All posts by Duf

Saturday morning I got done with my early chores with the chickens and weeding the property.  I threw two gas cans and the empty chlorine containers in the back of the Tacoma which were to be filled as part of the errands run.  Cindy’s mom had just moved into her new place and Cindy had been searching FB Marketplace for some furniture for her.  She came across a great deal on some furniture that I did not think would last long.  Cindy called the woman and found out she was in Bonita Springs, the direction we were headed.

I suggested to Cindy that we go there now so we can pay for the stuff, grab what fits and then come back for the rest later.  The woman was down with the plan so our destination was rerouted on the fly.  When we entered  the address the location looked to be by the water, interesting.

So as we pulled up we were in front of a large condo building.  It turns out this place is on the third floor, something that didn’t come up during the phone conversation.  So we went up to take a look at the furniture which seemed to be in good shape despite the ridiculously low price.  Cindy was getting something like 8 pieces for 75 dollars, including a sofa, shelf unit, a few tables, chairs and a rolling cart.  The issue was how we were going to get the stuff downstairs.

I said that my preference would be to try to get the biggest pieces out on the first trip so Cindy could come back with the truck herself later to grab the small things.  First out was the sofa, it was the longest piece but relatively light.  To get it into the elevator required us to angle it upward awkwardly but somehow we wedged it in there.  Next I wanted to tackle the shelf unit which was shorter but much taller and heavier. The lady’s significant other helped me with this piece thankfully.  It just barely fit into the elevator.  When I dropped it inside the elevator I did so on top of big toe, causing the nail to cut the skin, seeping blood in a gross manner.  I had not left the house wearing footwear appropriate for moving furniture.

The big piece went in the back of the truck next to the sofa but I had to leave the tailgate down and rely on my ratcheting strap to lock it in place.  We brought down a few of the smaller pieces of furniture and the cushions, wedging them in strategically.  The empty chlorine and gas jugs had to be stuffed into/under furniture as well, it was quite the configuration.  After loading and securing we carefully made our way to Cindy’s mom’s new place, avoiding the interstate, making the trip longer but safer.  Cindy’s mom seemed to like the furniture and could not believe it was that cheap.  I got a quick tour of the new place which seemed nice and easier to take care of.  Cindy’s mom is pushing 80 so smaller is better.

When we got home Cindy prepared a quick lunch.  As we were finishing Deb showed up.  Cindy called and asked her if she wanted to come along to pick up the small items and then hang out that night which she agreed to.  I headed outside for a non-stop taskathon which included weed whacking followed by mowing the few parts of the yard that are actually growing during our dry season drought.  The grand finale involved me grabbing my electric pressure washer.

The corner of the metal roof by the large oak tree was covered in gunk, looking almost black in sections.  I wanted to blast it away to restore a uniform look.  Washing a metal roof is risky business.  Every step you take has to be on one of the exposed screw heads for traction, the bare metal, especially when wet can take on almost an ice-like slipperiness.  Luckily both the electric cord and hose on the pressure washer are long, allowing me to cover a large section without having to move the pump unit.

The pressure wand did a great job of clearing the tree residue off the roof however while I was up there I then targeted the leaves and other shit I saw piled up in the gutters.  Now I had gutter screens installed on part of the roof line but even those had leaves and shit piled on top of them.  As I blasted the gutters it was like a blizzard of organic matter showering on the ground underneath.  Once it all dries some time with the blower will be required to get all the leaves pushed away from the house.

So once I got the leaves blown out I returned to the ground and noticed the outside of the gutters had scuzz growing on them as well so they had to get blasted too.  I concluded with doing a quick blast of the lanai floor near both doors, which gets dirty pretty quickly.  By the time I limped back inside it was 6PM, sheesh.  I had gotten a message from Cindy that her and Deb were returning with Burger Fi for dinner which was nice. In the meantime I took a shower and was laying in our bed, watching curling on tv when they got back, I was beat.

We enjoyed the meal while watching the new documentary about Pink on Amazon, Cindy and Deb are both huge fans.  I like Pink’s music as well but I found the documentary to be really interesting.  Seeing behind the curtain was cool and the way they mixed it with her concert performances was just the right ratio.  It made me appreciate her more as a person and artist, the girls of course loved it.

