All posts by Duf

I finally got to test out my new road bike tire I installed on Friday.  When I pulled out the road was dry and the sky did not look overly foreboding.  When I was approaching the halfway turnaround a saw a wall of rain ahead so I thought I would be smart and reverse directions early to avoid it.  My effort was fruitless as the rain had actual slid across my entire route, meaning I rode about four miles in constant rain on the return trip, not the best experience.  The good news is the tire felt fine.

I once again gave myself a hall pass from extensive yard work this weekend, deciding my mid-week mowing was good enough to get me to the following weekend.  I did the weeding and fixed a couple of the solar light strings that were accidentally cut and/or weed whacked months ago.  Elsa and I went on a long errands run which included Tractor Supply, Costco and Walmart.

During the afternoon I decided that I was going to continue the tradition of putting out the Halloween inflatables although a less extensive version.  I only have three things left plus the projector.  Unfortunately I think this will be the last year for the spider, the elements have damaged the material enough that it can’t fully inflate.

I decided to relocate the Grim Reaper to the front of the house instead of in front of the avocado tree.  Doing so gives him a more secure anchor point and also keeps his sizeable footprint out of the lawn for easier mowing logistics.  I would be lying if I didn’t admit I felt a bit mopey and sad as I went through the set up.

In the middle of it Jeremiah stopped down.  I had texted him asking if he wanted to try out the Z10 and the Dualtron scooter, which he had expressed some loose interest in previously.  As expected the Z10 felt very strange to him at first but he soon adapted to the different physics of the wheel and liked it.  He also appreciated the real vehicle capabilities of the Dualtron with it’s stability, high speed and option to sit or stand.  It seems the biggest negative for his wife, who would need to sign off on the idea is the scooter just doesn’t look very cool while riding it.  Compared to an EUC or One Wheel, a scooter definitely finishes last on the visual coolness look, unless you get one of the beast models that cost 4K plus.  I have had the Dualtron listed for sale for over a week with no serious offers yet unfortunately.

I took the V12 for a late afternoon coffee run. I took no recording equipment along, a rarity.  I just cruised along listening to Linkin Park blasting out of the BT speakers in the V12.  I took a detour into the yet to be completed park to see how things were progressing.  I was surprised to see some people already using the soccer fields to practice.  I also saw a few people walking and riding bikes.  It’s going to be so nice when it’s completed.

My Sunday was pretty low key.  I got out for a quick ride on the V12 with the Skydio drone in hand.  I wanted to get some aerial footage of me riding on Oil Well Road.  The flight was filled with glitches as I was trying to just use my phone for control which had a limited range.  I got back to the house about 10 minutes before the kick off of the Eagles game.

The Eagles game went pretty much as I expected with the Chiefs rolling over the Eagles, scoring 42 points.  I don’t think the defense forced KC to punt the entire game.  The Eagles offense moved the ball with Hurts putting up big numbers, the difference was in the red zone where repeatedly the Eagles had to settle for field goals where the Chiefs were scoring touchdowns.  The defense appears to just be bad, giving up over 70 points the last two games, which is not a realization you want to have four games into the season.  Oh well, I’ll keep watching.

I spent most of the rest of my Sunday binge watching a new for me series I discovered on Netflix, Titans.  It is based on the DC comic universe which is normally a negative thing for me as most DC projects pale in comparison to their Marvel equivalent.  This is definitely an exception.  The show is dark and has an edge to it that I haven’t seen before in the DC universe with one of the main characters being Robin, yes Robin, not Batman.  This is not the Robin you are used to.  This is a dark, very angry, and violent Robin.  The mix of characters and story so far has been really good.  Good enough that I got through 8 episodes over the weekend and expect to finish up season 1 soon.  The good news for me is there are two more seasons in the bank.  It reminds me of how I felt when I discovered Ragnarok, also on Netflix.

Overall it was an up and down weekend for me.  The struggles I have come and go.  There isn’t much I can do about it but continue to try to distract and distance until I find my way to more cheerful waters.

Yesterday after work I stopped at my buddies house to move a bed temporarily downstairs for him as his knee has him hobbling on crutches.  He is one of the people I know that has been single for quite awhile and professes to enjoy things being that way.  I have heard that from a number of long term single individuals over the years as well.  However ironically the scenario my buddy has with a knee injury severely limiting his mobility is another thing I think about as well in terms of having a partner to go through life with, especially as you get older.

