Category EUC

So we dropped off Elsa Saturday morning at Ali’s place.  Ali was nice enough to agree to dogsit her for the night while we were gone.  Elsa stayed with them once before and it worked out really well.  We wound up talking to them longer than expected and subsequently pulled out for the east coast later than I hoped.  Originally I had ideas of leaving around 8, instead we didn’t hit the highway until 9:45.

So I tried to go with the flow.  If we left early enough I had ideas that we could go to the convention first without our costumes on and then go back to the room, gear up and head back later.  I figured with our delayed departure we would have to just go to the hotel, change, and then head over.  I had no idea that leaving late was going to also carry a VERY severe penalty, in traffic.

The highway portion of the drive was without incident however once we entered the city limit of Fort Lauderdale we hit incredible grid lock.  This was not traffic, this was a parking lot.  If these sort of situations aren’t annoying enough, they are exasperated by people being idiots, thinking they are going to somehow get a few feet ahead of the poor schlub behind them.  Non-stop Cindy and I saw people being assholes and it catching on in typical lemming behavior.  “Hey if that guy can be an asshole, I will be too” The most egregious idiot was tractor trailer that decided to do a U-turn into the stopped traffic.

So believe it or not, we sat in this hell for nearly 90 minutes.  We assumed all along that there had to be an accident on 17th street where both our hotel and the convention center was located.  When we finally bypassed the quagmire we realized the problem was just HORRIBLE logistics.  For whatever reason, the people managing parking at the convention center must have been absolutely awful at their job.  The traffic was entirely caused by cars waiting to get into the convention parking garage.  Even though we were not going to the convention quite yet we were stuck because the hotel was a mile beyond Supercon. Imagine my joy when we drove by the building and saw a line of people at least a 1/4 mile long snaking around the building in the sweltering heat, waiting to get in.

By the time we got in the room I was sort of done, I didn’t want to think about Supercon, I was just glad to be out of the damn car and out of the stationary traffic.  After we grabbed an overpriced lunch on the hotel grounds, Cindy began her prep work which was extremely extensive.  I knew I had a lot of time to wait based on past cons.  I almost fell asleep on the bed as I just chilled out.  Finally it was my time to get ready.  My prep was pretty simple.  I put on long pants, my thick, way too hot for Florida Soldier 76 coat, and had Cindy spray some gray shit in my hair and paint some black shit around my eyes. I bet her prep took nearly two hours.

We originally were going to take one the hotel shuttles but with all of our props we decided to Uber it over there.  We were most worried about Cindy’s meticulously crafted sniper rifle getting damaged.  We did catch our first break of the day when we saw the line to get in was no longer snaked around the building.  I carried in my coat and mask as I didn’t want to broil wearing it outside.

So we finally got inside and had to go through “prop check” where they verify your guns can’t fire any ammunition.  After that we probably were supposed to go stand in another line where they convert your QR code paper to a badge you wear around your neck.  Somehow instead we got directed to a security guard that just waved us in.  Since we were both fully decked out at that point I guess he figured entrance was a formality.

So it only took me a minute or two in my full costume to know it was going to be rough.  Despite a ton of effort by Cindy, there was only so much that could be done to assist in comfort.  She padded the mask well and added a bunch of holes to assist in breathing.  Even so the temperature and humidity levels in the mask rose very quickly.  Before very long I had condensation forming on the red lens inside.  The heavy fake leather coat had sweat forming on my back in no time.  I just sucked it up and dealt with it.  I knew I was going to be hot going into it.

It took no time at all for the picture requests to start up.  Cindy’s costume was especially amazing.  The fact that she was painted bluish/purple with a deep, plunging neckline didn’t hurt either. It seemed like a chain reaction, once one person asked for a picture, another half dozen would ask as well, there are evidently a LOT of Overwatch players at Supercon.  Cindy and I patiently posed for every picture request.  If you are going to dress up like we did and not expect to be photographed a lot you are delusional. Besides being hot, the mask had the unfortunate side effect of making it almost impossible for Cindy to hear me with all the ambient noise.  I had to practically scream six inches from her ear if I wanted to get her attention.

The crowd inside the hall was maddening most of the time, there was just far too much humanity jammed into too small of a space for me.  It was just crazy.  We were worried about someone damaging Cindy’s rifle with it being so crowded but she did a good job of keeping it in a protected position most of the time.  Periodically we would just steer ourselves towards spots where there were less people to catch a breather, figuratively and literally.  I would take my mask off randomly just to try to cool down a bit.

Cindy had some funny interactions with some of the celebrities there.  She met and talked to the guy that plays Abraham on Walking Dead, well he used to until his character got his head beat in.  She also talked to the guy that plays Eugene, Cindy said he seemed like he was high as a kite.  They also had cast from the Karate Kid, the bad kid, the bad kid’s evil sensei and Ralph Macchio himself. There was a very funny interaction between Cindy and Ralph when he asked her what time the con ran until.  When she told him 8PM he said “Great, two more fcking hours…” as he laughed.  I am sure it has to get exhausting acting like you give a damn about all the people that come up to you asking you to wax on and wax off all day long.

