All posts by Duf

As promised I followed up with the Fort Lauderdale Tesla sales/service center yesterday.  I decided instead of leaving another message in the abyss which is the delivery team voicemail box I would instead go for sales, where someone is much more likely to answer the phone.  I did indeed have a woman answer.  I quickly explained my back story and within a few minutes she was able to verify that my registration has finally been switched and I could now put my own plate on the car.  She was also able to email me a copy of the updated registration I can use until my real version arrives.  It felt good to have the issue finally resolved.

Last night Cindy and I went out to dinner for our eight year anniversary.  We went to Brooks Burgers a place we have enjoyed a couple times prior. They have good food and well spaced outdoor seating.  As we exited the Model Y Cindy realized she forgot to bring a mask.  I told her she could wear mine but she didn’t like that option.  Instead I walked into the Pet Supermarket next door and bought a dog themed mask for Cindy, which she liked.

You can tell people are getting more and more dismissive about covid.  Despite it being a weekday evening the restaurant was pretty full.  We had to wait close to a half hour until an outdoor table opened up for us.  We spent the time just enjoying the weather, people watching and me sipping on a Miller Lite.  Once we sat down we discovered Tuesday night was also trivia night.  Although we didn’t participate officially it was fun trying to come up with the answers to the questions anyway.  We both enjoyed our meal and the opportunity to just get out and sort of live life like we used to.

I recently received some stickers I ordered, NSZR which stands for No Skill Zombie Rider.  The term is a mutation of two negative descriptions a rider in NYC came up with for riders in LA.  He described them as having no skill and also zombie riders.  I put those two terms together and have jokingly described myself as a NSZR for awhile.

When I paid the guy on Fiverr to design some emoticons and badges for my YouTube channel membership, the NSZR logo was one of the things that came out of it.  I received a 100 of them in the mail.  Last night Cindy was able to get her vinyl cutter to cut the outline of the sticker on the 4″ x 4″ sheets they come on, for a much cooler and unique look when applied.  I put one of them on my helmet and posted the picture online, telling people that one of these stickers was included with every order.  People must like the design as I woke up to three orders this morning.  It’s a cool logo and I have ideas of using it other ways in the future.

Well despite assurances from Tesla early last week that I would have my updated registration in hand before it expired yesterday, nothing arrived in the mail, meaning technically I am now driving a car with an invalid registration.  I had reached out to the local Naples Tesla sales rep I dealt with when buying my Y on Friday.  He told me if nothing arrived by Monday to call his store and they would get another temp tag overnighted to me to hold me over.  I called yesterday afternoon and of course my guy was off.

I reexplained my situation to the sales guy who answered.  He seemed less motivated to help.  His advice was to call the Fort Lauderdale location where I picked up the car and select the delivery team from the phone menu. I told him my past experience was it is near impossible to get someone to answer the phone there.  He said he would also send a message over the Tesla platform to that group as well about my situation.  The hope was one of the two of us would be successful.  Well the day passed without any further contact from Tesla.  Today is the day I apply full court pressure to anyone and everyone I talk to.  I need it resolved yesterday, literally.

Yesterday I got an unexpected package in the mail from my uncle.  He was cleaning out his old picture collections and found a bunch of old pictures of our family which he included.  Many of them were at my grandparents house but some were not, quite a few I had never seen before.  Going through them was a trip down memory lane.  Seeing pictures of my family from 40-50 years ago feels bizarre.

Of course it was impossible to thumb through these pictures and not feel sadness as well, seeing relatives that are long gone.  The most painful as you would expect was the various pictures of my mom, some of them dating back to her high school photo.  The passage of time is something that sneaks up on you, silently pushing memories into your rear view mirror, not to be thought about again until something like old pictures pulls those moments of time out of the cobwebs and back into focus.

Today is Cindy and my eight year anniversary.  That passage of time thing I just mentioned applies here too.  It seems crazy that we have already been together eight years.  During that time we have had so many memories created, laughs exchanged, and fun had that counting it all would be literally impossible.

The tree we bought/planted is our official anniversary gift to one another but we will do a dinner out tonight or this weekend, whatever works out.