When you are in a relationship you have each other’s back (hopefully), so of one if you has an issue the other is able to be there to catch and support you through whatever the issue is.  When you are single it is me, myself and I doing that support, although a strong friends network can help fill that gap if you are fortunate.  Walking the tight rope of aging and all of the fun bullshit that accompanies it without a safety net is not a warm and fuzzy feeling.

I have been finding myself getting more and more annoyed with the infrastructure bill that appears ensnared in Congress.  At first the highlights of it sounded all good with investments in transportation, renewable energy, and rebuilding many deteriorating roadways and bridges.  When this was promoted to the the American people by Biden it was going to be paid for primarily by reverting the tax cuts Trump instituted which gave huge corporations a massive windfall allowing them to pocket the overwhelming majority of the tax benefit wile giving the average Joe very little in comparison.  So paying for the infrastructure bill primarily in that manner sounded great.

Well low and behold, when you dig into what the bill is mutating into, there are devious changes that make me sick.  One part of this was a reported potential per mile transportation tax.  This was originally reported as being part of the bill in it’s current state however fact checkers revealed it is only funding a study of a per mile tax and if it would be an effective way to replace the gasoline tax since the future of transportation is definitely not gasoline.  However the idea that they would want to track the amount of miles a person drives and tax it in that manner is still pretty disturbing to me.

The other claim that has not been debunked is the bill including language requiring extensive reporting to the IRS of all transactions in and out of bank accounts of more than $600.  The basis for this was trying to find more sources of taxable income that perhaps is not being accurately reported.  There was a LOT of negative push back on this as again it seems like far too much of a Big Brother approach.  The last thing I saw is they now have moved that number up dramatically from $600 to $10000 which obviously is less oppressive but still annoying.

I guess the bottom line is my annoyance with the bait and switch at play here.  Don’t tell me we are going to revert the insane tax breaks that were given to corporations to foot the bill for something and then quietly infest the bill with all sorts of ways to further tax the mass population. It really is aggravating and furthers my disgust of the federal government in general, regardless if they are wearing red or blue, they are all controlled by the puppet masters above them with the asteroid sized wallets that can pay for any reality they wish to create.

Last night at home I did do a couple of the things I talked about doing Wednesday night.  I played WoW for maybe an hour and then cruised around VR in bed.  One of the highlights was in Oculus Venues listening in on a discussion about the merits of Manny Pacquio, the boxer, running for president of the Philippines.  You can’t really do many of the games lying in bed outside of something like chess or pinball but the social and media apps are still pretty enjoyable.

This weekend I am going to try to keep the chore list tight.  At this point I am thinking I will still put out the outdoor Halloween decorations so myself, Elsa, and motorists driving by can still enjoy them.

I left work a little early so I would have time to grab some food at Trader Joe’s, my favorite place to get frozen, single serving, ready to heat meals. I had not stepped foot in there in years but I was glad to see they still had the most of the mainstays I relied on 9 years ago.

Last night after finishing dinner I had to decide how I wanted to spend the rest of evening.  I was feeling unsettled. I had several options run through my head.  Maybe I could gain another level or two on my WoW characters.  Maybe I could hop in VR to play some games or wander around the social apps. Maybe I should do a live stream.  Maybe I could hop on one of my EUCs  and ride over to the school area to clear my head.  Maybe I could have done a lot of things.

What I wound up doing was watching recorded TV content while thumbing through my phone, feeling sad.  As I tried to quantify exactly how I was feeling, the word that struck me was “hollow”.  Externally I appear more or less intact, the same as has been the norm with maybe a little more of a slower gait.  I have had people not familiar with my situation ask me if everything is ok and of course I snap back with “Yep, all good” because that is what I do, don’t burden others with my problems.

The reality is the lack of a relationship opens up the bark of my tree to reveal the hollow center.  This may be something I can fill in over time but most of my 21 years in Florida has been spent almost exclusively with my wife/partner with very little effort put into building anything else.  Generally speaking, I don’t typically feel sorry for myself very long before my inner drill sergeant chimes in and reminds me to get back on the path forward instead of spinning in circles.