The other celebrities there did not seem quite as mainstream as we have seen at other cons but we did catch a glimpse of Lee Majors right before he skipped out to take a break.  Of course 75% of the people there probably had no idea who he was at this point.  The 6 Million Dollar Man was one of my favorite series growing up.

One of the downsides of attending in costume is you really do not get to take in very much at all.  Between picture requests and just getting moved along by human rivers it was really hard to spend a lot of time looking at stuff.  Again, we knew that was just the way it was if you dress up so I can’t complain about it.  I felt happy that all the work Cindy put into the costumes was being recognized by all of the attention she was getting.  The detail she went into was nuts when putting the stuff together.

We had fun meeting other people dressed up as Overwatch characters and took a lot of pictures as groups.  Unfortunately again, when you are the picture subject matter, you don’t get too many pictures yourself.  A few times we handed my phone to a nice bystander that took some shots for us.

They also had some cool sets that you could take your picture on.  We got pictures on a Star Wars, Star Trek, and a military set, they turned out cool.

So we walked around, mostly in character up until 7:30, a half hour before the main area closed.  Cindy and I were both beat so we decided to call an Uber to shuttle us back.  Ironically just as we were about to catch the car, a young girl we met in our hotel lobby was outside as well, looking to get back to the hotel.  Cindy said she could hop in the Uber with us if she wanted.  After verifying with her dad it was ok she accepted the offer which worked out well for her.

I was not very happy with this Uber driver.  For some reason he felt like late July in Florida did not require AC.  Instead he had his window down all the way.  Since the drive was only roughly a mile it wasn’t worth making a stink about but I thought it was odd.  My annoyance with the guy clicked up a few more notches when I realized today that he charged us a 27 cent “waiting” surcharge.  The thing is he was only waiting because he didn’t come to where we were, we had to walk 75 yards to him, so he charged us for it. Idiot.

When we got to the room we were beat, really beat.  We shot a brief video summarizing the experience before we began the clean up process.

So I let Cindy shower first as she obviously had more work to do than me.  When it was my turn I grabbed a wash cloth, soaped it up and started trying to scrub around my eyes to get the black gunk off.  Well all of a sudden I got a severe burning sensation in my right eye, I couldn’t open it from the pain but I immediately tried to flush the eye with the shower water.  It hurt really, really bad.  It took awhile  until I could keep the eye open and when I did, the eye was bright red.  I am not exactly sure what happened but I think I either got some of the black make up or the stuff  that was in my hair into my eye.  All I do know for sure was it felt like battery acid.  I stopped the eye cleaning process and still have black marks around both eyes which I hope will come off with normal cleaning cycles.

It was approaching 9PM by the time we got all cleaned up but we hadn’t eaten dinner yet.  We decided to check out a place on the hotel campus called Pelican Landing which overlooked the water that goes under the 17th street drawbridge.  We sat along the rail so we got to watch the boats traveling back and forth.  It was cool.  We had a waitress originally from Russia, named Olga.  The food was good but pricey, a theme repeated during our stay, more on that soon.

On the way back from eating we found our car in the parking lot and pulled out the two EUC’s.  We thought it would be safer to keep them in the room with us.  We rode them around the parking lot a little bit before riding them up to the door of the room.  It was fun.  It wasn’t fun trying to get into the room.

The keycards or more accurately the door lock they are used on was very glitchy.  You could not simply insert the card and remove it to get the door to open.  It required a very specific angle and speed of insertion and removal.  It took us no less than a dozen tries until we were successful.  There were other things about the room that were not up to what I would expect by Hilton standards like a toilet seat that was half broken, a towel bar that would fall to the ground when you pulled a towel off of it, a box of tissues that were drenched, and a bathroom fan that sounded like an airplane motor with a spun bearing.  It didn’t take me long to pass out Saturday night, I was exhausted.  I didn’t sleep as soundly as I would hope but it wasn’t terrible.

Randall made arrangements to come meet us for breakfast Saturday morning.  Originally we hoped he would bring his EUC to ride but his tire was out of air and he misplaced the valve extender that is needed to inflate it.  We caught up and had a nice breakfast at another in house restaurant although again, the dramatic premium pricing was pretty disgusting.  $80 for three people to have breakfast is just stupid in my opinion.

We walked around the grounds a bit and showed Randall our room.  We then walked out to the Prius to get out the wheels.  While Cindy was putting on her safety gear I told Randall he can jump on the Msuper to give it a try.  He was a bit wobbly but was able to stay on it.  We bid Randall farewell as Cindy and I headed out for a quick ride back and forth over the bridge.

The ride wasn’t very tough, the hills we faced in Marco Island were much steeper.  The views on top of the bridge were very scenic of course.  Cindy was feeling beat up from Supercon so we were done riding in 20 minutes or less.  She did agree to ride down on the dock with me by the multi-million dollar boats which was a cool way to finish up the ride.

So the checkout at the hotel put an exclamation point on the overcharging fiasco.  The quoted $125 per night rate mutated into a bill of nearly $300 after the overblown food charges and annoying add ons like $30 for parking.  I am not sure how some hotels think that parking is an ala carte add on option but it’s fcking ridiculous. But the bottom line is people keep paying it so they keep charging it.

