All posts by Duf

Last night after work I tasked myself with putting together the electric bike that showed up a couple days prior. For the past 10 years most personal electric vehicles I have purchased have only had one wheel with the exception being a couple electric skateboards and electric scooters.

The listing for this bike on Amazon stated the bike was 90% assembled. I was skeptical of that but once I opened the box I was a believer. Everything was very well packed and by the time I got all of the protective materials off I only had to put on the front tire, the pedals and a couple other small items. It was a total piece of cake. I will get the hang of how everything works this weekend before letting my girlfriend get on there so I make sure she is safe. It seems like a real nice bike for the money.

This Easter weekend will likely be a non-event around here unless we decide to do some sort of lunch/dinner on Sunday to mark the occasion. Easter in my lifetime has never meant much of anything except a possible meal with family members. I’m fine with it.

Oh Pam Bondi got blown out yesterday. That was fun news. Hopefully Patel is next. Soon Don will be out of sacrificial lambs.

I was locked in to watch the Artemis II launch last night. Cloud cover in our area made the possibility of seeing the smoke trail on the horizon impossible but watching it on TV was fine. The anticipation of the countdown was intense. The way the rocket accelerated off the pad was surprising. It practically leaped into the air at a pace much faster than the SpaceX Starship launches I have seen. They will spend a few days circling the Earth running a number of checks and tests before they hit the gas to accelerate to 27,000 MPH to escape Earth’s orbit and head for the moon. It’s going to be an exciting 10 days. Things have started just about perfectly, let’s hope it ends that way.

This morning as I was getting ready I saw this out my bathroom window. It was so beautiful that I threw on my pants and took a picture out of my garage. The skies in Florida are beautiful both at sunset and sunrise, one of the many reasons I never have regretted moving here.

Yesterday a large box was delivered to my place. In it was an e-bike I bought for my girlfriend. The thought is she will be able to use it to accompany me on some of my EUC rides. I need to put it together yet. From the video I saw it should not be a very difficult task to do so. It will be fun to have her along for the ride once in awhile.

Today Artemis II is scheduled to launch. Setting a launch date of April Fool’s day seems less than well thought out to me. This will be the first time astronauts will have circled the moon since the early 70s which is crazy. The program has been riddled with setbacks, delays and large cost overruns. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2016, yes, 10 years ago. The intent of the program is to establish a lunar base at some point, which again, was supposed to have been well underway at this point.

Much like the original Apollo program, the Artemis program is mostly motivated due to competition with another country. Back then it was the Soviet Union, now, it’s China who is pushing to establish a presence on the moon. There is a lot of pressure for this mission to go well. It’s been a long time since NASA has been in the spotlight. SpaceX has gotten almost all of the attention since the shuttle program was put to rest.

Being a space enthusiast I am very interested in this event however it seems like I am in the minority. In this 6 second attention span society we live in I bet you would be lucky to get 10% of the population that even knows what Artemis is. I think it would be amazing if we had a consistent human inhabited base on the moon. I hope today’s launch is the first step in making that a reality.

Happy April Fool’s day. I heard we were celebrating by having the biggest fool of all embarrass himself and the nation once again by doing a live address where he will explain how bigly we are winning the war. I saw a post on X from a former huge Trump supporter that not only voted for him three times but donated heavily to his campaign. Like many he is finally done with the circus and never ending stream of lies and broken promises. He ended his post by saying “The only ones left supporting him are MAGA always Trumpers who place the man above the policies and our country.” Amen. That is what cult members do, blind, undying obedience. Just ask Jim Jones followers that drank the poison Kool Aid.

I have a long history of working on my vehicles. I documented a lot of my trials and tribulations on my YouTube channel as well. Out of my 10 most viewed videos on the channel seven of them are vehicle related. It’s been a very long time since I have had to do a significant repair on my vehicles. Since I bought my 2016 Tacoma and sold the 99 Tacoma I haven’t really had to fix anything. All I have done is install upgrades and mods and not that many of them. Since I bought my first Tesla in 2019 I haven’t had to fix anything on them either. So when I decided to address my failed backup sensor issue in my Tacoma of course I needed to make a video of it. I sort of dreaded the task though as almost every automotive repair/project I take on turns out being a major PIA. Plus, I just haven’t done it for awhile, maybe I didn’t have the will power/determination to see the project through to the end. From my research I could just throw $500 to a dealer to fix the problem for me.

