Archives 2017

So most of my Saturday wound up being consumed by yard work which consisted of weeding, weed whacking, and mowing.  I worked into mid-afternoon trying to get the yard looking nicely manicured.  I am hoping as we transition into dry season the need for me to invest so much time each weekend on routine grass maintenance can instead be used for other projects.

After I finished up we did a late Rural King and Home Depot run.  When we got home I immediately spread the 20 bags of mulch we bought as well as throwing a dozen castle stones around the avocado tree up front.  We also lost another tree on Saturday, intentionally.  Well over a decade ago Ali and I bought a tree at a nearby home show that we planted near one of the front corners of the property near the road.  I have no recollection of what type of tree it was or why exactly it appealed to us. Well the tree hardly grew since it was put in the ground.  Perhaps it didn’t like sandy soil.  The tree was not attractive with a sort of gnarled appearance with spike covered branches that did nothing but tear at the canopy of the tractor when you drove close to the tree.

Irma had pushed a westward lean into the tree, making it even less attractive than it was before.  For years Cindy has expressed her dislike of the tree which I didn’t fundamentally disagree with, yet sentiment prevented me from taking it down.  For some reason as I was mowing on Saturday that sentiment lifted and I told Cindy if she wanted to cut the tree down she had my blessing.  She wasted no time, grabbing the battery powered Sawz-all and cutting the ugly tree down to ground level in a few minutes.  She tossed the pieces into the huge debris pile on the other side of the road.  I can’t say I have had much remorse since the tree was removed from the landscape, unlike much of the other landscape that bit the dust in the hurricane.

Saturday night Cindy went with Katie to some Halloween corn maze. (that they bailed on when they saw how long the line was)  While they were out I went into hardcore geek mode, participating in a funny event in WoW.  It was a “race” where you run on foot from one location in game to another which are far apart.  The gimmick was people were encouraged to do this run as a gnome, an ethnicity that most people don’t have so like many others, I made one just for the run.

So to cover the distance on foot took a long time, probably 45 minutes.  I died 7 or 8 times along the way as horde players looked at this as a perfect opportunity to “troll” the event, stepping on level 1 or 2 gnomes like ants.  After I completed the course on my gnome I went back and did it again as one of my high level characters at a walking pace which took much, much longer.  Not only did it allow me to take in the scenery and remember just how the game felt when I first got involved a dozen years ago, I also served as a body guard to other low level gnomes that were still running the course.  If I saw horde nearby I did my best to kill them off before they could squash others.  It was silly, stupid fun.  Walking the course took MUCH longer, I bet damn close to 90 minutes.

Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed to go run the track.  Cindy got up too but not to run with me, she was planning to run a nearby 5K with a friend of hers.  As I was close to completing my planned 12 laps I saw Cindy’s car pull into the lot.  I figured maybe she wanted to run a warm up lap with me or something.  Instead she said her friend backed out last minute on the race so she figured she would just run the track.

I told her I was literally starting my last lap but Cindy started running with me.  Well it didn’t take long for me to feel badly about not running longer with her so I told Cindy I would do an extra lap or two.  That turned into a full extra mile which of course I had no expectation of doing.  I am pretty sure it was the first time I ran four miles in 2017.  It’s funny, if I was by myself for the entire run, the idea of tacking an extra mile on the end would have seemed close to ridiculous.  However when you add another person to the mix those barriers get fuzzy.  Sure I was tired as I kept pressing on but it didn’t kill me.  It was a reminder how so many personal boundaries are self inflicted and why having others share your pain somehow makes it more bearable.  I guess that is why running clubs were invented.

Cindy and I went for a wheel ride near Vanderbilt Beach late in the morning.  It was fun as always but very warm.  I had a steady stream of sweat running down my back most of the time.

During the afternoon I worked on several things, including more futzing with the CR-10 printer.  I have a clear path to resolving my issue, I just have not worked out all of the logistics on how to get there.

Sunday evening we went out for an early birthday dinner celebration for Cindy.  We met up with Katie, Daniel, Cindy’s mom and two nieces at Outback.  It was funny that we got the exact same table that we had last time we were at the restaurant a year or two ago.  We had a very enjoyable dinner followed up with ice cream cake at Cindy’s mom’s place afterward.  We didn’t get home till after 9 which normally I would not be a fan of on a Sunday night however Cindy had a lot of fun which made it well worth it.