The drive back to the west coast felt long.  We drove through multiple periods of severe rain but also had blue sky periods as well.  Elsa was very happy to see us of course.  She got a stellar report card from Shugs.  It made Cindy and I happy to know Elsa can stay with them and adjust so well since she will be doing it again for over a week soon.

When we got home we dug into unpacking and attending to the chickens since we just had the coop closed last night and opened this morning.  All the chicken chores had to still be done.  I was happy to see that almost ALL the water behind the coop has dried up at this point.  Sure there is plenty of black muck left behind but if we get lucky enough to have some more dry weather that will eventually turn back into dirt again I hope.

I took tomorrow off as well to do more house chores and change the oil in Cindy’s Ioniq, readying it for the upcoming road trip.

So this was the third “con” Cindy and I have attended.  As I was sweating my ass off in the costume posing for picture after picture I tried to evaluate if the effort, time, and expense was worth the experience.  My answer to that is conditional.  Would I do it by myself? Hell no.  However Cindy is PASSIONATE about costume creation, she absolutely loves it.  If you saw how much thought and time she put into her costume and mine it would be hard to believe.  I think she also likes that people at the conventions recognize/appreciate her effort as the picture requests would indicate.  Because I know she gets so much out of it I am happy to support her by agreeing to go to these events. But I did learn a hard lesson that above all, comfort needs to be a primary consideration when choosing costume options.  If you are uncomfortable wearing something pretty much the entire time it just isn’t worth it in my opinion, no matter how cool it looks.

So although Cindy and I ride our EUC’s a lot we haven’t been doing any practice and that is an important distinction.  When we are cruising around on the weekends we are basically just enjoying the ride and taking in the scenery.  However when you have designated practice sessions, that is when you actually get better at doing stuff and it’s something we haven’t really done much of at all lately.  My last concentrated practicing was when I learned the basics of riding backwards months ago.

So after dinner I randomly asked Cindy if she was up for some driveway practice and she said she was.  She took her Inmotion outside and I rode the Monster.  Cindy worked on her turning, slow riding, control, and the first steps towards backwards riding.  I worked on some backwards riding, one legged riding and mounting, yes mounting.

Free mounting on an EUC is something I learned a long time ago with one catch, I really only learned how to do it one way, with my left leg on the pedal and the right foot on the ground.  I have gotten very adept at mounting and dismounting that way so I neglected to really work on doing it with the legs flipped around, I need to.  Being a one trick pony when getting on and off the wheel affects your ability to turn and do emergency maneuvers.  It makes sense why I am so much more comfortable making left hand turns than the right hand variety.  The EUC muscles on the outside of my left leg are much more developed.

So I worked a lot on getting on and off the bot with my legs reversed.  I felt like I was transformed back in time as my body just was not comfortable mounting from the other side.  I could also feel the muscles on the outside of my right leg getting worked in an unfamiliar way.  By the end of the half hour or so session I was getting better and better from that side, a testament to why I need to keep practicing.

I also did a little one legged riding where I would lift my right foot totally off the pedal for a brief period of time and balance myself and the bot on one leg.  It’s a bit tricky and puts a lot of torque on the supporting leg but I could do it at a basic level.  Finally, I did more backwards riding practice, something I have only done a little of on the big Monster.  I felt shaky the first few attempts but again, by the end of the session things were smoothing out. It was a real fun session and reminded me why regular practice beyond normal riding is a requirement if you want to keep getting better.

So the Big D made his latest blunder yesterday, deciding now was the perfect time to alienate the LGBT community by declaring the military no longer will allow transgender individuals to serve.  One of the reasons were the “tremendous medical costs” the military would have to deal with?  WTF???  Our military which routinely pays $400 for a toilet seat is now concerned with medical costs for a few transgender members of the service?  Is there a rash of people that were joining the military so the government could pay for sexual reassignment surgery??  Come on, this is just stupid.

Sadly myself, and a good portion of the country I imagine is getting desensitized to buffoonery in the White House since it is literally a near daily occurrence.  The dangerous side effect is people just shrug their shoulders and move on while things at the top rot from the inside out.

Saturday morning Cindy and I decided to get our weekend 5K run out of the way.  It was a rough, rough run.  The heat, humidity, and my body’s refusal to feel comfortable at any point during the run made for a miserable half hour.  We endured it and that is all that matters. I almost did not endure the yard work that followed when we got home.

My legs felt especially dead during the run and that sensation increased as I walked around the yard picking weeds.  Even with using my normal technique where my elbows are resting on my knees/thighs as I pull countless weeds, my legs and back were just weak.  When I moved onto weedwhacking I really hit the wall.  I felt dangerously tired at times.  More than once I just stopped to try to rest for a moment as the sun was melting me from above.  By the time I walked back in the door my tank was absolutely empty. I jumped in the pool to try to cool down my body temperature rapidly.  We then did a coffee run with Elsa which helped artificially restore some of my depleted energy reserves.

I did a decent amount of 3D printing Saturday afternoon.  I did my first printing with a new filament type called PetG.  Supposedly it offers some of the benefits of both ABS and PLA plastics. I got a green translucent variety that looked cool.  I had a hard time getting the print to stick to printing surface but after a few tries I was able to print out this EUC mudguard.  Unfortunately when I tried to test fit it on my wheel the one support snapped.  I plan to try to print the guard again with some more outer walls and infill for more strength.

