Last night I opened up my new floor vacuuming robot. If you know me, you know I have had a robotic vacuum for a long, long time, dating back to the original Roomba which was probably around 15 years ago. My current stable of robots included a Neato XV, a Samsung Powerbot, and a Deebot. The Neato XV is my oldest robot and ironically probably still does the best all around job on the floors. However it’s battery is going bad and it’s brush motor started making a noise that I could not easily identify.
I got a Sam’s catalog a couple weeks ago that identified a sweet deal on the base model Roomba, knocking 40% off it’s normal $299 price. It was an online only deal that only was good last weekend. I made a special reminder to buy it, which I did. Since I am a pro at robo-vacuums, set up of the Roomba took only 5-10 minutes. I let it fully charge and then let it loose on the house.
Unlike my other three vacuums which have a “vision” system which allows them to clean in a very methodical manner, the Roomba still utilizes it’s random bounce around behavior. It does not see the room, it just keeps bouncing around in a manner which hopefully covers everything. They did add a proximity sensor at least so if it is about to hit a wall or an object the sensor detects it so the bot just does a soft kiss instead of a harsh collision. I let the Roomba do a full run. It’s dust bin was stuffed afterward, despite me running the other bots a couple times a week. I originally thought I would recycle the Neato but the brush motor noise went away so I guess I will be a four robot home for at least the time being.
I am on the cusp of what will be a full four day weekend. My plan is to get the worst task done first, which is always my preference when given a choice. I will be pressure washing the inside and outside of the pool cage, the deck, and anything else I have energy reserves left over for. The other three days will have smaller, less pain invoking things on the agenda. I do want to see Shang Chi this weekend since it comes out on Disney Plus Friday. The chickens were very happy when I told them they could sleep in the next four days.
More and more I have days where I struggle regarding what I want to actually share here. The easiest thing to write about are the accounts of the very busy pace I normally maintain, describing the challenges, the wins, and the losses in the mundane world of tasks I exist in. It’s black and white, sterile, and doesn’t scratch beneath the surface. Writing about some of the inner feelings and thoughts about life in general at this point in time is not easy and not desirable in most situations, so I only do it rarely. Remember to not stare.
Even though Friday evening I still had adequate light for my 10 mile ride, I did the prep for the following week where that will no longer be the case. I attached a light to my helmet and the the rear of my Trek to make me clearly visible to motorists, even once daylight has passed. I also wore my clear lens work glasses for the ride as tint will not be workable over the winter. I have found that wearing glasses with a top frame are annoying while riding. When you are in the down position that frame is annoyingly in your field of vision. I bought a cheap set of cycling glasses that have no top frame for that very reason. The ride itself went ok with temps around 80 I couldn’t complain.
Saturday morning was the first REALLY cool morning. The thermometer actually dipped into the upper 50’s at the house. I was doing chicken and other chores in the morning wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and I loved it. I am so over the heat and humidity. Elsa and I did an errands run that probably added up to at least 75 miles of driving, it wasn’t ideal.
During the afternoon I took down the Halloween decorations, which is far less depressing than when I do the same with Xmas decorations because there is far less invested. Two of the inflatables were “retired” (aka, thrown out). Both the big red spider which was probably 5 years old and the scary tree developed leaks that I could not trace. The spider’s material was deteriorating all over from the years of sun exposure so I could understand it. Scary tree was only two years old. He was inflating fine at the beginning of the month but by the end was a saggy, sad tree. I did make a proactive move for next year, buying two more Halloween inflatables on Amazon at a post Halloween discount price.
Late in the afternoon I took my V12 out for a DD run. During the ride I stopped to talk about the catastrophic fire that Ewheels had, the company I have bought that vast majority of my wheels from. Although not proven yet, it is suspected that the fire started from a defective battery pack. It’s a devastating loss.
Saturday night I watched Battlestar Galactica – The Plan. It was a “movie” based on the series that I loved, or so I thought. What it actually turned out to be was a bunch of scenes from the TV series thrown together in such a way to give a rough, Cliff Notes version of the story. I found it extremely disjointed, jarring, and not good in that format. Don’t bother if you were a fan of the show, you have seen it all before.
