Archives June 2018

So I went into this weekend with a loose outline of things I wanted to do and accomplish.  I found that challenging to do.  Saturday morning I hit the track again after a two week hiatus.  I still have been having some persistent aching pain in my knees that I hoped some rest would fix.  It has not thus far so I decided to run anyway.  The first lap or two I could feel the pain but it subsided as I warmed up.  The warm and humid air made the 3.4 miles feel like a struggle.  My pace was slower than my recent best.  It took me about a minute longer to complete the distance.  Not having Cindy there definitely slows me down.

So when I got back I started on normal stuff.  Although the grass was probably high enough to mow again we decided to put it off until Wednesday since we are both off that day.  I am taking the day off for the gutters to be installed on the house.  So after getting the first round of chores done outside we hopped in the truck to run errands which included stops at DD,  Home Depot, JoAnn Fabric, Petco, Lowes and Costco.  Yea it was a bit much.

While we were at Home Depot I couldn’t find what I was looking for, an adjustable screen insert (more on that later), but we did wind up buying something spur of the moment, a raised patio garden box.  I have talked many times about how hard it is to grow things here successfully in the summer.  The biggest problem is insects destroying the plants.  We are hoping by setting this up on the lanai we can finally grow something to fruition in the summer.  I was considering building something along this same design but when the opportunity came to just buy it I took the easier option.

So the reason I was looking for a screen insert was because I was trying to come up with alternative power options for Cindy’s RV.  Currently we have it connected to the same outlet that is used to power the 110V water equipment as well as coop power.  The circuit does not have enough juice to run the RV air conditioner consistently.  I am concerned about moisture/heat causing issues inside the RV so I had been trying to come up with a way to get more power out there.  My idea was to tap an outlet inside the guest bedroom.

By using the screen insert and a lot of weatherproof tape to seal the rest of the screen, my plan was put into motion.  I meticulously prepared the insert and then connected four extension cords together to stretch out to the RV.  I plugged in the cord on both ends and excitedly told Cindy to flip on the AC.  Well the AC ran for a few seconds and then turned off.  Yep, it popped the breaker.  I tried a few more times, hoping it was a fluke.  Nope, the circuit popped every time.  It actually did worse than the line it was on before.

The line in the house is a 15 amp circuit, the other circuit for the well equipment is 20 amps.  I thought having a 15 amp circuit with less contention would be the winning combo but I was mistaken.  I dejectedly undid all of my work and swapped the RV back to it’s original power source.  I really thought I had a viable solution but things don’t always work out as planned.

During Saturday afternoon we got absolutely SMASHED with rain.  I estimate we got close to 3 inches of rain in roughly 90 minutes.  The end result was standing water quickly forming in it’s usual locations.  Luckily the ground was still able to absorb it and by the next morning the water was gone.  This will not be the case for much longer.

Saturday night we watched the latest Netflix disc, Valerian City of a 1000 Planets, a sci fi movie based on a popular book I never read.   It was a very odd, random movie with really incredible visuals.  They must have spent a ton in production costs but unfortunately the end result was a B level movie, at best.

Sunday morning my to do list was still unsatisfied.  We picked up Sadie during the morning for another extended stay which Elsa was thrilled with.  It’s funny how Ali’s place is the only other location where Elsa immediately relaxes and feels comfortable.  Within 60 seconds of arrival she is already up on the furniture snuggling with Ali and Shugs.  We headed to Rural King afterwards to grab some chicken supplies.

During the afternoon I tried to address some of my remaining to do’s.  One of them was trying to salvage a pull cart we bought from Home Depot no more than two years ago.  It’s frame was evidently constructed out of some very low grade steel and is badly rusted, so much so that the part that connected to the handle snapped off.  This happened a few weeks ago and I had been hoping to come up with someway to extend the life of the cart at least a few months.

I first used a paint/rust stripper attachment on my drill to peel away as much of the rust as possible.  I then sprayed the areas with a rust inhibiting primer/paint.  I then reconfigured the handle layout, mounting the bracket further back and in a 90 degree different orientation than it originally was.   I then cut off the rusty remains of the mount with my Sawzall.  The new setup is not perfect but functional.  The entire time I was doing the work I felt frustration that the $130 “Gorilla Cart” was built so poorly with cheap materials.  When my rig job finally fails I won’t be buying one of their products again.

Most of the afternoon it looked like it was ready to let loose with rain which sidelined my hopes of riding with Cindy.  However later in the afternoon I decided to venture out anyway solo, riding to the school on my Msuper.  It looked like it was going to downpour at any moment but somehow I escaped the rain and got in a fun little ride.

