All posts by Duf

Last night was another late one with my eyes not shutting until about midnight.  After playing some WoW I was going to shower and hit the sack.  Just before I turned off my computer Cindy told me Katie was asking about playing some in VR.  Despite my oncoming sleepiness I told Cindy I would get in and play with her.  Cindy was already in bed so she stayed there, and just put on her Quest headset so she could be in our virtual party while Katie and I played some Beat Saber in which I lost every game but one, which I am accustomed to.  We were just getting ready to do some bowling when DJ woke up so Katie had to jump out.  When I looked at the clock after taking the headset off I realized it was a good thing timing-wise. I am feeling a bit sluggish this morning, hopefully the XL DD coffee can help burn off the fog.

This is Super Bowl weekend.  The pandemic is a pretty solid excuse to not have a Super Bowl party once again.  I don’t know if Cindy will invite anyone over last minute.  I do find the game interesting with Tampa Bay actually getting a home game for the Super Bowl, which to my knowledge has never happened before.  I also find it amazing that Tom Brady has served up the ultimate FU to Bill Belichick and the Patriots, taking the Buccaneers to the Super Bowl while New England failed to even make the playoffs.  I really would be ok with either team winning as I have reasons to be happy either way.

Brady and the Bucs winning would be like writing the perfect ending to an unbelievable career.  If the Chiefs win it’s another feather in the cap of the former Eagle’s coach Andy Reid who despite frustrating me greatly at times, I am happy for any success he has had since leaving the team.

So Alfie Oakes has gained a ton of notoriety in our area over the last couple years.  Until he became exposed as a hardcore Trump cultist, he was best known for building the most extravagant and delayed super market in our area.  His Seed to Table store opened up 4-5 years late but has had good success since it opened it’s doors.  He has done what I feel is the dumbest thing you can do as a business owner, make your politics public.  He started publicly ranting on social media, at times it was almost as if Trump’s hand was jammed up Alfie’s rear end, working his mouth for him.

Alfie also liked to emulate Trump’s litigious ways, suing the county for trying to make him enforce the county mask mandate.  Just like Trump, he has lost these cases, repeatedly.  He has held Trump rallies at his store and even paid to rent a bus to take a load of like minded Trump zealots to the riots in DC on January 6th.  The guy is really a piece of work.

Well all of a sudden yesterday I got a message from one of my friends in PA about Alfie, asking what the hell was his problem?  Somehow his lunacy had gotten national media attention focused on a news person that filmed a walk down the cash register line at the store.  Not a single customer or employee wore a mask and there were none of the basic safety features set up at the store like have become commonplace like spit shields.  It was quite the badge of honor for Naples to be associated with such an individual.

It’s a shining example of people not caring about the big picture.  Their simplistic thinking is if they aren’t worried about getting sick that is where their concern ends.  I find it ironic that many of these people also claim to be religious which teaches some core tenants, like caring for others.  I have several first hand stories of covid nightmares in my personal circle of existence, perhaps that is the only way the “me first” type of individual wakes up.  Taking basic preventative steps is not a big ask until the numbers start going the right direction and show the spread is dying off.  If you are bored just Google “Alfie Oakes” to get an eyeful of the end results of Trumpism when you have more money than compassion.

Regular blog readers will recall the ordeal I went through when I got my colonoscopy 3 years ago.  Between choking down the prep solution, the toilet endurance events and then my actually being sick with something that felt like the flu at the same time, it was sort of a nightmare.  During the exam a pre-cancerous polyp was found and removed.  The doctor said because of that I should have a follow up in three years just to make sure nothing bad takes hold.  I clearly recall thinking at the time he told me that, “good luck with that” as I had absolutely no desire to repeat those events anytime soon.  I recall thinking that I’ll get my next one in 5 years, maybe.

So you can imagine my joy when I got an email this week reminding me that three years has flown by already.  I almost insta-deleted the email, recalling my vow to ignore the 3 year advice.  However after a pause and some adult thinking I reconsidered and scheduled the procedure which will happen in early March.  My thought process involved considering the responsibilities I have and how colon cancer would be an experience far worse than any colonoscopy in the long run.  It won’t be fun for sure but perhaps like most things in life, the second time will be easier than the first.  Another sour part of this is unlike my procedure 3 years ago, which was paid entirely by the county, any follow ups outside of their once a decade preventative maintenance schedule occurs on my dime. (and insurance)

So the coldest air in probably two years blanketed our area this morning.  The coldest reading I saw in the car was 36 degrees.  It was cold enough to deposit frost at various spots around the yard and do things like partially freeze the chickens water.  For many years I used to run a chinese fill drill when cold temps like this rolled in, trying to cover cold sensitive landscape with blankets, buckets, and frost cloth.

I no longer do this, content to let plants that don’t tolerate cold take the hit because despite my covering efforts in the past, they never seemed to really change the outcome much.  This scenario of giving less damns about certain household tasks has been a trend that has been gaining momentum over the last decade or so.

Last night Katie and DJ were over.  We had dinner while we watched a show.  Of course as he is approaching the age of 2, DJ is not going to sit quietly to watch a program.  He had fun making his rounds, eating a little, drinking a little, playing with Elsa, his toys, while visiting all three of us at varying times.  It brings a unique energy when DJ is around so it is always entertaining and enjoyable when they are both over at the house.

I have always been all about space exploration dating back to a young child when I thought being an astronomer would be sort of awesome.  I watched the test flight of SN9 yesterday which ended in a similar fashion to SN8 with a fiery explosion landing, however for what appears a different reason.  Although SpaceX and Elon have not released any preliminary data for the failure, it seemed like the second Raptor engine that was supposed to fire up for landing instead sputtered and flamed out.  With SN8 the official cause was listed as a lack of fuel pressure to the engines.  This time it seemed like the engine just flat out failed.

Even with the back to back failures, thanks to SpaceX’s incredible ability to pump out test Starship prototypes, it won’t be long till they are back at it, pushing the envelope.  You needed no further proof than the fact that SN10 was already on the launch pad a couple hundred yards from SN9.

While the northeast is digging out from a big snowstorm, us Floridians have been dealing with some of the coldest weather in awhile.  There is a good shot that temperatures tonight at our place will dip into the 30’s.  The “thinning of blood” that people use as a way to describe the lack of cold tolerance many Florida residents have is a real thing.  When I first moved to Florida I used to laugh at people that bundled up like eskimos when the high temps only get into the 50’s or 60’s.  Although I still don’t reach for a winter coat and have kept my “no coat worn to work ever” streak alive for going on 21 years, I most definitely am more bothered by cold air than I once was.

The past two nights for some reason I have had awful sleep filled with waking up and long efforts to fall bask asleep.  They also have been punctuated by a lot of dreams, the details of which have been escaping me.  This morning I was so tired I fell back asleep immediately after silencing the alarm, waking up a half hour late.  The end result was no shower, a slammed Pop Tart breakfast, and hauling ass to get out the door.  I still managed to get to the office on time just in a more disheveled manner than normal.

The northeast appears to be buried in a nasty storm today.  I still have distinct memories of the misery associated with snowstorms as an adult.  The grocery store panic, endless shoveling, and driving on ice rink-like roads were part of the reason I yearned to relocate 1200 miles to the south.  The adult snow experience eclipses the wonder, anticipation and excitement I had about snow as a child.  I have had some stinging reminders of what real winter is during some of our winter visits to PA over the years, I am more than fine keeping them at arms length.  All my friends and families in the northeast, I offer you my sincere condolences.

After quickly doing chicken chores Saturday morning I hopped in the car and headed to one of our branches to do support related to a migration of our DL issuance system.  I originally had visions of being out of there in an hour but it wound up taking three hours until I was done.  No problem was show stopping, there was just a lot of testing that needed to be done.

