Despite the dramatically less amount of daylight available after the time change I hustled and got out on my MSuper for a little bit last night. I just stayed local going up and down the nearby side street. At the fairgrounds dead end I had an off roading opportunity. It is the same path I tried a few weeks ago on my Ninebot One but ran out of path to follow. It appears that since that time one of those huge brush cutter mowers went through. There was now a 20 foot wide cleared area all the way to Immokalee Road.
Despite the path being mowed down there were plenty of hazards along the way with branches, ruts and rocks scattered everywhere. Riding through the rough cut grass on the Msuper was much easier than attempting the same on the Ninebot One. The larger tire and heavier weight of the Gotway made it feel much more stable and capable of handling the rough terrain.
I also have finally gotten smooth mount and dismounting of the wheel “clicked” in my head. Like I mentioned before, I operate mostly on feel and I finally got the feel of how the knee has to be positioned to lock my leg in place against the wheel so the off foot can be placed/removed easily. I forgot to shoot video of it over the weekend but I will soon.
Today is election day, the finish line of almost two years of incredibly corrosive presidential campaigning. I, like most Americans just want the process to be over. While the local news played last night, literally every other commercial was alternating Trump sucks, Hilary sucks exchanges. Although I am still pretty confident that Hilary will win in the end, the aftermath of this process is sure to have lasting effects. During the Obama elections/administration I didn’t think it was possible for the American political climate to be more divisive. Well we have managed to push the bar so low that it is now underground.
Despite my feelings about Trump’s qualifications as President (he has none), the fact that a large portion of the population are willing to overlook his horrid resume to just throw a non-establishment body in the White House is representative of how badly people are sick of it all. I understand that frustration and have felt it for a long time. I just don’t feel like cutting off my nose to spite my face is going to help things in the big picture.
It’s ironic to me that a decent amount of people that rail against Hilary actually liked when her husband was President, or at least liked the way the country felt while he was in office. Budget surpluses and economic prosperity do feel good after all. Of course the moral police will hate Bill forever. Anyway, to me it seems like some people are forgetting this is actually a Hilary/Bill 2.0 presidency. Do you think Bill is just going to sit in the White House bedroom and read Penthouse magazines all day? Of course not, his fingerprint might not be the one in the spotlight but you can bet he will be influencing and consulting nearly non-stop.
If Donald does lose I’ll still watch him on Apprentice, no hard feelings.
On Friday evening I hopped on my latest electric unicycle, a cheap $200 unit whose only purpose was to give Cindy something safer to learn on. The wheel is small and slow which is a good thing when learning. It also comes with detachable training wheels that you bolt to the foot pedals to keep the bot upright while you get a feel for the balance point. Cindy did not react favorably to my surprise purchase which I already expected. However through a careful negotiation she agreed to try once again to learn.
She has a big advantage now that neither of us had when the Ninebot One arrived. First she has someone in the household that has absorbed a lot of bumps and bruises so I can help guide her on ways to avoid them. Second, this cheap wheel is better suited to learning. In addition to the training wheels it also has a strap that can be used to further assist keeping the wheel upright. I of course had to take the wheel out for a test ride myself. It felt like a child’s toy compared to what I was used to but the basic functionality was all there. You can see my test ride below.
Saturday morning I was outside bright and early to get the basic chores done, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures and lower humidity. I wanted to get done early because Cindy had indicated she wanted to cruise two nearby community yard sales on the PTV’s. We drove to the gas station and used it as a launching point since it split the difference between the two developments. We spent nearly two hours cruising around in the beautiful weather. We got TONS of comments about the wheels, everyone was curious and interested in them.
I was very interested in an absolutely beautiful 1970 Chevelle we saw that had a 502 engine in it, something I had never seen but evidently is a popular aftermarket choice. He actually had TWO of these motors, one in the car and another he built to sell which was on display in his garage. It was awesome.
While we were riding around I spotted a large black bird that at first almost looked like a chicken walking near the sidewalk. As I got closer I realized it was a buzzard. As I got even closer I realized the reason he was walking was his left wing was injured, it was hanging low awkwardly. Of course my initial instinct was I wanted to help the bird but being on an electric unicycle far from the car made that trying to capture/aid the bird not logistically possible, buzzards are very large birds. As we rode away from the bird I felt very guilty. The guilt continues as I recall it now.
