That is the one word I would choose to describe how the American populace as a whole should feel that we elected Donald Trump as president. The debacle in the first debate last night was only the most recent of countless examples of how incapable he is of functioning as an adult, it was like Chris Wallace was trying to control a tantruming child. The absolute void of decorum was expected but vile nonetheless. Repeatedly Chris Wallace would carefully construct a question and pose it to Don. If it was one of those fever blister topics like his intentional misleading of the population regarding covid, his income tax evasion, or asking him to denounce the actions of white supremacist groups such as the “Proud Boys”, he would totally ignore the topic and spin off into another scattergun attack.
I heard a lot of people criticize Chris Wallace as the debate moderator which I really don’t agree with. Short of having the button for an oversized shock collar that would be around Big Don’s neck, I don’t think there was anyway to get Donald to stop interrupting, blurting, and stepping all over what Biden was saying. He simply refused to abide by the rules of the debate which was very symbolic of how he has approached nearly everything he has touched as president, the rules don’t apply to him.
Biden repeatedly tried to step out of the tsunami of insults to talk about actual issues and plans but overall I think at best he was average. To be quite honest the format is a joke, especially with Trump involved. Nothing of real substance can be gained by voters that are somehow undecided at this point. There has been a wave of opinon that after seeing that first debate they should cancel the remaining two. I would be happy with that decision as all it does is further embarrass the country while serving no practical benefit whatsoever. If you are a Proud Boy you are still voting for Trump and if you were voting for Biden you still would be after that debate as it just reenforced that when the choice is anyone but the raving orange lunatic on the other side of the stage, anyone has to win.
Joe did deliver some funny moments such as telling Trump to “Shut up, man.”, calling him a liar repeatedly as well as the worst president in US history, not that any of those statements are not already well established.
We actually watched the debate on BBC which was quite interesting. Once the fireworks ended their reaction to American politics was priceless, they were dumbfounded by what they just witnessed. They found it hard to believe that THIS was what American politics has mutated into. I agree wholeheartedly.
I forgot to mention that Florida’s governor without warning declared Florida was magically now in “Phase 3” last Friday which basically meant business as usual. The timing of this seems odd as the majority of regions in Florida still have mandatory mask orders in place till the end of October. The other contradictory item is the calendar which is about to flip into October which marks the beginning of typical flu season. There are numbers already escalating around the world and I have little doubt that trend will be seen here as well, it’s just a matter of to what degree.
I have the feeling Desantis did this for political reasons, likely pressure to use it as a campaign talking point. “Look, Florida is FULLY open, we beat Corona” Unfortunately I think the reality is the Desantis announcement will have the same trajectory as George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” proclamation on the deck of that aircraft carrier, prematurely signalling the end of the Afghan/Iran conflict. Of course we know how that all played out.
Tonight is the first presidential debate. I am sure it will be disgusting and depressing to witness. I have not decided if I want to see it live or just rely on recaps. The world is dark enough without seeing President Very Stable Big League Genius putting his lack of vocabulary, responsibility, and intelligence on display for the world to cringe at.
The weekend was another fast paced one with list items keeping us on point. Saturday was the busier of the two days including staples such as weeding and mowing the property. However we also set up our sizeable Halloween decorations which includes five yard inflatables and a LED projector. We finished up the day planting the poinciana tree I bought for Cindy a few months ago in the yard. That was an ass busting task as they recommend you create a hole 6 times the diameter and double the depth of the pot the tree is in. It felt like we were digging for days.
Saturday night we watched Knives Out, which was like a game of Clue in movie format. It was actually quite entertaining with a number of well known actors. We both liked it. B+
Sunday morning Cindy joined me for a proper PEV ride, something we had not done together in quite awhile. We went down to the Greenway and rode all the way through to the beach and back. Despite it being EXTREMELY hot and humid we both had a fun ride for sure which I think was captured on the video.
When we got home the Eagles game was already in progress against the Bengals, another 0-2 team like the Eagles. Despite the identical records the general consensus was the Eagles were a much better team and this game should give them the opportunity to “get right”. Well instead they showed the same weaknesses and inconsistency that had them winless so far. Let me just scattergun talk about various red flags as I think of them.