After getting home and eating lunch Cindy, Elsa and I headed out to Home Depot and Rural King to get supplies.  One of the things I bought was a single 16″ patio stone, for my 3D printer room.  You may wonder why in the world would I be using a patio stone in there?  It turns out it is a great way to negate printer vibration noise.  Cindy has complained forever about the noise some of the printers make, much of which is caused by vibration in the printer getting amplified by the bench it sits on.

Last week I saw multiple examples of hobbyist putting their Prusa printers on these patio blocks with small pads under them.  They claimed it did a surprisingly good job of deadening excessive noise.  I was skeptical but it is worth the $3.66 the block cost me to give it a try.  I set the block up under the noisiest of my four Prusa Mk3S printers and was surprised that there was a noticeable difference in decibels.  It was significant enough that I have Cindy tasked with getting me three more blocks this week.

Later in the afternoon I did a task I had been wanting to shoot a video on, ripping open a bent up wheel motor that was sent to me by an EUC buddy from Vegas.  I thought it would be interesting to see how things looked inside of it.  I immediately ran into a roadblock as the bolts that attach the slide frame to the motor were stripping when I tried to turn them out.  Evidently they used red loctite to secure them.  I later found out that I would have had better luck if I heated them up first prior to breaking them loose.

Instead of that I brought in my impact wrench and was able to brute force a few out while hopelessly stripping the rest.  I looked at it as an opportunity to test out my new angle grinder to cut off the stripped bolt heads.  It was the first time I have used the tool since receiving it.  I wore safety glasses but was in my bare feet on my knees so I definitely was not utilizing best safety practices. It did however make for a funny visual.  I got the thing apart eventually.  I have no real use for it now so it will probably wind up going in electronics recycling, although I may try to make clock out of one of the motor covers.

On Saturday night Cindy, Katie and I finally got to do some virtual bowling together with all three of us in the same lane.  It was funny hanging out and hearing Cindy and Katie’s commentary.  The fun was cut short however because Katie’s headset ran out of juice as she forgot to charge it from the last play session.

During the day Saturday Cindy and I also got to check out the brand new DD that opened up less than three miles from our house.  It was clean, small, and BUSY.  When I went Sunday evening for a late coffee the drive thru had 7 or 8 vehicles lined up.  The good news is the staff we interacted with seem personable and nice which is not always the case in our other DD stomping grounds.

On Sunday Cindy and I rode to the DD, her on the Dualtron scooter and me on my Veteran Sherman.  We didn’t get there until a little after 11 and it was PACKED.  I guarded the equipment while Cindy went inside.  She said there were 13 people ahead of her at one point.  Everyone wants to check out the latest and greatest.  It will be nice to have a quick 6 mile round trip to grab coffee when no other errands are required.

After getting back from the ride I went right back out to shoot two more videos since I was already dressed for it. One video was a private thing I shot on request for a rep of one of the EUC companies to go along with Chinese New Year.  The other video was my first response to a response video.  Evidently another EUC YouTuber took offense to some commentary I made during a ride back in November and decided to make a video about it.  Nothing he said was disrespectful but I thought it would be entertaining to address it on video along with a few other talking points.

I wound up my evening with some more hobby room work along with playing some WoW for the first time all weekend. As I was around the property this weekend I kept seeing annoying jobs that need to be attended to, the biggest and most annoying is pressure washing.  It feels like I just pressure washed the pool cage not that long ago but the deck and frame have areas that are very, very green and in need of blasting.  I will force myself to do the job sooner rather than later, despite my intense dislike of the process.

Dipping back into the time machine yesterday motivated me to add some new entries into the random memory list which was already pages long.  It would not surprise me if it was last updated a decade ago.  I copied the existing entries and moved them to a page here on the blog where they can be much more easily maintained. I then added a dozen or two random thoughts that popped into my head.  I’ll try to add more as time allows. The new list is here.