Sunday morning Cindy and I did the chlorine run and Rural King stop that got bypassed on Saturday. During the Rural King visit Elsa decided she would take a dump in the middle of the store.  Cindy did a mad scramble to contain the shrapnel, it was quite the mess.

I had some cleaning chores I knocked out in the afternoon before I headed out for a quick ride on my 16X to the nearby Dunkin Donuts.  On the way back I stopped to talk about an aspect of my EUC hobby that doesn’t get much attention, the risk for injury.

Last night Cindy powered through the last few episodes of Jupiter’ Legacy on Netflix, a superhero based series that we both really enjoyed.  We started on another Netflix series called Pine Gap which has nothing to do with superheroes but we are finding interesting as well.

Yesterday morning I felt like my symptoms post-vax were improving but then as noon approached I started feeling more “blah” roll back in.  I was at first going to try to go to the gym but reconsidered and ran errands at lunch instead.  That feeling of mild malaise continued for the remainder of the day and I again was in our bed earlier than normal.

When I got home I did immediately tackle the UV bulb replacement.  The replacement for the replacement bulb I bought arrived yesterday.  There was some slight size differences with the base of the bulb which required me to enlarge the mounting hole in the coil cover just a bit.  The sound of me doing so with the drill scared Cindy, I am sure it sounded bad inside the house.  I had some struggles getting the plug from the ballast to seat properly into the connector for the bulb.  I would get the bulb lit and then if I bumped the wire the bulb would go out.  After multiple attempts I finally got it seated properly and the air handler reassembled.  I set a reminder on my calendar to replace the bulb yearly so I can be proactive instead of reactive with this task.

This weekend I have a number of to do’s on my mind.  I’m hoping to be completely free of the Moderna blues by this evening, getting lots done while feeling shitty is a tough ask.

So I received my second Moderna shot yesterday morning around 10:30 AM.  During the day I drank more water than normal and had my Tylenol on call.  The tech that gave me the shot advised that I only take the Tylenol if I start feeling poorly.    Hell I even went to the gym yesterday at lunch.  The soreness in the injection spot had started already but was not severe enough to prevent me from doing a bi/tri routine.

As the afternoon progressed the pain in the arm continued to slowly radiate outward and I could feel a sense of general malaise coming over me.  It was nothing crippling but I definitely did not feel normal.  Last night the feeling of blah increased but I still was able to function more or less normally although I did head back to bed earlier than normal.  I had a difficult time falling asleep, despite feeling tired both mentally and physically.

Overnight was not pleasant.  I felt like I had a fever and had weird spikes of pain in both of my arms. My entire right shoulder felt like I had been shot with a gun. I felt bad enough that I got up at 2AM and finally popped the Tylenol.  When I looked at myself bleary eyed in the mirror my face and body all looked very red and flushed.  I eventually fell back asleep although I don’t think it was very restful as the side effects continued, although dulled by the Tylenol.  I woke up with the alarm feeling severely hung over but functional enough to drag myself into work.  The stories I have heard from others is the side effects, once they start reversing should clear up pretty quickly.  I have conference calls today anyway so it is just as well.

It feels good to have the vaccination behind me.  In two weeks I will be fully vaccinated by all current standards although I feel like I was already pretty much there with one shot in the arm and my likely Covid infection in December of 2019.  Next week our office is lifting the mask mandate for staff and it was already optional for customers so I guess the timing of my second shot works out pretty well.

I have been reading multiple accounts of employers struggling mightily to fulfill open jobs.  It seems like one of the large causes behind this is currently there is a large disincentive to work if you are benefiting from the expanded unemployment benefits.  Not only has the period of time you can collect benefits been extended but the amount you collect has been increased dramatically.  The end result of this is in many people’s cases they can actually make MORE money by not working, which seems insane.  Unfortunately many human beings don’t have a real work ethic and sleep fine at night allowing the government to pay for their existence.  My brain is not wired that way.

When the pandemic started there absolutely was a crushing need for support by the government as businesses closed. Since most Americans live check to check, people were immediately in dire straits.  However at this point, with the majority of the country open or nearing normal operations, if you are still willingly suckling off the governments teet, you just don’t care.  You aren’t building your career, you aren’t saving for your future, you are just doing the short term, easy thing because you care too little to be bothered by big picture scenarios or the long term impact, IMO.

