Yesterday I was over at the new branch for half the day getting the last IT components up and running. From a technical standpoint the site is ready to go although from a practical standpoint it is not. The awful cabinet makers are still not completely done and the public waiting area is filled with countless boxes that need to be unpacked. Luckily neither of those issues are something I am responsible for.
With this project behind me my immediate plate of work related must do’s has cleared up, allowing me to take some vacation time. I put in to give myself an extra long weekend, taking off Thursday through Monday. It’s a bit of a weird situation because for the last few weeks 95% of the staff have been on 50% work arrangements where each employee works two and a half days a week but is getting paid for full 40 hour weeks. Our department is part of the 5% that has not been on that arrangement so it is a bit of a irritant that I am burning my vacation time to get what others are receiving gratis. Before I get too bent out of shape I remind myself that in so many other ways I am far luckier so I just grin and bear it. That skill is something I have needed to rely on throughout my adulthood. Being able to pause and reflect before reacting is something that can be useful. It’s a skill our president is lacking with the latest example being the circus pandemic news conference yesterday. It’s a big league cluster fck.
I threw my two 35 pound dumbbells in the back of the Tesla today to add some more avenues for my parking garage workouts to explore.
I got an email from ATT letting me know I could upgrade my old Iphone 6S, yes 6S. When I replaced my phone almost two years ago I decided to stick with the 6S for one reason, the headphone jack. At the time I was still driving the Prius and the only way I could interface my phone to the car’s stereo system was via that headphone jack. Obviously now that restriction has been lifted since the Tesla became my daily driver. I also was a bit hesitant about things like losing a physical “Home” button but I decided to take the leap and order an Iphone 11.
The phone arrived Thursday and I went about setting it up late Thursday evening since I decided last minute to take Friday off. I opted to migrate the old fashioned way, by doing a full back up of the old phone and restoring it to the new hardware which seems to be the most reliable path from past experiences. It took awhile but before I went to bed I was up and running on the new phone. The bigger screen real estate was a nice upgrade and maneuvering without a home button wasn’t nearly as annoying as I thought it might be. Over the rest of the weekend I also enjoyed the higher speed 5Ge service as well as dramatically improved battery life. Yesterday I had 84% battery left without charging the phone at all during the day. The phone also includes wireless charging so the Qi charger in my Tacoma can see some actual use.
One of the reasons I was interested in taking off Friday is it would give me one more chance to go ride with Mickey before he heads over to stay at his parents house on the east coast. I picked him up mid-morning. The original plan was to ride the swamp but it was closed a few days prior due to the Covid 19 restrictions. We decided to still ride around the house where there is a variety of off road paths available to us. We also stopped at the house where Mickey got to meet Cindy briefly which was cool.
Even though I knew it was closed I suggested we ride up to the swamp entrance to take a look. When we did we saw one vehicle parked in the road due to the parking lot gate being closed. We decided to ride up to the boardwalk entrance to see if it was physically blocked which it was not. We rolled on into the swamp where it didn’t take long until we passed another set of rule breakers, a couple walking their dogs. Mickey thought the swamp was really cool, about as opposite as you can get to riding the streets of NYC. Our turn around point was defined for us by a large gator that was blocking the majority of the path, neither of us felt like pressing our luck to get by. The video tells the story pretty well. We both enjoyed the ride and I suspect it won’t be the last time we ride together before Mickey heads back to NYC.
After dropping off Mickey I donned my 3D printed mask for a visit to Costco to pick up a number of items. Unlike the last time I was there a couple weeks ago, there were a lot more people wearing masks or at least covering their face in some manner. The most humorous of all was an old man that had a full size bath towel tied around his head. Costco really had taken steps to enact social distancing as well as putting up “shields” between the cashier and customers to minimize interaction. It’s a strange new world we live in.
On Saturday morning I went to the track first thing to get a run in, something I had not done for a couple weeks. I trudged through the 12 laps but man it was not comfortable at all. The morning temperatures lately have been approaching summer-like levels which added to the misery of the experience.
My chore list on Saturday included my normal outdoor items. Late in the morning Katie and DJ came over. I had not seen either in person for somewhere around three weeks. It didn’t take long for DJ to want me to hold him, I don’t know if he just likes the higher vantage point but he seems to enjoy hanging with me.
After they left Cindy and I did a Home Depot run, something Cindy hasn’t done in quite awhile. Both of us were masked up. We had to wait in a line for about 5 minutes until we were allowed in the store. We grabbed a bunch of items, the two main things I needed to deal with were the dirt and sod which I laid down immediately.
Later in the afternoon Deb came over to hang out. We went for a ride where we remained masked up around the neighborhood. She wound up hanging out till around 9PM. We always have fun when we get together and I think everyone enjoyed the break from quarantine.
Easter was obviously a different experience this year. No family came over except for a visit from Katie and DJ. It was his first Easter so Cindy wanted to make it special. She made him a basket and set up a blanket outside to take pictures on. Once again DJ wanted to hang with “grandpa” a lot so it made pictures less than simple. We still got some cute shots. I really do like the upgraded camera on the Iphone 11. Portrait mode is especially cool.
On Sunday I also finished up some of the extensive cleaning duties from the weekend which included bathroom cleaning, vacuuming, steam cleaning the floors, and washing the bedding. Even though the act of cleaning is never particularly fun, I enjoy the end result.
Yesterday we finally were able to set up the computers at our new branch which was relief. I have a few more details that need to be addressed there which hopefully takes no more than a few days. After that project is in my rear view mirror I’d like to take a few days off even if I am doing it on my dime compared to the rest of our staff that is working 2.5 days a week.