I also did multiple prints of the prototype mudguard for the Monster.  I have been working with my EUC buddy from Finland who has been designing the mudguard in Fusion 360 based on the measurements and pictures I have been sending him.  He makes some changes, I print it out and then do a test fit and provide feedback which is used for the next revision.  We are on rev 6 at this point and I think we are almost there.

On Saturday night we watched Hacksaw Ridge, a true life story of amazing bravery, endurance, and heroics during the World War II land portion of the Japanese campaign.  It seems almost superhuman to have endured what this man did.  It’s a movie everyone should see to give a true sense of just how awful war really is and why it should be mankind’s goal to eliminate it, even if it is a pipe dream.  I give it a solid A score, Cindy rated it A++.

Sunday morning I cleaned the chicken coop and much like last week, again was disgusted with the amount of pure mucky areas.  The sod I laid last week helped but other disgusting areas opened up.  I was again motivated to buy a bunch more sod to address the mess.  However unlike last week, my calls to the home improvement stores all had the same answer, “Sod is gone”  I plan to take the truck to work on Tuesday, sod delivery day, so I can grab a bunch more to throw around the chicken yard.

We headed out for an EUC ride mid-morning and met up with Daniel and Katie at the park in Pelican Bay.  I looked up and suddenly saw Katie riding backwards, easily.  She said she had practiced backwards a couple times.  Well her couple practice sessions resulted in her being MUCH more proficient and comfortable going backwards than I am.  She just has natural ability to ride an EUC, something I definitely don’t have.  Repeatedly during the ride she flipped into backwards riding with ease.

It was hot as hell so keeping moving was a priority.  As soon as you stopped the heat and humidity was stifling.  Again we swapped around wheels to a degree.  I rode all four of the wheels at one point or another.  It’s amazing how different the riding experience is between the wheels.  I definitely prefer a bigger wheel at this point.

After lunch I immediately headed outside to do the best I could mowing around the standing water.  It looked like it was going to rain on me multiple times but it thankfully held off.  There were certain areas where I just rammed the tractor through mud bogs, relying on momentum to keep me from getting stuck.  A good portion of the yard is just a muddy, disgusting mess, I hate it.

I chilled for most of the rest of the day, meddling around in WoW attending to the needs of a half dozen virtual beings.  It’s odd how being so busy in the game translates into relaxation for me, but it works.

Saturday morning instead of running we were out in the mucky yard bright and early getting chores done. The daily downpours during the week has made portions of the yard pure muck, it’s disgusting.  I got out on the tractor later in the afternoon to mow what I could without mud bogging.

I also did two projects on the Prius.  For the second time in four months I had a headlight go out, this time the passenger side.  Despite doing the job not too long ago, I struggled again with the task that requires a lot of working blind, relying on feel alone.

I then threw the car up on ramps for an oil change.  Thankfully that was a much more straight forward job.

During the day I also had time to design my first Fusion 360 3D object from scratch, not following a tutorial.  I struggled mightily to get the software to spit out what I wanted due to my lack of experience, but by the time I was done I had a custom sponge holder bracket that did EXACTLY what I needed it to do.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched our Netflix rental, Underworld, whatever the latest iteration is. (I think there are six of them at this point)  Of course to me, Underworld is all about Kate Beckensale in tight leather outfits beating up werewolves and vampires alike.  Even with this going on I found this sequel only average and would rate it a B-, still ok to rent but a waste if you saw it in theaters.

Sunday I drug myself out of bed and to the track for a VERY humid 5K around the track.  I was joined by a guy walking laps at an extremely slow pace.  For every one lap he completed I ran between two and a half and three laps.  I was glad to be able to complete the distance without any bad pain from my right side.

When I got home I cleaned the coop and was absolutely disgusted to how mucky the front of the coop area had become.  I made a snap decision that I had to do something about it.  After calling the Bonita Home Depot to verify they had sod, I hauled ass there and filled the bed of the Tacoma with 15 bags of top soil and 30 pieces of sod.

I used the supplies to fill the small trench in front of the coop that gets the most disgusting.  The chickens were very happy to help me spread the top soil.  Anything dry is very appealing to them at this point.  On Saturday I dumped 5 bags of sand into piles in their run without raking it so they would have dry stuff to dig around in.

After taking a quick shower to rinse the sweat and dirt off me we headed out to meet Katie and Daniel for an EUC ride.  Daniel just got his brand new Gotway ACM this week so he was anxious to show it to us.  The wheel more than doubles the speed, power and distance of the Ninebot One Daniel had been riding up until this point.

We had fun zipping around the North Collier Park grounds, taking turns switching wheels.  I rode the ACM for a bit and to be honest wasn’t all the comfortable.  The wheel felt small, short, yet fat between my legs.  I felt a little wobbly on the wheel and much preferred the fit and ride my two larger wheels provide.  Like anything, I am sure I would get more used to it with more pedal time but it really made me rethink my idea to buy a 16 inch Kingsong wheel.  I may instead look at the 18 inch Kingsong wheel instead.