Cindy contacted me late yesterday afternoon to let me know the AC in the house was off again.  On Monday night the system had shut off.  When I went out to check the air handler there was water in the float cut off switch area.  When that happens the system cuts off as a fail safe.  I thought this was weird because part of what I did when I had the air handler open on Saturday to pull out the dead UV light was suck out the drain line from both sides with the shop vac, a normal preventative maintenance step.  To have water in the float area already was a head scratcher but I sucked the water out again and put the float switch back in, after doing so the system started running again normally.

So when Cindy contacted me it was the exact same scenario.  Water had tripped the float switch.  I tried giving her guidance over the phone but she was saying the thermostat display was still blank.  She said Katie’s boyfriend Daniel was home and could come over.  Daniel does HVAC for a living.  I told her that was fine but I would leave early to see if we could tag team the issue.

When I got home Daniel still had everything ripped apart.  He even had the cover to the electronics removed on the compressor outside.  He had swapped out two transformers, saying they felt abnormally warm.  I explained to him the scenario of what I did and how things normally go with this unit, it’s a higher end Trane system which I don’t think he saw a lot of.  He bypassed the float switch from the system temporarily and the thermostat kicked back on.  It seems like the float switch itself may be flaky, which is not a very common failure.  He swapped back all of the transformers he pulled but he did not have a replacement float switch on his truck so he just left it out of the loop temporarily.

The system fired back up and started cooling the house which had crept up to 80 degrees, not bad considering it was 94 degrees outside.  I think the metal roof really does a nice job of reflecting much of the heat. Daniel is getting a replacement float switch today and will put it in later.  I still have some confusion about why water started collecting in the float in the first place.  The drain line seems clear so if this scenario happens again once the float is replaced more thorough investigation is going to be needed.  I am going to have to open the air handler back up again anyway when the correct UV bulb shows up.

Luckily the AC work didn’t run too long.  Cindy and I were still able to get out to the beach last night.  We followed a similar game plan as two weeks ago, grabbing a cheap, quick meal at Tijuana Flats and then headed to Vanderbilt Beach.  Both the restaurant and the beach were less crowded than two weeks ago which was Cinco de Mayo, which made sense.

The water, unlike last time, was almost as smooth as a lake with next to no waves whatsoever.  The water itself was also the most clear that I could recall seeing in a very long time, perhaps related to the lack of wave action.  We could clearly see the bottom.  We mostly just sat and watched the sun drop from the sky, enjoying the sights and sounds around us.  I really like forcing myself to just step out of my weekly routine to enjoy the fruits of living where we do.  It’s good for me. Cindy loves it too.

Today is my second Moderna shot, the shot that has knocked a bunch of people I know on their ass.  I plan to hydrate as much as I can and I have my bottle of extra strength Tylenol on hand as recommended to try to knock down any symptoms I have.  The reaction can be pretty severe according to others, like severe flu.  The bright side is it is normally short lived, 1-2 days at most.  Like most unpleasant things in my life, my desire is to just get this out of the way so I can emerge from the other side, ready to address what comes next. If disaster strikes and you never hear from me again, let me leave you with the life advice I gave to my niece as part of a questionnaire she gave me for a school project.

#19.  What’s your best piece of wisdom you can share?

Don’t take the path of least resistance in life.  The rewarding parts of life come from overcoming obstacles, not avoiding them.

When I quit Planet Fitness early last year it was mostly a joyous event as I have always hated that gym and everything it represented. I left there because the county opened up their own on campus fitness center which was good enough for my needs, except for one thing.  The fitness center had no bench press, no shoulder press, no squat rack, and a general lack of any equipment used for pressing exercises.

Shortly after I started going there I contacted the person in charge of the center and asked if they were planning to add a Smith machine to the facility, a utilitarian piece of equipment that can be used in a variety of ways.  At that time I got a song and dance along with several excuses as to why they didn’t have one.  It was very clear that when this fitness center was laid out, it was done so with females in mind as 2/3 of the available space was allocated to fitness classes and stretching.

