A big surprise, no mouse for you, a big fall
So when I got home Friday evening Cindy told me she had a big surprise for me as I walked up the driveway. She pointed over to the bed of the Tacoma. I looked inside and saw a huge full size Segway laying back there. This is the Segway our friend said she didn’t want so I knew we might get it but I had no idea Cindy made the transfer during the day.
It didn’t take long for me to get the two wheeled 100 pound+ monster inside. Even though we knew the batteries were dead I plugged it in anyway just to see if it would take a charge. The Segway does look hardly used, just as advertised. It’s history of being an unwanted gift from a pro-QB to his offensive lineman which in turn was given to our friends husband who is a trainer that works with pro athletes is an interesting one. Once the trainer got it the wheel basically has sat in a garage for 5 years or more, untouched.
I dug right into doing research on the wheel to try to determine how old it was. In the process of doing so I identified that we were missing an important part, the Infokey. This device that looks like a digital watch is what interfaces with the Segway to do important things, like turn it on. Our friend is going to look and see if she can find the key, if she is unsuccessful it will cost me around $200 to get a new one. Yes, it’s expensive.
Expensive is a running theme with these Segways, brand new they cost roughly $6000. When I started digging into battery replacement costs it was a bit staggering. For a brand new set I could scrape the $2000 mark. Even refurbished batteries will set you back $1400-$1500. This was starting to look ugly. I have no idea if there is anything else wrong with the unit, to spend that kind of money just to find out seems sort of nuts.
So although I was a little put off by the numbers I kept digging, stumbling across a message board forum for Segway owners. I determined this unit was a SegwayI2 that looked to be manufactured in 2011. On this same message board I stumbled across a guy that was selling a used set of functional batteries for less than 25% of what a new set cost. I figured this was a good compromise which would allow me to test the Segway without spending a fortune. That message board is a great source of info that I will be leaning heavily on in the future. So for now the behemoth personal transport device will just be hanging out by the front door until the parts arrive and hopefully the Infokey is found.
Saturday morning I got out for my run. It was one of those runs where every lap felt like a struggle. Part of the problem is I am running at a bodyweight of 187-188 pounds right now. Even dropping 5 pounds would make a significant difference. Carrying more poundage seems to help my strength numbers at the gym but definitely makes running much less efficient. Maybe my pre-colonscopy liquid diet and intestine purge can kick start me to dropping a few.
After I returned from running I tended to house chores including some quarterly duties like running the generators and sucking out the AC drain line with the shop-vac. We took Sadie and Elsa along to Home Depot later to pick up a few items, mostly for the chicken yard. I got some large and pretty white egg rock to fill the areas in front of the coop. The stones are really cool but super expensive at $10 for each small bag. I also dumped some mulch in the back of the coop in the chicken “playground” area so they had something to dig around in.
Later Saturday afternoon Cindy and I went back out, this time to Costco for me to pick out frames for my new glasses to help me see distance better. The selection of frames wasn’t quite as large as I thought it might be but I still didn’t have much trouble picking out a set that Cindy and I both though looked decent. I am looking forward to seeing how things will come into focus that have been blurry for so long.
We also stopped at Michael’s for Cindy to pick up more stuff for her exploding Cameo 3 habit. She bought a bunch of supplies for herself and I chipped in and bought her an awesome craft light that is fully articulated with a built in magnifying glass. It was marked down 75% so it was a sweet deal. Since there are no returns on clearance merchandise and the box looked like it was opened already we took the time to pull it out and make sure it worked before making the purchase.
Saturday night Cindy was digging into her new stuff while I dug into some WoW while having a couple things cooking on the 3d printers. We fell asleep watching some of the US curling team’s gold medal match. It’s such a bizarre but interesting sport for me to watch.
Sunday morning I just got done paying my bills when all of a sudden my mouse became unresponsive. The keyboard was fine but the mouse was locked, weird. I had no idea why it would lock but I restarted the system to clear whatever the problem was. Imagine my delight when I rebooted and still had no mouse. Ok so I went an extra step, shutting down the PC, unplugging the power cord for 15 seconds to clear the USB bus and then bringing it back up. No mouse on the screen.
