Last night after work I went to get my hair cut. I last had it done before the trip to Texas so I felt ready. When I got home I finally got around to making a video comparing two of my wheels, the Inmotion V9 and the Nosfet Aero. It was something I had been wanting to do for at least two weeks so it felt good to get it off my plate. My plate feels pretty full of should do’s but far less must do’s than I once had.

I had an impulse buy of another Bambu printer yesterday. They are running a pretty significant sale that started yesterday. I bought a P1S with an AMS unit which was more than 25% off it’s normal pricing. I now need to put some serious thought into how I want my office/hobby/3D printing room laid out to make this all work. As is often the case, getting rid of things that I don’t really need anymore is step one.

Last night I did a very rare evening/night ride on my Nosfet Aero. As I left I was treated to a number of beautiful views of the sky as the sun had recently set. The Aero was a great wheel for the ride, able to comfortably roll me along at 25MPH without being overly big or heavy.

I have always said riding is a great way for me to clear my head and reset myself overall. There have been various stressors circling around me in recent months and I have done very little riding to help even that out. I have ANOTHER wheel coming my way in not too long which looks to be another design that checks a lot of my boxes. It is being sent for my evaluation. I’m looking forward to it

Saturday morning I attended the gun safety course that is mandatory in order to receive a concealed carry permit. The course was a bit dry, I caught my eyes closing several times. It is an interesting experience being in that environment which I assume hold some political and personal beliefs that don’t align with mine. I am ok with agreeing to disagree without feeling the need to assault someone’s character in the process. At the end of the class you fire two shots with special low power ammunition and you are handed your course certificate. In total it was two and a half hours. While I was there I picked up the Glock 19 knock off that I had sent there. Now I just need some 9MM ammo for it.

Saturday afternoon I decided to get the gutters cleaned. The recent heavy rains resulted in waterfalls spilling over the gutter edge so I knew the job was overdue. The task is not fun as I scooped out tons of debris with my gloved hands and then went back around with the hose to blast out whatever was left. Although it’s not fun it doesn’t take me much more than an hour to do it all. The benefits were noticed immediately as the intense Sunday storm was channeled as intended by the now clear gutter system.

Over the weekend the US got directly involved in the Iran/Israel conflict by bombing several nuclear production facilities in Iran. Although we have been told for many years that Iran did not have a nuclear weapon now supposedly they were close. Of course in my opinion, after 9-11 if you don’t have strong skepticism about anything the government tells you to excuse military action you are naive. What shrapnel comes from this is yet to be seen but I have a feeling Iran isn’t going to put it’s tail between it’s legs and run away. Since Afghanistan has dried up as a funding source for the massive military industrial complex we needed another feeding source I guess. The world and the people that run it are hell bent on destroying each other and themselves in the process, in my opinion.

Last night there were storms incoming but they still decided to try to get volleyball in. It started to ran lightly as we heard the lightning alarms by the nearby schools go off. We determined the lightning was miles away so we kept playing. I was just walking back from retrieving a ball when I saw a blinding flash in my peripheral vision. Without thinking I instantly crouched down and covered my ears, anticipating the booming crack that arrived almost immediately. We all scattered from the court area to a nearby shelter. The close strike brought torrential rain with it.

We stood around for maybe 20 minutes hoping it would relent but there was no such luck. Instead it intensified and was blowing sideways. I was already wet so I said f it and crossed the parking lot to my truck in the midst of the downpour. By the time I got behind the wheel I was dripping wet and still sandy, a wonderful combination. We only got about a game and a half in which honestly I was ok with. I forgot my pre-play dose of ibuprofen so it was not going to be a great time for me if it went the full two hours.

The drive home was downright treacherous with sheets of rain and flooded areas on the roads. I was glad I was in the truck. Elsa of course was petrified from the storms. I found her hiding in the guest bathtub when I got home.

This weekend I have my gun safety course on Saturday as a hard must do. There are a number of should do’s as well. The water spilling over the edge of the gutters was a strong visual reminder that I need to clean them out and install the leaf guards I bought.

I ended my two day fast last night. It felt good to eat. I drank so much coffee during the day I had a weird sensation of being overly awake yet tired at the same time. Getting through yoga class yesterday was not an easy task either. When I weighed myself before eating I basically had maintained the five and half pound weight loss I had in the morning. This was definitely a bit of a mental challenge but I could fast once a month.

This Saturday I am taking a gun safety course. I am taking it at the place my latest hand gun, a Dagger 19 was shipped. I did the paperwork last Friday but I can’t pick it up until this Friday due to the background check and 3 business day cool down. Taking this course will allow me to get a concealed weapons permit meaning I can carry a weapon on me if I wanted to, which I don’t.

In fact in Florida a concealed weapons permit is no longer required to carry a weapon. The reason I want one is once I have it I am able to pick up a gun the same day without the cool down period because they fingerprint and do a background check on you. I can’t imagine a scenario where I would need/want to carry a gun although keeping one in the glove box could be a possibility at some point. Almost every person I know has at least one gun. With the world teetering on edge nowadays you just never know how crazy things could get.

I now have a stack of paper hundreds of pages high of HOA documentation to drop on the requesting home owners lap. I hope they have a lot of time to read.