As I anticipated, things did not go smoothly. The four sensors in the bumper that are used by the system can not be accessed easily. I had to remove the bumper covers to get access. In the process I wound up snapping a number of connectors, luckily I had enough unbroken ones to put everything back together. If you watch the video you will get a good sense of the frustrations I worked through. In the end I got the problem fixed which was somewhat surprising. In total if I include the trim tools I bought for the job I spent less than $100 on the repair along with roughly three hours of my time.

My new (to me) wheel arrived on Friday. Over the weekend I put on some parts that were removed for shipping. The wheel has a few warts like a bent and unusable kick stand, a slightly crooked headlight, a missing charge port cover and a charger that has something rattling around inside. None of these things are huge issues.

The wheel is HUGE. It legitimately seems like half of a motorcycle with it’s massive 100/90 tire. I only got to ride it for a couple minutes just to verify base operation. It feels very stable and planted based on that ride but I need to get a real road test in the books. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my trade.

Elsa’s one dog bed has a small hole in the top of it from either her or Mia digging at the bed with their claws. I bought them a new bed over the weekend. It looks/feels like an oversized marshmallow covered in faux fur. After a brief WTF is this when they first saw the bed they quickly realized how soft and comfortable it is which made me happy.

I skipped doing the HIT training workout on Sunday. Saturday morning I walked between a mile and two on the beach with my girlfriend first thing and then went to play pickleball afterward. That combination left my body feeling all sorts of aches and pains that made submitting it to that intense exercise circuit sound like a very bad idea.

Today my wheel that I traded for is supposed to arrive, the Commander Pro Max. Hopefully it survived the journey from California without incident. I got word that my Aero that I shipped arrived out in California Wednesday in good condition. This wheel has the largest battery and presumably the longest range of any wheel I have ever owned. I will need to put that to the test at some point. It’s fun getting a new wheel without laying out any cash to do so.

Elsa has continued to do well in recent weeks. She has been doing well enough that we now have my girlfriend’s dog staying with her during the day.

Both Mia and Elsa are very fond of one another and both hate being alone so it works out well. I have adjusted my routine so I drive home quickly before my lunch to let them outside briefly and to say hi which they seem to enjoy as well.

Besides needing to wear the diaper, Elsa otherwise has been acting pretty normal. She still drinks a lot of water but that has been the case for a long time. She is consistently eating the FreshPet food which is very high quality and nutritionally complete. She is eating way more than she used to which has her making BMs 2-3 times a day but they are the good, well formed variety. Overall she has seemed happy and content since her flurry of vet activity at the end of January and beginning of February. I am good with that.

I never expected to be changing diapers at 58 years old but it isn’t the huge PIA I initially thought it might be. Elsa being agreeable to wearing diapers has made my intense laundry routine much less so. I am no longer having to strip and wash the bedding on a daily basis. I have left my alarm clock at 6AM however. That extra 30 minutes allows me to get ready in plenty of time and get into work early which is a good thing. Where we are at now is much better than I anticipated a month and a half ago.

I am going to be attempting something I have not had to do in a very long time, an automotive repair on one of my vehicles. Sure I have done maintenance/upgrade items all along on both the Tesla and 2016 Tacoma but I now have something to actually fix. The rear parking sensor system in the Tacoma has been broken for quite awhile. This system consists of four little sonar button looking things that reside in the rear bumper. From my research it is not an uncommon thing to fail.

My “fix” up until this point has been to just disable this system which is controlled by a button on the dash. I bought four non-OEM sensors to install although I may not need all of them. My understanding is these sensors are connected in series so if just one of them goes bad the entire system fails.

The non-OEM sensors have a mixed bag of results. Some people say they worked just fine, others said you should just stick to OEM. The thing is Toyota charges a ridiculous amount for these sensors. I read a dealer quoted somebody $500 to replace the sensors. If things go my way, I’ll do it for 35 bucks.

