All posts by Duf

Last night playing sand volleyball I injured my right knee. We were the only three person team after one of our players pulled a muscle in his leg. About halfway through the night was when I hurt myself. It’s too bad because I was playing pretty well prior to hurting myself. I struggled but made it through the rest of the night, limping to my Tacoma afterward.

When I went home I iced my knee and took a couple Advil. When I woke up this morning it still hurt but not in a way that makes me feel like I did something really serious. Plus the knee was not all blown up and swollen which is another good thing. I’m hoping it’s just one of those situations were something in my meniscus was floating around and got pinched in a bad way. I have had that happen many, many times over the years and normally I am better pretty quick.

This weekend I am supposed to go to the gun range with my buddy once again. It will give me a chance to shoot my Dagger 19 for the first time, a Glock 19 knock off. It should be a fun time. I am hoping my buddy Juan is going to join us as well.

I have a number of loose ends of projects hanging out there that I would like to get buttoned up. My hobby room/office has been in mild disarray for close to three weeks while I try to get the rack printed to stack my two AMS units. Once that is completed things will be much better in there although I do need to do a thorough sweep in the room to discard things I no longer need.

Speaking of things I no longer need, I neglected to mention that I sold my Mten3 earlier this week. This was the oldest wheel I had in my collection. The Mten3 is unique as it is extremely small yet has decent power. It’s small size allowed me to do things I am not comfortable doing on other wheels. I used to have a lot of fun on it. However the reality is I have not ridden the wheel hardly at all in the last four to five years.

I wasn’t actually actively trying to sell it. A guy that I have sold other wheels to and a 3D printer just reached out to me and said he was looking for one and he knew I had one so he asked if I wanted to sell it. After a very quick internal discussion I said sure why not. There is no reason for me to keep it around if I am not getting solid use of the wheel. In the past I would have held onto the wheel for sentimental reasons. I am much less sentimental than I once was.

Looks like Big Don has a rather large mess on his hands. Grab your popcorn.

I cut my fast from 36 hours to 24, eating last night. It wasn’t a very fun day, especially playing pickleball in the hot July sun with no fuel in the tank. I felt bad about not hitting the original target but it sure felt good when I got some food back in my stomach. Over the 24 hour period I lost between four and five pounds. I’m looking to maintain that loss through some changes in what I am putting into that hole in my head.

Today I am doing my third fast. I had dinner last night around 7:30 and I won’t eat again until around 7 tomorrow morning so the fast will be around 36 hours as opposed to the 48 hours I did last time. I will be drinking black coffee periodically throughout the day to keep my hunger issues down but I really dislike black coffee. I’m normally a cream and sugar guy. I was 188 pounds last night before my shower. It will be interesting to see where I am at tomorrow morning. Fasting is one of those things that isn’t fun but the benefit outweighs the discomfort IMO. I am planning to play pickleball at lunch while fasting, something I have never attempted before.

Another thing I have been going without for roughly a week is unisom. Ever since early 2023 I have relied on unisom more often than not to knock me out to sleep. It originally started because of issues in my personal life that were cluttering my mind. I would wake up and then not be able to turn my brain off to fall back asleep. Unisom deadened that response so I stuck with it as getting sleep, even drug assisted sleep is important. The downside was getting out of bed is difficult and when you do it still leaves you in a groggy haze for a period of time.

So anyway my sleep has not been bad going all natural. If I wake up during the night I have been able to fall back asleep. I don’t do it as quickly as I do while taking unisom but because my mind is more at peace now I can resume sleep without the major struggle I once had. I am hoping to continue sleeping without aid for as much as I can.

Last night I worked on assembling the AMS rack that I have been printing for close to two weeks. It is a ton of parts. The design of this model is pretty amazing, it is held together mostly by “bow ties” that are hammered in between the various sections. I have a bit more to go but I am in the home stretch. This is one of the biggest 3D printing projects I have ever done.

I was messaging with my buddy Jeremy last night a bit and I mentioned how I was loading up on protein prior to the fast as you are supposed to do. I told him I was doing so via eating a rather big piece of steak that my girlfriend prepared for me. This news shocked him because the last time he knew I was an active pescatarian (seafood only) which had been the case since sometime in 2014. It made me realize that I never actually talked about this shift publicly.

I started to introduce other types of meat back into my diet last summer. I think having more balance in my diet has helped me somewhat with my overall health and wellness. Do I have some conflict about doing so, sure. The entire reason I went pescatarian was because I love animals and I hate that they have to suffer to be a food source for human beings. However my diet change is kind of connected with other changes in my life like how I stopped caring about politics as much since it is all basically corrupted and I can do nothing about it personally. I realize that my dietary choices will not stop/affect the overall consumption of animals so I made the decision to eat more “normally”.

It’s sad in a way and feels like in some aspects of my existence I have sort of shoulder shrugged and given up. Over the past couple years I have made a conscious decision to focus my energy on things that directly impact my quality of life and abandon things I have no ability to change. Is it advice I would give to others? I think everyone needs to make their own decisions on how they wish to spend their energy, focus, and time. Just know it’s a limited resource so it should be spent wisely.

Sunday was my 5th consecutive day of doing athletic competition with four of them being pickleball with sand volleyball wedged in the middle. I have not asked my body to do that much in a very long time, probably dating back to 2023. It held up ok. My last two games of pickleball I played on Sunday were my most challenging of the 5 days. I played doubles with three guys, two of which were significantly better than me. I had to adjust my strategy quickly as things I could get away with playing lesser players were quickly exploited by the higher level competition. We lost the first game by two points but then won the second which felt like a nice little feather in my cap. Playing people better than you is how you improve the most, IMO.

If that wasn’t enough, on day six which was yesterday, I did a 5K walk on the beach. Walking the uneven surface is a challenge as well as being chill at the same time. The second half of the walk was into a constant gusting wind which made it even more of a workout. I do not believe I have ever walked three plus miles on the beach, ever.

Sunday evening I did my range test on the Inmotion V12S, not getting started until nearly 6:30PM which is highly unusual for me. It had the benefit of lower temperatures. It also had the side effect of finishing the 36 mile ride in darkness. The wheel performed well during the test.

IN the middle of the test I rode by a fenced in area with a black goat near the fence line. He was kneeling on his front legs as he was eating grass, it looked cute. I started to talk to him as he walked over. He started rubbing himself against a bristle brush the owner had attached to the fence post which was even cuter. He then stops and I see his penis start to emerge, it is almost completely parallel to the ground. Suddenly he starts to urinate. The stream is strong, strong enough to reach his mouth. The goat starts drinking his urine like he was at a water fountain. I was shocked at the abrupt change in tone from the goat being cute to disgusting in a matter of seconds. Yes I was filming the encounter.

Yesterday I saw the new Superman movie. If you want to see it, dont read this paragraph as it contains spoilers. I thought it was dumb, really dumb. I heard that this version of the film was a throwback to when the Superman in the comics was more sci-fi and silly. I’m glad I never saw those comics. The dialogue seemed like it was written for children and the addition of bowl cut Green Lantern, Hawk Girl, and Mr Terrific did nothing to elevate the level of maturity for the film. But to me the dumbest thing about the movie is the portrayal of Superman himself as someone who gets his ass kicked regularly. It seemed everyone was kicking his ass during the movie but then he would have sudden outbursts of being invincible/super strong only to get beaten up some more. To me, this is the worst Superman movie I ever saw. I like the Henry Cavil version much, much more. I’d give this a C. The best part of the movie is the dog.

I’m going to do another fast this week starting tonight after dinner, lasting until breakfast Thursday morning. Even though it’s not fun I think there is a clear benefit to forcing your body to go without for a period of time. I still have a a handful of pounds I wouldn’t mine disposing of as well. This is a good way to kick start it.

Last night when I left my house to go play volleyball it was raining steadily at my house. Luckily at the courts which are maybe 8 miles away it only rained briefly before stopping. I had an odd night. I personally played some of the best volleyball I can remember in a very long time. I was pretty consistent in all aspects of the game. Despite this my team was 1-5, there was some inconsistency elsewhere, let’s just leave it at that. Even though losing never makes me happy I was pleased with my play and most importantly that I again walked across the parking lot to my truck without a limp although I can definitely feel some soreness and pain this morning.

Recently Amazon released the AI upgrade for their Alexa smart home assistants. I was one of the very early adopters of the tech when it first came out around a decade ago. It has always been “smart” but nothing like the AI you see today. Well that has changed. The voice is now like modern AI and the interactions are as well. You are no longer required to say Alexa prior to every inquiry or command. Instead you say it once to get it’s attention and then it will continue to listen to you for a short period of time where you can ask it anything in a much more natural way as you can with ChatGPT or Grok. I am digging the upgrade although I am sure that some people will be wary of letting AI into their home in this manner.

I took Monday off so I have my second extended weekend in a row. I have a number of things on my want to do list. It seems my hobby room/office and my desire to get it more cleaned up and organized is an eternal list item. I make some progress but then I start a project that makes it a mess again.

I am in the middle of a big 3D printing project of a shelf which will allow me to stack two AMS units on top of one of my printers, allowing me to access 8 rolls of filament at once. However this print job is taking forever. I have already gone through two full rolls of expensive PETG-CF filament and I am still not done. I would LOVE to get that shelf built and the AMS stack complete. Right now I have piles of parts I have already printed for the project scattered about the room.

