related. It’s been a very long time since I have had to do a significant repair on my vehicles. Since I bought my 2016 Tacoma and sold the 99 Tacoma I haven’t really had to fix anything. All I have done is install upgrades and mods and not that many of them. Since I bought my first Tesla in 2019 I haven’t had to fix anything on them either. So when I decided to address my failed backup sensor issue in my Tacoma of course I needed to make a video of it. I sort of dreaded the task though as almost every automotive repair/project I take on turns out being a major PIA. Plus, I just haven’t done it for awhile, maybe I didn’t have the will power/determination to see the project through to the end. From my research I could just throw $500 to a dealer to fix the problem for me.

As I anticipated, things did not go smoothly. The four sensors in the bumper that are used by the system can not be accessed easily. I had to remove the bumper covers to get access. In the process I wound up snapping a number of connectors, luckily I had enough unbroken ones to put everything back together. If you watch the video you will get a good sense of the frustrations I worked through. In the end I got the problem fixed which was somewhat surprising. In total if I include the trim tools I bought for the job I spent less than $100 on the repair along with roughly three hours of my time.

My new (to me) wheel arrived on Friday. Over the weekend I put on some parts that were removed for shipping. The wheel has a few warts like a bent and unusable kick stand, a slightly crooked headlight, a missing charge port cover and a charger that has something rattling around inside. None of these things are huge issues.

The wheel is HUGE. It legitimately seems like half of a motorcycle with it’s massive 100/90 tire. I only got to ride it for a couple minutes just to verify base operation. It feels very stable and planted based on that ride but I need to get a real road test in the books. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my trade.

Elsa’s one dog bed has a small hole in the top of it from either her or Mia digging at the bed with their claws. I bought them a new bed over the weekend. It looks/feels like an oversized marshmallow covered in faux fur. After a brief WTF is this when they first saw the bed they quickly realized how soft and comfortable it is which made me happy.

I skipped doing the HIT training workout on Sunday. Saturday morning I walked between a mile and two on the beach with my girlfriend first thing and then went to play pickleball afterward. That combination left my body feeling all sorts of aches and pains that made submitting it to that intense exercise circuit sound like a very bad idea.

Today my wheel that I traded for is supposed to arrive, the Commander Pro Max. Hopefully it survived the journey from California without incident. I got word that my Aero that I shipped arrived out in California Wednesday in good condition. This wheel has the largest battery and presumably the longest range of any wheel I have ever owned. I will need to put that to the test at some point. It’s fun getting a new wheel without laying out any cash to do so.

Elsa has continued to do well in recent weeks. She has been doing well enough that we now have my girlfriend’s dog staying with her during the day.

Both Mia and Elsa are very fond of one another and both hate being alone so it works out well. I have adjusted my routine so I drive home quickly before my lunch to let them outside briefly and to say hi which they seem to enjoy as well.

Besides needing to wear the diaper, Elsa otherwise has been acting pretty normal. She still drinks a lot of water but that has been the case for a long time. She is consistently eating the FreshPet food which is very high quality and nutritionally complete. She is eating way more than she used to which has her making BMs 2-3 times a day but they are the good, well formed variety. Overall she has seemed happy and content since her flurry of vet activity at the end of January and beginning of February. I am good with that.

I never expected to be changing diapers at 58 years old but it isn’t the huge PIA I initially thought it might be. Elsa being agreeable to wearing diapers has made my intense laundry routine much less so. I am no longer having to strip and wash the bedding on a daily basis. I have left my alarm clock at 6AM however. That extra 30 minutes allows me to get ready in plenty of time and get into work early which is a good thing. Where we are at now is much better than I anticipated a month and a half ago.

I am going to be attempting something I have not had to do in a very long time, an automotive repair on one of my vehicles. Sure I have done maintenance/upgrade items all along on both the Tesla and 2016 Tacoma but I now have something to actually fix. The rear parking sensor system in the Tacoma has been broken for quite awhile. This system consists of four little sonar button looking things that reside in the rear bumper. From my research it is not an uncommon thing to fail.

My “fix” up until this point has been to just disable this system which is controlled by a button on the dash. I bought four non-OEM sensors to install although I may not need all of them. My understanding is these sensors are connected in series so if just one of them goes bad the entire system fails.