Later in the afternoon Cindy and I headed to Home Depot. The primary intent was I wanted to scope out the price of new extension ladders. The 20 footer I have just is not long enough to safely reach the top of several of the trees on the property. Since I plan to tackle that project Friday I wanted to be prepared. Well when I saw I would have to spend around $300 to upgrade to a ladder that won’t easily fit in my storage sheds I shit canned that idea but Cindy came up with a better one. She recalled that ladders were among the tools you can rent from Home Depot. We went into the tool rental department and saw I can rent a monster 32 foot ladder for 24 hours for $50. It was a perfect solution. I plan to pick one one up on my way home from work Thursday.
Later in the afternoon Cindy and I erected the inflatable arch for the last time. I wanted to take measurements so I could list the arch for sale. I felt a bit bittersweet about it but still confident that it was a good move for me to let race timing behind. I was surprised I got some immediate interest int the arch and sold it for my asking price. I dropped the two large boxes off at FedEx this morning.
Saturday night Cindy and I went to see Dr Strange. My knowledge of Dr Strange was very, very slim. I knew of the character and that was about it, I never read any Dr Strange comics. The movie is an origin story which I thought was well done. We saw the 3D version of the film and this was actually a situation where it was merited. The crazy visuals associated with the mystical world was well served with an extra dimension.I have liked pretty much every Marvel movie of the last 10 years and Dr Strange did not break that streak however I would rate it in the bottom third of those films. I’d give it a strong B+. Don’t forget to stay till the end. The ending bonus content got me excited about what is to come.
Saturday night was the clock switch meaning my Sunday run was no longer starting in utter darkness. Instead when I pulled into the parking lot at 6:45 the sun was already rising which felt a bit weird. The temps weren’t bad and I completed the four plus miles at a pace within a few seconds of the previous week although it did not feel like it during the run, which was a bit of a struggle.
Katie and her boyfriend Daniel joined us for our Sunday morning ride. I brought my training EUC with for Cindy to start learning on. Not only did Cindy try it (and did well), so did Katie and Daniel. Daniel’s progress was the most amazing. He went from not ever riding an electric unicycle to being able to roll without training wheels down the sidewalk within an hour. To be young again, sheesh. Like I mentioned, Cindy did well, I am hoping we can keep her moving forward in her progress. Once it clicks for her I am pretty sure she will be better than I am.
So I got to watch the Eagles for the fourth time this year go down, continuing their winless streak in the NFC east. Carson Wentz, despite putting up the most passing yeards of his young career, did not play great, throwing two consecutive bad interceptions in the first quarter that put the Eagles in a quick 14 point hole. As positive as I am about Wentz he definitely does not seem good at touch passes. I don’t think I have seen him hit a receiver in stride on a long pass all season and his endzone post pattern throws just do not have the trajectory or accuracy that is required. Hopefully he can clean up that part of his game eventually.
The decision by Doug Pederson to twice go for it on 4th down when the team was in easy field goal range will be questioned. I do like the aggressiveness but you have to have the personnel to pull it off. Both failed 4th down attempts not only failed but failed miserably. Of course those 6 lost points were exactly the margin that would have secured a one point win for the team. If there is a bright side to losing three of the last four games, I would say every loss, except the Washington game, the team played well enough to win. My expectations for the rest of the season have shifted back down closer to where they were week one. If we split wins and losses the rest of the way it will still be a more successful year than what I first thought.
Last night we watched our latest Netflix rental, Neighbors 2. It was much like the first iteration with a few spots of laugh out loud laughter back filled by a lot of silly shit. I think I gave the first one a B. I will stick with that rating for 2.0
Last night after work I was again out on my MSuper without my GoPro. Instead of driving to the school I rode there, the higher top end speed of the new wheel made getting there significantly quicker. I decided to fire up Strava, an app that is normally used to track running or cycling sessions, to track my ride. It gives you mapping, time and speed tracking very easily.
While I was at the school I practiced my wheel mounting technique. Despite now logging almost 300 miles on a single wheel my mounting technique has not improved with distance, I was still hopping my grounded foot on the wheel in a somewhat frantic manner.
