Archives July 2017

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.

For the last several months I have been immersed in a whirlwind of changes due to the renovation that has been going on at the main office.  Just hammering through the obstacles associated with moving staff to a new location, gutting the old space and putting it back together from an IT perspective is pretty immense.  However that isn’t all the changing going on. We are also in the middle of an 18 month project where we are migrating most of our back end systems to the cloud from an in house cobol solution, yes cobol.

To say I have a lot of simultaneous demands on my time, skills, and patience would be an understatement.  I find it funny when some people from the outside look upon my job duties and think I must be some sort of super genius to be able to do what I do.  Although some degree of intelligence is required, to me a certain personality and mindset is much more critical.

Although my list of personality defects is rather lengthy, I possess some traits that definitely help me manage my job responsibilities.   I am a good troubleshooter.  I may not always know the answer off the top of my head but I do have a systematic and reliable thought process to get me to that answer in a reasonable amount of time. I always am thinking about plan B, C, and D if plan A doesn’t get the job done.  I don’t procrastinate.  Putting stuff off to me that could be done immediately serves no purpose and only leads to chaos and poor performance in the end.  Finally, I don’t panic.  When the pressure is on, instead of locking up, my brain is constantly navigating a path to an eventual solution.

I have worked with many people in IT that do not have some and maybe none of these traits.  They struggle to keep their heads above water as a result and may even find themselves out of the profession by their choice.  I feel very fortunate that after a lot of dead ends as a young adult I managed to somehow stumble into a career path that played both to my natural personality traits and my personal enjoyment of computers.  Not many are so fortunate.

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.

It seems like there has been a steady stream of famous entertainers dying unexpectedly over the last few years but none have saddened me as much as the news that Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, killed himself yesterday via hanging.

Without a doubt, Linkin Park has been my favorite musical group of the last twenty years.  Their mostly dark, angry music connected to me in a way that few others have.  Despite the the downer vibe in a lot of their music I found it’s effect on me to be just the opposite, it pumped me up.

It is sobering to know the voice that brought me all of that energy over the years has now been silenced forever.  The fact that he willingly turned off his own lights gives a sense to just how dark a person’s life can be, even when seemingly surrounded by light.

A lot of YouTubers are talking about Logan and Jake Paul, brothers who each have YouTube channels that are exploding in popularity.  I was familiar with Logan from my days on Vine, the 6 second video service that is no longer around.  Logan was very popular on there.  So anyway I was curious what all the fuss was about so I went to his channel and watched one of his daily vlogs.

Wow, if there ever was a YouTube channel encapsulating everything disturbing about the state of youth in America, this is it. (Logan is 22)  The videos are a perfect fit for the constantly distracted, ADD riddled, smartphone addicted young people of today.  It seems that Logan leans heavily on his Vine background in his video style.  No segment goes more than 10 seconds without a jump cut and the video was filled mostly with loud, idiotic, or ridiculous behavior. His brother’s channel is basically more of the same.

Evidently being a moron/maniac is a very lucrative field.  By conservative estimates, each brother is likely pulling in between 1 and 2 MILLION dollars per MONTH from their channels.  That is incredible.  I can only hope the persona he puts out there on video is not who he really is.  To me, as a rapidly approaching half centenarian, the idea that this sort of entertainment is wildly popular just makes me shake my head, lean back on my rocking chair, take a drag on my pipe and profess how kids today just don’t have a clue….

This weekend will be the last “standard” weekend for awhile.  Next week Cindy and I are going to the Supercon in Ft Lauderdale and the next two weekends we will be rolling through our northeastern road trip.  I look forward to stuff like this but also have trepidation at the same time.

So we still have been getting daily downpours that make it impossible for the standing water on the property to dry out.  Hell we need a solid week of no rain to not only allow it to dry out but also for the subterranean water table to drop a bit so every single rain event does not instantly result in standing water.  I still have my sump pump in the chicken backyard running 24/7 to try to accelerate the process.  Last week I read that we are basically in a 200 year high rain cycle, meaning it is the most rain we have had this early pretty much since they started recording it.