Cindy had been doing a lot of organizing and cleaning up in the latter part of the day, especially in the guest bedroom.  Later in the evening I helped her with some finishing touches including hanging a couple mirrored window frames and a picture to fill dead spots on the walls.  The room, which had become sort of a dumping ground, looks 100% better now.

As I mentioned earlier I have a weird split week with taking off on Wednesday.  I am sure I will spend a good portion of that day off getting done what needs to be done.

It’s been a busy week of work so I am anticipating the weekend, where I will fill a good portion of it with more, work.  It’s the hamster wheel I willingly subject myself to.

I don’t have many words to entertain you today but I do have over 90 minutes of live streaming to keep you occupied if necessary.

So after I shot the aerial video for the Wear Orange event on Saturday I uploaded the edited footage to the groups Facebook page.  In order to make the video easier to share I also uploaded it to my YouTube page so the group could link from there.  Well within the first 20 minutes I got a comment on the video referring to “libtards”, so I disabled commenting on the video.  When I woke up the following morning I saw the video had a 3-1 dislike to like ratio which was sickening.  Do we really live in a world where people DISLIKE movements to curb gun violence?

The Wear Orange movement supports the second amendment.  Their goal is sensible gun laws that reduce the threat of gun violence in the US which is at insane levels compared to the rest of modern society across the world. (on average 96 people per day are killed in the US by guns) But all it took was anything with the word “gun” in it to flash trigger dislikes by gun zealots that see ANY attempt to enact reasonable gun laws to the government knocking on their door to take their aresnal.  It’s pure lunacy.

I was very disappointed and saddened by the reaction to the video and decided to make it a non-public listing that can still be shared but won’t be listed in the normal video list of my channel.  The last thing I have the energy for is circular debates with gun zealots that refuse to acknowledge that reasonable, common sense gun laws are something the majority of people in the US want and support.  Unfortunately the lobbyist dollars from organizations like the NRA drown that voice out.

There is a LOT of construction in southwest Florida over the last few years.  As you can imagine new housing is what you see the most of but a close second is something you might not realize, storage facilities.   There have been an INCREDIBLE amount of high end storage facilities built in the last decade.  We are talking air conditioned, indoor storage in structures that look like office buildings.  I have to ask myself the question, why?

To me, the main reason someone would need additional storage is if they were in between living situations.  Maybe they had a house and are temporarily living in a condo or an apartment.  For instance when I lived up north, we sold the townhouse almost a year before moving to Florida.  We spent that time living at my mom’s and all of our stuff went into a storage facility up there.

I have to wonder how so many people have such a need for additional storage in this area.  The first thing that comes to mind is it’s just a byproduct of rampant consumerism that plagues modern society.  People just have stuff, so much so that their living space can not accommodate it all.  To me the simple answer would be to have less things.  If the items can afford to be in storage for months or years at a time there is a good chance you don’t really need them.

You would be hard pressed to travel a mile and not run into a storage building. I doubt this trend will ever end but it’s fun to complain about regardless. That’s what old men do anyway, right?

So the Eagles are all over the headlines today but not for anything they are doing on the field.  As is tradition the Super Bowl winning team was invited to the White House to meet with Donald.  Well it appears that the President is not well liked by members of the team, so much so that I heard that less than 5 players planned to actually attend.  Rather than suffer the embarrassment of a skeleton crew, the president called off the ceremony and in typical fashion lashed out on Twitter, following his normal routine of throwing out half truths along with outright lies. The president wrongly made this about standing for the national anthem, which all Eagles players did last season.

“The Philadelphia Eagles are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated tomorrow. They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country,” Trump said in a statement.

So is Donald now saying Eagles players don’t respect and honor the military because they don’t want to shake a hand of a president they don’t respect?  As usual there is a disconnection of logic in Donald’s thinking where the number one priority is somehow spinning it into a positive for himself, regardless of how much mud he has rolled around in.

I think it is cool that the team for the most part is doing it different, just like they did all last season.  The easy choice would have been to just not make waves and put on a song and dance for the press and Don at the White House.  Instead they decided to stand by their morals and beliefs, choosing to not participate in the three ring circus which is now going on in Washington DC. Bravo.

Yes you saw nothing from me late last week because I was at the tax certificate sale. It was boring but ran efficiently.  There was something noteworthy on Friday that I will cover more below.