Late afternoon we piled the dogs into the Prius for a Rural King run which they were very excited about.  It’s always fun to bring Sadie and Elsa along anywhere.  They are quite the entertaining canine couple.

My work week is once again looking super busy, hence the reason this is getting punched out on a Sunday evening, an extremely rare occurrence.

So as part of my Saturday morning chores I wanted ot get the grass mowed and weed whacked.  The standing water had dried up so I knew in wet season you need to take advantage of these dry opportunities.  Cindy and I busted ass and got everything looking good, just in time for it to absolutely pour a couple hours later, submerging the grounds once again.  It’s so frustrating.  When I walked back in the chicken area to turn the pump back on the water was only three to four inches from the top of my boots.

When I was doing stuff around the yard I was feeling some moderate discomfort from my right side.  It was the left over pain I had from doing dragon flags on Friday.  I was a little concerned that the pain, which seems to be right around where a liver is supposed to me, was still hurting.  The pain also erased running from the activity list for the weekend.  When I was crossing the Home Depot parking lot with Elsa and tried to transition into a light jog to avoid burning her feet I felt significant discomfort.  As the weekend progressed the pain has lessened so hopefully just avoiding dragon flags in the future will be the long term remedy.

Saturday night we got out to see the new Spiderman movie.  I found it interesting that Marvel basically decided to tweak the Spiderman origin story most of us know.  Despite this it somehow all worked which isn’t surprising.  Everything Marvel touches just works.  Both Cindy and I really enjoyed the movie, earning a shiny A+ in my book.

Sunday morning Katie joined us for our EUC ride around some of the beautiful nearby developments.  She had my old Ninebot One that I gave to Daniel in her truck which Cindy hopped on and rode at the end of the ride. It was sort of a symbolic triumph for Cindy since it was her fall off the Ninebot One in the driveway that scared her from learning for months and months.  For her to be able to step up and do a few circles on the 9B1 like it was no big deal was a testament to how far she has come.  Cindy said she actually liked the way the 16 inch wheel felt.

I did some more 3D printing over the weekend, printing a cool clamp style headset holder for Cindy, a small skull ring, a new phone case and a few other items.  I also got to do my first “fixing” of the FlashForge Finder.  When I was changing filament a piece seemed to get stuck in the extruder.  I had to do some minor disassembly to get access to the filament tube.  I then was able to use the included tools to clear the path and load in some fresh spool.

It’s a good thing that I get some practice digging into the printer.  With the CR-10 large format printer I have on order there is probably going to be a lot of tweaking, improving, and fixing going on.

I recorded a second video during the afternoon recapping my experiences thus far with 3D printing.  For being complete novices, I think Cindy and I have created some pretty amazing objects.

Sunday afternoon was chill with Cindy working more on her costume designs while I worked more in WoW.  Since I unlocked the ability to fly in game it has made leveling characters significantly easier.  I now have six or seven of my 11 toons at max level and keep working on the what is left.

We watched 50 Shades Darker last night, a movie I rented because Cindy expressed interest.  I saw the first one with her and was not very impressed although it was some low level soft porn.  I thought the sequel suffered from a disjointed plot which I found a hard time caring much about.  Of course it was filled with large amounts of more soft porn once again so I can give it a B on entertainment value I guess.

I once again have not been sleeping well.  Lately it seems I wake up an hour or two before the alarm goes off and just fade in and out of consciousness until the bell sounds.

Over my adult life I seem to have hobby or interest phases where I get very focused or interested in something and dedicate a LOT of time to it.  Some things totally fade away, others just see less time dedicated to them. Some of the things that have rotated on and off that list are volleyball, cars, bar fitness, WoW, race timing, RC planes/drones, and electric unicycles.  Well it seems that 3D printing may be officially on that list as well.

After buying my FlashForge Finder a few weeks ago CIndy and I have been on a 3D printing tear. The majority of that printing has been stuff for Cindy’s Widowmaker costume for Supercon but I have made a lot of other cool things as well.  There is something very satisfying about being able to create an object out of nothing.

Well I expanded my 3D printer collection by ordering a printer that is taking the 3D printing world by storm, the CR-10.  It is so popular because it is able to produce HUGE prints in multiple materials with very good quality.  There are lots of printers that make really nice prints however what makes the CR-10 so crazy is it is only $400, $100 less than what I paid for my FlashForge printer.

This printer does require some minor assembly and is definitely not as targeted to the 3D printing novice as much as the Finder is.  I did a decent amount of reading and researching on the CR-10 and unlike so many things in life, it actually seems to not be to good to be true.  It’s a high quality, huge volume printer for a very affordable price.  I’m really looking forward to digging into it once it arrives and see what I can do.  I expect some more technical challenges with this type of printer but nothing that I can’t handle.

Speaking of 3D printing, Cindy has been busting ass getting the dozens of 3D parts I printed assembled for her rifle.  She is almost there and it looks great.  It amazes both of us that we were able to create something of this detail and realism ourselves, as complete 3D printing novices.

So I wanted to do a different kind of EUC ride for the 4th of July.  I suggested to Cindy we drive all the way down to Marco Island to ride around the hilly area, something we never tried before.  Cindy was enthusiastic about the idea.  The drive took between 45 minutes and an hour so it was significant time investment.