This weekend was gone in a blink of an eye or so it seemed.  Saturday morning I had to come into the office for another conversion.  The work itself only took about an hour but when you add in the round trip closer to three hours was burned up in the task.  When I got home the next few hours included many different chores around the property, culminated by mowing the yard which despite it being only a little shaggy in areas, still takes the better part of two hours.

Saturday night we set aside four full hours to watch the Zak Snyder cut of Justice League.  When I first heard they were re-releasing the movie I was skeptical about just how much they would actually change.  The answer is, a lot.  This version is over an hour and a half longer than what was released in 2017. It almost felt like a brand new movie to me, there was so much stuff that was either totally new or changed.  Despite it’s crazy length both Cindy and I enjoyed it.  They dug much deeper into character stories that were just skimmed over in the original, and I appreciated it.  I’d give the reboot an A, seriously.

I neglected to mention the new guava tree we have in the front yard.  Cindy picked it up Friday morning and we had the same crew that trimmed our trees come and put it in the ground.  Yes I could have planted it myself but I wanted to give the tree the best shot at flourishing so I paid to have them do it.  It went in the spot where the poinciana went that didn’t do well.  Hopefully this becomes a prominent part of the landscape for  years to come.

Sunday I posted three videos.  The first one was me installing my new mudflaps on my Model Y and talking about some of the differences in the Model Y compared to the Model 3 that I was not aware of.  Ironically installing the mudflaps has lead to me buying new mudflaps.  Tesla only sells them for the front of the car which is a bit weird.  A commenter on the video told me of a 3rd party option for all four wheels which only costs few bucks more than what I paid for just the front. So I guess I can make ANOTHER mudflap video in the future.

Later in the afternoon I took my Veteran Sherman to nearby mostly empty side streets to do some high speed runs.  I wanted to see if I could match or eclipse my old top speed record of 42.5 MPH.  The first road I picked for testing was not good for high speed riding.  It had sections of small waves in the asphalt.  These waves actually initiated a high speed wobble that could have been really bad as I was going 30MPH+ when it happened.  Luckily I was able to ride it out without hitting the ground.

After that wobble I decided to try another road, looking for flatter terrain.  I found one about 5 blocks down which felt very flat.  After a few tries I clocked a run with a top speed of 42.9 MPH, a slight increase from my prior best but an increase nonetheless.  I had my Skydio 2 drone up in the air as well as a ground mounted camera so editing it all together took quite awhile.

By the time I was all done most of the evening had gone.  As I sat at my PC later working on some 3D designs I found myself wondering where the last 48 hours had gone.  It had evaporated in a snap.

I have had some new annoying pain out of my left knee which was formally known as my “good knee”, good as it had not been surgically operated on twice before as my right one has.  Any sort of side pressure on the joint is uncomfortable.  I can walk good enough, I’m not even limping.  But sitting, depending on the angle of the knee and laying on my side especially, makes for radiating pain in the joint.  Just like most aches and pains at this point, I assume it is a transient condition which will go away once whatever is loose  and causing irritation in the joint moves around, but until that happens I get to complain about the joys of aging some more.

I just came off a nice 3 day weekend but I will be rolling into a slightly shorter version this time around.  Once again I need to come into the office for a DL conversion project on Saturday.  Luckily there are only two workstations involved this time so if things go smoothly it should not take very long.  Still, it disjoints my normal weekend schedule somewhat but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The county fair is back this year.  Last year it closed after four days as Covid hysteria was spreading like wildfire.  It seems like this year it’s mostly business as usual although they are supposedly taking temperature checks at the gate, having lots of hand sanitizer available and encouraging mask use inside the buildings but not outdoors.  Knowing the typical fair goer I would not expect a lot of masks to be seen.  Without a doubt the “f it” mentality is firmly taking hold regarding diligent covid precautions around here.  Cindy actually said she may be open to going to the fair but we will see, I don’t want to go and have her feel stressed out the entire time.

Cindy had told me that the check engine light had come on in her car a couple days ago.  Our knee jerk thought was maybe it was time to take it to the dealership since it is approaching 50,000 miles.  However I told her I wanted to throw my code reader on the car just to see what is up. So when I turned the car on I saw the check engine light was indeed on and I also saw a brief warning pop up that the windshield wiper fluid was low. Wow it even lets you know that, cool.