It was a weekend full of both worthwhile and frustrating moments.  On Saturday morning we set an early alarm but not to get up and run as we normally try to do.  This alarm was so we could go out and clean the chicken coop before heading down to Lowedermilk Beach for the Wear Orange event.

Wear Orange is a national movement whose goal is to actually do something about rampant gun violence outside of the meaningless “thoughts and prayers” that are dumped out on social media after each national gun related tragedy.  The movement is not about abolishing the second amendment.  It’s about enacting common sense gun laws that are actually enforced, a cause I definitely support.

So anyway, the Naples chapter includes Susan, a friend of mine from the running club.  She knew I flew drones and asked if I would be willing to use my drone to film a video of something they planned on the beach where the event participants would spell out GUN VIOLENCE.  She thought it would be cool to capture it from above.

We got on site a little after 8.  It wasn’t long before Cindy and I started helping Susan’s husband George, who I served on the running club board of directors with for years, lay out the letters on the beach.  George and Susan had put a lot of planning into this.  He had the a drawing sketched out ahead of time that we used as a template.  He brought a bunch of dixie cups that we used as human markers.  Basically wherever there was a cup, that was where we wanted a person to stand.  It was a good plan.  Laying out the template took more time than I expected.  Certain letters like G’s and S’s are especially challenging to get right from a ground perspective.

So we got back up to the pavilion in time to hear a couple of the speakers for the event.  They were compelling, touching and impactful stories of how gun violence affected their lives and what they are doing about it.  It was then time for the beach portion of the program.  As everyone headed toward the beach I tried to get my drone in the air.  I had some issues that had me worried for a bit.  The GPS in the drone flagged me as being in a “caution” area as I we were not that far from the Naples airport.  I had to acknowledge the potential risk of doing so and it took me several minutes to get through all of the prompts to finally allow me to take off.

By the time I got airborne the crowd was pretty much in place.  It took a bit of fine tuning for me to get the shot where I could see everything well.  Despite the considerable wind at the beach the Mavic Pro held position flawlessly.  Under Susan and Cindy’s direction the participants went through the routine and I think it turned out pretty well on video.  It certainly wasn’t marching band precision but for a first time I think everyone did great.

So let me fill in the blanks with the Prius.  On Friday after stopping for coffee on my way in I turned the car back on and was immediately presented with the “red triangle of death”.   This is an error condition that typically means something very serious is wrong with the hybrid power system.  More often than not it means your battery has a problem.

I have sort of been waiting for this to happen.  The prior owner told me the battery had been replaced once right around the 100,000 mile mark.  Considering the Prius now has almost 215,000 miles I figured it was only a matter of time until the batteries went south.

The reason this is a dreaded occasion for a typical Prius owner is because of the potential repair expense it represents.  A dealer can easily charge you $4000 for a brand new battery pack.  Considering our Prius is probably not even worth $4000 that didn’t make any sense.  Thankfully over the years an alternative solution to this problem has evolved.  There are a number of companies that specialize in swapping out Prius batteries with rebuilt packs at a much lower cost than new.  Sure you won’t get the lifespan of a new pack but depending on your situation that may not be a big deal.  For me, I am looking at getting a Chevy Bolt in the next year or so, so I don’t need a 5 year solution.

So anyway a quick search online revealed a number of companies that do this.  I landed on battery4prius.com  This was a company started in California back in 2009 but have since opened another location in Homestead, just across the state from us.  In addition to installing rebuilt batteries, they offer door to door service where they come to you and do the swap which is super convenient.  The cost for this is not awful, only $145 to come to Naples.

So after work on Friday I contacted them.  The cost for a battery warrantied for one year or 20,000 miles was $750 plus the travel charge.  Resolving the issue for less than 25% of what a dealer would charge sounded good to me so I booked an appointment.  I was surprised when he said a guy could come out on Sunday, great.  Ok, let me get back to chronological order.

So when we got back on Saturday I wasted little time before jumping on the tractor after lunch.  The rain, which is FAR ahead of normal amounts for May has made weekly grass mowing a necessity once again.  The positive is at least the property looks green and healthy again instead of brown and dead.  After mowing we headed to Home Depot.

As I was mowing I was thinking about Cindy’s RV and how it is going to survive in the back yard during rainy season.  I came up with the idea of parking it up on some patio stones to keep it off the water soaked ground underneath.  At the store we found some very large 20 inch square pavers that I thought would work out well.  We also got some smaller pavers to put in front of the entrance to the RV as a landing.