In one of my videos from the weekend I talked about how rough holidays are going to be since this upcoming weekend is normally when I would pull out the Halloween inflateables.  Going through the effort to decorate the home just for myself may be just another exercise to put on an appearance that externally it’s business as usual. The reality is doing this sort of stuff with no one to share the experience/enjoyment with is a real struggle for me mentally.  I’m not sure if time fixes that issue or not.  Most of the single friends I know don’t do much at all for the holidays, maybe that will eventually be my new normal.

This week has been a pleasant surprise weather-wise.  The last two mornings when I have gone out to do the chickens there actually has been a hint of coolness in the air with a temperature right around 70. In addition the last two days have been full sun with no rain, allowing the hated standing water to dry up around the property.  I knew I had to try to get the mowing done last night after work.

I have had it stuck in my head for a long time that if I haul ass I can do the mowing in 90 minutes.  Well that is clearly not the case.  I think the addition of the chicken yard changed that number to no less than two hours.  Trying to mow the grass on a weeknight at the end of September is a tough ask as the sun sets pretty early compared to mid-June.  I knew I would be doing some mowing by headlight, I didn’t realize just how much.

I spent close to 45 minutes mowing with the headlights on.  The new ultra-bright LED floodlights I have on the chicken coop helped with illuminating the last section of the yard but there were plenty of spots where it was headlights only. Some of the spots were inundated for almost two weeks so it was like a jungle.  I got it all done a little after 8PM.

So I came in figuring I had one of those quick and easy single serving microwave meals left as I obviously wasn’t in the mood to do formal meal prep.  I swore out loud when I opened the freezer, dug around and saw I had none left.  My dinner consisted of a PB sandwich, cottage cheese, cookies and chocolate milk, f it.  I will be stopping at Trader Joe’s after work.

The Eagles/Cowboys game was awful, a true shit show.  THIS was more in line of what I expected out of the Eagles this year.  The Cowboys dominated the Eagles in pretty much every facet of the game.  Jalen Hurts looked lost and in the second half of the game seemed to quickly bail out on pass plays after throwing two bad interceptions and instead tried to make plays with his legs.  The defense was horrid, allowing the Cowboys to gash them with the run and pass.  Thankfully I dozed off for a good portion of the second half.  Things don’t get any easier next week with the Kansas City Chiefs rolling into town.  I hope Hurts confidence can rebound because he looked very shaken in the game last night.

I officially have Covid fatigue.  I am sick of hearing about it, arguing about it, and dealing with it.  If anything is clear, it is that there has been serious misinformation spread around regardless of your point of view.  I think mandating vaccination is stupid when we are seeing at capacity football stadiums, concerts, and all sort of other events that will pass around a highly transmissible virus like candy. It is obvious that like it or not, the country has decided that they are done with covid and any attempts to reel that sentiment back in is going to be an awful failure.

At first vaccination was pitched as the covid cure.  Well obviously it’s not, getting vaxxed will hopefully keep you from having a serious covid encounter but you still can get sick.  We have had several vaccinated people at work get covid and thankfully they weren’t crushed by it.  So if you are vaccinated, great, in most cases you have an insurance policy on worst outcome covid reactions.  However if you didn’t get vaccinated, that’s fine, I don’t give a shit.  If you wind up with a bad case of covid I will have a hard time feeling much sympathy for you but if that is a risk you want to take, go ahead.

Initially the sentiment that was pushed that being vaccinated meant not getting covid, meaning less spread/risk to others.  That is clearly not true, I as a vaccinated individual can carry covid that might not be affecting me severely but can be passed to others.  Now you could go down the “everyone should wear a mask” all the time road but we already know that is an established failure.  People “wearing” masks that protect their chin are everywhere.  It is clear that you can not count on people wearing masks reliably or consistently, no matter how much you encourage it. The only way that works is with disruptive things like lockdowns, closings and strict enforcement.  We all know how that went.

So what is my bottom line with all of this?  Self responsibility.  Decide your risk tolerance and if the time comes for you to pay the price for those decisions, so be it.  With everything that has transpired from this mess it seems pretty clear to me that alternative choices could/should have been made in several of the forks in the road.  The insane cash grab by vaccine makers is something that can not be ignored, as well as the efforts to bury less expensive alternatives.

It may be time for some people to think about working on those comorbidities that are taking a lot of covid victims down.  Living a healthier lifestyle pays dividends in many ways. I also think that natural immunity is always a preferable option if either your immune system can hack it or you have effective treatment to knock it down. Requiring people that have confirmed cases of covid to get vaccinated make no sense IMO.

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: