Archives June 2017

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.

This morning I dropped off my Tacoma at the dealer to get the official recall work done on my rear differential that is seeping fluid slightly.  The official fix is the same thing I read when they wanted to confiscate my truck a few weeks back, replace the gasket and re-torque the bolts.  I guess they just got the parts in to do the work.  I was given a loaner Rav4 so I hope the entire thing is a non-issue.

Now that the gun parts are 3D printed I have been printing some more cool/useful things.  The Iphone 6 phone stand took FOREVER to print, something like 18-19 hours.  The reason it took so long was it utilized a .1 millimeter resolution height (gun was printed at .3 mil) and 100% infill (gun was 30%).  These settings make the files huge and the prints slow but it results in a VERY strong end product.  The stand will work perfectly to keep my phone ideally placed and angled at the office.

The other object was a 3D lampshade that was my first ever Fusion 360 project that I made from scratch.  Now of course I made it from following a YouTube video step by step but I hope sometime soon I can get comfortable enough in the software to bang out my own custom objects to a degree.

So after a one year road trip hiatus Cindy and I officially are heading back on the road in early August.  We are doing something rare in my road trip history, an entirely east cost route that will take us as far north as Portland, Maine.  Hugging the east coast during summer is less than ideal because of the summer vacationers but we wanted to try it at least once. One of the stops we have planned along the way is Rehoboth Beach where we plan to finally spread my mom’s ashes at the place we all enjoyed many fond memories.

The trip is on the short side as my work schedule the next several months sort of sucks with many weeks requiring my attendance, this was literally the only week I could sneak in before December.  It looks like the mileage each way is roughly 1600 miles so the distance compared to our 6500 mile western trips is not bad. However the fact that we are covering 3200 miles in nine total days while trying to allow ample time to sight see and explore via one wheel is going to make for some very full days.

So after having pretty much all standing water dried up/pumped out by Saturday afternoon we are back to a submerged state from some rain Sunday followed by a deluge from a strong storm last night.  This morning before work I was outside in my boxer shorts and boots reconnecting my submersible pump set up.  I am sure it looked fascinating.

As far as we can tell all of the parts for the Widowmaker rifle have been printed so overnight we started on another 3D cosplay piece, head gear.  The piece consists of three 3d printed parts that are attached to a head band sort of thing.  The biggest part was printed first and it came out pretty damn well.

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.

So Cindy and I have been 3D printing day and night, printing parts for her Widowmaker gun.  Yesterday a flaw in our set up was revealed when one of our frequent summer power blips killed a print that was over halfway done.  I immediately ordered a small UPS that should prevent this scenario from repeating.  I also ordered another Night Owl camera to add to the house security DVR that will be focused on the 3D printer so jobs can be monitored remotely. Otherwise we seem to have a good system in place.

We are pumping out parts pretty regularly, at least two per day.  My main job is getting the 3D models configured and printing.  Cindy has been doing the post print work which includes cleaning up the pieces after removing the support material and eventually assembling it all together. The printed parts look really sharp, I’m hoping for an equally sharp outcome.  At this point I have almost entirely consumed my one kilogram reel of silver PLA filament.  It’s a good thing I have another one on the way.

So once again there were some downpours yesterday at the house, retarding my battle against standing water in the coop yard.  The pump I have back there seems to be very good quality.  It has been running around the clock for close to a week without issue.  The forecast calls for roughly a three day break from precipitation which would be fantastic.  The combo of bright hot/sun combined with pumping water elsewhere should be able to empty out the water in that period of time. hopefully.

Of course the long term solution to this problem is to raise the ground level in that area.  Trying to do it one 40 pound bag of topsoil at a time would be rather brutal but might be the eventual route I have to take.

So I have been doing better the last 48 hours or so with not dwelling as much on Tuki’s demise. However that changed after work.  We gave Tuki’s cage to Cindy’s ex-sister-in-law and niece since they have birds.    Having the cage out of my field view removed one large glaring reminder in the living space but at the same time it’s absence was also like a black hole in some ways.  Well tonight I was unloading the dishwasher and had the emotions kick back in which may seem like odd timing to most, unless you knew one of Tuki’s many quirks.

For some reason that will remain a mystery Tuki found the act of someone emptying the dishwasher extremely entertaining and enjoyable.  As you unload dishes he would say his name repeatedly in one of the many variations he could say (Tuk, Tuki, Tuki-Tuk, Tuk-Tuk).  He also would make some of his pleasant sounds instead of the bone chilling screech he was so fond of.  His absolute favorite part of the process was when the silverware went back in the drawers.  Perhaps the clinking noise was something he just liked for his own bird reasons.