The non-OEM sensors have a mixed bag of results. Some people say they worked just fine, others said you should just stick to OEM. The thing is Toyota charges a ridiculous amount for these sensors. I read a dealer quoted somebody $500 to replace the sensors. If things go my way, I’ll do it for 35 bucks.

Last night I got out to see Project Hail Mary, a movie based on a book with a potential end of days scenario. I love both end of days and sci-fi movies so it was a good fit for me. The movie had a strong opening weekend and has received positive reviews and I see why. Outside of a few slow spots I found it entertaining. I never thought they could make an alien that looks like giant rock insect endearing but somehow they pulled it off. I give it an A. What I did not enjoy was the 30 minutes of commercials and previews that Regal forces upon it’s customers. It’s utterly ridiculous.

It felt good to get on the other side of the colonoscopy. When I weighed myself Tuesday night before prep began I weighed 185 pounds. When I weighed myself Thursday morning after a day of just liquids followed by a night of sitting on the toilet I weighed 178 pounds.

On Friday I still felt a little low energy but my girlfriend was off as well so we had a nice day together. Part of that included going to the beach for the first time in 2026 and taking a nice walk. We also went to the beach Saturday night to watch our first sunset of the year. We underestimated just how cool it would be at the beach. We were both quite chilled by the time the sun dropped below the horizon due to a constant high wind.

I played some pickleball Saturday morning. In the first game I got my right index finger smashed by my overly aggressive female partner’s paddle when she went for a ball in the middle that normally would be mine. Once again it was stupid busy and I only got three games in before I called it quits. At least I won all three.

For whatever reason I was printing a variety of 3D models this weekend. I had three of my four printers churning out stuff non-stop. I do tend to print more on the new Snapmaker U1 because it is so efficient compared to my three Bambu printers.

I shipped off my Nosfet Aero on Friday. It’s a weird scenario. I traded my Kingsong F22 Pro for the Nosfet Aero to a dealer in Clearwater last year. In that trade I definitely got the worse end of the deal monetarily. I am doing another trade, this time trading the Aero for a much bigger and faster wheel with a huge battery. As far as worth goes I am ahead on this deal. The Commander Pro Max I am getting when new cost close to double what the Aero does. Hopefully everything is cool with the wheel. There was nothing wrong with the Aero. It’s a great little wheel. I just was not getting much use of it. I have less than 100 miles on the thing.

This will be my first “normal” week in quite awhile. I can deal with normal.

So my on/off and then back on again colonoscopy went down today, my third one. I had my first experience in 2018. In that procedure the doctor removed a somewhat large polyp that was determined to be per-cancerous. Because of that finding I had to get a follow up done only three years later. During that exam only a small benign polyp was removed so my next screening was scheduled 5 years out which at the time seemed like a long time. In reality it arrived here much faster than I realized/wanted. Boy a lot of things have changed during those last 5 years.

The worst part of the first two colonoscopies was choking down the liquid Suprep. Each sip was gag inducing. This time I was able to use pills instead, 24 of them in total to achieve similar results. Even though the pills take awhile to get down since you are supposed to wait two minutes before ingesting each one, it still was much better for me. The countless trips to the toilet are never fun but unavoidable.

I was very tired this morning due to the limited and interrupted sleep I had last night. After getting up at 1AM for round two of the prep I didn’t get back to sleep until maybe 3:30 followed by a 4:45 alarm. My girlfriend took me to the hospital which we arrived at bright and early at 6AM for the 7:30 procedure. This is the first time I had a colonoscopy done in this hospital. My first two were at a specialized surgical center.

Other than getting stuck three different times trying to place the IV everything went smoothly. It was very disorienting waking up in the recovery room after what felt like an instant. To my mind it almost felt like I was teleported from the procedure room, the anesthesia knocked me out that quick. My eyes were blurry and I felt disoriented, so much so that I thought the nurse sitting next to my bed waiting for me to wake up was my girlfriend at first. Once she assured me she wasn’t my girlfriend she told me that the procedure went well and no polyps were present, a great thing. It took maybe 15 minutes until the fog cleared enough that I could get dressed and wheeled out to my girlfriends car. I was still pretty loopy the entire way home.

My task today is to take it easy as much as possible. I am also off tomorrow which is cool. It feels good to be on the other side of yet another colonoscopy with the possibility of not needing to get another for 5 or possibly even 10 years down the road. It feels even better to not have had to pay $1800 to get that outcome.