Carson again was not good with more turnovers and numerous off target throws that had me shaking my head throughout the game. The only positive feeling I got was he actually got them in the end zone at the end of regulation to tie the game. However overall I continue to lose confidence that Wentz will be able to change what he is at his core, an inconsistent gambler. It’s a coin flip if him holding onto the ball is going to help or hurt the team play after play.
The injuries on this team are insane. Desean Jackson is hurt, again. He has been injured on and off the field more than he has played the last several years. Why the Eagles went into this season thinking they could count on him is a head scratcher. Same applies to Jeffries. The offensive line is a mess as well, Jason Peters was hurt again. He is practically playing on crutches at this point. They also lost Goddert and one of their DB’s in the game.
The penalties were inexcusable. Despite playing like garbage most of the game the Eagles had a chance to attempt a makeable field goal at the end of overtime to salvage a win. Instead one of the lineman jumps, pushing the Birds 5 yards back and out of field goal range. It was their 11th penalty of the game. The game wound up as a tie which is supposed to be better than a loss but it sure didn’t feel that way. The great news is the next three games are against top notch teams, two of which are on the road. There is a very realistic chance the team could be 0-5-1. Wouldn’t that just be special?
Over the weekend I was thinking about the Trump virus and how it has infected the minds of many of my peers. Everytime I find out someone I know is a Trump supporter I have felt remorse and sadness as I just can’t understand how these individuals that I know to be good and decent people would chose to support someone who is the antithesis of that. Back in 2016 I could almost excuse it, as a vote for Trump in many cases was more just a vote against Hilary as the DNC stepped all over Bernie to ensure Hilary was the nominee. However after all that has transpired since the man was sworn into office, if you still support him there is something much more serious and nefarious going on. His ability to fan the dark flames of hatred, me firstism, and bias is unmatched in presidential history.
So as I thought about this sadness and confusion over just how many people could get ensnared in Trump’s massive web of lies, fraud, and dictatorship I gave pause and realized that this behavior among human beings is actually commonplace. History is absolutely filled with populations following what are now seen as madmen with blind obedience. My mistake is thinking that as a society we had matured beyond allowing that to still happen.
This behavior is all around us. As I was talking to Cindy about this I compared observing Trump supporters invoking similar feelings in me as when I watched Leah Remini’s special on Scientology. It seemed impossible that a person would believe and go along with the things this utterly ridiculous “religion” demands of them yet thousands believe it hook, line, and sinker. This is a time tested and proven tactic to control people, speak loudly in an authoritative manner and a large portion of the populace will believe you, adore you, and follow you to their demise if necessary, regardless of the amount of truth in your words.
I feel fortunate that I was never indoctrinated into religion as a child, somewhat insulating me from the mindset that makes people fall into the trap of psychological manipulation for the benefit of someone other than themselves. Late this weekend some data from Trumps tax returns started to be released, finally. Shocker, Donald doesn’t pay a lot of taxes and surely utilized fraudulent reporting to ensure that outcome. But to Trump acolytes, regardless of indisputable data, facts, and even recordings of the very stable genius himself speaking incriminating words, none of it matters, because Don tells them it doesn’t. Please vote. I am filling out my mail in ballot today.
It seems every night of the week I try to get at least something done to reduce the workload of the weekend. This week I did more work on my printers and last night I got to make a few adjustments to my new KingSong S18 suspension wheel that I had been hoping to get to days prior. Despite my efforts the weekend still will be busy although I don’t have a big project like painting the coop roof on the list. Cindy wants to get the Halloween decorations out so that will be fun.
Yesterday we converted another branch over to the updated queue software but I was out of the office at nearly my normal time due to starting earlier and the process taking less time. We are going to try to knock another one out tonight using a similar strategy.
I don’t have a lot more I feel like talking about at the moment, the inspiration swells and fades like tides of the ocean. I could rail about the lunacy of the 2020 election forever but who wants to hear that? Anything I say will likely not reach the percentage of voters that need to be motivated to act. If turnout is high, democrats win, if it isn’t, republicans win. It really is that simple.
What you see pictured is an Atala butterfly. I had never seen these before until a few months ago on my daily walks to the gym. There were dozens of them flying around a bunch of a type of plant which I now know is called coontie. Every day I would see the insects darting happily around the area and it made me happy for some reason.