When you watch experienced EUC riders they can push off with one foot and then bring the other on board in a smooth and controlled manner. Well thanks to some encouragement from a fellow rider I decided to try to polish my technique. Practicing the mount involved taking single steps with one foot on the EUC and the other off where you get a feel for how to hit that balance point. Like most things, it took me longer than it should to translate the instructions to implementation. I’m not great at reading something and then executing, I operate a lot on feel and little else. Once something clicks and feels right I am good to go. Reaching that point can take awhile for me.
So anyway after a couple dozen practice steps it finally started to feel right. The key for me was allowing the knee on my left leg which is on the EUC first to bend inward slightly, wedging my leg firmly against the bot, allowing me a stable platform to roll for a second while I bring the other foot onboard. It’s hard to explain so I will try to demonstrate on video over the weekend.
During the long straight away parts of my ride I could tell I was going considerably faster than I would have been able to on my Ninebot One. I was surprised just how fast I got up to, touching 20.6 mph according to Strava at one point. That is road bike speed with a solid tailwind for me. It won’t be long until I try to do the famous DD ride on one wheel. The Msuper has the battery power to actually pull it off.
So I have kept the amount of political talk in the blog relatively light, despite this being the most disgusting election of my adult life. Outside of discussing the eventual result, I plan to try to keep it that way, however…. I wanted to take a moment to just illustrate the type of deception that goes on when portraying scenarios with fuzzy numbers.
One of the things you will hear HRC bashers say is she will continue Obama’s policies that increased the national debt more than any other president in history. That’s a pretty strong statement that will surely sway the light thinkers. After all, debt is bad. So before we dig into that statement you could factor in that when Obama took office the country was in fiscal freefall, the sky was literally falling. The federal government spent mountains of cash bailing out financial institutions and offering stimulus packages like cash for clunkers, rebates for energy efficiency upgrades, and tax cuts. Say what you will about agreeing or disagreeing with some or all of those actions, the end result was the nose of the country was unquestionably pulled up from it’s trajectory into the ground. Of course we still had the uncapped wellhead of money being burned up supporting the Iraq conflict that was created via phantom information by the Bush administration as well. So yea, doing all that cost money, a whole bunch of it.
So when you turn your attention to dollars the numbers look big. Under Obama’s administration the national debt grew 56% in the first 7 years, adding roughly 6.5 trillion to the national debt. Growing the debt 56% sounds terrible doesn’t it? But wait a second, let’s put other presidents to the same scale. If you flip back only one chapter to the W nightmare years the national debt over his term grew 101%, yes almost double the rate of what has transpired under Obama.
When you look through history the light bulb really comes on. Ronald Reagan who is still seen by many as a star and the inventor of trickle down economics that has been an absolute disaster for the middle class for the last three decades plus, grew the national debt 186% during his reign. Yes, that is correct, 186%. So hopefully this information if nothing else gives you some pause to blindly accepting information vomited at you by the people best served by you believing it.
If you would like to open your eyes a little bit, take a look at the debt numbers by president here. Yep Obama as president has hit a bunch of potholes but he absolutely has done an admirable job of turning what was a very dire situation into merely a bad one.
This weekend there will surely be a lot of EUC riding going on, the weather is supposed to be quite nice. I would like to catch Dr Strange, run, and do whatever else sounds good at the time, after chores are done of course.
I was out on my new Gotway wheel again last night albeit solo this time. Before I left I went through a calibration routine that is supposed to allow you to level the pedals. It resulted in a funny video that illustrated just how fast the tire can spin and just how loud and annoying the beeps the wheel makes can be.
Afterward I headed back over to the school to get some more riding in. I am really enjoying the new freedom the Gotway gives me where I no longer have to worry about the wheel slowing me down when I approach 14mph. I did a few higher speed bursts during the ride that might have gotten into the high teens speed-wise, that felt plenty fast enough.
Late last night I watched my first baseball of the entire 2016 season. Yes, I am not kidding. I wanted to see if the Cubs could end the longest championship drought in baseball, dating back to 1908. When I flipped the game on it was already in the 7th inning and the Cubs had a comfortable 6-3 lead. I felt good about their chances as I saw they had Chapman getting warm in the bullpen , the 100mph+ closer. When they brought him in to get the last out in the 8th inning I figured it was the beginning of the end for the Indians.
The unthinkable happened, before Chapman could get that single out he gave up a double that drove in the guy on first base and a homerun that tied the game, holy shit. It started to rain during the top of the ninth which is when sleep overtook me unfortunately so I didn’t get to see the dramatic finish with the Cubs scoring two runs in the 10th inning and the Indians falling short, only scoring one run in the bottom of the inning. I would have liked to see the excitement at the end of a crazy World Series. I’m happy for the Cubs and Chicago fans, some of which I know personally (Lily), that the long, long streak has finally come to an end.
I got a very surprising Fed Ex shipping update yesterday indicating my new MSuper EUC which was originally estimated for Wednesday was going to show up Monday instead! I had been following the shipment closely which made this even more surprising since early Sunday morning the wheel was still in the UK. Later Sunday I saw it’s location had been updated to Tennessee so I assumed the Wednesday delivery was going to stand. I was amazed when I saw it was on the truck for delivery, kudos to Fed Ex.
Cindy freaked me out a bit when she sent a picture of the FedEx missed delivery sticker on the front door. The box required a signature and Cindy was out running errands. She saw she just missed the truck so she actually went out and found the guy and signed for the wheel for me which was awesome.
So of course as soon as I got home I dug into my new toy. The first thing that struck me was just how heavy the wheel is, weighing in at right around 45 pounds. Since I have done a ton of research before making the purchase I mostly knew what I needed to do right away, put air in the tire and start charging.
Gotway like Ninebot is a Chinese company, however they are MUCH smaller with a staff somewhere around 40 people. You can immediately tell the difference as Ninebot has tailored their vehicles to be more suitable for the American market with design and safety features that are regulated. Gotway has not been around long enough to start polishing their product line to that degree and it shows. However what their wheels lack in sophistication they make up for in power, speed, and range, at your own risk of course. The manual was entirely in Chinese and the phone app that is used to communicate with the wheel is primitive compared to what Ninebot provides.
So I pumped up the tire and threw it on the charger for a little bit. It arrived with only 30% battery charge so I wanted to give it a little more juice before my initial test ride. The sun was starting to set so I pulled it off the charger after maybe 25 minutes to give the wheel a short test. Cindy was outside with me as I was able to hop on immediately and take off.
I felt like I was transported back a couple months ago as far as my skill level goes, it felt so different than the Ninebot One. The most immediate difference was the firmness setting on the pedals. By firmness I mean how much forward and backward lean is required to control the wheel. I almost felt like I was on a bed with worn out springs, it felt much softer than what I am used to. Luckily this is one of the many configurable settings for the MSuper.
The other thing I noticed was because of the fatter tire, higher profile, and increased weight, the same moves I would use to turn the Ninebot were not sufficient to turn the MSuper. I will have to do a fresh set of experimentation with optimal foot/leg placement for the new wheel. None of these things were unexpected, I knew it was going to feel different than my 9B1, I just didn’t realize it would feel THAT different.
I threw it on the charger overnight so I will have a fresh battery to play with this evening. I plan to take it to the school parking lot to get practice on the MSuper. It will take some time for me to get the same level of confidence as I have on the Ninebot One but once I do I think the MSuper is going to be simply an awesome experience to ride.
The weather for most of this weekend was odd for Florida with mostly overcast skies that looked like rain yet yielded little more than a few sprinkles. At least the cloud cover kept the temperatures down although the humidity level was not nearly as pleasant as last week. I did some normal yard work in the morning before Cindy and I took Sadie for a ride to one of her favorite places, Rural King.
Later in the afternoon Cindy and I went out for a ride on our wheels in Valencia Lakes, a nearby development. While we were in there we tracked down the house of our friend Kerri who we know from the running club. Her and her son watched our chickens for us during our road trip last year. We hadn’t see her in quite awhile so it was nice to catch up.
Saturday night we headed to the movies for the first time in a few weeks to see Inferno, the third movie based on a Dan Brown book. I have read all of his books, including Inferno a year or two ago. I enjoy his writing style as well the subject matter that walks on the edge of controversial subjects like the hypocrisy of religion. Inferno, is based on another controversial subject, explosive human population growth and the brick wall it is hurdling us towards at a rapid pace.
The first two thirds of the movie seemed to follow what I remembered from the book pretty faithfully however the last third felt foreign with a number of things that I did not remember happening. I was not sure if I was just suffering from poor recollection of the book details or if they did make some wholesale changes. Well the answer is somewhere in the middle. After the movie Cindy looked it up and there were a number of deviations from the book including a very major one. I almost felt like I needed to go back and reread the last 50 pages of the book to see just how poor my recollection was. Anyway, my spending the last third of the movie reconciling between the book and film may have affected my overall enjoyment of the movie. I’ll give it a B+ although in reality I am feeling more B’ish about the whole thing.
Despite getting home late from the movie I woke up before the 6AM alarm to get up and run. I felt exhausted but compelled to keep up with the minimal once a week running program. I got out on the track about 15 minutes earlier than normal meaning it was literally pitch black when I started. I like that by the time other people start showing up I am nearly finished. Despite nearly 20 degree warmer temperatures and higher humidity than last week I turned in what I think was my fastest run of 2016.
Katie came over mid-morning to join us on what is becoming our traditional Sunday morning family ride on the Segways. We decided to take her to North Collier Regional Park, a spot Cindy and I have rode before. Not only is it a great spot to ride but they also had early voting available so Cindy and Katie could take advantage of it since neither had voted yet. This was actually the first time Katie had ever voted so it was cool to be there for her first time. With as long as the ballot is, I can only imagine how long the lines will be on election day. If you live in Florida and don’t take advantage of early voting you are crazy.
We had a fun ride after that although Katie had a few near falls. The Segway Minipros are very stable normally but they do have the same tilt back mechanism that my EUC does in order to limit rider speed. Basically when you cross 11mph the unit will start tilting you back, slowly at first and then more if the speed is still too high after a couple seconds. Twice Katie got hammered with severe tilt back that took her off the path although she didn’t fall off.
The tilt back safety feature is really a catch 22. Once the rear tilt reaches a certain angle your natural reaction is to lean forward to keep on top of the bot. The forward lean is interpreted by the wheel as you wanting to go even faster so it tilts you back even harder. The best way to deal with it is to just not go into tilt back speed area. Katie had one more near crash incident when she squeezed between a parking stop and curb and got one wheel up on the curb in the process. I’m not sure how she avoided falling that time but it made me think a helmet and wrist guards would be a good addition to both of the girls riding attire.
One of the things I like about the new wheel I am getting (arrives today) is the tilt back behavior can be customized. The higher speed capability of the wheel should make tilt back a thing of the past as I don’t intend to run it out to it’s top end speed. 25+ mph on a unicycle is a bit crazy.
Sunday afternoon Cindy and I took Sadie along to Home Depot to get a couple things including a nice yard wagon that will make transporting things to the back yard not necessarily require a trip through the gate with the Tacoma. We also bought an inexpensive Thanksgiving themed inflatable for the front yard, hoping to build off the popularity of our big red spider.
I got to play a lot of WoW Sunday afternoon which I enjoyed. I literally have a mountain of virtual things to do in game if I chose to do so. So far I have been echoing the feelings of other players regarding the new expansion that launched a month or so ago, it’s really good. So far I have only touched two of my eleven characters. There is just so much to see and do.
So of course I tuned in for the Eagles/Cowboys game. I am not sure why I am feeling so negative about the loss today as going in I thought the Birds didn’t have a great shot to win. I guess it’s because the Eagles played well enough to win and had a 10 point lead early in the fourth quarter that they gave away. I was not very happy pushing my waking hours to midnight (considering I got up before 6) just to see the defense collapse, allowing the Cowboys to score a TD on their first possession, easily. So before I start naming names and pointing fingers, let me once again say that I did not expect the Eagles to be good this year, so the fact that they have been doing better than expected is not lost on me.
Ok, Carson Wentz completed something like 32 passes but only threw for a little over 200 yards? When has that ever happened? The dink and dunk passing attack was a bit maddening and a testament to just how mediocre the Eagles wide receivers are. They scare no one. There is no deep threat on the team. You would think normally that a lack of speed would at least be countered by sure handedness? F no, these guys routinely drop easily catchable balls. Last night another four or five balls hit receivers in their hands and wound up on the ground. If the team had a true number one caliber wide receiver I think it would make a huge difference.
The Eagles cornerbacks blow, especially Mills. I am so sick of watching him get burned or penalized repeatedly and then wagging his finger when someone assigned to him doesn’t catch a ball, through nothing he did well. I mean he wags his finger if the ball is uncatchable, like he did something significant. Stop with all the gesturing and just play better. I still don’t understand how a 7th round rookie draft pick is a starting corner for the team but oh well. He also fell asleep at the wheel on special teams, allowing the Cowboy punter to run for a soul crushing 30 yard scamper. You suck buddy, leave the taunting and gesturing to the guys that actually make plays.
Fletcher Cox, what the hell dude? I recall during the tumultuous Eagles off season that I asked why in the world the team thought Fletcher Cox deserved to be the highest paid non-QB player in the NFL? His stats were good, not great, and certainly not deserving of such ridiculous wads of cash in my opinion. Well he has basically been a ghost this season doing nothing well unless you count getting blocked or falling down as positives. I focused on him during several series and he really looked like he was going through the motions with no motor at all. He was an absolute non-factor once again last night. That was definitely money ill spent.
Doug Pederson, the kicker made a 55 yard field goal not once, but twice at the end of the first half after the Cowboys called a time out to ice him. When you have a slightly shorter FG opportunity late in the game to make it a two score game you instead punt it away which resulted in the Cowboys immediately marching down the field and scoring? That was my first coaching wtf I had so far with Pederson this year, hopefully there aren’t a lot more of them. So ok, rant over, it felt good to get it out my system.
Tonight for Halloween I totally expect to get zero trick or treaters, just like every year for more than decade. Just in case we have a small bag of candy ready to go although I am sure Cindy and I will be the ultimate consumers of it.
Like I mentioned above my new MSuper electric unicycle is arriving a day or two earlier than I expected which is an awesome surprise. I can hardly wait to give it a go.
I don’t feel very chatty at the moment. Cindy and I have been watching a couple new shows recently, both of which we caught up on last night. Designated Survivor is an ABC show where Keifer Sutherland plays the President after basically all of the US government is killed off from a bombing during a state of the union address. His long run as the star of 24 made him a good fit for this role although his ability in the show to instantly adapt to being thrust into the role of President seems a bit unbelievable. Regardless Cindy and I both are looking forward to each and every episode.
West World is an HBO drama evidently based upon a movie from the 70’s that I never saw. It is a bizarre scenario where in the future a company builds an “amusement park” that is set in the Wild West time frame. The park is populated by androids that are cast members. The park guests have free reign to do pretty much whatever they want. Of course when many human beings are inserted into a situation like this, the dark side of themselves takes control. The androids have some fascinating qualities about them as well. For a tech/sci-fi geek like myself the show hits dead center in my sweet spot.
Yesterday Cindy completed her latest costume creation, a Pokemon dragon which she made for her nephew. She made it over the course of a couple days. Cindy really has skills when it comes this sort of stuff. She loves doing it.
So I have been driving the Tacoma to work all week since picking it up from the dealer on Tuesday to see if any of the weird dash warning lights would reappear since pulling the rattling Automatic adapter. I have not seen a single reoccurrence of the problem so I feel pretty safe in saying the adapter was the source of the problem. I guess I could try to get another adapter but at this point I don’t even know if I want one if it has the potential to make the vehicle computer go haywire.
This weekend will be another free form couple of days with no major projects on the clipboard. Unfortunately the weather is not supposed to be quite as crisp and refreshing as last weekend. I was hoping beyond hope that my new EUC would show up this weekend so I could get out and play on it. Unfortunately it looks like it will not arrive from it’s transatlantic journey until early next week.
Early voting started in Florida on Monday. I was originally going to try to vote then at the early voting location on our government campus but every time I looked the line was longer than I was willing to stand in. I guess since it was the first day I should have expected it. Of course 90% of the people in line were already of government entitlement collecting age.
Yesterday afternoon I saw only a few people in line so I decided to get it over with. In a general election the ballot is quite long, taking up both sides of two huge pieces of paper. As a tech person I still find it sort of amazing and sad that in 2016 we are still voting with paper and pen although they do scan the paper ballots at the end so the results are electronically tracked.
The voting process took me maybe 5 minutes to get through darkening in all of the appropriate circles, a lot of which I had no opinion on like if a long list of judges should be retained or not. Of course I happily darkened the circle for medical marijuana, I can only hope big pharm’s brainwashing attempt against medical marijuana is unsuccessful this time around. I don’t need to even waste time talking about my presidential choice other than saying it did not rhyme with Dump. At this point I just want this election season to be over. It has been the most corrosive, most depressing, and most ignorant campaign I can recall in my lifetime. I can only hope that I never see anything close to resembling it in the future.
