I did not see one second of the state of the union address and don’t feel like I missed anything. I heard the speech went on for nearly 80 minutes and followed the pattern you would expect. Most SOTU speeches are pretty cleanly broken into 50 percent looking at what has been accomplished and the other half talking about what is to be done. From all accounts Donald spent 80 percent or more of the time in self congratulatory fashion which is to be expected. I am so very tired of politics and reading the inane ramblings of Trump enthusiasts on social media. It just makes me feel worse about the world than I already do.
Instead of watching Trump I had three of my 3D printers chugging away making Eagles cookie cutters, recording two videos in the process, a much better use of my time, in my opinion.
I finally got around to doing a video review of the laser engraver I was sent by GearBest a month or so ago. It is not a high end device at all and has a very small (38MM square) burn area but it does indeed work. I have done a number of test burns on cardboard and they have turned out well. Like most Chinese products there are some odd and quirky aspects to the device but for what it costs, it does the job.
Wow ever since Logan Paul decided it would be funny to shoot video of a guy that hung himself in Japan’s “Suicide Forest”, my ad revenue has got hammered. A similar thing happened when PewDiPie was accused of making racist remarks on his channel last year. Advertisers knee jerk reaction to this shit is to stay away and seems like that is once again the case. My predicted monthly revenue since the Logan Paul video has dropped almost exactly by a third. When you combine this with the recently changed partner program announcement that rips monetization away from channels with less than 1000 subscribers it adds up to a whole lot of suck.
You will notice that I have started to include my standard affiliate links at the bottom of my blog posts. It’s just another way to diversify and get more exposure. Feel free to ignore them or check them out, whatever floats your boat.
Saturday morning Cindy and I were up early to head out to the Run for the Paws, the race Ali started a dozen years ago mostly due to our experience with adopting Nicki. Cindy and Sadie came as well. We sadly left Elsa at home but she would have been absolutely terrified the entire time and it would have been miserable. Cindy and I both were wearing Eagles jerseys which drew more praise than negativity at the race.
We arrived close to an hour and a half before the 8Am start. It was nice to see a lot of the old familiar running club crew although some of the key roles are now being handled by other people. I primarily let Cindy tend to Sadie while I lent a hand here and there in a very minor way. It certainly felt odd to have so little responsibility in a situation where I used to have a ton of weight on my shoulders, but I’m certainly not complaining. I have not missed timing races at all with the only caveat being the positive interactions with race organizers and participants.
So the plan was for Cindy to walk Sadie with a friend of ours and I would just run it, my first chip timed 5K in years. With my weekly runs, a fast pace has dropped off the radar as one of the goals so I didn’t really know what to expect. I ran the race like I normally do, see people in front of me I identify as targets to pass, and then try to do so. For the most part I took down all targets but overall my pace was slower than I expected. My chip time just barely got into the 29’s. I knew I would be slow, I didn’t think I would be that slow. Oh well, good thing I’m not qualifying for the Olympics.
Once I finished I stood at the finish line with Ali for awhile waiting for Cindy and Sadie to finish. After waiting 10 minutes or so I started walking back out on the course to make sure everything was ok and to walk/run in with them. Everything was fine and Sadie seemed to be holding up well, much better than last year, to the 5K distance. We slowly jogged across the finish line where Sadie was greeted very enthusiastically.
Last year after the race I stuck around for the entire awards and even helped clean up some but I was there by myself. This year we had to let out a friend’s dog on the way home and we wanted to get back to Elsa who was likely very unhappy. We just stayed long enough for Ali to introduce Sadie at the start of the awards and then headed out. We didn’t go around to do a round of goodbyes but we will see a number of the people at our Super Bowl party so it’s all good.
So on the way home like I mentioned we had to stop to walk our friend’s dog but before that we wanted to do a DD pit stop. I was on Airport Road turning left onto Pine Ridge. I was behind a cargo van. As I approached the light the van partially blocked my view of the light but just as I started making the turn the turning arrow went from yellow to red. Oh well, I still cleared the intersection before opposing traffic got a green.
Well as I am sitting on Pine Ridge I see flashing red and blue lights in the mirror. I then realize the lights are directly behind me and not trying to get anywhere else. Yep, I was getting pulled over. I think the only other time I can recall being pulled over was early in my Florida residency when they had a speed trap out by my house. I got off that time with a warning. Well this certainly wasn’t what I needed for my post race celebration.
The deputy, who was probably a guy in his late 20’s, early 30’s was pleasant. He said I ran the light but it “wasn’t bad”. I had my registration and insurance in hand and apologized, saying the van partially obstructed my view. After running my plate he returned with a piece of paper, luckily it was only a warning. I thanked him for cutting me a break. If he was a Yellowstone Park Ranger he surely would have thrown the book at me.
So when we got home we dug right into chores with chicken clean up being first on the list. Earlier in the week Cindy had noticed all of the cameras but one in the coop were showing offline. I figured I just needed to reboot the DVR as this sometimes can happen. Well when I was out in the coop run I realized that no amount of reboots would fix the problem.
I had drilled a small hole in the side of the coop that I ran the camera wires through to the head unit inside. I filled the remaining gap with pipe foam insulation. Well when I glanced at that hole I saw it as empty with 7 sets of chewed through wires hanging there, the damn mice were at it again. They evidently destroyed the wires and insulation in order to give themselves free entry into the coop. I have already ordered new wire sets but I will need to modify my installation to make it mouse proof. I have been live trapping and relocating the pests. I have caught three so far but evidently more remain.
Despite the early rise and 5K I deemed Saturday afternoon as the time I would pressure wash the two sheds which were both various shades of green/black. I used the gas pressure washer which has much more crud blasting power than our electric model. It’s always a bit hairy standing on the wet roof of the big shed as I lean awkwardly over the edge to blast a few of the panels. But hey I haven’t fallen yet in 15 years of doing the task, I’m a pro at this point.
Saturday night we watched our latest Netflix dvd, the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Johnny Depp has been a bit of a joke recently with an embarrassing string of box office failures. I hoped one of his most iconic roles could reverse the trend. Well the best I could offer is, sort of. I thought the movie was ok. I once again dozed off a few times due to being up early for the race. My general feeling at the end of it was that hopefully I had seen the last of the series. It was a shrug my shoulders B flick, I guess. I just didn’t care.
Sunday I started off with chicken cleaning and bill paying. Mid-morning I hopped on the Monster to ride to Dunkin Donuts. I arranged with Cindy to meet me there with the dogs so we could go run errands afterward. I was carrying some major speed during the ride. I did not have a tracking app running but I am pretty sure most of the ride was at 20mph+. I got there faster than expected, so fast that I had an extra 10-15 minutes to roll around the side paths and roads until Cindy got there.
We then hit Pinch-a-Penny, Rural King and Home Depot to pick up several things. One of the things I grabbed were some longer weather proof roof panel screws to replace a few I saw that were loose and/or missing from the big shed. I replaced them later in the day.
The rest of Sunday was pretty chill. Cindy spent a lot of time working with her Cameo. She just loves creating things on the platform and I encourage her to do so. I too messed with my laser engraver as well as playing a nice chunk of WoW to wind down my weekend. All was well with the world…
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Yes you haven’t heard much from me this week as time seemed to fly by with other things consuming my time. Last night when I got home one of the first things I did was investigate a cable tv/internet outage that Cindy told me about earlier. When she left for work in the morning everything was working, when she returned later nothing was.
The first thing I noticed when I got home was an orange coax cable run from the pole to my neighbor’s house. It was just laying across the grass which was odd. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that this cable appeared the same day our service went down. I went over to the neighbors to find out what was up.