We parked at the same spot the Marco Hill Run is based out of, a race I timed for years.  I was initially frustrated when I turned on my GoPro and realized I left my micro-SD card in the reader at home.  However I was able to run into the Publix and grab a 16GB card to save the day.

The ride was really fun, scenic, interesting, and challenging.  I have NEVER ridden any EUC on hills that big.  I have seen a number of videos of fellow riders on the internet pushing their wheels up and down big hills and having the bot overheat or implode.  As we were riding I was using the app on my phone to make sure both the Monster and Msuper were not getting too hot from the added load.  Both wheels stayed safely in the normal operating range thankfully.

Riding hills requires a different technique.  Depending on the length and degree of climb you have to really pitch your body forward and shift your weight to your toes to keep the wheel going.  It also feels weird going down steep declines as your speed can very quickly ramp up to uncomfortable levels.  Cindy got a bunch of seated riding in too, despite the terrain.  It was a great ride and I hope we can take the wheels down there again to explore other parts of the island.

So when we got home after lunch I went directly outside to mow the back yard, the area I missed on Saturday due to a downpour that submerged the yard once again.  I gave the back yard a matching  haircut and finished up just as it started to rain, again.  By the time it stopped the standing water was back again.

We spent a lot of the rest of the day doing stuff we enjoyed, me playing WoW and Cindy working on her gun.  We were trying to estimate how much time in total we have spent on the Supercon costume/gear but it would be too staggering to add up.  Despite all the work, it’s something Cindy really enjoys doing so the hours don’t really matter.

I forgot to mention I have now put up a a web site for my EUC Army moniker that I established on YouTube awhile ago.  I took down the running club website that I still had alive in one of my WP hosting slots on GoDaddy and installed eucarmy.com there instead, a much better use of my resources.

My thought process is when we are asked about the wheels we can simply say, “go to eucarmy.com to find out more”  The site explains some of the basics as well as links to more information, a forum, and recommendations on where to buy EUC’s.  I like the visuals of the site, it will be interesting to see how much traffic it will generate for me.

Our 4th of July celebration was a minimal as you can imagine.  When we took Elsa out for her final walk of the night we each lit a single sparkler that was waved around for a few seconds.  I had no desire to go fight traffic and crowds to witness the fireworks at the Naples Pier and there were plenty of backyard firework shows going off all around us.

Cindy and I started off the weekend with a track 5K.  I forced myself to do it even though as recently as Friday night I was walking around gingerly due to hamstrings still sore from deadlifting on Tuesday.  Much like the week prior, the run felt like a struggle pretty much the entire time.  The temp almost being 80 degrees with high humidity at 7AM didn’t help matters.

I wanted to get all weekend labor out of the way on Saturday and I worked diligently to make that happen.  Weeding was a particularly large pain in the ass.  The frequent rain combined with steaming temperatures provides the perfect conditions for weeds to pop up everywhere.

It was bright and sunny for most of the day Saturday, so much so that once again the dreaded standing water had dried up.  Around 3 o’clock I decided I should take advantage of this and jumped on the tractor as I saw a few gray clouds starting to form.  Well as I was about half way into mowing the first front section when it started to rain lightly.  Since the tractor has a sun canopy it also does a decent job as a rain canopy so I pressed on.  By the time I called it quits after finishing the front of the house I was mowing in the middle of a monsoon.  Of course the recently dried up sections of the yard were now back under several inches of water…..sigh.

Another thing I got out of the way on Saturday was my weekly bill paying session.  I actually had very few bills to pay this week so a wave of inspiration hit me.  My primary 15 year mortgage was real close to being paid off.  I had planned to pay it off in a couple months but I decided I would dip into one of my other budget columns and pay the sucker off now.  I have been overpaying a little bit each month ever since the house was refinanced  which has allowed me to get to this point roughly a year ahead of schedule.

A looong time ago I had set a goal of having the house paid off before I was 50 so it feels good to accomplish that.  However when I initially set that goal it was the intent for the house to be COMPLETELY paid off which it is not.  I still have my home equity loan which was opened almost as long ago which was used to pay for things like the pool, the two terrible land investments in Lehigh Acres, divorce settlement funds, and home improvements.  Now that the primary mortgage is cleared out I can attack the HELOC as well as having some extra funds to both save and do some other things with.  I would like to open up a Roth IRA to give me a third retirement account to lean on when I am old, gray, and feeble. (if I make it that long)  So anyway, yes, it feels good to have the primary mortgage satisfied, it’s something a lot of people never get a chance to do in their lifetimes.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched Aftermath, a recent movie I never heard of with Arnold starring in it based on a true story.  I was somewhat surprised that the movie was missing pretty much any of the classic Arnold physicality even though there is a weird, twisted, revenge plot going on.  I thought it was well done although extremely sad and tragic.  It gets a solid B but don’t expect to be jumping for joy afterward.  I think this movie never hit theaters and went direct to Blu-ray.