Oh I forgot to mention on Saturday the roof guy from Home Depot came out to look at the house.  Their quote on shingles was in the same ballpark as the first quote I got.  One option he presented which was interesting was “architectural shingles” which have a lot more overlap which makes them more durable than standard three tab shingles.  They also have “cool” varieties of this shingle which supposedly reflects heat much more effectively. Their quote for metal roofing was sky high.  Part of that gap with my other metal roof quote was the HD quote was for more expensive hidden fastener roofing while my first estimate had exposed fasteners.  But even so, over 30k for metal seemed a little outrageous.  I am hoping to get a firm answer from my home owners insurance today.

I have an odd week ahead with me taking off tomorrow, mostly to make the special chocolate birthday cake for Cindy.  It will be cool to break the week into a one and three day chunk.

So I managed to stay up for the Eagles/Panthers game last night.  Well I mostly did, drifting off mid third quarter but awakening with about two minutes left in the game.  Beating the Panthers on the road was a pretty huge deal and may actually be enough to make me think the Birds actually could be a playoff caliber team this year.  It’s a feeling I haven’t had in a long time but pretty much everything I saw last night, except for that dumb ass Mills at cornerback, makes me think the team actually has a shot.  Hopefully the injury bug doesn’t hit too hard this year.  It would be nice to have something to look forward to after the regular season.

Speaking of football, I neglected to mention that the Florida Tarpons, the local arena football team I had season tickets to for 4-5 years packed up their bags and relocated to Lakeland, close to two hours away.  There was no warning for the sudden move which I found a bit annoying yet in the big picture I understand.  Attendance was always pretty abysmal and after the end of each season I would always say there was no way they would be back next year.  Well I guess I was finally right, sort of.

Today another piece of the hurricane remediation process takes place.  A guy is coming out to do an appraisal on the house so I can reopen my home equity line of credit.  I am hoping the blue tarped roof doesn’t cause a big issue but I can give him pictures of what is under there in case he needs it.  The need to even have a formal appraisal in this situation, which I have to pay for, is sort of ridiculous.  A simple search on our tax collector website reveals a value far exceeding the minimal requirements to qualify for the loan.

This weekend there is more to do, as always.  Don’t get me wrong, although I do complain about my workload at home, 180 degrees in the other direction would not be good for my state of being either.  Sitting around and basically doing nothing all weekend would bother me more.

So I spent at least a couple hours last night swapping out stuff on my CR-10 in the hopes to fix my jamming filament issue.  After a lot of tedious reassembly I reloaded filament and immediately witnessed the same problem.  Needless to say I was really,really frustrated as you can see here.

One small bit of good news was the FEMA blue tarp program seems to be something you aren’t used to from a federal government program, efficient.  Cindy only requested the tarping of our roof last Friday and less than a week later the house is wearing a nice new blue hat, for free.  The tarp will help keep the roof insulated from leaks while we wait for roof replacement which at this point I am guessing will take at least six months.

So I spent a good portion of the night fighting with my CR-10 printer getting increasingly frustrated as I went along.   When I got the Creality printer I knew I would be digging into it much more than my FlashForge Finder which is pretty much a plug and print 3D printer. However I am getting frustrated with my recent issues, enough so that I already am eyeballing what my NEXT 3D printer will be down the road.  I intend to resume the work tonight, hopefully I can get the machine printing reliably again by the weekend.

That’s all I got for ya.

Yesterday I had to go down to Everglades City, one of the areas most devastated by Hurricane Irma, to do an assessment for what was needed to get a temporary office open while the city hall building is repaired from water damage.  I had not been to this location in quite awhile.  The drive in was quite the visual with debris piles lining the roadways.  The craziest pile of all was “Mount Trashmore” as named by the locals, a huge pile of debris in the middle of town.  Evidently trucks are slowly coming in to remove the junk as they can. There were also multiple pallets of bottled water and MRE’s which have been sitting out in the elements for weeks which evidently are left overs from the initial assistance effort.

The government building had a few inches of water on the floor from the surge but that was enough to do major damage.  All of the floors were ripped up revealing a sub floor that was just a mess.  In addition the first four feet of plaster/drywall on the entire first floor was cut out so the walls could be dried out properly.  The interior of the building was filled with an army of drying fans pointed in every direction.  They are estimating the building will take six months to be repaired.

Ironically we went through the exact same scenario with Hurricane Wilma when extensive damage required the building to close for roughly the same amount of time.  As I toured the building with our employee that works there she showed me a mark on the wall as we ascended a staircase.  She said that was the level the storm surge reached after Hurricane Donna.  When I looked down and saw we were a good 15 feet above the floor below I gained yet another new appreciation for the destructive potential of hurricanes.