Sunday the weather again was glorious with bright sun, blue skies and crisp air. I had the windows open all day long, a rarity. After a morning of normal tasks I came to the point where I had to decide what I wanted to do with my afternoon. With the awesome weather maybe I should go on an extended ride, maybe go to the beach, maybe anything that took advantage of the great weather outside. Well I did come up with something that benefits from nice weather as well, tending to the grass. Yes I consumed my entire afternoon weed whacking and mowing the property which took almost exactly 4 hours. Now there was reasoning behind this.
Last week I put it in to have this upcoming Friday off. Our office is closed for Veterans day on Thursday so this gives me a four day weekend. I targeted pressure washing the pool area during this time, which is disgusting. Doing this job is ass breaking and very lengthy. I determined that if I had to do yard maintenance during the weekend as well it would be really unfun, hence why I decided to do it now.
Yesterday I also thought I would make a preemptive strike on the pool area cleaning. I got out my 30 Seconds hose end spray attachment and filled it with the solution which is some sort of bleach mixture. I figured I could save myself from the worst of pressure washing by spraying the overhead pool cage with the solution to de-green it ahead of time so I don’t have to blast it as much. This was not the best thought out plan. Spraying a bleach solution up means it also has to come down. I had bleach dripping all over me but didn’t care. Only after I thoroughly soaked the frame twice did I head inside to take a shower and wash the clothes before the bleach really started burning things. I wasn’t all that pleased with the outcome. It did get rid of a lot of the green but those frame sections still will need to be blasted regardless.
By the time I got back inside the Eagles game was already well into the first quarter, they were playing the LA Chargers in Philly. Once again the Eagles stuck with their new found revelation that they can actually run the ball and any game plan that revolves around Jalen Hurts being a prolific passer is going to be problematic. Their offense was solid, again using more runs than passes by a significant margin. This running rebirth has occurred without their starter Miles Sanders in the lineup.
The problem is their defense was terrible. They did not register a single sack, a single turnover and allowed LA to pretty much move the ball at will. I was disgusted that during the last LA drive of the game where they got the winning field goal, the Eagles defensive backs were STILL giving LA receivers a 10 yard cushion off the line, it was maddening. I really hate the soft zone, no blitz strategy the team seems to be based on, it sucks. The team is now 0-4 at home.
Ever since the Linc opened, there has been a sense that the home field advantage that the team used to command at the Vet has disappeared. For whatever reason, playing at Lincoln Financial Field just does not carry the weight the Vet did. Maybe since ticket prices have gone through the stratosphere, the down and dirty, louder than a bullhorn fans that used to populate the 700 level have been priced out of attending. The team plays the Broncos next week, which is likely another loss, which will pretty much send this season into lost cause territory.
One thing I have done for a number of years is take iconic shots from the various destinations I have been to and put them into my rotating backgrounds in Windows. Every 10 minutes or so a new background pops into one of my two screens. Of course over the last 8 years all of those destinations involved Cindy as well so I have had to make some adjustments. It used to be that seeing these images pop up would bring back momentary jolts of good feelings as I recall the scenario and everything associated with it. Now, although I still remember the good times, it is unavoidable to feel the sadness associated with the past tense aspect of it all.
I even get the feeling of sadness when I see the images from my dad and stepmom’s place in Mariensville. Despite it being in the middle of nowhere there were some very fond memories of that place for me. I do this pretty routinely, dwell on the past twisting one time happy memories into sad reminders. I remember hearing/reading somewhere a quote that went something like this, “It’s ok to look at the past, but don’t stare…..” I get it.
Last night was a big one, DJ officially became a big brother with Katie giving birth to baby Emily. It sounds like the birth process went extremely quick and smooth, you couldn’t ask for more. Hopefully Katie will be discharged sometime this weekend so the newly enlarged family can all be under one roof. There is going to be a lot of adjusting going on without a doubt.