Sunday morning Cindy and I got out on the wheels, riding directly from the house over to the high school roughly three miles away.  The wide open and traffic free roads are great for practicing.  I did more seated riding on the Monster and Cindy worked on a number of skills as well.  Her comfort level on the wheel is approaching mine.

It felt like I was wasting time not having my 3D printer building something so over the weekend I printed Arthas the Lich King, a big character from World of Warcaft lore. It was a very complex model and I was skeptical of how it would turn out.  When it was done printing it was encased in support material but after a lot of careful clean up by Cindy this was the end result.  Cindy will also be the one to take on the very intricate task of painting the model when she has time.

The reason Cindy’s time has been taxed is her relentless work on her cosplay costume and props.  She has been spending a ton of time assembling the 3D gun that we printed the parts for.  Putting all the parts together and making it look pretty is a far greater task than the printing of the parts.  It’s exciting seeing the gun come to life bit by bit. Hopefully by the end of this week it will be more or less done.

While she was plugging away on her stuff I was plugging away in WoW having a good time rotating through my various characters and getting stuff done in a virtual manner.  I always feel somewhat guilty after prolonged gaming sessions but I enjoy them all the same.

I have a weird week where after a day at the office I am treated with another day off.  Cindy and I have no definitive plans for the 4th but I am sure EUC riding, gun building, and WoW will be part of the itinerary.

I forgot to mention a call I had with my insurance agency the other day.  The call was inspired by the revised monthly car insurance bill I received after adding Cindy’s Prius to my policy.  Specifically, that the monthly bill more than doubled adding a 10 year old vehicle that was worth probably 10% of the Tacoma.  I explained the scenario to the phone rep on the other line and how it did not make sense that my policy would increase so much more for a vehicle that is worth a tiny fraction of what the truck is.  I asked him to explain to me how that is logical.

He said that the higher costs has to do with the additional safety features the Tacoma has that the Prius lacks.  He said the collision portion of the policy for the Tacoma is indeed higher than the Prius but the comprehensive portion is less due to these additional safety features.  I turned the discussion to the big picture cost of car insurance as for these two vehicles I am paying over $2400 a year despite being nearly 50 years old and NEVER having an accident claim or speeding ticket since moving to Florida.

I told the rep the way it used to work was as drivers get older their insurance goes down.  Instead my insurance has steadily risen, despite my squeaky clean driving record.  The rep said the blame for this is almost entirely litigation, specifically the mega-settlements you see TV lawyers bragging about.  I told him that despite this it is very difficult for me to feel sorry for insurance companies when I read about the incredible profit margins and CEO salaries associated with them.

The rep understood my frustration and told me he was paying almost exactly the same as I was to insure his two vehicles as well.  The end result of this was my dropping the collision coverage on the Prius to save a few bucks.  He also said that if I opt to pay the six month premium in a lump sum instead of monthly there is a 10% savings.  I did not realize the savings was that significant else I would have done it that way for a long time.  I hung up not feeling particularly better about the situation but at least I got to voice some discontent I suppose.

I picked up my Tacoma on the way home last night.  The recall work on the differential went without a hitch.  The truck was ready to go as promised.  Dealing with a different service advisor at the dealership has made my experience there much more enjoyable.  I shot a video about the differential service of course.

When I got home I completed two other videos.  One was me cracking open the side case of my Gotway Monster to make sure all of the wiring and electronics looked ok.  The reason I did this was a rash of Gotway failures where wires and/or electronic components inside their wheels failed causing rider injury.  I was happy to see the inside of my wheel looked pristine.

Finally I ripped the video of the time lapse print of the 3d lamp cover I made in Fusion 360.  It was my coolest print to date, until I printed a 3D mesh skull yesterday. 🙂

The property is back to being water logged after a week of afternoon storms.  I have the pump back up and running, trying to somehow stay ahead of the steady stream of water from the sky.  It’s frustrating.

This weekend we will have Sadie which will make Elsa VERY happy.  It makes the entire household better when Sadie and her happy go lucky attitude is rolling around the house.

So I had a LOT of stuff I wanted to get done this weekend.  I gave Cindy my potential list and she busted ass on Friday getting a number of the indoor components of the list knocked out which I greatly appreciated.  Friday had been bright and sunny for the most part and the forecast was for Saturday to be much of the same. I was hoping to be able to get a pretty comprehensive mowing session in to take advantage of the receded water.

The weather forecast was accurate for the most part and the end result was a monster chore day on Saturday.  Not only did Cindy and I mow and weed whack the normal portions of the yard, I also took the tractor out back and cut everything back there as well.  There were a handful of other small projects we threw in the mix.  The end result was my not coming back inside until after 4PM.

When we ran to Home Depot earlier in the day we also stopped at Walmart for Cindy to grab some Zima, yes, Zima.  After around a decade hiatus Coors has decided to bring back Zima on a limited basis which was awesome news to me.  You see when I started drinking at 24 years of age Zima was my alcohol of choice.  I had not acquired a taste for beer as of yet and the smooth citrus taste of Zima made them go down very easily, possibly too easily as I had MANY Zima induced stupors in my mid-20s.