Last night I called my dad to see if the sale on his Alfa went through.  The answer was, not yet.  It sounds like a frustrating and bizarre situation.  He actually had a check clear and be deposited in his account, only to have the funds removed the following day. Evidently the buyer neglected to provide some documentation to the bank so they pulled the funds which seemed very strange to me.  I would assume funds are only deposited once all T’s are crossed and I’s dotted.  The car is still in dad’s possession so at this point it is just more of an annoyance that the entire process has to be delayed another few days, but dad doesn’t mind waiting.  He almost is glad to wait to mildly punish the buyer for not doing what he was supposed to do.  If it was me, I would be more worried about the deal falling through.

Dad also told me about more BS that is going on with the sale of his two (bad) investment properties in Arizona.  Much like me, he invested in land during the real estate boom and like me, that land is now worth a small fraction of what was paid for it.  Anyway trying to complete the paperwork for the sale of a property on the other side of the country is a hassle and some of the expenses associated with the sale, like phantom road fees really pissed dad off.

Pissed off are the two words I would use to describe the tone of most conversations I have with dad.  The list of things that piss him off are nearly endless.  His approach to things that piss him off can be counter productive at times but he always has been the type of person that will make a stand on principal, even if that principal may not be deemed worthy of such effort in other’s eyes.

I certainly do share some of his anger at what the world has mutated into but I try to focus that energy into finding a way to keep my personal sphere of existence as happy, fulfilling, and content as possible.  I gave up a long time ago thinking my opinion or actions meant much of anything in the big picture which is a sad statement but a true one none the less.  Unless I am willing to pick up my life and relocate to a Scandinavian country I just have to be content to navigate around the landmines of corruption, greed, and ignorance that are so prevalent in the US today.

The good news from the dad conversation is once the land and car sales go through, the purchase of a high end solar power system can commence which will have far greater tangible benefit to my dad and stepmom down the road.

Due to a lack of time I am trying to jam in blog entries where I can and in some cases, combine some of my Dufisthenics content in here as well.

On Monday I finally got the combination I have been hoping for at Planet Fitness for chest day, a free Smith machine and the ab slant board being available.  The combination of the two would allow me to simulate a real decline bench press, the only real bench pressing I can do right now because of left shoulder pain.  I have been trying to do decline with a regular bench but it sucks as the downward slope requires you to try to grip awkwardly with your feet and legs to keep yourself from sliding.  With the decline ab bench I could lock my legs in place.

The combination of the two worked out well when combined with my being at a peak of my cyclical strength level.  I pushed up a fake 265 for one rep (240lbs actually) and did rep totals at lower weights far exceeding any recent PF efforts.  It really sucks that it is so hard at times to get access to the equipment you want to use.  It’s so frustrating to see people that have absolutely no clue what they are doing tying up a smith machine for 20 minutes doing movements that are dangerous or have minimal value due to horrible form/ROM.

To say that decline bench pressing is ok for my shoulder is sort of misleading, it just hurts less.  If I were to describe the sensation in my shoulder I would use this example.  Take a piece of lunch meat and lay it on a plate.  Now take a handful of small gravel and sprinkle it on the lunch meat.  Finally, take one more piece of lunch meat and place it on top.  Now run your hand back and forth over the lunch meat.  That is how it feels.

As I mentioned, my workload for the last few months and likely to the end of the year is pretty massive.  I am steering the ship of a ton of projects simultaneously, each one important in it’s own way, by far the most I have had to do/be responsible for, ever.  I’m not complaining, I’m up to the challenge but it will sure be nice when I can go back to my normal, mostly static environment where things just sort of work because I put in the effort to make it that way.