Starting a couple weeks ago that happiness began to turn to sadness as I started seeing many if these beautiful insects on the sidewalk, either dead or dying. I wasn’t sure what was going on that would cause this. Well last week as I walked back from the gym there was a woman that was very closely monitoring the bushes and the butterflies around them. She pointed to the leaves and showed me a number of pods clinging to the underside of the plant leaves.
Those pods are what eventually evolves from the large orange pouch you see in the picture. The butterflies grow this caterpillar pouch over their short lifetime, stick it to a leaf of ONLY this plant, and then die shortly thereafter. Evidently this species almost went extinct when coontie was being harvested for other uses but they have made a strong comeback in Florida with more coontie being planted in natural landscapes. When the caterpillars hatch, they only want to eat coontie leaves.
Anyway, I thought this was little ecosystem was sort of amazing. The butterflies act of procreation being also an act of suicide has some deep symbolic imagery that I haven’t been able to verbalize satisfactorily.
Last night we updated another branch to the updated customer queuing system. The entire process only took 15-20 minutes which was nice. We have four more to complete so hopefully the time needed shrinks with each subsequent upgrade.
I made my token $25 donation to Joe’s presidential campaign yesterday. To be quite clear, it isn’t because I think Joe is a superb candidate for the job. He comes with his own set of baggage, not to mention being older than dirt. However it’s the only option we have unless we want to endure four more years in the armpit of modern American history.
I was at the office for an extra hour last night to migrate our customer queuing solution to a new version. The work only took about an hour but we have five more that need the same procedure done to them over the next couple weeks. When combined with the swap out of the majority of our workstations at our branches we have a lot of balls in the air right now.
When I heard over the weekend that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died I cringed inside, knowing this was going to add one final toxic pile of diarrhea on top of an already disgusting 2020 presidential election. She had been in poor health for quite awhile and I always got the sense that the GOP was circling like buzzards just waiting for an opportunity to further retard the Supreme Court back into the 20th century. As expected Mitch McConell and the very stable genius announced plans to try to ram through picking a replacement before the election which at this point is 6-7 weeks away. The hypocrisy of this is amazing but unfortunately predictable.
If you are typical Trump supporter that has a memory that does not extend past the last 15 minutes of time, you may not recall prior to the 2016 election the GOP senate REFUSED to confirm Obama’s selection for the court. Through a bunch of dirty tricks and stall tactics they put off the confirmation for almost an entire year, saying they felt it was only fair to wait until after the election for this decision to be made, since after all it is a lifetime appointment with ramifications that can last decades.
Now suddenly this selection needs to be ram rodded through according to the GOP, not a fck is to be had about the election. When the hypocrisy of the situation was pointed out to Mitch his response was more or less, “too bad, so sad”. I have said for a long time that the lifetime appointment of supreme court justices is moronic, at the same level as the lack of term limits in the US senate which allows boot lickers like McConnell to fester and grow over decades. Of course I can’t change whatever the eventual outcome is, I can only hope that it is simply one more example on top of the hundreds of prior ones, just how corrupt this big league administration has been which will hopefully lead to it’s ousting in a few weeks. I would love to be able to finally move past this point in history that will clearly be defined as the most embarrassing and ridiculous presidency in the history of the United States.
After work on Friday I again got on the Echelon bike, which has replaced running as my Friday night cardio before eating pizza. It’s a tough workout and on a calorie burned basis it feels like I am getting higher numbers than I would running. I almost hit 400 calories on the 30 minute ride which left me drenched in sweat despite being in air conditioning.
On Saturday the main task I wanted to get done was putting another coat of white Flex Seal on the coop roof which was a holdover list item from the prior week. I had washed off the layer of grime last weekend so I could get right to it. The Flex Seal does not go on as easily as paint since it has a consistency more like liquid rubber. I applied it liberally and with little concern for neatness. The goal is to simply reflect heat so the coop doesn’t become an oven.
I decided to even paint over the skylights which were already badly discolored from sun exposure. I had them covered up from the inside anyway so it made sense to coat them permanently. I was sweating like I was in a sauna. The bright sun and high humidity make it a broiler by themselves but as I was up on the ladder I also was getting the heat reflected back at me off the white roof. It was rather intense. After a couple hours of work I had a thick coat applied which on top of what was already there should hopefully reflect heat without much help from me for the next year or two.
