The weather yesterday was simply awesome with high temps that didn’t exceed 75 degrees. I took advantage of it when I got home, jumping on my Msuper to ride it over to the school, just like the good old days. When I got over there I buzzed around the middle school grounds. A lot of that time was spent riding backwards. I bet a rode close to a mile in reverse in total. I still don’t get to practice as much as I would like but even so my reverse riding went pretty well.
It just felt great to be peacefully rolling around the school grounds and adjacent development, not having to worry about external forces affecting my moment. Riding my EUC is very akin to the feeling you hear bikers talk about, both human and gas powered, about the freedom you feel in those moments. It insulates you from whatever is negative in your sphere of existence, at least for a short period of time.
When I got home I also tried again to print a larger version of the ornate cross I had my friend 3D model for Cindy. I am still having some issues but at least they are not the jamming variety which started my long battle with the printer weeks ago. I think I can figure this latest problem out without additional expense and just a small expenditure of patience.
So for the first time in weeks I successfully completed a print on my CR-10. I can’t even begin to describe all of the things I tried, installed, removed, and repaired trying to get back to this point but it’s been a long list that has been filled with tons of frustration.
My successful print was the famous Benchy boat print which is used to test how well a printer is calibrated. My model turned out pretty damn clean. I tried to build on my success by trying to print a much larger model but ran into some adhesion problems I need to work on some more. Still, it was my first success after a long string of failures so it felt good.
This morning we woke up to something that had not been seen since probably late April or early May, an outside temperature that started with a 6. The thermometer read 69 degrees. It felt wonderful outside. The oppressive heat and humidity of south Florida feels longer each year, making the prospect of eventually moving to a more temperate climate in the future a very appealing concept.
So I finally got a call back from my insurance company, well to be clear, I got a call back from the company my insurance company sub-contracts out their claim handling to. I am less and less impressed with the way Tower Hill does business now that both the adjusters that did my assessment and the people cutting checks both are not actual Tower Hill employees.
So anyway, I tell this woman how the number they came up with was much lower than the estimates I have received from contractors. (roughly 5-6k) I told her I had emailed those estimates in earlier in the day. The conversation was very difficult to hear, she sounded like she was talking inside a box and there was a lot of background noise. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was intentional, making a call annoying makes you want to end it sooner.
She said that after looking at the estimates the only way she could authorize paying out additional funds was if she contacted these contractors to see why their quotes were more than the insurance company estimate. I laughed out loud at this as I knew it was utterly ridiculous. To think a contractor, who is already buried in work is going to sit there and waste their time on the phone justifying their quote to some insurance company call center minion is laughable. I indicated that this didn’t seem to make any sense but she repeated that was the course of action to follow. I gave her permission to contact them but I don’t expect her to get anywhere with it, but she already knows that.
The interaction to me was just very transparent. The entire goal here is to delay and frustrate the homeowner to the point where he just wants to get stuff fixed so they accept the initial offer. However in my situation I have the house and pool cage temporarily fixed enough that I can play a long game if need be. I plan to consult the public adjuster I spoke to initially and see what she thinks my best course of action is at this point.
I tried to give myself extra time on Saturday to work on the pool cage by getting the weeding out of the way on Friday evening. In a way it was sort of nice as the temps were in the low 80’s and dropping.
Saturday morning Cindy was helping out a friend with a 5K walk that supports cancer research. She suggested I get my run out of the way on Saturday so we could sleep in on Sunday. I took that advice and started running even earlier than normal since Cindy had a 5AM alarm. I took my first strides a little after 6. Since I pushed my run to 16 laps when Cindy showed up last week so I felt obligated to run more than my normal 12 times around the track so I added a 13th lap. I didn’t feel too bad.
After getting back and tending to the chickens I wasted little time before I started working on the pool cage screen. I first did my amateur seamstress impersonation, sewing up the sections of screen that had a gap. The end result is far from visually pleasing but I think it will do a half decent job of keeping unwanted critters and bugs out of the pool area.
I then grabbed my bag of 2″ Nylotec pool cage screws and replaced all of the screws in the 1″x 2″ header piece, most of which were completely rusted. These nylon head screws will basically never rust and make the cage look much better. I replaced about 30 screws and have a lot more to go. I have a kit to replace the smaller screws along the bottom and I need to get one more size to replace the real big cement screws which are the worst looking of all. Installation of the new screws is easy, back out the old screw and insert the new one, which has a slightly larger diameter, allowing you to use the existing hole.
Cindy was gone longer than I anticipated but when she got home I asked her to help me with the last and most difficult screen fix I had left to do, a roof section. I had a similar issue as I did with the sides, since I could not get screen rolls that were wide enough to cover it completely I was going to use a long four foot roll, overlapping two pieces.
Getting the strip of screen stretched across the opening was a difficult task in itself. I had the roll up on the roof with me while Cindy had the other end, trying to get it over the edge of the cage so it could be pulled over top. The gusting wind turned the screen into a sail, making the work even more frustrating. Eventually we got the first piece in place. I splined it in along the roof gutter and then came down and did my best to pull it tight and attach it on the other side. My best was not good enough as the wind ripped it out. I had to reattach it a couple times.
Getting the second piece on was equally if not more frustrating. Eventually we got it into place enough that I told Cindy I could take it from there. I was not pleased with the way things were. The one strip of screening had a fold along the edge that I could not reach. With the long strip only being secured at either edge I knew there was a good chance it would come loose quickly so I felt that somehow I needed to secure it more on top.
At first I entertained the idea of simply scaling the pool frame like a circus act however thankfully visions of me getting blown off balance by the wind and crashing through the screen to the concrete below made me reconsider the plan. I did come up with a plan B however. After I climbed back on the roof with the Gorilla ladder I proceeded to pull the ladder up on the roof with me. I then put one end of the ladder on the roof and rested the other end on a roof beam of the pool cage, creating a shaky scaffolding. I then carefully crawled out across it, some 15-20 feet in the air, hoping that my demise would not come from the ladder suddenly breaking in half from using it in an unintended way. I somehow managed to get some spline in a couple spots on top of the cage that hopefully will keep the screen in place for now. I was glad Cindy was not outside to witness this act of daring. (stupidity)
Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the Kingsman sequel at Silverspot. Unfortunately our favorite theater at Coconut Point is STILL closed due to hurricane damage. The parking garage was a bit of a mess coming in but a cluster fck getting out, reminding me why I prefer seeing films elsewhere. The movie was very entertaining in a different and bizarre kind of way at times, much like the original. It was entertaining enough for me to push into A- range.
On Sunday morning I had the idea to try to ride my Gotway Monster all the way to Ave Maria and back, a roughly 30 mile trek. It was much further than Cindy would have wanted to ride so she stayed home while I shoved off solo. I thought I would have absolutely no problems having the battery capacity to do it. I figured my 1600WH battery would be good for around 50 miles of riding. Well for almost the entire ride there I was going into a heavy headwind. When I stopped in town and looked at my battery indicator I was a bit shocked to see it was down to 50% after only going 15 miles. I had visions of running out of juice before I could get back home.
Luckily for me that headwind turned into a tailwind on the ride back, plus I tried to keep my speed down a bit. If you watch the video you will see I ramble about a number of different topics along the way. My calves and feet were completely numb by the time I pulled back in the driveway.
Cindy and I ran out to Home Depot and Rural King when I got back, taking the dogs along. They love to be in the car. Sadie loved going into stores too. Elsa gets more freaked out being around strangers but we keep trying to expose her to the environment to help her settle down.
I spent the majority of the rest of the day doing video production and again clubbing away at my CR-10 problem. I wound up buying a new hot end assembly but in order to install it I had to utilize my very poor soldering skills to splice the new end into place. I am worried that my connection will not hold up to the endless back and forth movements the printer makes but time will tell.
I put everything back together and my clogging problem seems to be fixed but I still need to do a recalibration of the printer to get it printing correctly with the new stuff in there. I shot some video of the process and then somehow proceeded to lose the SD card the footage was on. I must have set it down somewhere while cleaning up the mess I had on the desk but I spent a good 20-30 minutes looking everywhere for it to no avail. When combined with the frustration I was already feeling with the printer shit it was not a good time. If this latest round of attempted repairs does not work out I think I am just about ready to say F it and just wait to get a Prusa i3 MK3 which has similar print capacity with a whole less frustration.
So most of my Saturday wound up being consumed by yard work which consisted of weeding, weed whacking, and mowing. I worked into mid-afternoon trying to get the yard looking nicely manicured. I am hoping as we transition into dry season the need for me to invest so much time each weekend on routine grass maintenance can instead be used for other projects.
After I finished up we did a late Rural King and Home Depot run. When we got home I immediately spread the 20 bags of mulch we bought as well as throwing a dozen castle stones around the avocado tree up front. We also lost another tree on Saturday, intentionally. Well over a decade ago Ali and I bought a tree at a nearby home show that we planted near one of the front corners of the property near the road. I have no recollection of what type of tree it was or why exactly it appealed to us. Well the tree hardly grew since it was put in the ground. Perhaps it didn’t like sandy soil. The tree was not attractive with a sort of gnarled appearance with spike covered branches that did nothing but tear at the canopy of the tractor when you drove close to the tree.
Irma had pushed a westward lean into the tree, making it even less attractive than it was before. For years Cindy has expressed her dislike of the tree which I didn’t fundamentally disagree with, yet sentiment prevented me from taking it down. For some reason as I was mowing on Saturday that sentiment lifted and I told Cindy if she wanted to cut the tree down she had my blessing. She wasted no time, grabbing the battery powered Sawz-all and cutting the ugly tree down to ground level in a few minutes. She tossed the pieces into the huge debris pile on the other side of the road. I can’t say I have had much remorse since the tree was removed from the landscape, unlike much of the other landscape that bit the dust in the hurricane.
Saturday night Cindy went with Katie to some Halloween corn maze. (that they bailed on when they saw how long the line was) While they were out I went into hardcore geek mode, participating in a funny event in WoW. It was a “race” where you run on foot from one location in game to another which are far apart. The gimmick was people were encouraged to do this run as a gnome, an ethnicity that most people don’t have so like many others, I made one just for the run.
So to cover the distance on foot took a long time, probably 45 minutes. I died 7 or 8 times along the way as horde players looked at this as a perfect opportunity to “troll” the event, stepping on level 1 or 2 gnomes like ants. After I completed the course on my gnome I went back and did it again as one of my high level characters at a walking pace which took much, much longer. Not only did it allow me to take in the scenery and remember just how the game felt when I first got involved a dozen years ago, I also served as a body guard to other low level gnomes that were still running the course. If I saw horde nearby I did my best to kill them off before they could squash others. It was silly, stupid fun. Walking the course took MUCH longer, I bet damn close to 90 minutes.
Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed to go run the track. Cindy got up too but not to run with me, she was planning to run a nearby 5K with a friend of hers. As I was close to completing my planned 12 laps I saw Cindy’s car pull into the lot. I figured maybe she wanted to run a warm up lap with me or something. Instead she said her friend backed out last minute on the race so she figured she would just run the track.
I told her I was literally starting my last lap but Cindy started running with me. Well it didn’t take long for me to feel badly about not running longer with her so I told Cindy I would do an extra lap or two. That turned into a full extra mile which of course I had no expectation of doing. I am pretty sure it was the first time I ran four miles in 2017. It’s funny, if I was by myself for the entire run, the idea of tacking an extra mile on the end would have seemed close to ridiculous. However when you add another person to the mix those barriers get fuzzy. Sure I was tired as I kept pressing on but it didn’t kill me. It was a reminder how so many personal boundaries are self inflicted and why having others share your pain somehow makes it more bearable. I guess that is why running clubs were invented.
Cindy and I went for a wheel ride near Vanderbilt Beach late in the morning. It was fun as always but very warm. I had a steady stream of sweat running down my back most of the time.
During the afternoon I worked on several things, including more futzing with the CR-10 printer. I have a clear path to resolving my issue, I just have not worked out all of the logistics on how to get there.
Sunday evening we went out for an early birthday dinner celebration for Cindy. We met up with Katie, Daniel, Cindy’s mom and two nieces at Outback. It was funny that we got the exact same table that we had last time we were at the restaurant a year or two ago. We had a very enjoyable dinner followed up with ice cream cake at Cindy’s mom’s place afterward. We didn’t get home till after 9 which normally I would not be a fan of on a Sunday night however Cindy had a lot of fun which made it well worth it.
Oh I forgot to mention on Saturday the roof guy from Home Depot came out to look at the house. Their quote on shingles was in the same ballpark as the first quote I got. One option he presented which was interesting was “architectural shingles” which have a lot more overlap which makes them more durable than standard three tab shingles. They also have “cool” varieties of this shingle which supposedly reflects heat much more effectively. Their quote for metal roofing was sky high. Part of that gap with my other metal roof quote was the HD quote was for more expensive hidden fastener roofing while my first estimate had exposed fasteners. But even so, over 30k for metal seemed a little outrageous. I am hoping to get a firm answer from my home owners insurance today.
I have an odd week ahead with me taking off tomorrow, mostly to make the special chocolate birthday cake for Cindy. It will be cool to break the week into a one and three day chunk.
So I spent at least a couple hours last night swapping out stuff on my CR-10 in the hopes to fix my jamming filament issue. After a lot of tedious reassembly I reloaded filament and immediately witnessed the same problem. Needless to say I was really,really frustrated as you can see here.
One small bit of good news was the FEMA blue tarp program seems to be something you aren’t used to from a federal government program, efficient. Cindy only requested the tarping of our roof last Friday and less than a week later the house is wearing a nice new blue hat, for free. The tarp will help keep the roof insulated from leaks while we wait for roof replacement which at this point I am guessing will take at least six months.
So I spent a good portion of the night fighting with my CR-10 printer getting increasingly frustrated as I went along. When I got the Creality printer I knew I would be digging into it much more than my FlashForge Finder which is pretty much a plug and print 3D printer. However I am getting frustrated with my recent issues, enough so that I already am eyeballing what my NEXT 3D printer will be down the road. I intend to resume the work tonight, hopefully I can get the machine printing reliably again by the weekend.
Yesterday I had to go down to Everglades City, one of the areas most devastated by Hurricane Irma, to do an assessment for what was needed to get a temporary office open while the city hall building is repaired from water damage. I had not been to this location in quite awhile. The drive in was quite the visual with debris piles lining the roadways. The craziest pile of all was “Mount Trashmore” as named by the locals, a huge pile of debris in the middle of town. Evidently trucks are slowly coming in to remove the junk as they can. There were also multiple pallets of bottled water and MRE’s which have been sitting out in the elements for weeks which evidently are left overs from the initial assistance effort.
The government building had a few inches of water on the floor from the surge but that was enough to do major damage. All of the floors were ripped up revealing a sub floor that was just a mess. In addition the first four feet of plaster/drywall on the entire first floor was cut out so the walls could be dried out properly. The interior of the building was filled with an army of drying fans pointed in every direction. They are estimating the building will take six months to be repaired.
Ironically we went through the exact same scenario with Hurricane Wilma when extensive damage required the building to close for roughly the same amount of time. As I toured the building with our employee that works there she showed me a mark on the wall as we ascended a staircase. She said that was the level the storm surge reached after Hurricane Donna. When I looked down and saw we were a good 15 feet above the floor below I gained yet another new appreciation for the destructive potential of hurricanes.
Yesterday I received some more hurricane related numbers. This time the number was roughly $4500, the estimate to rescreen the entire pool cage and fix the minor door/frame damage. The number, much like the roof estimate was more than I expected but not surprising considering the circumstances. So now I at least have one estimate for the roof and pool cage repairs. Now I am awaiting one more very important set of numbers, what my home owners insurance is going to offer me.
It has now been exactly two weeks since the adjuster visited. I called yesterday to find out how long it would be until I hear back with a settlement offer. The woman on the phone said they allow up to 14 business days so if I don’t hear anything by next Monday it’s time to start rattling some chains. I certainly hope the number they give me is fair and reasonable. If it is a ridiculous lowball then I have to dig in for a fight which only retards the timeline even further.
Speaking of fights, that was what I was doing last night with my CR-10 3D printer. I am still struggling with a filament feeding issue which I am not able to figure out as of yet. I have a number of parts ready to throw at the problem but I was awaiting one more thing to arrive so I could do all the work at once. I might just install the stuff I have now instead of waiting. I get an unsettled feeling when my 3D printers are just sitting there, wasting print time.
I did manage to print the object I was trying to print on the CR-10 on my FlashForge Finder, albeit a smaller version of it. The project, an ornate cross was something my EUC and 3D printing buddy Mathias, who lives in Norway, designed for me and it was kind of amazing. The design was based on a physical cross that Cindy has that broke after a fall. I had made a few attempts to recreate the cross as a 3D image using an overhead photo but struck out. Mathias has a lot more experience than I do so I asked him about it.
Like I said the cross had some broken sections so the picture was not complete. Even with that issue he was able to reverse the other side of the cross which was intact in the picture to create a very accurate replica. Cindy was thrilled with the small black version I made and is looking forward to doing a full scale version on the CR-10 in different materials once I get it working 100%. The amount of things you can create/do/fix with 3D printing are truly infinite.
Yesterday I received an unexpected email from a woman from “Jukin media”. She said her company produces fail videos for a show on MTV2. She happened to stumble across the video from my second day of EUC learning where I crashed hard onto the parking lot. She was doing an inquiry regarding gaining my permission to use the clip in the show in return for compensation.
Of course I was intrigued and responded back regarding it. The Cliff Notes version is I think the clip can’t be used because I no longer have the original unedited footage. (YouTube clip has captioning) However, I did send her some links to some of my other fall/fail/crash videos so perhaps I may just wind up being on the show. Regardless of the outcome it was cool to get the inquiry.
I am expecting this weekend to again be quite loaded with things to do however hopefully this time there will be more fun things like doing some more work on my 3D printer and putting out the Halloween decorations. I am thankful that Tropical Storm Nate is apparently going to be tracking far west of us but at the same time feel badly for whomever on the gulf coast winds up having to deal with yet ANOTHER US landfall storm. 2017 appears to be rivaling 2005 in regards to the most miserable hurricane year in recent history.
I outlined the mods I want to do on the printer here.
So I received back my virtual estimate for roof replacement that was calculated using info from GIS mapping and Google Maps. I really had no idea what to expect but figured somewhere between the 10 and 20k range. The quote for a metal roof slid in just below that top number at 19,000 and change. The cost to reshingle the roof was around $15500, a small enough difference that I would absolutely go the metal roof direction without question. This quote included completely stripping off the old shingles and underlayment and renailing the deck surface. This particular company won’t lay metal on top of shingles which I assume is the best way to go about things, it just costs more.
So now I am sort of in circling mode. I have a Home Depot rep scheduled to come out two weekends from now to give me a second quote for comparison. I have had absolutely no luck finding anyone willing to even give me an estimate of fixing up the pool cage which isn’t all that surprising. However what I really need is to hear back from my homeowners insurance to see what they offer me for settlement. I also need to see how quickly I can get my HELOC reopened to help me offset the expense of everything.
When I came home yesterday I saw a crew of guys on my neighbors roof laying down blue tarp. I was confused, I did not know if these were roofers that were tarping the roof as part of their service to protect it before they could repair it. It turns out they were actually a crew hired by FEMA that tarps damaged roofs for free. There is an application process to get it done which I hope to have Cindy investigate/apply for me today. In all likelihood my roof is not going to get replaced for at least six months so I should take advantage of the program to minimize the chance of water seeping in between the damaged shingles.
A good portion of last night was spent in the hobby room. Despite my repeated efforts, the area designated for 3D printing kept turning into a mess and I was sick of it. Cindy had made a good suggestion that we should mount some pegboard along the wall behind the desk to allow me to hang and organize the various tools and supplies I use regularly for 3D printing.
I picked up the pegboard last night after work, which was a bit of an ordeal since I had the Prius. Home Depot only sells the stuff in big 4′ x 8′ sheets which would not fit. I waited to have an employee cut the sheet in half so I had two 4×4 squares. Even so it was a very tight fit, requiring me to flex the pegboard pretty severely to fit inside the car.
I cut a piece further at home so it would fit in between the shelf supports. Cindy and I came up with a weird but effective mounting method which involved cutting off small sections of a foam pool noodle into little donuts that we tie wrapped to the back to keep it away from the wall a bit. We then used more tie wraps to attach the top of the pegboard to the shelving above. It worked out really well and should do no damage to the wall behind it. After the board was up I spent another chunk of time hanging items on it, organizing what wasn’t hanging and throwing out stuff that was not needed. I’m happy with the end result and I am sure it will get tweaked a little further down the road.
So with our latest building swap complete (one more to go), things at work have finally settled down a bit for the time being. It couldn’t have come a moment too soon as the combo of hurricane issues combined with massive requirements at work were burning me down to a nub big time.
Last night I continued my struggle with my CR-10 printer, trying to get an annoying clogging problem corrected. I wound up eventually doing so by putting in the spare nozzle that was provided with the printer. I finally got the last part of the latest EUC stand printed overnight although it was a bit buggy. At random times little snot balls of filament were created and scattered around the print. I am hoping the reason for this is the filament itself which was out in the open during the power outage when the air inside the house was incredibly hot and muggy. PLA filament actually “goes bad” when left exposed to air for prolonged periods of time, especially humid air. I am hoping the bugs I saw were just related to that.
So I have already begun crafting a list to consume a good portion of my first “normal” weekend in quite awhile. We have been enjoying a rain free period which has allowed the property to dry out completely. I want to take advantage of this by mowing/weed whacking EVERYTHING which of course will take hours to complete. The grass however is only a couple items on a long list that consumes the entire piece of note paper it is written on. It will be a very busy weekend and although it would be nice to just chill, stuff just won’t get done by itself.