It was weird, I would see the mouse light up for a few seconds and then go dark. This kicked off an intensive plugging and unplugging diagnostic series that was maddening. I used my mouse on another system, it worked fine. I plugged a different mouse into my system, it still didn’t work. I pulled EVERYTHING off the USB ports and still could not get it working. I was getting VERY frustrated, this just didn’t make sense. I finally got the mouse working again by doing not one but two system restores. The first time I only went back a day with the same results. When I dropped back to a week ago the mouse functionality returned. I am still perplexed by what happened exactly but feel fortunate I got it going.
We went out to ride wheels with Kate and Daniel. The four of us had not ridden together in quite awhile. We met up out at Ave Maria. I brought my Mten3 and utilized it’s maneuverability to spend a lot of my riding time going backwards. We were having fun tooling around when all of a sudden I heard the unmistakable sound of a wheel hitting the pavement. I look down the parking lot and see Katie on her rear end and her Mten3 doing cartwheels with a piece hanging off of it.
By the time I got up to Katie she was already standing up. I did a quick survey and didn’t see any blood on her front. I asked what happened. She said she was going fast and the wheel started to wobble. Speed wobbles do happen sometime but normally you can just ride them out. Well this wobble was bad causing Katie to come off the wheel and land on her rear end at high speed. Despite a lack of blood, a lot of the damage was concealed by her shorts, she had bad brush burns on her rear end as well as some on her hands/wrist.
Her injuries were painful for sure but we all felt lucky that she didn’t get hurt worse. Both Katie and Daniel ride with absolutely no safety gear, despite our repeated warnings about doing so. I am hopeful that this incident, which could have easily been much, much more serious, will give Katie reason to start wearing at least a helmet and wrist guards at a minimum.
Katie was more upset about the damage to her wheel than her body. I was able to snap back on the part that had flown off. Other than some fresh scratches on the case, the wheel worked fine afterwards, despite the pretty epic tumble. The crash cut our riding short obviously. We went to the local Publix so Katie could wash up a little and then they came to the house so Cindy could help make sure all of the parking lot debris that was ground into Katie’s skin got cleaned out.
The rest of our Sunday was pretty chill with more Cindy crafting, more 3D printing and more WoWing occupying most of the time. Last night I finally finished up my quest to get all character classes in WoW to the new current maximum level. For those of you on the outside of WoW madness this will mean very little to you. However those of you that have played WoW will realize how much effort goes into bringing 11 characters that far.
This is colonoscopy week. It started off poorly with me getting a lousy night of sleep with what felt like constant drainage running down my throat. As much as I am not looking forward to the colonoscopy, the last thing I want is to have to postpone it due to illness. Once I am finished off putting medical procedures, I am very much a “just get it over with” type of person, in case you haven’t noticed.
And now with the plugs!
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Ender 2 on GearBest US Plug – https://goo.gl/v5bNRG $159 USE COUPON – “ENDERC”
AnyCubic I3 MEGA – US WAREHOUSE – https://goo.gl/BKwhEu $329.99 USE COUPON – “I311GBUS”
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Esun Cleaning Filament – http://amzn.to/2zP3qwW
Creality Cr-10 3D printer – http://amzn.to/2w7yqIF
Dagoma Neva 3D printer – http://amzn.to/2hYNjoV
FlashForge Finder 3D printer – http://amzn.to/2sCllp7
Hatchbox white PLA filament – http://amzn.to/2rrIfMt
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The gimbal I use – http://amzn.to/2lJbZCa
My GoPro camera – http://amzn.to/2kkBUmJ
GoPro foam windscreen – http://amzn.to/2maDI2B
Selfie stick – http://amzn.to/2mJTJLL
Segway MiniPro – http://amzn.to/2lddTNt
Segway S1 – http://amzn.to/2A8CkQQ
DJI Mavic Pro – http://amzn.to/2kpV4Tk
My EUC protective gear
Killer 187 Wrist Guards – http://amzn.to/2p8y9m9
Triple Eight Helmet – http://amzn.to/2p8uuoH
STX Elbow Pads – http://amzn.to/2oNMrYJ
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Looking for Gotway, Inmotion or KingSong electric unicycles?
Go here for free shipping! – http://ewheels.com/eucarmy
Check out all my sites!
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Duf 3D YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBnqqxnkBqc5ISDQRr0YkiA
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