Late Saturday afternoon I wound up going to one of our branch offices for almost four hours. There was a hardware refresh going on that was being managed by one of my desktop support guys. He was having an issue getting the credit card readers functional with these new systems. I drove down confident I would be able to find the root cause and establish a reliable fix. I failed on both accounts.
The problem was inconsistent with no pattern I could identify. Out of the more than 20 workstations only five or six had functioning credit card readers. I dug on the internet looking for info, downloading updated drivers, and searching for similar situations. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t come up with the magic solution. I reached out to some other resources hoping they may have some proven remediation answers but for now it’s just one big frustrating situation.
On Sunday my to do list had two Tesla items on it. I am right around 20,000 miles on the car now so I wanted to rotate the tires again which I did once before at 10k. It’s one of the very few Tesla maintenance items there is. The tread on the tires still looks great, something I was worried about as I had read stories of owners blowing through tires in 25,000 miles or less.
I then replaced my cabin air filters and cleaned the evap coil on the car. I have had the parts to do this for months but I never got around to it. Model 3’s had an issue with the HVAC having a mildew smell when they first came out. Tesla actually fixed this issue via a software update where they had the fan on the car run longer once the AC stopped to better dry out the coils. The filter kit I got was an upgrade from what Tesla uses from the factory, including stuff like carbon inside for better odor absorption.
Getting access to where the filters are located was a pain in the ass, requiring me to wedge myself awkwardly into the footwell to reach the access door. I think the video does a good job at depicting the various struggles I encountered along the way.
During halftime of the awful Eagles/Rams game I shot a quick video update on our whole house solar system. In it I talk about the realities of summer in Florida where daily thunderstorms cut back on power output while the brutal temps and humidity drive up electricity consumption by the AC system. The end result has been my using more than I have been producing for at least the last four months. I can’t give a full opinion until a complete year has passed to see the numbers. Regardless I am still glad we took the leap, even if it isn’t quite the savings I imagined.
So the Eagles/Rams game was bad. Believe it or not I don’t think it was as close as 37-19 final score. The Eagles defense is porous and seems to lack the ability to make any big plays. The offense was better but still had three turnovers, including Carson throwing a bad one in the end zone. It’s funny I recall last year feeling very down on Carson for a good portion of the season. I said how he seemed to lack the ability to come up big when the pressure was on. Surprisingly down the home stretch last year he did exactly that, delivering a streak of wins that required him to perform under pressure.
I don’t know why consistency is so elusive for Wentz but unless he manages to find a way to get there, we are going to be dealing with a lot of frustration. The team on paper has too much talent to struggle as it has.
The rest of Sunday I spent a lot of time in the hobby room, trying to clean up what was a mess from various repairs and projects going on simultaneously. I still have multiple printers in there that need attention and the entire room needs a thorough round of me going through everything to organize and throw out as needed.
When I got home last night I saw we had not had any additional rain for the second day in a row. I felt like I had no choice but to get on the tractor and try to knock out mowing the yard. Some areas were still mucky but mowable if I raised the deck. With days shortening I ran out of daylight and used the bright LED headlights to finish up the last 20 minutes of work. Getting the mowing done last night gives me one less thing to add to this weekends task list however it already has more things on it than I can likely accomplish, oh well.
It seems that a good chunk of Bloombergs 100 million is going on Biden tv ads in Florida. I swear every commercial break on local network tv has Joe’s face plastered all over it. Hey by default I want Joe to win too but I wonder if they ever think about diminishing returns when they oversaturate the public with this stuff. If anything, 2016 showed that people are fickle and have a difficult time thinking about anything outside of what is immediately in front of them. With that being the case, I would think hammering closer to the date of the election would be more effective. Man I can not wait until the election is over. I can only hope the outcome is a choice for sanity instead of blubbering incompetence, machine gun lies, and IQ in double digits.
Last night was my last one with the demo Sherman. We actually had a rain free day so after work I wanted to try to get out to attempt one more time to crack 40 mph on the wheel. The sound the big knobby tire makes at speed is un-apologetically loud and in your face. On my third attempt I hit 40.1 mph and then the attempt after that I topped out at 41.5 mph. Even with as stable as the 80+ pound wheel feels at speed, going that fast on a one wheel self balancing device is a white knuckle experience. I was up late last night packing up the wheel and editing the footage. Here is the result.