Last night I assembled my new AnyCubic Max printer. Assembly went fine but I have some more testing and tuning to do. Hopefully I can finish it up tonight but I need to figure out how I want to shuffle my print farm around to accommodate the new printer which is a larger format style.
I have been reading more and more positive stuff about the effects of hydroxychloroquine on Covid 19 patients. This article seems to indicate that there is some new understanding of what Covid 19 actually does to the body and that leads to some potentially good news if the drug combo does indeed shut it down before it can do real damage.
I skipped running Friday night. My legs have been killing me from all of the body weight squats I have been doing as part of my lunch time calisthenics workouts. On Saturday morning I buzzed around in the morning taking care of the basics. Cindy has been busy during her time off working on the outdoor landscaping, relocating a bunch of stuff in a more pleasing way. The biggest task was pulling out a decent sized bird of paradise that was by the house which she did entirely by herself.
Saturday afternoon I arranged to meet up with Mickey, a well known EUC rider from NYC who came to Florida to stay with his sister to wait this mess out. We met at Ave Maria which was very quiet, even more so than normal. They went so far as to pull down the rims off the basketball courts so people would not be tempted to play together. We had a very long ride on a variety of wheels.
Early on Mickey and I did a high speed run while I was riding my MSX 100V. Mickey has ridden his wheels in excess of 40MPH and had challenged me awhile back to see if I could at least hit 37mph. It took a few attempts but I hit that number and then some, topping out at 38.6 MPH. Going on an electric unicycle at that speed is not for the weak of heart and after the experience I don’t find any sort of pressing desire to do it again. I was beat up and pooped by the end of the three+ hour riding experience. Mickey and I seemed to get along well, talking easily about a variety of subjects. It all made for a long but interesting video, if I do say so myself. I am hoping we can meet up for a swamp ride next.
Saturday night I had three White Claws backed up up by one of my few remaining Zima’s. The end result was some welcome laughter and silliness, something that is in short supply nowadays.
Sunday was a pretty quarantined day. I only headed out to grab a coffee and drop off some stand orders at the post office. Otherwise I was home all day working on stuff. Among those things was installing a Ring Pop Up cam on the chicken run to replace the old Ring doorbell that was out there. I then mounted the old doorbell on the east side of the house to give us some surveillance in that direction, which we never had.
For almost a month I have had my one Prusa printer set up on the fold up table in the middle of the hobby room as I repeatedly have tried to fix a problem with under extrusion. I have made multiple attempts, unsuccessfully, trying various fixes for the problems of varying difficulty. Yesterday I bit the bullet and committed mentally to replacing the entire hot end assembly, a tedious task that I spent close to two hours on. At least the end result of my efforts was the printer once again working normally. In this crazy time it’s nice to have some wins now and then to break up the looming and omnipresent negativity.
We are STILL waiting for the contractor to complete the customer counters at the new branch. We have had our equipment piled up in there waiting for these clowns to finish all week. Yesterday they were supposed to be in there busting ass to get it done. Instead, nobody showed up. I have said many times how I can not stand businesses or individuals that over promise and under deliver. I would much rather be told realistic/accurate information that can reliably be depended upon. If you can’t do that for me we are not going to get along very well. At this point we will not get the branch set up until next week sometime, hopefully.
Last night I edited two videos, one was footage from Tuesday when I stupidly thought I was going to score hand sanitizer at Target. The other was my skateboard ride over my lunch hour yesterday.
This weekend I have things to do which include meeting up with Micky, an EUC YouTuber from NYC who has family in our area. We plan to ride around Ave Maria, observing social distancing the entire time, of course.
So yesterday the governor of Florida finally caved to a mountain of pressure and declared a statewide stay at home order. It’s the same basic structure as other state orders where the general populace is supposed to stay home except for essential needs. It also dictates non-essential public facing businesses close. The list of essential businesses however is quite large and a bit fuzzy in definition. This order lasts throughout the month of April.
The order’s affect on me is minimal as since our offices collect state fees we are deemed as essential services. More than likely we will continue to move forward being closed to the public but still having employees report at 50% staffing levels to do things like process mail and answer the phones. The 50% staffing policy has not been applied to our department as our jobs aren’t really dependent on customer traffic.
I continue to be very mindful of my interactions with other people as well as cognizant of cleaning my hands after touching anything out in the public space. When I get home my work clothes go right into the wash machine and after I take care of the chickens I jump in the shower to clean off, just in case. Because Cindy is very concerned about contracting Covid 19 because of her health issues we have been sleeping in different bedrooms and using separate bathrooms. The living together yet apart dynamic has not been an easy change and the way things are lining up I don’t see even a speck of light at the end of the tunnel.
Since hording began I have not panicked but I have been keeping my eyes open online to snag some stuff if it comes available. I snagged TP a few weeks ago, and just yesterday a 12 pack of paper towels, both from Walmart.com. Yesterday for the hell of it I did a search online for hand sanitizer and was surprised to see that one of the Naples Target locations was showing it actually had it in stock. It said you couldn’t order and then pick it up but it clearly showed as being available.
I was hopeful that I once again stumbled across some good fortune so I decided to stop there on my way home. I entered the store with my buff on which drew second glances from a lot of other store patrons. Once again, I could count the amount of other people wearing masks on one hand.
I combed the store back and forth looking for sanitizer and asked an employee who didn’t know anything. I came up empty on my search which was disappointing. It’s the last time I will trust an IN STOCK status in a Covid 19 world.
Yesterday I filmed my lunchtime One Wheel ride as well as my ride home in the Tesla. I got the One Wheel video edited but was far too tired to knock out the Tesla video before hitting bed.