I attached my code reader but it locked up before any details of the issue were displayed on screen.  I then thought I would try something, adding washer fluid.  Surely low washer fluid wouldn’t trigger a CEL right?  I only had a small amount of spare fluid left but I poured it all into the reservoir tank of the car.  I got back behind the steering wheel and turned the car back on.  The check engine light was gone, wow.  I laughed as I told Cindy the cause of the warning.  We wouldn’t have been laughing if we had just paid for a dealer service visit just to be told they added washer fluid.  Always check the simple things first.

There was an information leak in the EUC community on Monday where details about an until that point “secret” wheel were released by somebody scraping the FCC website.  If there is one thing I know about being a YouTube creator, being one of the early people to discuss new subjects is a good thing so I wanted to get something out there, pronto.

I did the entire video sitting at my desk, showing details and talking about the information from the leak for around 25 minutes.  When I stopped the recording the program used to capture my screen closed but did not transfer the recording to my video editor like it normally does. As soon as I saw this I was pissed.  I have two versions of the video editing software on my system, a 2019 version and a 2020 version.  The 2019 version actually works better for me so I normally use that.  Well a side effect of having two versions is a screen recording will only automatically go into the 2020 version.  For a few minutes I thought I had totally lost that 25 minutes and I was thinking about the frustrating task of trying to do it all again effectively, as I felt like I did a decent job with what I had just completed.

I searched and searched for the recording and was just about to give up and start over.  I looked in one last spot and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the video file sitting there with a current timestamp, disaster averted.  I processed the video and sent it up to YouTube.  As I had hoped the video is getting a lot of views and has been well received.  Sometimes it’s good to be early.

Yesterday afternoon Katie and DJ hung out for most of the afternoon which was fun. After they left I worked on the one task I had left in my mental list, starting the hobby room purge.  Over the last few years through my hobbies of PEVs and 3D printers I have accumulated of stuff to support the hobby like parts, tools, and accessories.  The problem is most of these have gotten thrown in bins and never touched again.  Yesterday I started to address that, taking down everything on the shelves and going through it.

I wound up with a heavy garbage bag of stuff, most of it perfectly viable stuff that somebody else could probably use.  Unfortunately I don’t have the time or energy to rehome it all so it all got tossed.  The decision making process was pretty simple.  I would look at something and quickly evaluate it.  If I had no use for it or I had a half dozen of them already it went bye bye.  I only really addressed the shelf area, I have stuff below waist level to still work on but that will be another day.

I got word that the spot on my face I had tested at the dermatologist was skin cancer once again, but I already assumed that.  It’s going to be one of those annoying MOH procedures where they cut it out, test the cells on the perimeter and potentially cut you again if they missed some.  I’m not looking forward to it but at this point I have had that done four or five times, it’s getting to be old hat.

I am trying to drop in an entry quickly on my final day of the three day weekend.  My list was long and Cindy was gone at a plant show on Saturday.  I was on the go the entire day trying to make headway on my list items. I did take a break in the morning to grab coffee and give Elsa her first ride in the Model Y.  One of the tasks was to try to fix the weed whacker which did not want to stay running without the choke applied.

I took the card partly apart and blasted the shit out of it with cleaner, also blasting into the fuel intake tubes.  After putting it back together and couldn’t even get the damn thing to start.  I made the easy decison to just curb the old weed whacker and buy another one for $100 which will last me another 3-4 years.  I just didn’t want to spend the time to really rip into the whacker.  As I get older my time becomes more and more valuable so I am less willing to spend it getting annoyed/frustrated if I don’t need to.

I weed whacked the property with new unit without issue.  It was nice to not have to be constantly futzing with the trottle to keep the whacker running.  I also fixed the leaking window in the small shed.  Doing so meant adding some additional framing below the window, shooting in a ton of sealant and then screwing the siding into the new wood.  I then sealed the drip edge as well with some rubberized stuff normally used for roofs.  It doesn’t look beautiful but it should keep water from getting inside.