Yesterday I received some more hurricane related numbers.  This time the number was roughly $4500, the estimate to rescreen the entire pool cage and fix the minor door/frame damage.  The number, much like the roof estimate was more than I expected but not surprising considering the circumstances.  So now I at least have one estimate for the roof and pool cage repairs. Now I am awaiting one more very important set of numbers, what my home owners insurance is going to offer me.

It has now been exactly two weeks since the adjuster visited.  I called yesterday to find out how long it would be until I hear back with a settlement offer.  The woman on the phone said they allow up to 14 business days so if I don’t hear anything by next Monday it’s time to start rattling some chains.  I certainly hope the number they give me is fair and reasonable.  If it is a ridiculous lowball then I have to dig in for a fight which only retards the timeline even further.

Speaking of fights, that was what I was doing last night with my CR-10 3D printer.  I am still struggling with a filament feeding issue which I am not able to figure out as of yet.  I have a number of parts ready to throw at the problem but I was awaiting one more thing to arrive so I could do all the work at once. I might just install the stuff I have now instead of waiting.  I get an unsettled feeling when my 3D printers are just sitting there, wasting print time.

I did manage to print the object I was trying to print on the CR-10 on my FlashForge Finder, albeit a smaller version of it.  The project, an ornate cross was something my EUC and 3D printing buddy Mathias, who lives in Norway, designed for me and it was kind of amazing.  The design was based on a physical cross that Cindy has that broke after a fall.  I had made a few attempts to recreate the cross as a 3D image using an overhead photo but struck out.  Mathias has a lot more experience than I do so I asked him about it.

Like I said the cross had some broken sections so the picture was not complete.  Even with that issue he was able to reverse the other side of the cross which was intact in the picture to create a very accurate replica.  Cindy was thrilled with the small black version I made and is looking forward to doing a full scale version on the CR-10 in different materials once I get it working 100%.  The amount of things you can create/do/fix with 3D printing are truly infinite.

I figured a quick blog entry recapping the weekend was a good way to celebrate a dominant Eagles win over the Cardinals.

I again had a lot of things I wanted to get done this weekend but I did not compose a to do list mapping it out this time.  I was out in the yard pretty early Saturday, tending to the chickens needs and weeding.  I was very surprised when Cindy told me she got a call from the FEMA guy, saying he was going to be stopping by soon.  Cindy HAD just applied for the FEMA blue tarp program the prior afternoon.  Evidently they are getting caught up.

In a nutshell, FEMA will tarp your damaged roof for free.  Since I likely will not have my roof repaired for six months I may as well take advantage of the extra insurance policy to prevent water from permeating the damaged sections of shingles.  I’m not sure how long it will take until the roof is wearing a blue tarp but I bet it will be less than two weeks.

Cindy, Elsa and I headed out to our almost automatic stops at Home Depot and Rural King.  I needed a few things.  When we got home I headed outside to install some of them.  I installed a new handle/latch on one of the screen doors that was damaged during Irma, the guts of it had been damaged from all of the wind and associated slamming.  I also finally got to replace the roof panel on the chicken run that was ripped off during the storm.  The chickens now have full rain protection once again.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to the movies for the first time in a long time.  Our favorite movie theater, Coconut Point has been closed since the storm as they evidently are having a hard time finding a contractor to repair whatever damage they have.  We instead went to Silverspot which also still had some storm related issues, their high tech kiosk ticketing system was dark and they didn’t have the ability to check people in with hand scanners like they normally do.

The movie we went to see was Blade Runner 2049.  I saw the original decades ago but remembered very little about it besides it starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer.  This version of the movie was very long, nearly three hours in length. The movie was also INCREDIBLY loud, it may have been the loudest film I ever saw in a theater.  Repeatedly you could feel the floor shaking and the drop ceiling vibrating from the volume of the sound.  Cindy had to cover her ears more than once.

Those things aside I found the film entertaining  and good albeit confusing at times.  After the movie I was trying to clear up fuzzy plot points with Cindy as there was a lot going on.  The film also had the largest naked women I have ever seen on screen, I bet some of them were a 100 feet tall.  I saw the film’s week one numbers missed expectations which is too bad.  However I think that is part of the risk of doing a sequel of a film 35 years after the original.  A good chunk of the original audience is now either dead or being pushed around a nursing home.  Millenials could give two F’s about replicants or Harrison Ford.   I did find it interesting to find out the original futuristic Blade Runner film was cast to take place in 2019. Anyway, I liked it, if you are my age you will probably like it too. B+

This morning despite getting home late I drug myself out of bed at 6AM to go run at the track.  As I downed my power breakfast of two Pop Tarts I saw my weather station indicated the humidity outside was 95%.  That is lovely.  As I trudged around the track I yearned for the winter mornings where temps in the 50’s are much more common.  I am so ready for heat and humidity to take a three-four month hiatus.