They said that they just had cable internet service added to their house and the orange cable was the temporary line the installer used until someone else could come to do a buried line. The timeline of the work fell in line with my suspicion as he finished up after Cindy had already left for work. I called up support and told them I suspected their installer somehow managed to disconnect/damage our line in the process of hooking up the neighbor. I now have to go home this afternoon to meet up with a tech to figure out what exactly happened.
As you can imagine, in our household the lack of a high speed internet connection can be mildly disruptive as I have so many devices connected to it. Despite being cut off via land I was able to provide internet access to my PC via a personal hotspot on my iPhone. The connection proved to be surprisingly robust, even allowing me to play an hour or so of WoW without issue.
This weekend will be a busy one. Cindy and I are attending Ali’s Run for the Paws 5K on Saturday. We will arrive somewhat early to lend a hand where needed. Once again Sadie is going to “run” the race with us. We would love to take Elsa with but she would literally be terrified the entire time and it would be a miserable experience.
The rest of the weekend I will jam in my normal list of things to do. We also have some clean up around the place that should get done before hosting our SuperBowl party next weekend.
I have a weird pain that has been mutating over the past week or so. It started out as pain in the right jaw hinge when I chew. The pain got more painful as time passed but also sort of migrated to the point where it feels like half jaw/half ear. With my long history of ear infection problems I am hoping I am not dealing with one again. The past two nights I have been trying to beat back whatever it is by laying on my left side with a 50/50 solution of vinegar and isoproply alcohol in my right ear. A couple times in the past I was able to reverse similar pain by doing this. The last couple days the pain has stepped down a few degrees but is still clearly present. Hopefully I can avoid seeing a medical professional for this.
I picked up Sadie on my way home from work on Friday. When we got home Elsa went absolutely bat shit crazy to see Sadie emerge from the Prius. She loves having Sadie around.
On Saturday morning I started out once again with my 13 lap run around the track. During the last half of the run some kids were getting dropped off presumably for some athletic event. About a dozen of them joined me on the track, doing one high speed lap, easily blowing past me. Some of the kids were wearing flip flops and still left me eating their dust.
My chore load for Saturday was pretty light with weeding being the primary must do. We headed out to Rural King and Home Depot with the dogs mid-morning. I grabbed 15 more bags of top soil to continue my primitive ground level elevation project behind the coop.
My 3D printers were working hard on Saturday finishing up another colorful EUC stand. I also printed a blue version of my knife model to use at work. On Sunday I put my rudimentary Fusion 360 skills to work to design a little clip I could put on my pool vacuum hoses to keep them from falling off the holder I have on the wall.
Late last week I passed another milestone on my main YouTube channel, crossing the 3000 subscriber mark. I thought I would celebrate the occasion by making a short montage video that touched on the core subject matter my channel is about.
Saturday night Cindy and I headed out to see 12 Strong, once again opting for the VIP theater experience at The Prado. We decided to eat dinner there as well since we had a good experience eating there with Randall a few weeks ago. Cindy and I ordered the exact same items off the menu and had the same praise for the end result. The only negative was the super slow service at the bar where they had one woman back there that didn’t seem to know what she was doing. Eventually we just bailed on the idea of getting a beer after waiting for more than 5 minutes with no movement in the line.
The movie was about a seemingly crazy true story at the beginning of the Afghanistan conflict. A small US team was sent in to work with a local Afghan faction to overtake a Taliban controlled area. The soldiers literally at some points were fighting Taliban in tanks and truck mounted rocket launchers on horseback. Yes it seemed sort of insane. Their original intent was to serve as a cross hairs for US targeted airstrikes but it morphed into horses versus tanks in the end. I am not sure how much of the scenario was exaggerated for the movie, but if it went down pretty much as depicted, it’s an amazing example of heroism and bravery. It’s a solid A flick.
After the movie we stopped at the cute little ice cream shoppe next door and enjoyed small cups of ice cream as we sat by the cool fire/water feature. We both really enjoy watching movies at Prado.
On Sunday morning Cindy and I went out for an EUC ride, parking in the Super Target lot since Cindy had a few things she wanted to pick up there. We brought the Msuper and Mten3 for the ride. It was a fun ride and the longest distance I have taken the Mten3 as we looped all the way to North Collier Park and back.
So on the way back we came in behind Target like we did on the way out, to avoid the busy parking lot traffic. As we were wheeling along a white SUV was approaching us from the other direction. As it got closer instead of following the curve in the road it kept going straight in our general direction. The driver of the vehicle had his face in his phone, of course, and was not paying attention.
Cindy yelled out and gestured at the guy who then immediately jerked the wheel to change direction. We had plenty of room to avoid an impact but the guy was clearly not paying attention. Well after we passed I saw the reverse lights on the SUV light up in my rear view mirror. Cindy looked back and saw it as well and was worried he was going to try to hit us which I assured her he would not do. Instead he sped past us in an adjacent lane and then gave us the finger as he drove by, what an idiot.
It would have been interesting if he would have stopped and gotten out of the vehicle. I am normally not the type of person to overreact to a situation or go looking for conflict. However if someone brings it to my doorstep then things can get a little scary. So anyway, the dumb ass drove away and we had a funny ending to the ride video as I had the camera rolling, just in case.
Sunday afternoon we did our own thing. Cindy did a lot of crafting over the weekend. She is getting really good with her Cameo and made a very pro looking t-shirt decal that she applied with her new heat press machine. I edited the ride video and then watched a good portion of the Patriots/Jaguar game.
Man although I have no love for the Patriots it is impossible to not respect how much they have accomplished. Once again they came back from a double digit deficit to beat the Jaguars. The fact that Tom Brady accomplished this without Gronkowski, who was knocked out with a head injury late in the first half, made it even more impressive. Brady’s list of accomplishments are simply staggering. To me, there is not a doubt that he is the best QB of my lifetime.
I of course was more interested in the next game. Once again, despite having the best record in the league, for the second time in as many weeks the Eagles were an underdog, at home, which is almost unheard of. Most people, myself included thought that once Carson Wentz got hurt the Eagles chances of success dropped way down. However the team has managed to use that as a rallying cry, using the underdog role to fuel their efforts.
The way the game started did not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. The Vikings marched straight down the field and scored a TD with little resistance. The sick feeling in my stomach was amplified by the stat that they flashed on the screen stating that no team with an indoor stadium has ever played an outdoor game in the championship game and won, their record is 0-12. In the past the Eagles have had a bad habit of bucking these trends so I was worried that we were again headed in that direction.
If you would have told me that the Birds would turn things around to score 38 unanswered points at that time I would have called you crazy however that is what happened. I was so used to Eagle teams in the past collapsing with big leads that I was still not confident when the score was 31-7. Only once they got the final touchdown did I know for sure they were going to the Superbowl. What an amazing game.
I was so happy for Nick Foles, he had a superb game. I always liked the guy when he was with the Eagles. From the start he struck me as a quality human being and for him to succeed at this level after struggling when he was traded was heart warming. He played like his amazing year under Chip Kelly when he threw 27 TDs with only two interceptions. He was calm and in control.
The Eagles defense came up big after looking like a doormat on the first drive. The Vikings did move the ball somewhat but some big takeaways kept them from scoring again which was huge. This game will go down as one of the all timers in my book as far as satisfaction and level of play goes.
The Super Bowl party we are hosting once again after a one year hiatus suddenly has taken on a whole new level of excitement. To have the team I have lived and died with my entire life in the big game will be special indeed. I can only hope somehow they are able to keep the magic going just one more time…
So my week long series of mostly day long meetings have wrapped up but it is only the start of a very long and involved process that will be taking place on the next 6-7 months. We are ripping out our old Cobol legacy back end systems and replacing them with a cloud based vendor. It is MASSIVE undertaking that will be very difficult but should hold a lot of back end benefits including greater productivity, efficiency, and flexibility in many areas of our office. I am very much looking forward to this time next year when all of these large resource projects will be in the rear view mirror.