This weekend I need to go to one of our branches for a couple hours Saturday to oversee a migration of the state software used to process driver licenses.  This is a staged statewide conversion which rolls out over the next few months.  My hope is I won’t need to be required to be onsite for all of our roll outs if we get a good handle on things this time around.   The remainder of the weekend will be tight with to do’s.  I have a number of video related things to do as well.  I also soon need to start working on getting my tax information together.

Speaking of taxes, I ran a year end report on the 3D store sales.  I more than doubled the sales of the prior year which is sort of incredible based on how limited my marketing is.  I am hoping things work out ok from a tax perspective.  I have a ton of expenses that get written off in connection to the store and my “content creator” business.  In addition I have been putting some money away during the year to help cover any potential tax liability.  My tax situation is also helped by the fact that I have always claimed zero dependents on my W4 withholding so I have more taxes pulled out up front.  I have never not received a refund since I have been in Florida, this may be my first year that no longer is true.

I don’t have anything present day I chose to talk about right now so let me dive back into childhood and talk about how I managed to remain entertained.  Present day children are conditioned from a very young age to be entertained by screens, an electronic pacifier.  Back in the 70’s the only video content available came in the form of television.  In our house we had one of them and it was a large piece of furniture, nothing that could be utilized on the go.  Plus because our house was situated at the bottom of hill our TV reception was very poor, getting maybe a half dozen channels, if that.

So back then entertainment and distraction was not thrust upon you, you had to come up with your own ways to make each day interesting.  Living on an old farm property gave us many ways to entertain and/or get in trouble.  Climbing trees were a big activity for me.  I would regularly climb 20 feet or higher into trees, without supervision, something that would be seen as borderline child neglect nowadays.  At one point I had the evil idea to throw objects at cars passing on the road while I was way up in one of the dense pine trees.  I vividly recall the fear when a car slammed on it’s brakes and the driver came storming out, looking to see where the debris came from.  I froze like a statue in the tree, afraid to even breathe as it may reveal my location.  Luckily I escaped detection but I never did that stunt again.

Right across that same road there was a creek that was a normal play destination area.  The creek was at the base of a very steep hill so it was not unusual for rocks from the hill to roll into the water below.  There were two main activities I recall as being my mainstays in the creek, building dams out of the rocks and letting my super hero action figures “swim” down the creek.  This was a somewhat risky move as you had to make sure you grabbed the action figure before it got to the more fast moving and deeper water further downstream.  Of course bad behavior also occurred at the creek, highlighted by the time I decided to fill Todd’s shoes with mud, for no good reason at all.

The big old barn was a place of polar opposites.  On the second story was my dad’s junked Alfa that I used to sit in, imagining I was driving countless times.  The second floor also included the old hay stalls that had hay that could have been over a decade old inside of it.  As a kid I gave no thought to what sort of disgusting mess I was jumping into time and again, filling my lungs with large quantities of unknown irritants.  Rodents of course lived in there as well but I don’t recall seeing many. I also painted a rectangle on the outside wall of the barn that I used once I got into baseball, to work on my accuracy as a pitcher.

The first floor of the barn was a different story.  We used to store our bikes in there so I had to go in the side entrance often.  I was convinced there was something evil lurking in the stables.  I rarely would move my eyes upward when I went in there, just grabbing the bike and and getting the hell out.  I was sure if I looked into the distance a pair of red eyes would be looking back at me.  I was really fearful of the space.

Speaking of bikes, I used to go on rides by myself all the time.  The most common destinations were Brightbill’s store in Gouglersville where I bought the overwhelming majority of my baseball card collection from, one pack at a time.  The other spot was Colonial Hills Bowling alley where I spent a small fortune in their arcade over 10 years or so.  I even rode my bike a few times to my cousins house, alone which was a distance of probably close to 10 miles.