However about a month ago, an old leg press machine they had there broke and instead of fixing it they pulled it out to make space for, a new smith machine.  I was thrilled by the news.  The machine showed up Friday which is normally my body weight circuit day.  However I had to get on the Smith and do some bench pressing.

Now I have been bench pressing prior to this, sort of.  With no bench press at this gym I have been forced to awkwardly and painfully roll a barbell onto my chest to do the movement for months.  However that method has limited me to using no more than 135lbs.  With the Smith machine I can once again start moving heavier, body weight plus numbers which is good for me, both physically and mentally.

Yesterday, my normal gym chest day, was spent almost entirely on the Smith machine doing a bench press ladder that topped out at 225lbs before I stepped back down.  It felt great to have a similar feeling to the thousands of benching reps I have put in over the years.  I look forward to getting my pushing strength back to similar levels prior to covid becoming a household name.

When I was working all of those Saturdays at our branch offices I started doing the weeding on Friday evenings.  I didn’t do that this week and found myself annoyed Saturday when I needed to complete the task before going on a coffee run.  We had a big errands list, first hitting Tractor Supply where I got chicken stuff as well as an unexpected purchase of another raised/moveable planting bed for our refurbished garden area.  We then headed over to Lowes where Cindy loaded up on plants for the garden and I grabbed some stuff to relocate/change one of the sprinklers.

After eating lunch I began working on the three main tasks I wanted to accomplish.  First up was the sprinkler work.  I wanted to move one of the sprinklers that was at the old boundary of the garden about 10 feet closer so it was in range of the new boundary.  I also wanted to change out the rotary sprinkler to a stationary pop up sprinkler which gives more concentrated water to the area.  Finally, I added a two foot riser so the water was easily able to clear the higher walls on the new raised beds.

It was a decent amount of labor, carefully digging up the existing sprinkler, removing it, and then attaching a 10 foot section of buried funny pipe which I attached to the new riser/sprinkler.  I fired up the sprinklers in the area to verify we had decent coverage, which we did, before I back filled everything and tamped it down.

I next headed into the garage to work on replacing the failed UV light in the air handler.  I was able to open up the air handler pretty easily and removed the burned out bulb.  I cursed out loud however when I unpacked the replacement bulb I bought on Amazon to find that it was not the right one, despite the description for the item matching up.  So I put everything back together and ordered the correct bulb from another site, as I was not able to find it on Amazon.

My final task was changing the oil and filter on the Husqvarna tractor which just crossed the 50 hours of operation milestone.  The task went fine although I should have taken a different approach when removing the oil filter.  My method resulted in a massive oil spill which could have been avoided.  Other than that, I was able to complete task number three.  I wasn’t thrilled with only hitting .666 on my to do list but you can’t win them all.

Deb came over Saturday night.  I grabbed us some food at Lil Apetito for us to enjoy while we watched Richard Jewel (I’d give it a B).  When the house phone rang during the evening (which we never answer), I noticed the caller id said Lil Apetito.  I checked the voicemail and they were calling to say they had my vaccination card.  Evidently when I paid for the food the card slipped out of my wallet without me noticing.  I felt very fortunate they made the effort to contact me since I get vaccinated the second time this week.  We called back and made arrangements for me to pick it up on Sunday.

Sunday after paying bills I headed out to go ride the abandoned golf course again, this time with my OneWheel XR and KingSong S18.  I wanted to contrast how the S18 felt versus the V11 which I brought there two weeks ago and also contrast the riding experience of an EUC to the OneWheel in that environment.  I had a lot of fun cruising the course which I basically had to myself.

Katie dropped off DJ for us to babysit during the afternoon.  Daniel and her were going to work on erecting the shed they had bought over a year ago.  They recently had a concrete foundation poured for it.  Watching DJ is not an easy task as his short attention/interest span has him constantly on the go, looking to interact with whatever he can get his hands on.  Cindy and I tag teamed it as best as we could.  Later Cindy had the idea of taking DJ with us to go get late day coffee as he likes riding in the Tesla and also car rides often put him to sleep.