Overnight my massive two day print of one of my WoW characters finally concluded. This was the model I was in the middle of printing when a shelf collapsed on my printer last week. It looks pretty odd right now but once Cindy is done working on it I am sure it will be one of my most prized 3D prints.
I am picking up Sadie on the way home to make Elsa’s weekend a lot more fun. Luckily we seem to be through the worst of our most current cold snap. It’s still very cold by SW Florida standards but at least we are out of the landscape danger zones and we have avoided frost which really kills stuff off.
This weekend has standard fare included, highlighted by the NFC championship game on Sunday which includes the Eagles, the first time it has happened since 2009. The Eagles have a pretty bad track record in this game, who could forget when they lost three consecutive NFC championships in the mid 2000’s? I am hoping the unexpected success and magic of the 17/18 season continues on. To have this team get all the way to the Super Bowl would be an incredible belated Christmas present.
No there have been no major life events that has made the blog go dark this week. I just have a heavy work schedule which has left time for little else. The theme of this week has been cold, as in dealing with it. This morning the thermometer in the Prius read a very frosty 36 degrees when I left the house.
I have recently developed a very different attitude when it comes to temps that approach the freezing mark. I used to go into fire drill mode and scramble to try to cover any and all potentially cold sensitive plant life in the yard. Despite my extensive efforts, things still bit the dust. My new feeling is if something dies due to the cold that helps me know to not put the same item into the ground in the future. If stuff in the garden takes a beating it is easily replaceable. This adjusted attitude makes forecast cold fronts much less stressful for me.
If I had more time I’d love to talk more about shithole countries and porn star love affairs but alas, I will leave that to others.
So I went into my four day weekend with a desire to accomplish certain things so I went back to my reliable paper motivator, writing these items down on a list. The plan was to start things off Friday by changing the pads on the front brakes of the Prius. Well that project got sidetracked a bit when I woke up to a mess in the hobby room.
I had glanced in the room to check on the progress of a roughly two day long print of one of my WoW characters. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw pure chaos instead. One of the shelves that was above two of my 3D printers, including the CR-10 in the middle of the two day print had collapsed, falling on top of the printers and spilling the contents of the shelf all over the room. Of course my print was ruined as the shelf obstructed the CR-10. I actually felt lucky that the printer didn’t seem to be all that screwed up. Both Cindy and I were amazed that we did not hear the shelf break and crash during the night. Based on my security DVR camera it went down around 3:30AM.
I looked at the shelf to see what happened. I didn’t think I had that much weight on it. It appeared that the clips that secure it to the wall had failed. When I looked at the shelf above the failed one I saw one of those two wall clips was starting to pull out as well so I obviously had some work to do. After I cleaned up the considerable mess I made note of what I would need to redo/strengthen the shelves. I bought the parts later which included metal clips instead of plastic and I increased the amount of supports and clips by a factor of two.
So I finally got to turn my attention to the Prius mid-morning. I had changed the pads and rotors on a number of vehicles in the last 10 years so I wasn’t too worried about the technical aspect of it. I had no pulsation or pulling so I just got the pads, assuming the rotors were fine. (they were) I went a different route with the pads, paying more than double the price of third party prices to get a hold of a pair of OEM Toyota brake pads. I am hoping the 200,000+ mile Prius lasts me a another few years so I made the extra investment in parts.
The new pads ironically were the reason for my only real hiccup during the work. With aftermarket pads you just take them out of the box and slap them in. With the OEM pads you have to move the metal shields on the back of the pads from the old set to the new, something I did not realize until I already had one side done. Other than that the job went well although to be honest, the old pads still had about half of their life left. I’m not sure if it is the regenerative braking a hybrid does or what, but brakes seem to last forever on them.