When we got home we wasted little time before setting it up.  We hooked up the Tacoma to the 26 foot camper and first pulled it away so Cindy could mow down the grass it resides on.  I then did a loop around the back yard and returned to the parking spot so we could pull the RV up onto the pavers. The weight of the unit cracked a couple of the blocks as we drove across them but they were still functional.  It was weird, just adding the couple inches of height from the pavers made the entire RV seem significantly higher. This simple addition should make the RV  more stable during wet season and keep the tires from being in constant contact with the soggy ground below.

Later in the weekend I enjoyed a Zima in style.

So Sunday I found myself aggravated.  The Prius battery guy had originally said something about the installer being able to come earlier in the day which I said was ok, however the guy never followed up with me so I assumed we were back to original 12-2 time window.  I was hesitant to leave the house all day because I didn’t want to miss his arrival.

I had to do an impromptu tractor repair during the day.  Cindy agreed to mow the back section of the yard.  After I filled the tractor up and was working inside she came and got me, saying the tractor wouldn’t move.  WTF, I just backed it out and it was fine?

So after sitting on the Craftsman and verifying it was screwed I went back inside for a bit.  I was already frustrated about the Prius guy, diagnosing the tractor in the 90 degree heat was not something I felt like doing, but it had to be done.  So I went back outside and pulled off the deck, hoping to not see a shredded drive system above it.  I had already replaced the pulleys and drive belt once before.  I actually caught a break this time, the belt had just slipped off a pulley which I popped back on in 15 seconds.

While the deck was off Cindy gave it a thorough cleaning as it was encased in green organic material.  After she was done it revealed the mower deck is starting to fail, a byproduct of the cheap stamped metal they make them out of.  There were a couple holes in it, one almost golf ball sized.  I actually had this same problem with my old Cub Cadet mower.  The bigger the hole gets the more problem it creates as it allows grass clippings to fly up onto the pulley system, making a bigger mess.

I “fixed” it for now by cutting apart a section of aluminum gutter and then pop riveting it over the holes, creating a barrier.  Like I said, I have run into this before and I know my repair at best will only buy me some time before the entire deck would need to be replaced.  However by the time that happens I am hoping it might be time for a new tractor as well.  I’d love to find a somewhat affordable tractor with a welded deck but they don’t seem to exist.

Well 2PM came and went with nobody showing up.  I sent texts and left voicemails asking what the deal was and received no response.  I was very frustrated and around 5PM had given up on them showing and agreed to ride wheels to the grocery store with Cindy.  Wouldn’t you know it, literally 5 minutes after we left I get a call from the 305 area code.  It was the installer.

This was not the owner of the company I had been communicating with, this was one of the guys that does the work.  I asked him if he was the guy that was supposed to be on site by 2PM?  He said he was.  He said he told his boss that he was running behind schedule around noon but for whatever reason this was never relayed to me.  Well we immediately turned around and headed back to the house.  We literally passed the installer on the way out, he said he saw us on the wheels and thought it was bizarre.

The guys doing the work was a 24 year old kid and his dad.  Jonathan was also a full time HVAC student but also works at Wal-mart and installs Prius batteries on the weekends.  Just hearing that made me immediately soften the edge of the anger I was feeling about the situation.  I respect hard work.  He was very apologetic that I was not told about the delay.  He told me that they can actually get the battery replaced in less than an hour which was shocking.  When I looked online about the process of changing the battery it was described as a 3-4 hour job.  Jonathan said it took them longer when they first started but like anything in life, the more you do it the more proficient you become.

They backed up those words, the original battery was pulled out of the car in 25 minutes or less and in another 10 minutes they were doing some initial testing.  They had some issues with some connections that they had to address but after doing so they had me take the car on a solo test drive and all seemed well for the 10 miles or so that I tested it.  I returned, paid them and felt very fortunate to get the problem addressed quickly and without spending 4k.  Jonathan told me if I had any problem to let them know.  His good attitude totally turned what was a negative situation into a positive one.

Of course you know what happens next.  On my drive into work today the red triangle of death returned. The symptoms now are different however.  When the failure occurred on Friday the car drove horribly, only running on the anemic gas engine.  Today after the light popped back up it actually still drove normally and the battery itself appears to be functioning as it should.  I suspect this is a re-occurrence of the same connection problem they saw yesterday.  I have a message in asking for remediation.  I guess we’ll see how solid that warranty is.

If you have Netflix, check out Evil Genius.  It’s four episode story of one of the most bizarre crime stories I ever heard of.