We had several bottles in the fridge getting cold during the afternoon.  After a long, hot, sweaty day of work I couldn’t imagine a better time to give Zima 2.0 a taste test.  I thought the moment was important enough to capture on video.  The ridged side bottle was exactly as I remembered 20 years ago.  When I cracked open the bottle my first taste was not a sip, it was a guzzle, I was so thirsty.

I immediately was in a taste time machine, transporting me back to the 90’s.  The clear beverage tasted exactly as I remembered and that means it was goooood.  Cindy somehow missed out on the Zima craze back then but she was more than willing to give it a try this time around.  She was quite pleasantly surprised, she really liked the taste as well.

About halfway into her bottle she added some chamborg to it. By the time she finished that she was full blown drunk.  I finished my first bottle before the video was over and followed up with three more bottles in short order.  It was the perfect reward for a day of hard labor.  I can only hope our hardcore patronage of Zima over the summer is enough to make Coors carry the magical drink on a permanent basis.

My Zima induced mild drunkenness helped me enjoy our Netflix rental, The Great Wall a little bit more.  Cindy said the movie had gotten awful reviews and it didn’t take me long to see why.  The story and plot was just silly and I was really surprised an accomplished actor like Matt Damon would have agreed to be a part of it after reading the script.  It had good action and visually cool cinematics at least to keep it in the C range.  Cindy stopped watching about halfway through and worked on her gun instead.

Speaking of her gun, at this point we have pretty much all of the individual parts 3D printed and they look cool.  However this was only the first and possibly easier portion of the gun creation.  Assembling the dozens of pieces in a clean way is not going to be easy at all but I am letting that part of the process completely in Cindy’s hands.  The gun is held together by a combination of glue, metal rods, and magnets.

Over the weekend I also downloaded and installed Fusion 360 which is software that allows you to make your own 3D objects from scratch.  I played around in it a little.  It seems very complex but powerful.  It will require a lot of time of mine just playing around in there to get the hang of things.

Sunday morning Cindy and I set the alarm to get in a run, hoping an earlier start time would help minimize the oppressive heat and humidity.  Despite taking our first stride around 6:45 it was still a miserable slog.  There were many times I felt like stopping during the 5K but I had designated the run as a psuedo tribute to Tuki in my mind.  Everytime I felt like stopping I just thought about Tuk and the anger I feel towards myself about it. The physical discomfort I was feeling was only a small portion of the punishment I felt I deserved.

Although we just ran a 5K I had another type of endurance activity in mind for the electric unicycles, the 20 mile round trip ride to Dunkin Donuts.  When I suggested it to Cindy I sort of expected a knee jerk negative reaction but instead she seemed sort of into it.  She had never ridden much more than 10 miles before and never in a sustained high speed commuting type of scenario on main roads.  We strapped on our safety gear and headed out into the steamy morning air.

At first I thought Cindy would demand we stayed on sidewalk for most of the ride however she actually suggested we use the Immokalee Road bike lane for most of it instead.  The idea of criss crossing the six lane road multiple times to stay on the sidewalk did not appeal to her.  She did quite well maintaining a steady 18+ mph pace on the Msuper once we go into the long straightaway portion of the ride.  Having the seat for the Monster also was a big plus as it allowed her to ride probably 8-9 miles of the 20 in the seated position which she is really getting adept at.

There were parts of the ride when she was on the Monster that she was riding quite fast, fast enough that my Msuper gave me a “hey, slow down” warning beep a couple times.  It was a fun ride and Cindy pulled back into the driveway now much more confident in her ability to ride the wheels longer distances.

We had a nice rest of the day at home outside a brief run to Rural King to grab a couple things.  It seemed like an almost perfectly balanced weekend where we worked very hard on Saturday but worked hard on Sunday doing what we wanted to do instead of what we tasked ourselves to do.  Cindy wound up the weekend with a good dinner and an even better homemade chocolate cake. A couple more Zima’s helped put a happy exclamation point on the two days.

I have a good chunk of vacation time to use up before my annual rollover in mid-August.  I also have a bunch of small projects on my mental to do list that would benefit from taking a few long weekends.  I actually had hoped to either take today or Monday off to facilitate just that but can’t because of various work commitments both days.  Don’t get me wrong, having to find ways to jam in vacation time is a good problem to have but it is a problem nonetheless.

Last night in addition to cranking out more 3D prints I recorded a video about a recent safety issue with newly produced Gotway wheels.  Well actually I recorded the video twice.  The first time I neglected to remember that I had the camcorder set to time lapse mode so my 10 minute video got compressed into 10 seconds of footage.  The video talks about the very dangerous problem where going over a very minor bump can cause a Gotway wheel to oscillate violently back and forth, throwing the rider to the ground.

Marty, one of my online EUC buddies had just received a brand new Gotway Msuper and was filming as he took it out for it’s first real test ride.  As he crossed a small bump between the road and sidewalk ramp his wheel shook rapidly and tossed him hard onto the sidewalk.  He screwed up his wrist pretty bad as well as his shoulder.  Anyway my video outlines my thoughts about the whole ordeal and why I plan to get a Kingsong 16S for my next wheel instead of dipping back into the Gotway world.  I have plenty of ways to hurt myself already, I don’t need a wheel failure to do it for me.

This weekend has a lot of 3D printing and a lot of sweaty work ahead of it. Yay.