We extended the drive after getting the coffee to allow the car to work it’s magic.  DJ did actually fall asleep, so much so that he was snoring at one point.  When we got home Cindy tried to transport him inside without waking him up, unsuccessfully. We took him back to Katie’s place around 6:30.  The kids had gotten the walls of the shed erected. I started helping with a few things and before I knew it I was fully involved in getting the roof installed.  It was probably the ideal outcome because I think Katie would have struggled with some of the things that needed to get done to get the roof in place. When we were done the shed was almost complete with a roof and the doors installed.  All that remained was adding some door hardware, securing the floor to the slab and doing a round of final fastener tightening.  They appreciated the help.

It was dark when we left and we still hadn’t eaten dinner.  Cindy suggested we pick food up at Culvers.  We enjoyed it at home but as soon as I was done eating I hopped on the computer to finish up the long video edit.  I didn’t hit the mattress until almost 11:30.  It worked out to be a fun weekend with a pretty balanced mix of work and non-work activities.

The 2007 Prius has left the building.  Yesterday in a FB Marketplace whirlwind, the car, which I gave to Katie a little over two years ago, was sold.  As soon as Cindy listed the car she was deluged by interest, primarily because of the low ask price of $1200.  With 14 years and over 235,000 miles on the odometer it has now left my circle of existence.

The Prius was the car we bought for Cindy to replace her Miata, which she loved but had a boatload of problems.  When Ali and I bought our 2007 Camry Hybrid we had first looked at a Prius.  I recall at that time I dismissed it as being too small for me to fit, however as I found out later, the Prius actually fits me just fine, in more ways than one.

Cindy used the car as her daily driver until we bought her the Ioniq.  At that point she “sold” the Prius to me and I used it as my daily driver, instead of piling miles on my then new 2016 Tacoma.  When I think about what I have been through with the car, both good and bad, the log book is huge.

Besides reliably performing the mundane task of taking us to and from work daily, the Prius was also a part of one the most memorable western road trips I ever had.  Prior to this, all of our road trips were done in conversion vans which offered lots of space with little mpg.  Surprisingly, doing 5000-6000 miles in the Prius was not nearly as bad as we feared. Spending 25% of the amount of money we usually would spend on gas was a huge pro with the 45-50mpg I could normally pull.

The car took us through the winding and beautiful roads of Yellowstone Park.  It was the vehicle we were driving when I had my infamous drone flight in Yellowstone which resulted in almost a $1000 fine several months later. The car delivered us to Craters of the Moon in Idaho, which lived up to it’s name.  At that park I again flew my drone and this time ran out of battery in the middle of a lava field which resulted in another infamous moment as I searched and searched for it, walking on areas that I was not supposed to be.

It took us to the Great Salt Flats in Utah where I did repeated speed runs which left the undercarriage coated in salt crystals.  Cindy and I had to then track down the closest car wash to blast off the corrosive salt as quickly as possible.

On our way to Vegas on one of the wide open roads with 80MPH speed limit I took the Prius to it’s top speed ever of 101 MPH.  I remember being surprised that the speedometer even had a third digit.

The car also made a visit to White Sands (top picture), where we once again took in the beauty of the park which has sand dunes so white that you could easily mistake it as snow, if you didn’t look at a thermometer.

In addition to the road trips the car was involved with it also has been the target of a lot of maintenance/repair work for me.  A few of my Prius repair videos are some of my most viewed on the channel, with my headlight bulb video crossing 125,000 views.  The car was responsible for what was probably my most involved repair ever when I removed the hybrid battery pack, took the pack apart and replaced two bad cells with refurbished ones.

I had never owned a vehicle that had over 200k on the odometer, the closest I got was my 99 Tacoma that was in the 190’s when I sold it.  The Prius smashed that mark by more than 40,000 miles.  The last two years since I gave the car to Katie things started to go downhill for the old girl.  The red triangle of death would come on pretty regularly but I was always able to clear the error.  The repairs I did to the hybrid pack actually did allow the car to keep plugging along.

The struts on the car were shot and the ABS controller is on it’s way to failing as well, which is another very expensive repair if you pay a mechanic to do it. The tires were marginal and because of lack of driving, the 12V battery was also discharged.  This laundry list of issues is why the car was listed so cheaply.

