Archives September 2017

That is the question I have been asked quite often by both people near and far regarding the impending doom that is Hurricane Irma.  It’s been 12 years since we had our hit from Wilma but I still remember how surreal and dangerous it felt.

So what am I going to do? Well first of all, not panic.  The hysterical/mob type mentality that these sort of events bring to the surface so easily in many people bothers me.  I absolutely hate it.  It demonstrates to me just how quickly people can devolve when faced with a crisis.

There have been a surprising amount of people that have chosen to pack their shit and get out.  I think the images of widespread destruction in Texas from Harvey being so fresh in people’s minds has ratcheted up the panic level here.  When you hear numbers like 185mph sustained winds and things like “most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean”, any person would have to be concerned, which I am, but packing up and leaving never entered my mind as a remote possibility.

I did have some concerns with gas.  I wanted to make sure the Tacoma was fully gassed up since it would likely be the primary post storm vehicle due to it’s ground clearance.  During the day every gas station you passed was mobbed by cars, like fire ants converging on a victim.  I told Cindy I wanted to try to go out later at night and to head east instead of west.  During previous hurricane episodes I actually had luck finding gas in Immokalee, I figured I would try again.

At first it looked like my plan was going to be a bust.  The first four or five gas stations we passed were out of gas.  We then spotted a convenience store with cars lined up for the pumps, normally not something I would be excited about.  I swung a U turn and got in the line which was probably around 10 cars deep.  We waited in line for around a half hour, both of us hoping they would not run out of gas before we reached the pumps.

Luckily we were able to get some gas.  Even though I had three empty 5 gallon gas jugs in the back of the Tacoma I only filled one of them in addition to topping off the truck.  I already had one full 5 gallon container at home so I didn’t want to partake in hoarding mentality.  There will still be gas deliveries this week that will allow me to fill the other cans if I want to.

As far as other prep at home, if the the forecast path remains in a direction that could hit us with major weather I still have my plywood I cut to size for the various openings on the house.  Affixing them is a long, difficult, and tedious process.  We also would have to try to get EVERYTHING that is not in the ground outside, inside using a combo of both sheds for storage while crossing our fingers that the hurricane straps that hold them to the ground do their job.  Our new RO system has a 300 gallon water tank that should be able to provide us water as long as I can provide the system power via generator.

I have two generators, a big one that is 12 years old that does not want to run continuously for long periods of time and a smaller Honda that is less powerful but very reliable.  I would use the big generator to power the water system in spurts the keep water flowing.  The little one would be used to power a few key things inside like the fridge, maybe a fan, and hopefully my window AC unit at night if it still works.  We have some rechargeable lights and battery banks to charge things like phones as needed.

To be honest my biggest concern of all is the safety of the chickens.  The shed we converted into a coop is wind rated to something like 75mph.  I am hoping it being braced against the attached run gives it some additional strength.  However if the forecast is for winds approaching triple digits I think we will use the old chicken tractor and relocate the chickens temporarily into the garage.  If they were hurt/killed from us rolling the dice with the coop staying intact I would feel absolutely awful. For this plan to take place I would need to pull my Tacoma out of the garage and park both it and the Prius sideways in front of the garage door to offer additional wind protection buffering.

So as I said, I won’t be panicking but I will be watching the updates carefully and acting accordingly.  There is nothing in my lifetime that matched the sights and sounds of the absolute fury of a hurricane ripping down my pool cage in 2005.  I am hoping we manage to not reach that magnitude of intensity this time around.

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.