A little over a month ago I did a 32 hour or so fast, the first time I did one for non-medical reasons. Weight loss wasn’t the primary goal it’s more about the health benefits of your body going into a state of ketosis where it starts consuming it’s reserves to maintain itself. Supposedly in this process potentially harmful cells are cleared out first which sounds like a good thing to me. It’s not exactly fun not eating but I got through it.

Well I am again fasting but this time I am extending to two full days. The last time I ate was Sunday evening. Since then I have been relying on coffee and small bits of sea salt to curb hunger issues. To be honest this morning I don’t even have real significant hunger right now. Where I can really feel the fast is trying to exercise. At the gym yesterday I felt an energy deficit which is to be expected. Today I will be doing yoga so it will be interesting to see how that goes. I weighed myself this morning and I have lost about 5.5 lbs since Sunday night. I’m not positive if I am going to eat immediately when 48 hours are up or push it until tomorrow morning with breakfast being my first meal.

Last night I worked on gathering HOA historical documentation to fulfill a request from a neighborhood resident who is clearly looking for a conflict. I only got on the HOA board towards the end of last year. It’s been more eventful than I would have hoped. When I moved to my house one of the big appeals was it is a neighborhood filled with nice people with an inexpensive HOA where basically only common sense rules are asked to be followed. I never would have expected to find myself in the situation that has been presented to me now where common courtesy is absent, replaced by deception and dishonesty. As unfortunate as it is, I will deal with it. There are no other options.

I got a pickleball session in Saturday morning. Once I got home I didn’t waste much time before heading into the office to do the planned server work on our primary domain controller. We got new hardware to migrate to and this should have been a pretty straightforward task. It wasn’t. For some reason the old domain controller had an issue that would not allow us to demote it or make any change whatsoever in it’s roles/features. The plan was to decommission the old one and then bring up the new one with the same name. Instead we wound up just bringing up the new server with a different name and moving all of the primary roles to it while leaving the old server online for now until we figure out why it won’t allow for any changes. The end result was what I thought might be an hour in the office turned into an entire afternoon.

One thing that did go as planned was installing the new AMS 2 onto my X1C printer. Installation went smoothly and the new unit worked well in my first multi-color print. I am looking forward to a lot of successful printing in the future. I also had to deal with a similar issue as I did before on my A1 where I got an extruder jam message. This time I took a different, easier approach where as before I just ripped into things unnecessarily which resulted in my screwing up the printer. I had the jam cleared in less than 5 minutes.

I called my dad on Father’s Day where we caught up on the latest and greatest. I filled him in on my personal conflict in my neighborhood as it reminded me of some of the conflicts he has had over the years. My approach however is definitely different than what he would normally do. I am basically documenting and collecting whatever needed to address the issue if it comes to a head. Documentation is a liar’s mortal enemy.

Last night I played sand volleyball. It’s been close to a month since I played last and this is only the third time I have played in 7 months plus. Things went surprisingly well. My team went 5-1 and my play was solid all around. Although I was tired by the end of the night overall my endurance felt improved over the last time I played. Most importantly other than some mild soreness I feel pretty unaffected physically from two plus hours of sand volleyball, a big positive in my mind.

My weekend is looking pretty full. I hope to play pickleball tomorrow morning and then have to go into the office Saturday afternoon to get some server work completed. I would love to get the gutters cleaned and the leaf guards installed. I also have the new AMS 2 system that I want to install on my X1C printer to address load errors I am getting from one of the slots. I will make sure to allocate some time to just chill, hopefully.

It was a stormy evening last night. Elsa is terrified of rain, lightning and thunder but surprisingly I got her to go outside and do her business after work as I held an oversized umbrella over her head. It was a good night to get stuff done around the house. It looks like I am selling one of my Prusa Mini’s to one of my YouTube subscribers. I worked on getting the printer ready by updating the four year old firmware and calibrating it. The firmware was so old that I could not just install the latest and greatest. It had to be a two stage process where I installed an intermediate version before I was able to jump to current.

I then turned my attention to the bench where the two Bambu printers reside. The area was just too cluttered with tools and accessories that are used to maintain the printers. Doing something as simple as changing the filament on the AMS or emptying the poop bucket often resulted in me knocking something else over. I dumped everything out and reorganized and relocated a number of items that were not needed. I have like 7 or 8 years of various tools associated with my 3D printer hobby, a number of them were no longer needed.

By the time I was done the bench top looked 100% better to me. When things that initially are chaotic become organized and orderly it brings me a sense of accomplishment and peace that I never tire of. To be honest I need to do a sweep throughout that entire room to get rid of things I really don’t use or need. When I moved in and found a place for everything I had I felt it was good enough but now it needs to enter phase two of clean up where anything that has not been touched since I moved in needs to get tossed.

The hard rain last night emphasized my need to attend to the gutters and leaf guards that I have sitting in a box. The water in certain areas was just pouring over the gutter sides due to debris. Last time I cleaned the gutters it only took me around an hour. I need to get that done soon before daily downpours is a reality.

I got out to see Ballerina last night which is meant to be a prequel to the John Wick series. The main character has all of the killing ability of John but in the package of a petite female. It definitely met or even exceeded the original movies in terms of action and methods that somebody can be eliminated even including the use of flame throwers, fire hose and ice skates, yes ice skates. I mean it was entertaining if you are care only about the action and little about much else. It felt very predictable and silly at times although I didn’t realize that John himself would be appearing in the prequel as much as he was. I’d give it a B.