Like I mentioned the other day, his contributions to the house environment were so established that it felt like they were woven into the very fabric of my day to day living experience.  I don’t want to overly embellish the relationship Tuki and I had personally because it was not great although we both learned to get along, more or less.

We used to have a hard time getting Tuki to go back into his cage at night but discovered that if I was the one to refill his water and food dishes he almost always would go back into his cage because he saw it as an opportunity to try to bite me as I pulled and reinserted his food crocks.  Most of the time it seemed like he was just acting like he wanted to attack me to establish dominance but a couple times he actually did bite me hard which I never reacted well to. He was always very fond of Alison and Cindy, letting them handle and pet him with far less consequence than if I would have tried it.  Hell he was more fond of pretty much every visitor we had to the house than he was of me.

I swear Tuki lived in a time vacuum.  He never seemed to look or act much differently from year one to year seventeen. He never had any health problems and likely would have lived for decades to come if not for my terrible judgement call which I will regret for a long time to come.

So due to a mechanical issue my buddy’s flight was postponed till today instead of yesterday so we had Lucky in the house for an extra night which Elsa definitely was happy about.  The contrast between how Elsa was when Lucky first came in the house till now is hilarious.  She now wrestles and plays with Lucky constantly and he has clearly been accepted into Elsa’s elite inner circle of trust.

Don will be coming to pick up Lucky around mid-day while Cindy is home so I said my goodbye’s to him before I left for work.  He is such a good and loving dog, it breaks my heart that he has to be associated with such a painful event like what happened Friday.  However I didn’t blame him then and I don’t blame him now.

So there again was a lot of 3d printing work last night.  Cindy and I are learning as we go.  With the gun I am trying to make for Cindy’s costume I came against a piece that was far too big to print at 100% size.  It was even too big to print at 80% scale like I did with the other parts I have made so far.  I found if I shrunk it to 67% it would just fit.

I started the print job but then realized it was sort of dumb for two reasons.  All of the pieces need to be printed at the same scale so if I print this piece at 67% it would mean I would need to reprint the other pieces I already completed as well to the same scale which would be a pain. Plus reducing the model size that much would make the gun look too tiny I think.

So I instead did my first slicing job.  I reset the big part to 80% scale which put a good portion of the model outside the printable range.  I then did a slice on the Z axis, lopping off about 25% of the top.  I then broke the bottom and top sections into their own print file.

I printed the larger section over night.  It took close to nine hours to complete but turned out well.  I am now printing the chopped off section which Cindy will clean up and glue to the first part to make it whole again.

I also figured out a way to finally print some parts that I failed at a half dozen times before.  I was able to separate the four parts and print them on their ends instead of flat.  Sure it used extra support material but the end product was pretty good.  I am happy that I am slowly understanding some of the basics so I can come up with ways to get around obstacles as they pop up. Since we have never done this before we are hoping it all turns out half decent.  The quality of the printed parts so far has been really good for a $500 device.

So after the awful tragedy of Friday night I spent the rest of the weekend trying to keep myself as distracted as possible to avoid focusing on the loss of Tuki and my role in it.  During the day I got on the tractor and did my best to mow the yard.  After two weeks of torrential rain it looked like hell.  I got more cut than I expected at first which at least made things look a little less chaotic.

I was glad that the submersible pump that I ordered showed up.   I wasted little time before hooking it up behind the chicken coop.  There was a small hole that was dug out by the chickens by their playground which is where some of the deepest water resides.  I took an unused pot and placed it in the hole, it fit pretty much perfectly.

The reason I used this set up was I wanted the pump to be slightly below ground level so it pumps out as much water as possible.  I ran two extension cords from the shed and 150 feet of hose to the large drainage ditch in between our property and the one to our east.

I plugged in the pump and it started humming along.  The other end of the hose was so far away I couldn’t verify it was working until I walked over to the ditch.  I was glad to see/hear a strong flow of water dumping out the end.  The pump has been running constantly since about 3PM Saturday and has dropped the water level back there by several inches.  The problem is there is SO much water, I bet it is easily 15-20 thousand gallons, that even with the 1/3 hp pump going full speed it is going to take a long time to get the water out of there.  By yesterday afternoon there was an appreciable difference, enough that the chickens started to venture further back.  I have a feeling the pump is going to be a permanent fixture in the chicken yard during wet season.

I spent a lot of time getting my feet wet with 3D printing.  I had two big issues, oozing and some prints lifting from the print platform.  I addressed the lifting print by using a trick others posted with this model printer.  It involved flipping the print bed upside down so the glass side is up.  After doing that I applied blue painter’s tape to the glass.  The prints appeared to adhere consistently after that.

The oozing was a pain.  Basically before a print begins the extruder (print nozzle) is brought up to operating temperature, somewhere between 200 and 220 degree celsius (400 degrees!).  As it hit that temp some of the plastic filament starts to melt and run out of the extruder.  Depending on how much, it can screw up the print as the unwanted plastic gets in the way.