I went right from running to cleaning the chicken coop when I got home.  I followed up with paying the bills and then getting ready to go ride.  I originally had a plan to go do a solo ride to DD and then get picked up by Cindy so we could go pick up and install a microwave for her mom.  My ride to DD went by quickly on my Monster and when Cindy showed up she said the install was postponed until her mom could locate a microwave she liked.  We decided to go another 10 minutes down the road to North Collier Regional Park where Cindy could go walk Elsa while I rode around some more. It was hot and sweaty but fun.

Most of my afternoon was consumed by watching the Eagles lay a beating on the Cardinals, a pleasant surprise.  After the game was in hand I tended to a few remaining household chores before punching out this entry.  I am already anticipating a busy start to next week so I am taking my writing time where I can find it.

Yesterday I received an unexpected email from a woman from “Jukin media”.  She said her company produces fail videos for a show on MTV2.  She happened to stumble across the video from my second day of EUC learning where I crashed hard onto the parking lot.  She was doing an inquiry regarding gaining my permission to use the clip in the show in return for compensation.

Of course I was intrigued and responded back regarding it.  The Cliff Notes version is I think the clip can’t be used because I no longer have the original unedited footage. (YouTube clip has captioning) However, I did send her some links to some of my other fall/fail/crash videos so perhaps I may just wind up being on the show.  Regardless of the outcome it was cool to get the inquiry.

I am expecting this weekend to again be quite loaded with things to do however hopefully this time there will be more fun things like doing some more work on my 3D printer and putting out the Halloween decorations.  I am thankful that Tropical Storm Nate is apparently going to be tracking far west of us but at the same time feel badly for whomever on the gulf coast winds up having to deal with yet ANOTHER US landfall storm.  2017 appears to be rivaling 2005 in regards to the most miserable hurricane year in recent history.

I outlined the mods I want to do on the printer here.

So I received back my virtual estimate for roof replacement that was calculated using info from GIS mapping and Google Maps. I really had no idea what to expect but figured somewhere between the 10 and 20k range.  The quote for a metal roof slid in just below that top number at 19,000 and change.  The cost to reshingle the roof was around $15500, a small enough difference that I would absolutely go the metal roof direction without question. This quote included completely stripping off the old shingles and underlayment and renailing the deck surface.  This particular company won’t lay metal on top of shingles which I assume is the best way to go about things, it just costs more.

So now I am sort of in circling mode.  I have a Home Depot rep scheduled to come out two weekends from now to give me a second quote for comparison.  I have had absolutely no luck finding anyone willing to even give me an estimate of fixing up the pool cage which isn’t all that surprising. However what I really need is to hear back from my homeowners insurance to see what they offer me for settlement.  I also need to see how quickly I can get my HELOC reopened to help me offset the expense of everything.

When I came home yesterday I saw a crew of guys on my neighbors roof laying down blue tarp.  I was confused, I did not know if these were roofers that were tarping the roof as part of their service to protect it before they could repair it.  It turns out they were actually a crew hired by FEMA that tarps damaged roofs for free.  There is an application process to get it done which I hope to have Cindy investigate/apply for me today.  In all likelihood my roof is not going to get replaced for at least six months so I should take advantage of the program to minimize the chance of water seeping in between the damaged shingles.

A good portion of last night was spent in the hobby room.  Despite my repeated efforts, the area designated for 3D printing kept turning into a mess and I was sick of it.  Cindy had made a good suggestion that we should mount some pegboard along the wall behind the desk to allow me to hang and organize the various tools and supplies I use regularly for 3D printing.

I picked up the pegboard last night after work, which was a bit of an ordeal since I had the Prius.  Home Depot only sells the stuff in big 4′ x 8′ sheets which would not fit.  I waited to have an employee cut the sheet in half so I had two 4×4 squares.  Even so it was a very tight fit, requiring me to flex the pegboard pretty severely to fit inside the car.

I cut a piece further at home so it would fit in between the shelf supports. Cindy and I came up with a weird but effective mounting method which involved cutting off small sections of a foam pool noodle into little donuts that we tie wrapped to the back to keep it away from the wall a bit.  We then used more tie wraps to attach the top of the pegboard to the shelving above.  It worked out really well and should do no damage to the wall behind it. After the board was up I spent another chunk of time hanging items on it, organizing what wasn’t hanging and throwing out stuff that was not needed.  I’m happy with the end result and I am sure it will get tweaked a little further down the road.