Last night I went out on my wheel for a short ride. I once again crossed Immokalee Road and headed to the sparsely populated side streets on the other side. I had two separate dog incidents during the ride. The first one was some small dog, not much more than chihuahua size. I heard it’s annoying bark as I approached. As soon as it saw me it came sprinting down the driveway and out into the road in hot pursuit. I pushed the wheel to it’s top speed of about 14 mph. Despite doing so I could still hear the little dog keeping up a short distance behind me. Eventually it got tired and gave up but I bet it chased me for a couple hundred yards.
The second dog encounter had much more danger potential. This dog was in the front yard with two of it’s owners which looked like a father/son. As I approached they must have known there was a potential problem as they started squeaking the dog’s toy to try to get it’s attention off me. They were unsuccessful in doing so and the boxer mix was after me and closing quickly. I quickly realized I was not going to be able to out run this guy. Within a few seconds he was by my side which was very dangerous for both the dog and myself. If he decided to dart my direction all sorts of bad things could happen.
I could tell the dog wasn’t ferocious so I decided to just slow down and grab a nearby stop sign. I stayed there until one of the owners ran up and apologized. Once I stopped the dog wasn’t even interested in me and instead took a dump by the side of the road. I told the guy it was no problem and that I have a dog as well. So although I do like riding on the mostly empty streets in that area, the amount of people that don’t seem to care about restraining their dogs because of the remote geography makes me think I need to cross it off my normal riding list. Well cross it off until I get the Msuper which has the ability to go 20+ mph which should make it very difficult for most dogs to track me down.
On my return trip down our street I realized I had a very easy way to see if there is any traffic sneaking up on me instead of awkwardly trying to look over my shoulder which can affect my balance. I instead just used the camera on my phone in selfie mode. It worked great. I know a fellow rider that has a small rear view mirror attached to his helmet for even more safety which is a good idea as well.
So Cindy told me during the day that she couldn’t get the tractor started. It sounded like she cranked it to the point where the battery was too weak to turn the motor. When I got home I figured I had to drive the Tacoma around back to jump start the tractor which is a pain in the ass. I then realized I had a much easier option. I bought a portable power center for race timing. It is battery powered but has an inverter in it that allows it to provide AC power. It also can charge USB devices, has a light, AND has integrated jumper cables. I pulled it out of the closet and carried it to the shed where the tractor was housed. The motor fired right up and Cindy was off and mowing. When I sell my race equipment I think I will probably keep the power center, it’s a good insurance policy.
So I took my Ninebot out on the road and again ventured on the far side of Immokalee Road where the streets are very sparsely populated. I wound up on a long limestone road. The rough surface added for some additional challenge. However the biggest challenge was when I drove by a large house that had two VERY large, unrestrained dogs in the front yard. As soon as they saw me they started charging and barking like mad. I remained calm and accelerated the wheel without looking back, even though I could hear them in close pursuit. Luckily they gave up pretty quickly. They may have been totally fine if I would have stopped but I didn’t really want to find out. Even if you live in a mostly deserted road, having dogs of that size loose is pretty irresponsible. You can see them briefly in the video after I put some distance between them and me.
Yesterday we got the Amazon Echo Dot that we ordered close to a month ago. The Dot is the much smaller cousin of the Amazon Echo. The amazing thing is it has almost all of the functionality of the Echo at less than third of the price. The biggest difference is the Dot does not have a high quality integrated speaker like the Echo does. The small integrated speaker has much more basic sound quality but is fine. It has a headphone jack that you can use to connect it to a higher quality speaker as well as the ability to pair to a bluetooth speaker.
To be honest the only other difference I noticed was that to change the volume by hand you use two buttons on top of the unit instead of the slick integrated volume ring the Echo has. Other than those two things, it seems to have all of the abilities of the Echo in a hockey puck sized form factor. You do not have to have an Echo first to use a Dot, it will stand alone as it’s own smart home hub.
Hooking it up took all of 5 minutes. The Dot and the Echo actually are aware of each other and will defer to whichever device hears you better so if I issue a command in the bedroom only the Dot will respond and not the Echo, which is in the main living space. Cindy and I liked having the Dot available to serve our needs in the bedroom without having to scream out to the great room. We like it enough that I may get one more to put in the office, the other space in the house where we spend most of our time.
This will be my first sort of normal weekend in awhile. The weather should be AWESOME as our first real cool front is supposed to blow through, knocking our night time lows into the low 60’s. Sure I have work to get done but I hope to have relaxing and fun much more heavily mixed into the equation.
When I got home last night I decided to put together one of the presents I got for Cindy for her birthday, a glider/rocker chair. Cindy had said she would put it together herself but I figured I would do it for her while she was teaching a class so she could jump straight to enjoying it. The assembly looked worse up front than what it turned out to be in reality, despite pretty sparse instructions. It made me smile when I came back from my EUC ride and saw Cindy out on the lanai rocking in her new chair while watching the chickens.
So last night I finally decided to pull the trigger on buying my touring electric unicycle, a Msuper V3. The wheel has a large 18 inch tire with power, speed and range capability that is damn close to double what my Ninebot One E+ has under the hood. It is a beast. I decided to buy the wheel from SpeedyFeet, a company over in the UK run by a guy that I really like from his YouTube videos.
So I hop on his site and place the order. As soon as I try to complete the order I get a payment error. I waited a few minutes and tried again, same deal. I immediately assumed it was my CC company flagging the transaction as suspicious since it is overseas. I logged into my Chase account to see if I could authorize the transaction easily but didn’t see a way to do so. I decided to just use Paypal instead to complete the order. The wheel probably won’t show up for a couple weeks so I will have a lot of time to build up anticipation.
So this morning I wake up and see an email from Chase regarding card activity as I expected. I figured I would just call them when I got to work and say false alarm, it was me. So I make the call and am surprised the transaction they first ask me about is not SpeedyFeet, it is Sunshine Grocery Store for $275. Huh, excuse me? I had never heard of the store. When the rep looked at the transaction he said it was in Naples. I quickly looked online and saw the store was the shitty market about five miles from me at the corner of Wilson and Golden Gate Blvd.
After confirming with Cindy she didn’t for some reason go on a wild spending spree there, I logged into my account to look at all the recent activity. I was not pleased. There was a second visit to Sunshine as well as another local small supermarket as well as over $400 of charges at two local gas stations. To round things out there were two Amazon transactions that I did not make. In total, somewhere around $700 had been thrown on my card fraudulently since Friday.
So I started going over the transactions with the Chase rep, indicating what I did and did not charge. I told him that it looked like most of these were in person transactions. I said I have my card on me, how would they be doing over the counter transactions. He said all of these transactions were via magnetic swipes, not using the chip that is part of the EMV cards. The roll out of EMV tech seems totally half baked if so many retailers, including ALL gas stations still only accept the magnetic strip swipe for payment. My assumption is that either Cindy or I swiped our card at a gas station that has a card skimmer. Cindy did get gas at one station she never normally uses in the past week so that is the number one suspect on the list.
So after identifying the fraudulent transactions the rep said my card was frozen/cancelled and that I would be getting a brand new one with a new account in the mail shortly which will end this asshole’s joy ride. Of course my frustration ride is just beginning as I now have to update the dozens of places that I regularly use that card as a payment source for. The most frustrating thing is these skimmer criminals basically get a free pass. If they are able to install the skimmer without being detected they are free to steal card info as they see fit since credit card companies make zero effort to prosecute them.
Nailing these people would take nothing more than a basic investigation in many cases. You have the exact time the transaction came across the counter. Pretty much any retailer has a security camera pointed at the counter. Match the transaction to the video and BAM, there is your bad guy/girl. Because of the scale of credit card fraud banks have decided this is basically just a cost of doing business and write it off. As long as that environment exists the scammers will continue to run rampant.
Even if EMV chips were fully implemented, RFID readers would be able to accomplish the same sort of deception. It just doesn’t seem right that the guy shoplifting a few steaks will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law but the credit card thief that steals thousands of dollars of merchandise from countless individuals is not even pursued.
Despite the dramatically less amount of daylight available after the time change I hustled and got out on my MSuper for a little bit last night. I just stayed local going up and down the nearby side street. At the fairgrounds dead end I had an off roading opportunity. It is the same path I tried a few weeks ago on my Ninebot One but ran out of path to follow. It appears that since that time one of those huge brush cutter mowers went through. There was now a 20 foot wide cleared area all the way to Immokalee Road.