Last night I got out to see Project Hail Mary, a movie based on a book with a potential end of days scenario. I love both end of days and sci-fi movies so it was a good fit for me. The movie had a strong opening weekend and has received positive reviews and I see why. Outside of a few slow spots I found it entertaining. I never thought they could make an alien that looks like giant rock insect endearing but somehow they pulled it off. I give it an A. What I did not enjoy was the 30 minutes of commercials and previews that Regal forces upon it’s customers. It’s utterly ridiculous.

It felt good to get on the other side of the colonoscopy. When I weighed myself Tuesday night before prep began I weighed 185 pounds. When I weighed myself Thursday morning after a day of just liquids followed by a night of sitting on the toilet I weighed 178 pounds.

On Friday I still felt a little low energy but my girlfriend was off as well so we had a nice day together. Part of that included going to the beach for the first time in 2026 and taking a nice walk. We also went to the beach Saturday night to watch our first sunset of the year. We underestimated just how cool it would be at the beach. We were both quite chilled by the time the sun dropped below the horizon due to a constant high wind.

I played some pickleball Saturday morning. In the first game I got my right index finger smashed by my overly aggressive female partner’s paddle when she went for a ball in the middle that normally would be mine. Once again it was stupid busy and I only got three games in before I called it quits. At least I won all three.

For whatever reason I was printing a variety of 3D models this weekend. I had three of my four printers churning out stuff non-stop. I do tend to print more on the new Snapmaker U1 because it is so efficient compared to my three Bambu printers.

I shipped off my Nosfet Aero on Friday. It’s a weird scenario. I traded my Kingsong F22 Pro for the Nosfet Aero to a dealer in Clearwater last year. In that trade I definitely got the worse end of the deal monetarily. I am doing another trade, this time trading the Aero for a much bigger and faster wheel with a huge battery. As far as worth goes I am ahead on this deal. The Commander Pro Max I am getting when new cost close to double what the Aero does. Hopefully everything is cool with the wheel. There was nothing wrong with the Aero. It’s a great little wheel. I just was not getting much use of it. I have less than 100 miles on the thing.

This will be my first “normal” week in quite awhile. I can deal with normal.

So my on/off and then back on again colonoscopy went down today, my third one. I had my first experience in 2018. In that procedure the doctor removed a somewhat large polyp that was determined to be per-cancerous. Because of that finding I had to get a follow up done only three years later. During that exam only a small benign polyp was removed so my next screening was scheduled 5 years out which at the time seemed like a long time. In reality it arrived here much faster than I realized/wanted. Boy a lot of things have changed during those last 5 years.

The worst part of the first two colonoscopies was choking down the liquid Suprep. Each sip was gag inducing. This time I was able to use pills instead, 24 of them in total to achieve similar results. Even though the pills take awhile to get down since you are supposed to wait two minutes before ingesting each one, it still was much better for me. The countless trips to the toilet are never fun but unavoidable.

I was very tired this morning due to the limited and interrupted sleep I had last night. After getting up at 1AM for round two of the prep I didn’t get back to sleep until maybe 3:30 followed by a 4:45 alarm. My girlfriend took me to the hospital which we arrived at bright and early at 6AM for the 7:30 procedure. This is the first time I had a colonoscopy done in this hospital. My first two were at a specialized surgical center.

Other than getting stuck three different times trying to place the IV everything went smoothly. It was very disorienting waking up in the recovery room after what felt like an instant. To my mind it almost felt like I was teleported from the procedure room, the anesthesia knocked me out that quick. My eyes were blurry and I felt disoriented, so much so that I thought the nurse sitting next to my bed waiting for me to wake up was my girlfriend at first. Once she assured me she wasn’t my girlfriend she told me that the procedure went well and no polyps were present, a great thing. It took maybe 15 minutes until the fog cleared enough that I could get dressed and wheeled out to my girlfriends car. I was still pretty loopy the entire way home.

My task today is to take it easy as much as possible. I am also off tomorrow which is cool. It feels good to be on the other side of yet another colonoscopy with the possibility of not needing to get another for 5 or possibly even 10 years down the road. It feels even better to not have had to pay $1800 to get that outcome.

24 hours ago I had moved my mental headspace into a “I’m not going to have a colonoscopy” mode and was somewhat relieved to not have to deal with it. This was caused by the doctors office not being agreeable to submitting the procedure as a preventative screening as opposed to a diagnostic based on the fact that I had polyps removed previously. I figured when I turned 60 I would get it done as required by my insurance.