The changes we are making are definitely trying to future proof the office where we are moving a lot of functions and services to the cloud where ultra-availability and redundancy is the norm.  People often ask if I worry about job security as a result of cloud outsourcing.  Of course I don’t as there is still plenty of technical expertise needed in migration, implementation, and maintenance of these IT solutions.  By the time I actually worry about job security I will hopefully already have one foot on the retirement bus.

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 when we first got Elsa it took awhile until she started to trust us.  There seemed to be something in her past that obviously made her skittish and untrusting of people.  However over time we have been able to melt away those barriers and now Elsa is just a bundle of fun and love, although still filled with plenty of quirks.

When I get home at night she is just so ecstatic to see me.  Usually I will try to immediately sit down on the couch so she can jump up for a thorough petting session.  Her excitement level is off the charts.  It seems like she is most happy when Cindy and I are both home, when one of us is missing it’s just not the same.  Even though I had some trepidation about signing on to getting another dog, I’m now glad we jumped in as she is a bright source of fun and love in our lives.

So our slimy governor, Rick Scott, who was in opposition to medical marijuana which was passed in the state during last years election, is playing games to try to make the implementation of legal medical cannabis problematic.  You see Tricky Rick has deep ties to Big Pharm and the medicine for profit industries.  His lobbyist friends are not interested in a simple, natural product elbowing in to their extremely fat bottom line.

Late last month Scott signed a bill regarding how medical marijuana dispensaries are supposed to be managed by individual counties.  Basically it says a county has only two options, they either have to ban medical marijuana completely or they have to allow it anywhere with no middle ground.  So in a very image conscious place like Collier County, despite their desire for legal marijuana dispensaries inside county lines, the idea of having no control over the number of them or locations is not realistic so this law would force them into banning it completely, which is not what anybody really wants.

Of course the Trickster knows that a lot of counties are not going to be comfortable with having no control but he can put on a false face and say “Hey, the law says the counties can have medical marijuana anywhere they want!!” with that slimy, disingenuous grin of his.  It’s so transparent.

Luckily, there is a good chance that Rick’s shenanigans will not stand up in court.  It is likely the legislation will be challenged in court and be overturned but in the meantime many Florida residents just continue to wait for something that have voted to implement for over 5 years.

So yesterday the latest Trump mess unfolded where it was revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt that none other than Donald Jr, who was involved in the campaign at as high of a level as possible had direct communication with a Russian lawyer about acquiring information that would hurt Hilary Clinton’s campaign.  It’s just amazing that after six months of  twitter rants, fake news claims, firings, resignations, recusals, and flat out denials, this story still has legs.  Not only does it have legs, it’s accelerating, straight to the top.

So although I do think it is incriminating for a politician to willingly seek out this type of information from Russia, I think Donald is doing a fine job of proving himself incompetent in so many other ways already. This is just more evidence of a lack of judgement that has persisted from the first moment the idea of a President Trump became a possibility.

But what I find almost equally incredulous is despite this overwhelming and never ending parade of evidence to the contrary, some Trump supporters STILL are steadfast in their denial that anything significant really happened.  Any efforts for me to logically comprehend how there could not be at least a degree of doubt in the veracity of the administration’s claims, regardless of who you voted for,  just fall apart.  Even if Trump eventually is ousted in a bi-partisan movement, it seems like some individuals will cling to their position, regardless of changing information and circumstances.  Chronically ignoring, redirecting, and denying, to me, is far less respectable than saying, hey, I thought this at one point, but you know what, based on new information, it turns out I was wrong, I’m human.

Hey listen, my preference would have been that Trump swoops in, proves the entire world wrong, and somehow became a respected, intelligent, well spoken, and capable leader.  Unfortunately instead, he has performed even worse than most anticipated and made our country a running joke throughout the worldwide community.  It is a surreal reality that I am actually preferring a scenario where Mike Pence would be calling the shots.

I was not happy to discover this weekend that once again the driver side headlight on the Prius had gone out.  I had replaced both bulbs a couple month’s back and it required near contortionist level skills and the patience of Ghandi.  I am hoping doing it for a second time won’t be quite as frustrating.