So the rest of Friday was spent mostly dealing with more aftermath from the shelf collapse. I ran to Home Depot not once but twice in total. The first time to get shelf hardware, the second was to pick up ANOTHER six foot workbench. After talking with Cindy, who had suggested another bench already, we came up with a plan that involved adding a bench to the hobby room and re-utilizing the desk in there for Cindy for her Cameo work. It a domino affect that had her old smaller desk relocated to the master bedroom where it will be used as a sewing station. It was funny how the collapse of the shelf lead to this series of events but Cindy and I really like the end result.
Saturday morning I got up and got my run in. There was another cold front approaching but the temps in the upper 50’s felt comfortable to run in. After I returned I didn’t waste much time before digging into more of my list, targeting the weeding, weedwhacking, and mowing portion of it. I had an interruption as I kept fighting with the weed whacker, it would only run in the choke position, which is too fast. If I used normal throttle it would sputter and die. I gave up on it and switched to my DeWalt battery powered whacker which is ok but doesn’t have nearly the same power and speed. I later discovered that one of the fuel lines had a crack in it, giving me something else to add to the list.
I kept busy right up until kickoff time of the Eagles playoff game. I was worried that the Eagles, who posted their best season in a decade or more was going to fall into a one and done scenario, despite being the number one seed in the NFC. The Falcons actually came into the Linc being the favorites, despite being the number six seed. Unlike the Eagles that sort of sputtered towards the finish of the year, the Falcons were improving.
The game was very frustrating as turnovers and mistakes were coming at a steady pace. It felt like the Falcons were more in control for a good portion of the game but even so, the score remained close. The Eagles slowly clawed their way back from a small deficit but found themselves up by 5 with time running out but the Falcons having the ball. When the Eagles allowed the Falcons to get a first down on a 4th and 6 I thought to myself, “Here we go again, another year of having our hearts ripped out with a playoff collapse” It felt that way all the way till the very end when the Falcons were 1st and goal with plenty of time on the clock. However somehow the Birds managed to keep them out of the endzone, capped off by a dramatic fourth down when Julio Jones, who was killing the Eagles time and again could not come down with a high pass after he had slipped down a moment before. I clapped my hands and yelled loudly, scaring Elsa whom came over for comfort and to help me celebrate. It was the most emotion I have felt from football in a long, long time, dating back to the Andy Reid era.
It was a great win and a very exciting way to end my Saturday. The Vikings, who had an even more dramatic win will be coming into town next week. I can only hope the Eagles keep finding a way to grind out a win despite less than ideal circumstances.
So Sunday came and I only had one item left on my to do list, “Test Tow”. For quite awhile I wanted to hook Cindy’s RV up to the Tacoma and tow it around to make sure it was viable. When Cindy bought the RV I spent $1000 to get a 10,000 pound stabilizing hitch installed on the truck but I had not used it yet, the RV was delivered by the dealership.
During the morning I attended to a few small things around the house like replacing the fuel lines in the weed whacker, a first time thing for me. It was a bit challenging feeding tube from the inside of the gas tank up to the carb but I figured it out. The whacker fired up and ran like a champ afterward, better than it has for awhile so I have a feeling the crack was there for awhile.
So after lunch we turned our attention to the RV. Cindy was obviously nervous about towing her trailer since we have not done so with the Tacoma. I too had anxiety about the process, not only because I knew that Cindy was worried about her RV but I was worried about my truck and how it would do towing something close to 6000 pounds. I also had never hooked up the hitch myself, I only watched it being done at the dealership for the test fit.
Cindy headed out before me and made sure the RV was tow ready, putting away loose items and securing other things. We also figured it would be smart to drain the gray and fresh water tanks as much as possible to cut down on weight. I then pulled the Tacoma into the yard and backed towards the hitch on the the trailer. It took a couple tries to get the ball of the hitch lined up with the receiver but it wasn’t quite as precise as I thought it may have had to be. Because of the design of the receiver, close is normally good enough as it will slide down over the ball once weight is applied.