Surprisingly I got a call later in the morning from the doctors office. They said they resubmitted the order to the hospital using the code that my prior doctor used. The end result is now the $1800 charge magically disappeared. The colonoscopy was back on. I was surprised yet appreciative that the office did listen to my objection and explanation of why it should be covered.

So I had to shift my mental state again into prep mode which began this morning. I am on an all liquid diet today. I brought in apple juice, Gatorade, chicken broth and coconut water to get me through the day. Since I have done a few 1-2 day fasts in the last 6 months this doesn’t seem quite as bad as it once did. The real fun starts after work when I start the Suprep which will cause massive GI evacuation.

In the past I used the liquid Suprep which was absolutely awful to get down. This time I was given the option to take the pills. It’s two bottles containing 12 pills each which are taken 5-6 hours apart. You are supposed to wait 2 minutes in between each pill, drinking a lot of water in between which is a bit of a PIA but it’s better than gagging on the liquid. I am curious how much weight in total I will lose from the process. I was 185lbs last night when I went to bed. My procedure is at 7:30 Thursday morning so 24 hours from now I will be on the other side of this and hopefully enjoying some solid food once again.

This billing issue was yet another example of why you can not simply accept an unfavorable outcome without question/opposition. I wonder how many people would just shoulder shrug and pay it, figuring there was no point in contesting.

I had some free time last night. I used it to level my first WoW character to the new max level of 90 in the newly released Midnight expansion. It was a good way to detach from the upcoming colonscopy experience I will be “enjoying”. The character I leveled is actually the first character I made in the game back in early 2005. He is a human warrior named IronDuf. I am not sure if I am going to do any substantial end game content with him or instead jump onto one of my many other characters and start leveling them as well. Typically, I will choose the latter option in WoW.

I have emerged from my five day weekend with a different outlook on my colonoscopy that is scheduled on Thursday. I might cancel it. In my last entry I had just revealed I was getting another one, my third time around. It is supposed to be my 5 year screening. Well last Friday I received an email from NCH, the hospital where the work is supposed to be done. In that email was a link for me to prepay my proposed share of the charges which totaled $1800. WTF? With my first two procedures they were covered 100% by our county insurance as they figure an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I figured it had to be some sort of mistake so I reached out to the doctor office.

Without going into a lot of detail, the issue is this new office is refusing to submit the procedure as a preventative screening and instead as something based on me having some polyps removed previously. This change flips a switch where the patient now gets to suffer financial pain instead of insurance footing the bill 100%. I had a prolonged phone conversation with the doctor office about this and informed them that when I had my second colonoscopy three years after the first one I did not have to pay because it was submitted as another screening, which it is. They did not seem to care.

I also talked to my benefits person at the county. All she could confirm is if the doctor submits the procedure as a screening it is 100% covered. Of course she can’t force the doctor to do this. So I am at a crossroads today.

I have already decided that I absolutely will not pay nearly 2k out of pocket for this. That is based on the total charge being over $16,000 which is absolute insanity for a 15 minute procedure. So if the doctor’s office does not agree to change the procedure type to a screening I will simply cancel the appointment. In two years I will be 60 and will be at the time frame where the county requires another colonoscopy so I would just deal with it then. Sure it’s not ideal to push off a recommended screening but this is the reality of medical care in the US. You don’t get the care you need, you get the care you can afford.

Over the 5 day break I got out on two EUC rides, a rarity. On one of the rides I had an encounter with a guy that called me a f’ing asshole several times which I describe at length in the video. I also might be doing another EUC barter transaction which I have done several times in the past. I would be trading my small Nosfet Aero for a BIG Extreme Bull Commander Pro Max. It’s not written in stone yet but I think the odds are good that it happens.

I spent a decent amount of time during this break in the new WoW expansion trying to level one character to the new max level of 90. I’m almost there. It’s the first conventional leveling I have done in a long time and I have enjoyed myself while doing it.

So I have either a two or three day work week depending on how events transpire today. Part of me would like to kick the colonoscopy can down the road another couple years and part of me would like to just get it over with, as long as it doesn’t incur a significant financial impact for doing so.