Front loaded till almost the end

So I have spent the majority of my 5 day long weekend as I normally do, trying to front load all of the work, projects, and tasks  so for the last portion of the time off I can chill out.  Well to finish that front loading process consumed nearly three full days unfortunately.

On Thursday I got a head start on the weekend chores by weeding and weed whacking the yard in the glorious heat and humidity of a late August Florida day.  I was pooped afterward but wanted to try to get one of my “fun” projects done, replacing the case on my Msuper EUC.  I damaged the case learning to go backwards and recently got a brand new case and trolley handle to undo the damage I had done.

Changing the case on an EUC is a MAJOR operation that requires you to take the unit pretty much entirely apart.    Of course I had never attempted such a thing but I had watched a video of the process and was confident I could do the work.

Well in the end I did indeed do the work but I hit some major delays along the way, all of which are documented in the nearly hour long video which was a condensed version of the nearly three hours I spent in the process.  In the end I found a way to circumvent my issues and the new case looks sharp.

On Friday the front loading continued in earnest.  This time I jumped on the tractor and mowed the grass, taking advantage of the relatively low standing water levels.  During the afternoon I started my second major hobby project of the weekend, installing a new logic board and auto leveling sensor into my CR-10.

Like the EUC work, this project required me to rip into the hardware in a pretty significant way.  I once again had a lot of struggles with the install.  A lot of the problems came from my relative inexperience with 3D printing hardware but as I usually do, I managed to find my way to the finish line in a circuitous fashion.

On Saturday half of my day was consumed at work.  I had to replace the two main backbone switches in our NOC, another part of our renovation project.  Doing so required me to unplug every wire connected to the old switches, install the new switches, and then run new wires in a more organized and orderly manner.

I asked Cindy if she wanted to come in to help as I could use her to help me document the connections so I didn’t miss anything.  She said sure and we decided to bring Elsa with as well.  Elsa was a bit freaked out being in a foreign environment and did not want to be out of eye contact of myself or Cindy.  It took awhile but eventually she settled down enough to take a nap while we worked. For the most part the work went smoothly and having Cindy there easily helped me shave at least 30 minutes off the job.

After the office work was done we ate lunch at Panera and then stopped at Rural King and Home Depot for some more supplies.  By the time we got home it was after 3PM so the majority of the day was eaten up.  Last night we vegged out while trying to continue consuming the backlog of DVR content we have from being away on the roadtrip.  If I didn’t have EUC’s, 3D printing, and WoW as hobbies I would be able to get through shows faster but to be honest, I’d rather have other things to help split my attention between.

We had some incredible lightning and thunder Saturday night.  At one point I thought a bomb went off in the atmosphere.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a ball of light out of the bedroom window and what seemed like 10 seconds later the shockwave hit and it hit hard.  Even inside you could feel the power of the blast, it did not seem like thunder from normal lightning, it sounded like a bomb.

All weekend I have had various episodes of limping and walking like a geriatric.  Regardless I tasked myself with getting up early this morning and going out to run.  I think I may have run lap 6 twice but either way I did somewhere around 5K of running, once again feeling very labored to do so.  I need to just keep pushing myself to get out there.  Even though things hurt the first few laps after I warm up the pain sort of fades and general discomfort sets in.

A little later in the morning Cindy and I headed out to ride our wheels.  It was my first chance to give the Msuper a thorough test after all of the work.  It seemed to ride normally which I was very happy about.  Katie and her friend Kendal joined us briefly on the ride but their one wheel ran out of battery power so they headed back early.  After the ride we made another Home Depot pit stop as well as a stop at Micahel’s for Cindy to grab some crafting supplies.

I currently have both 3D printers cranking out two different projects and I hope to be able to take a good portion of the rest of my time off doing exactly what I would like to do. We will see how that turns out.