To fix this I used multiple remedies.  I set the printer to run at a slightly lower temperature which slowed down the oozing but didn’t totally eliminate it.  I also would babysit the start of the print job.  Just as the extruder got to temp but before it actually starts printing I quickly grabbed the stuff that oozed out and cut it off.  Finally, I started putting “brims” on the pieces which creates a thin outline around the base of the model.  During the brim creation any junk that was on the nozzle normally will come off and should not affect the model building itself.

The printer has been working pretty much non-stop all weekend.  I printed a mudguard for the Msuper, an external spool holder for the printer which allows larger filament spools to be used and five pieces for a gun model that Cindy is making for her Supercon costume.  I have quickly seen why 3D printing can become a rather addicting hobby.  Watching the printer build a model is somewhat mesmerizing.

Saturday night we watched Assassin’s Creed, our latest Netflix rental.  I never played the video game the movie is based on so I really had no frame of reference.  I thought even without that background the movie stood alone pretty well as decent B+ entertainment.

Sunday morning instead of running I again put in time on the rower, 30 minutes to simulate roughly what my 5k runs consume.  Rowing is a different kind of uncomfortable compared to running.  The lack of impact is nice and the overall body benefit is surely higher.  However I don’t get quite the sense of accomplishment rowing 30 minutes compared to running the same amount of time.  I’m not sure why.

Cindy and I got out for a hot but fun ride on our electric unicycles mid-morning.  It was the fastest sustained riding Cindy has done to date.  She really is getting to the point where she can concentrate more on just enjoying the ride experience instead of having to constantly fear losing control.

I got to talk to my dad yesterday to catch up.  As in most of our conversations there are portions where dad grumbles about various things in the world that just piss him off.  I am excited that he appears to be still moving forward with his plans to install a large scale solar array on his property.

Sunday afternoon was pretty chill.  Katie came over to visit for a little while and I spent time working on more 3D printing, paying my bills, and playing a little WoW.  Cindy worked hard to make my Father’s Day as pleasant as it could be which I appreciated.

I took Sadie back this morning to Ali’s place.  We spoke only briefly about the Tuki incident.  If I would have talked about it more I am pretty sure both of us would have started crying.  Lucky goes home this evening so all of a sudden the household gets a lot less crazy and quieter.  The lack of Tuki’s steady contribution to the sound environment in the house is something that is going to feel very strange for a long time…

We lost Tuki last night which is of course tragic.  The worst part of it was his demise was entirely my fault.  Early on during Lucky’s visit he had shown interest in Tuki but the second I called Lucky off he forgot about it.  Since then we had Tuki out each night and I totally forgot about the potential danger of having a dog that is not used to having a bird in the house.

Well last night Cindy and I were both in the hobby room messing around with the 3D printer.  I came out after Cindy had just been out there a few minutes prior and saw the awful site of Tuki, who was already dead in Lucky’s mouth.  Of course I was in utter shock for a moment but then yelled at Lucky to drop him, which he did immediately.  I had heard no noises that would have indicated anything happened.

I called out Cindy who was equally shocked by what she saw.  Oddly at no moment did I feel anger at Lucky.  I immediately placed all blame squarely on my shoulders.  I should have never let Lucky alone with Tuki and better yet should have just left Tuki in his cage during Lucky’s visit.  The crushing guilt combined with remorse put me in a catatonic-like state for several minutes as I just sat on the couch in disbelief.    The reality that my pet that has been with me for roughly 17 years was now dead, due to my negligence was just an awful feeling.  Sure I have gone through the loss of pets in my lifetime but never has one met it’s demise because of poor judgement by myself.

Cindy and I took turns crying last night and this morning.  Despite the cantankerous relationship Tuki and I had I always loved him like any pet and appreciated the big attitude he always carried around in his little body.  He made us laugh with his mimicking of sounds and words along with his various weird quirks.  Even after going through the near nightly ritual of him trying to attack me when I refilled his food and water bowl, more often than not, after I turned off the lights and walked back towards bed, he would say “Night Tuk”.  I became so accustomed to his little sound additions to the household, having them suddenly silenced is going to be very weird and sad for a long time.

I had to make the very difficult call to Alison to let her know what happened.  Tuki and her always had a special bond and the news hit her hard as I expected.

This morning Cindy and I buried Tuki along with one of his favorite toys by the large coconut palm he could see when we placed his cage by the window.  The tears streamed down our faces as we petted his head one final time before we placed him in the ground.  I’m not quite sure how long it will take for to get out of the tremendous weight of guilt I feel.  I deserve to feel terrible.  It’s all my fault.