Last night I saw F1 the new Brad Pitt movie about Formula 1 racing. Like Tom Cruise it is a rarity that I see a Brad Pitt movie I don’t enjoy. F1 felt like a throwback where everything wasn’t CGI generated although I am sure there was still plenty in there. Even if you aren’t a racing fan I think you would enjoy the movie, a lot. Brad, who is now 60 years old I believe gives me an example to shoot for where you can be still be viable, active and fit well past the half century mark. I’d give the movie an A-

When I arrived home last night there was quite to commotion with trucks and heavy equipment gathered around the entrance to my development. On my way back from walking Elsa I asked one of the men working what was up.

For the last couple weeks there have been some utility contractors laying conduit for fiber optic cable. They pissed some people off as they spray painted yards, the street and planted flags indicating underground utility locations without any prior notice/permission. My neighbor across the street was really pissed because the drilling machine was on his pavers and spilled oil on them during the process. I saw the 84 year old man out there trying to scrub the oil off for quite awhile over the weekend. Well this mess at the entrance was due to them as well.

Evidently the underground drilling machine they use broke a sewer pipe near the entrance. Luckily it only affected one house in the neighborhood as far as the sewer connection but it still required a ton of work to address. I am sure the contractors responsible will have a huge bill from the county coming their way.

In theory having fiber in our neighborhood should be a good thing, it’s just a matter of how much speed it provides and at what cost. If the numbers are good I could see myself dumping Xfinity. It costs me over $220 a month for their service which is ridiculous IMO.

I have been hooked into a YouTube channel called Cart Narcs for a week or two. The premise is simple, a guy politely gets in the face of people that do not return their shopping carts to the collection points in parking lots. If they ignore his request to put the carts back he drops a magnet sign on their vehicle indicating they are a “lazy bones”. The reactions he gets from people he confronts range from good natured to violent.

My first job ever was a stock man at K-mart in the 80’s. One of my tasks was collecting shopping carts. Ever since then I had a strong dislike for individuals that were too lazy to walk a cart to the corral. Hell I have a strong dislike for lazy people in general now that I think of it. I recall that mostly miserable job at K-mart paid a whopping $2.75 an hour.

The other day as I was driving my Tesla Model Y Performance I had a random realization come into my head. When I bought this car last year I thought upgrading to the performance model of the car was something I wanted. With 0-60 times of 3.5 seconds the car is a true rocket, faster than most conventional performance or muscle cars. My rationale was I could get this performance while maintaining my payment because of the 1.99% financing I got on the car. The reality is I hardly ever utilize that performance I paid more for.

Every Tesla is relatively fast already. Sure the performance version adds some other things like cooler, bigger wheels, better brakes and a rear spoiler but the visual change is not dramatic. In retrospect I think I would have been better served if I held off until the Model Y refresh came out which adds features that matter more to me than leaving cars in the dust during stop light to stop light drag races that I never really have. It’s just another example of how my priorities have shifted and mutated over the years.

Here is the first of several videos I will be making regarding the V12S

My three day weekend passed quickly as always. My 4th of July was pretty calm. I stayed home with Elsa, giving her a couple hemp calming treats to get through the night of fireworks, her worst nightmare. She spent most of the evening in the guest bathroom. I left the loud vent fan on the entire time to help block out some noise.

On Saturday I finally got around to refreshing the mulch in the landscaped area, something I originally wanted to do over the winter when temperatures are 15 degrees lower and the humidity isn’t oppressive. Luckily this house has a lot less areas that need mulch than my old property so it was done in around an hour. I spent time out on the new V12S wheel for a nice 20 mile ride. I also shot a bunch of content around it, something I haven’t done a whole lot of lately.

There are lots of blanks I could fill in about the weekend but my mind is not in the thought sharing mode today for some reason.

Last night I got out to see the latest Jurassic Park movie, a franchise they have stretched across three decades at this point. Unlike some of the previous films they didn’t lean into the past pulling in characters from years ago. I think this cast stood well on it’s own, I really enjoyed the movie, enough to give it an A-. If you are a dinosaur fan you will want to see it.

With July 4th falling on a Friday this year it translates into a long weekend. As is usual my 4th will involve trying to minimize the amount of terror for Elsa from the fireworks through a combination of CBD calming treats and a lot of background noise in the house. The rest of my weekend will likely involve a combination of work and play, hopefully keeping the ratios at acceptable levels.

Pardon the abrupt segway but I have come to realize that I am far, far better off focusing on things that I can directly influence or control than spend large amounts of energy on situations that I can’t. Banging your head against brick walls is not good for your physical or mental health. I certainly have done my fair share. Everyone is responsible for the reality that they create/accept for themselves. If you don’t like it, change it. No one is coming to save you.