Bad/stupid behavior on the bike was a thing as well.  I’ll never forget the one time that I decided I wanted to attempt to make the 90 degree turn into our driveway without applying my brakes at all.  Remember my saying earlier that the house was at the bottom of a long hill.  My attempt went terribly wrong as my high speed caused me to swing wide as I entered the driveway, sending me down the small bank that surrounded the house and straight into a tree.

The five or six acres had plenty of other options, the abandoned rusted farm equipment, the fenced in area that we used as a makeshift baseball field, and the woods up behind the garage that had an infinite amount of items to keep us busy. However probably one of the most often used sections of the property was the small strip of grass between the small storage shed and the barn.  The strip was maybe 125 feet long and was the spot where most of our 1-2 person athletic competitions took place such as wiffleball, field goal kicking, punting, and tackle football.  The amount of games we played in that small section of the property probably numbered into the 1000’s.

Of course we did get screen entertainment as well, especially when my mom bought us a Mattel Intellivision in the early 80’s, which at the time felt like an unreal stroke of good fortune.  Todd and I played that thing to absolute death.

I always look back at my childhood as a constant time of discovery of both the good and bad parts of life. When my parents got divorced I experienced some of the darkest points of my childhood.  I recall wondering how it was to be an adult like my mom and dad and how in the world I would ever find my way to being one myself someday.   It’s surreal to try to reflect on the long and winding path that has gone in many unforeseen directions that have lead me to this moment in time.

What was the point of this entry you ask?  There is none, other than a random brain dump about what once was.

Many years ago I made a web page with random short blurbs about periods of my life.  If you found this throwback interesting, you may like this as well. http://duf.net/shawn/thoughts.htm

Yesterday a batch of 20 EUC Army shirts that I ordered came in.  I had ordered some shirts from another company that I wasn’t all that pleased with.  The company I ordered from this time I have used before and their shirts have lasted and looked good for years.

I had Cindy be my model for the 3D store entry which looked cute.  I am making next to nothing on the sale of the shirts.  Unlike the 3D stands, figuring the profit margin on a shirt is very easy.  Selling each shirt for $14.99 will generate enough revenue for me to buy a cup of coffee. I intentionally set the price of the shirt low because I see it as more of a marketing effort than a profit reaping one.  If the shirts cost less hopefully it is an easier snap decision for someone that in the big picture results in free word of mouth advertising for me. If the interest is there it will be easy enough to expand the clothing line into different styles, colors, and more.

I neglected to mention that once again our local Dunkin Donuts was engaging it’s door locking, drive thru only shenanigans this past weekend.  I decided to do some research and find out who owned the local Dunkin franchises, I knew one person owned a bunch of them.  Through some newspaper articles I found a name which I then found on Facebook.  His profile included a picture of a little girl surrounded by donuts so I was pretty sure I had the right guy.  I sent him a FB message asking if he owned the local Collier franchises and hoped to get a response.  Imagine my surprise when he confirmed he was the guy a little while later.

I gave him the background of the last two weeks with random door locking as their way to deal with light staffing along with the repeated scenes of angry and confused customers since there was no signage indicating what was going on.  I said I just wanted to make him aware of the situation in case he did not know.  Once again I got a response, surprisingly. He said there have always been challenges with staffing during the winter down here but he was not aware that this location was locking it’s door.  He thanked me for letting him know about it.  I don’t know if there will be any impact from my reaching out but hopefully somebody realizes that locking the front door is not the answer to the problem.

Katie, Cindy and I had another late night VR session, this time primarily trying out virtual bowling.  Unfortunately the multiplayer experience in this game is buggy and confusing.  Katie and I did manage to bowl a couple games against each other.  My real life bowling accomplishments didn’t translate that well to virtual bowling, Katie beat me in both games.  Even in defeat it was a fun experience.  At one point Katie and I lost the ability to talk so Katie was saying funny stuff and singing.  All of a sudden she heard someone else in the virtual lane say they could hear her, which was hilarious.