So after getting the ball secured we had to get the stabilizer bars locked in. The joints for the bars were very stiff, so stiff that I asked Cindy to go grab some WD-40. Even with using it I had to use all of my weight to push the bars on either side into place. The last parts of the process was hooking up the safety chains and then cranking the handle of the receiver jack so that all of the weight of the front of the trailer was supported by the Tacoma. The back end of the truck dropped a little but not horribly from the load.
So we decided we first would do some test laps around the back of the yard. I pulled ahead slowly and heard a lot of noise behind me. Cindy was really concerned but it was just normal noises of the hitch dealing with the very uneven terrain in the yard. I did a big slow loop and then let Cindy take the truck around as well for a lap. The Tacoma seemed up to the task so now it was time for stage two, a road test.
This was one of the things I was most nervous about. The path out of the back yard is tight and the opening in the gate is even tighter. With Cindy acting as a spotter I slowly pulled the truck and 26 foot trailer out of the backyard with literally an inch or two to spare. With Elsa in the back seat the three of us headed out onto open road with Cindy’s RV. She was VERY nervous.
So I had never towed anything nearly this substantial before. It felt strange as I could feel the truck dealing with the weight of the trailer and the back and forth physics of it. It also required a realignment of your normal driving position on the road as the trailer is much wider than my Tacoma. However as the miles passed I got more and more accustomed to the feeling. We did a big square that included getting up onto the interstate for approximately 5 miles. That was the only time the truck was not very happy, keeping a pretty steady 4500 RPM to maintain roughly 65 mph. Even so, it felt capable and pretty stable.
On the way back I surprised Cindy by offering to let her drive the truck. I actually was surprised as well but my time driving was uneventful enough that I felt Cindy would be fine as well. She went through much of the same early adjustment weirdness that I did but she drove us all the way home and even drove it back into the driveway and into the backyard. It was a much more stressful process at the beginning than the end. We both felt good to know that the mid-size Tacoma, a truck you will hardly ever see towing something that big, is up to the task. We also felt happy that we were able to complete a 30 mile trip without incident.
Last night we watched the latest Transformers movie. I’m not sure why I keep hoping that the next Transformer movie will be something different than all the prior sequels, dumb. Yea there are cool visuals but they only get you so far. The dialogue, plot, and overall feel of the series just is lame. I drifted in and out somewhat so maybe that was part of my lack of understanding but I doubt it. It was one of those movies that I tell Cindy I am glad we didn’t pay $30 to see in a theater to see a B at best flick.
Today is my last day of my extended weekend. I am hoping to finally overdose on fun things I want to do instead of things I feel I need to do. 3D printing, WoW, and EUCing all should be in the picture in some degree.
So yesterday I discovered a new, very cool thing I can print on my 3D printers, my actual characters from World of Warcraft. Using a couple different software packages I am able to extract the 3D model for any of my characters and then use another piece of software to create an STL file that I can feed to my 3D printer.
Over the decade plus I have been playing the game I have invested months of time in some of these virtual representations of myself, to be able to pull them out of the computer and into the physical world would be really cool. Right now I have two of the models printing. They are long, complex prints so I am crossing my fingers that nothing goes wrong. If the prints complete successfully that is only the first part of the project. I then hope to turn the models over to Cindy where she hopefully will be able to apply some of her painting skills to make the models really look accurate.
Last night I did another YouTube Live session, with Cindy pitching in this time. We set a new simultaneous viewer record, having 11 people on the stream at one point, whoopee. Even with the small audience we had a good session. One of the guys in chat we found out was a video editor that has worked on a ton of shows and major movies. He found my channel via the Tacoma route since he has 2017 he recently bought. There were a number of interesting people in chat. Before I knew it I had been streaming for over an hour and a half. I shut it down since I was setting an extra early alarm for today to get some stuff done at work.
Today I am on the eve of another extended weekend which I am excited about. Of course I already have a healthy mental checklist of things I’d like to accomplish during that time including doing the front brake pads on the Prius, yard maintenance, carpet cleaning, and more. The nice thing about having a block of four days off is I can get all these things done and still have plenty of time to spare.