Despite listing some of the issues in the FB ad the demand for it was sky high.  Katie got full asking price.  She got the paper title for it during the day and completed the transaction in the afternoon.  Just like that, the car is gone.  As you can tell by my walk down nostalgia lane here, I definitely have some sadness with the sale of the car but there is also a sense of relief.  Even though I transferred ownership of the car to Katie, I always felt like I was still responsible for maintaining it.  With the increasing number of issues the car had I have some sense of relief that those problems are no longer  my concern.

This weekend I have three medium level projects to tackle.  I am hoping to have minimal hurdles in accomplishing that goal as mentally, I just am not feeling all that motivated right now.  I officially booked my 2nd Moderna shot for next Wednesday.  With the CDC announcing yesterday that if you are fully vaccinated you basically now have a hall pass, I have a feeling more people will be motivated to get the shot.

On my way home I saw scenes that would make you think a CAT 5 hurricane was bearing down on our area, gas lines.  Repeatedly cars would be backed up into the roadway, participating in the panic buying of fuel, despite repeated assurances that it was not necessary.

The pandemic has brought out this side of human beings repeatedly where you saw people driving away with pickup beds full of toilet paper and hand sanitizer becoming as valuable as gold at one point.   It sadly takes very little to push many individuals into “trample the weak, hurdle the dead” mode where all consideration for others goes out the window and it becomes all about ME.  You may have seen some of the images of people putting gasoline into plastic storage bins and even plastic bags, although I can’t verify those pictures are from this latest panic.

The good news is the ransomware locked down pipeline has started moving again and is expected to be back to normal operation within a few days, hopefully putting an end to the panic mentality.  Of course it is only a matter of time until the next event triggers hysteria among the masses.  Being insulated from at least gas panic’s is one of the many benefits of Tesla ownership.

Recently there was a cyber attack on a company that maintains a pipeline that is responsible for about half of the gas on the east coast.  It was a ransomware attack which are the most damaging, encrypting whatever data it has access to, making it unusable.  Evidently this company has some PC’s controlling pipeline operations that got locked down as a result, disrupting everything.  So when this was announced the news advised people that there was no need to panic and that gas supplies remained normal.  Of course what do human beings do when they are told to not panic, they panic.

Motorists have been flooding gas stations due to lemming mentality, worried that they will not be able to get it, despite assurances that any shortage would be short lived and minor.  Instead, because of the gas hoarding an actual shortage is now a real thing in parts of the state.  Of course in situations like this it is hard to not gloat just a little bit that I am untethered from being a slave to gas pumps with my Model Y.  It is nice to be able to drive right past the rat nest of cars lined up at pumps.  Lemming mentality is a powerful force.  These type of incidents reveal just how fragile our infrastructure really is.  It takes only a small ripple to quickly amplify to a tsunami once public panic sets in.

The state had to enact an emergency order to prevent price gouging, just like they do in hurricane situations.  The Russsian hacker that has been identified as the likely source of the ransomware attack must be rolling on the floor laughing at just how easily he can break the chain.   Expect these sort of incidents to only become more and more frequent over time, just like data breaches/leaks.  Remember when companies were blasted across the news when they had a leak of personal user data?  Not anymore, it is so commonplace it hardly gets a sentence in the media.

It’s funny how as the years and then decades pass how a persons sense of normal evolves.  The aches, pains, and ailments I have every single day, some of which probably would have had me seeking medical assistance as a younger man are now just accepted as part of the deal.  Shit hurts.  It hurt yesterday, it hurts today and will hurt even more tomorrow.  You can either deal with it and move forward or become stagnated, focusing on things you can’t really change anyway.  Typically I will take the former approach.  My right eye is the latest body part that is not feeling up to snuff.  A few drops of Visine and I’ll call it good to go.

Yesterday Cindy booked our hotel for a quick road trip we’re are going to take next month to the Space Center.  It will be a fun little trip in the Model Y, it’s first longish distance journey.  I really have been missing the 10-14 day road trips that Cindy and I did the first several years of our relationship.  There have been a number of circumstances that have made us take a “maybe next year” stance to an interstate trip.  The last time we did it was the the northeastern summer road trip which had some fun moments but was soured by absolutely oppressive traffic along the way. That was four years ago.

I am hoping this small trip will be the launch pad for something more meaty.  Some of the most memorable moments of my adult life have occurred on these road trips.  Sure house chores and projects need to get done but they sure aren’t what you daydream about when you allow your mind to wander.