I grabbed my cordless drill and fixed a few of the pool cage screws that have been missing for a long time.  A couple years ago I had a plan to replace a bunch of the rusted screws with Nylotec screws which last much longer.  In that process I kept snapping the heads off the old screws because they were so destroyed by rust.  I never looked into to handle that situation, until I revisited it this week.  I found a video on the Nylotec site that showed all you do when the old screw breaks is drill the new hole at a slight angle and drive the new screw in.  The sleeve and cap covers the screw head so you can’t even tell it’s set at an angle.  I fixed about a dozen screws that were missing, calling it good enough for now.

On Saturday night Cindy and I watched Coming 2 America the sequel to the original that came out in the 90’s I think.  The sequel has some less than stellar reviews but I wanted to see it regardless.  It was amazing that they were able to get so much of the original cast on board, even James Earl Jones who is 90 years old now.  The movie wasn’t great but entertaining enough for a B- in my book.  The nostalgia factor alone was enough to make it worth watching for me.

Sunday I kept myself busy doing various tasks although my main list was all crossed off by that point.  Because of the time change I felt behind schedule all day long.  During the afternoon I went out for a ride at North Collier Park which was a fun little break.

Sunday night I hosted a three hour live stream that covered dozens of topics.  It was the first time I did a stream in over two and a half months, the longest hiatus in awhile, for no particular reason.

My Monday is halfway gone already.  I do have my target set on the hobby room.  I want to organize and purge the space, it’s in dire need.

As I hoped, the Tesla mobile service visit yesterday went smoothly.  The tech showed up during the first half of the appointment window and was able to get the Homelink hardware installed and the door jamb wiring issue handled in under an hour.  I’m hoping that is the first and last visit I will have from Tesla service for the foreseeable future.

Last night I dove back into some VR, this time trying to get through Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge.  I constantly find myself scrambling for weapons and health in the the game.  I don’t think it’s because the game is horribly difficult, I assume I am just not that good at it.  I also hung in VR Chat for a short period of time, just bearing witness to the insanity that explodes around you.

I decided to give myself another extended 3 day weekend.  It’s nice to be able to do so by just burning up a vacation day as opposed to taking a day off to get reamed and cleaned like last week at this time.  I do have a sizeable list already crafted for myself.  Most of the items require some more than minimal effort like starting to replace more of the rusted pool cage bolts and repairing the area around the window of the small shed that leaks water like mad.  However with three days I should be able to get it handled hopefully.

Cindy is going to a plant show with Katie on Saturday meaning I will be grinding away in solo mode, which is normally my most productive state.

During the last couple months I have seen a sharp decline in the sales on the 3D EUC store.  The slow down is something I haven’t seen in almost 3 years as there has been a relentless climb in activity which in most ways has been a good thing.  I don’t have a definitive explanation but there have definitely been some changes in the hobby.  There are now more alternatives out there for wheel stands.  There are a few other people making/selling 3D printed stands but there are also people that make their own solutions out of wood, metal, PVC and even rail mounted planters.  There are also 3D stand models available for free on the internet which people can print themselves if they have a 3D printer.

There are some distinct differences my stands have to the others, such as their ability to adjust in width to fit basically any wheel and the customization service I offer where I put whatever text a customer wants on the sides of the stands for a minimal upcharge.  In some ways not being that busy does have it’s advantages as well. It means I am buying less consumables, parts and spending less on electricity to power the print farm.  When I did my taxes this year I got a rough idea of my profit margin on the store, it wasn’t very good.  The best I could figure about two thirds of my gross sales are consumed by expenses, without factoring in electricity usage.  Still, the competitive side of me doesn’t like to “lose”, so I have been rolling ideas around in my head to see what I can come up with to get the foot back on the pedal.

One of the unique things about owning a Tesla is their remote service fleet.  If you do not live close to a Tesla service center they will often offer to bring the service to you instead via their fleet of mobile service techs.  I had a remote service call with my Model 3 and it was a pain free experience.  Today I have one for the Model Y.

The guy is supposed to fix the wiring in the rear passenger door jamb as well as install the Homelink garage door opener kit into the car.  The last time I had work done they came to my office to do it.  This time I left the Model Y at home since Cindy is there.  I set the appointment three weeks ago when we got the car but I already got a call this morning letting me know the tech should arrive within the hour.  As long as the work is completed correctly, it will be another gold star in my Tesla ownership experience.