I also was able to get Half Life Alyx working wirelessly which is so much better for the immersion process.  Having a wire trip you up all the time is a bit distracting.  I had all of the tools already in place to make it work, I just had to install a patch for the Virtual Desktop app to complete the loop.  I am currently stuck in some courtyard and have to figure out how to get out.

I had a busy weekend once again.  However despite being in motion for most of the two days I still felt like I wasn’t making much progress.  Friday night I was up late as Cindy, Katie and I were in VR hanging out.  When I say late I mean late, midnight was a few strokes away by the time I closed my eyes.  Saturday after getting the chores handled we headed out for errands.  Once again the door on our fcking Dunkin Donuts was locked as they supposedly did not have enough staff to at least have a single employee handle the counter.  Cindy pounded on the door and waited until they brought our Call Ahead order out.  This policy is absolutely ludicrous. I wish I had a contact number for the local franchise owner to complain.

One of our stops was Rural King.  The visit had the most unmasked retail experience I had seen since the pandemic began.  I would bet at least a third of the people we saw were unmasked. With the typical Rural King clientele this isn’t all that surprising yet most retailers in our area still have a mask required policy, despite the state of Florida itself not having any official covid restrictions now.  Cindy gets more bent out of shape about maskless people than I do.  I just am aware that I am not the mask police and if I tell someone they should wear a mask the odds of it making an actual difference is a few millimeters above zero.

Saturday afternoon I rotated the tires on the Tacoma, probably 10,000 miles later than I should have.  I recently started noticing some feathering on the outside edge of both front tires.  The truck has just over 40,000 miles at this point so the original OEM tires have been holding up well.  I am hoping the rotation will give me another 10-12k of use before I have to seriously consider swapping rubber.

I also did two additional videos on EUC projects.  One was adding spiked pedals to the V11 and the other was adding a yoga block to the seat to see if it made the wheel easier for me to sit on.  The first project went as planned.  The second was an epic fail.

Sunday morning Cindy and I tried to get our morning chores done quickly as we were meeting Katie, Daniel and DJ at the Naples Zoo.  I bet I have not been to the zoo in at least 10 years.  Taking a toddler through a zoo is not the easiest of tasks, the four of us took turns carrying DJ.  Overall he did well, the only issue was when we took the monkey island boat tour, he got a little grumpy for a few minutes when we restrained him from trying to get down on the floor.  It was cool seeing all of the animals but as I expressed on Friday, I do feel guilty seeing the animals confined, despite the zoos commendable efforts to have the animals in very large natural habitats.  Cindy and Katie spent as much time admiring the beautiful landscaping on the zoo grounds as they did looking at animals.

After we were done DJ came home with Cindy and I while Katie and Daniel went for groceries.  We had fun hanging out at the house for awhile.  Babysitting a toddler is no joke, you literally are on constant surveillance duty making sure he stays out of trouble.

Once  Katie came and got DJ I dug into some more tasks.  One of those was installing fire suppression balls around the hobby room.  There have been a number of EUC fires reported in the community lately.  Although none of them are with wheels I own, the potential is always there with lithium ion powered devices.  3D printers are also quite capable fire hazards as well so I thought it couldn’t hurt to at least put some sort of fire mitigation in the room in addition to the fire extinguisher I already have in there.  The balls were not cheap, I spent almost $200 for five of them.

Of course I made a video about it and it did not take long for the comments rolling in about my selection of AFO balls.  Evidently AFO is a chinese knock off of Elide fire suppression balls.  It seems the AFO brand, like many other chinese knock offs doesn’t perform as well as the original.   I thought the AFO product was a bit pricey, the Elide brands is more than double the price.  Having the AFO balls in there is better than nothing but I hope to add some of the Elide devices as well.

As suggested in the title, despite keeping busy most of the weekend it still feels like there is more, much more that needs to be attended to.