When I got home yesterday, after a frustrating day of dead ends when it came to trying secure someone to look at our pool cage and roof damage I decided I needed to get on the roof to do a few stop gap repairs.  When I did my roof survey after the hurricane I took note of a couple spots where the shingles were ripped off all the way down to bare felt/tar paper.  I read online that the underlayment will only hold up a short period of time when exposed to the elements.

We had made a nice pile of shingles that had ripped off the house.  I had Cindy toss a few of them up to me which I used to tuck under the intact shelters and then nail into place so water can run off instead of possibly under the shingles.  There were only three spots I found with bare paper so it didn’t take very long.

So as I survey what the hurricane remediation landscape, it is looking like a long and expensive path.  In anticipation of this I started the process of reopening my home equity line of credit for withdrawals.  It closed three years ago after 10 years.  At the time I didn’t feel like going through the hassle of the reapplication process however with a potential slew of home improvement expenses coming up it made sense to do so at this time.  If I am going to spend the money, I may as well do it in a manner that allows me to write off the interest on my taxes.

Like I said I have run into a lot of dead ends when it comes to getting estimates on the work I need.  I had one pool cage contractor said they are only doing full cage rebuilds, not repairs.  Another said they weren’t willing to drive so far because they have enough work by them. Others either don’t answer the phone or just never respond back to you.  I did however have the luck to find a co-worker whose husband works for a roofing company that has an interesting way to handle the estimate problem.

The company will present you an estimate without even coming out to your property.  How in the world can they do that accurately you may ask?  They use GIS imaging and Google Maps to gather the measurements they need.  They then feed these numbers into some program and generate estimates remotely, pretty cool.  I have not seen the estimates yet, I requested one for doing shingles again and a metal roof.  I have a feeling I will be in for some sticker shock.

So my goal to finish my massive to do list for the weekend came up short but it wasn’t from a lack of effort.  Mother Nature threw a big roadblock in the way when we got absolutely drenched on Friday, turning what was a dry landscape back into something that look similar to a rice paddy field.  Thankfully Cindy got the back half of the yard mowed on Friday before the rains came.

On Saturday we worked ourselves silly, busting ass around the wet yard.  I was doing weeding, debris clean up and weed whacking mostly.  Cindy spent a good portion of the day with the electric pressure washer, cleaning the pool cage and pool deck area.  Later in the afternoon we ran out for some more supplies at Home Depot.  When we got home the rain had returned.  I was so motivated to continue crossing off list items that I threw on my rain coat and worked through steady precipitation.

Despite being beat up and sore from Saturday’s work I set a 6AM alarm for Sunday so I could get out and resume my weekend 5K track runs.  Because of road trips, work commitments and hurricanes my running has fallen off a table.  I think this was the second time in three months I got out to run.  Of course my expectations were low, my goal was to simply survive the run as in not stop short of my 12 lap goal.  That goal was accomplished although I felt pretty miserable trudging through the extremely warm and humid air, mostly in total darkness.  As the sun began to rise it revealed that the school grounds took a beating from Irma as well.  The bleachers and part of the baseball backstop were mangled from the winds.

During the morning Cindy and I did get out for a quick ride around North Collier Park on our wheels.  Once again the power of a hurricane was on display.  Pretty much every direction you turned you could see damage from the storm.

Before the Eagles game started Cindy and I worked on yet another list item, washing all three vehicles.  I used it as an opportunity to make a Tacoma mod so far video, something I had intended to do for a little while.

I got word during the week that supposedly the NFL Sunday Ticket problem that I spent over two hours on the phone trying to remedy last weekend had been corrected.  I was skeptical Directv actually fixed the issue but I was pleased to see I actually had the package when I turned on the tv this week.  It was the first Eagles game I have gotten to see this year.  It was interesting game to see with a solid close win, capped off by the Eagles executing a time expiring long drive at the end to seal the game, something I am not accustomed to.  Their 3-1 start to the season is good news but I have been an Eagles fan for far too long to not know better than to get too excited at this point of the season.

So this morning I woke up to the latest in a far too common scenario in today’s world, another horrible mass shooting.  You have to wonder what snapped in this old man’s mind that would push him to raining down bullets from 32 stories up upon a massive crowd of unsuspecting victims.   I suppose this will once again spin up the circular gun control arguments which inevitably lead to nothing as both sides call the other names.  At this point I am pretty certain that there is no gun related tragedy that would be able to move that needle in any direction.