Last night we got blitzed with rain in advance of a cold front, so much so that the property which has been totally dry for weeks is now submerged once again. Being underwater on November 5th is not common, I am not sure we have ever been flooded this late in the year. The good news out of this is the weekend should be awesome with lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s.
I have a number of things this weekend I wanted to accomplish, so many that I probably should have written a list. Sometimes during the week a “I should do” item pops into my head but pops back out by the time the weekend rolls around.
Last night I decided I was going to “cook” dinner which in my world means basically any meal that involves more prep than 5 minutes in the microwave. I went all out, putting my cooking skills to the test with a meal of fish sticks, mac n cheese, AND baked chocolate chip cookies. Using the oven and boiling water at the same time took some careful balancing and precision but I managed to come out with something edible in the end. It also resulted in more clean up than is typically allotted.
I have still been working through my Lastpass password list. It is a much more daunting task than I first imagined. What I have found is in more recent times I have been using significantly stronger passwords but I was still using them in some situations on multiple sites. Luckily Lastpass makes it very easy to identify these duplications. One password I finally changed last night was associated with my YouTube account which somehow had not been changed since 2012, a gross oversight. I have a feeling I will be running into more WTF password realities as this process continues.
I am getting close to finishing Squid Game. It’s pretty compelling stuff if you can not get bent out of shape about the inherent violence in the story.
Yesterday I got a notice from my Lastpass password manager that my overall security score was low. How can this be? I am an IT professional! So I started digging into why Lastpass was telling me this. When I went into the dashboard I saw 574 passwords that were either weak or duplicated on multiple sites. Looks like I have some work to do.
I have used Lastpass for many, many years. It is a great way to securely store passwords without having to remember them all. Well way back when I did have to remember them all and as a result I reused passwords a lot, a huge no no nowadays. Not only were passwords reused, they were also weak passwords by today’s standards. For example one I used a lot was “vball”, that’s it. (no worries I don’t use it anymore) 🙂 So I started working on this massive list.
A large chunk of these offending sites were trimmed off quickly as they were for old sites that I either no longer need, duplicates or are out of existence entirely. However the sites I do actually need that were on the list needed more attention. What I did was on each site that was flagged, go in there and change my password and utilize the random password generator feature of Lastpass. It makes a long, unique, complex password that you can use for a site. You won’t remember it but Lastpass will.
A complex and long password makes brute forcing a password infinitely more difficult for a hacker. Using a unique password for each and every website you visit isolates the damage if a site is breached. If you use the same/similar password for every site, when a hacker gets a email/password leak from a breached site, the first thing they do is try those credentials on other sites. If you use different keys for each castle, the compromise starts and ends there. I have been able so far to clear up about half of the list. I have more work to do. I advise you do a similar audit of your credentials.
There hasn’t been much of note on the home front the last couple days. I still feel mostly like the road runner from the Wile E. Coyote cartoons, on the go.
On Friday when I got home I saw a number of things blown over in the yard like shelves and even the trash can. It was very windy. Normally going out for a road bike session in wind like this is pretty miserable, at least for the half of the out and back where you are going into the wind. I debated if I wanted to subject myself to the pain of strong head wind riding. I decided I would, figuring it would be a good character builder. If you don’t push into resistance now and then, you become less resistant. The ride went as expected.
If I was going to deal with a headwind in an out and back ride like my 10 mile course I would always prefer to deal with wind on the out portion, getting pushed back home is great. Unfortunately on Friday I was into the wind after the turn around. I stayed down on my aero bars as much as I could and used both my quads and hamstrings to pedal since I am clipped in. I refused to change to an easier gear because I thought it would hurt my overall time. It was tough but I survived, albeit with an overall pace about 1MPH slower than the previous week, understandable in the conditions. I felt a sense of satisfaction as I returned to the driveway, knowing I took the path of more resistance.
Normally on a Friday after my ride I make pizza and then just veg out either watching shows or doing stuff on the computer. This Friday I decided to take my V11 and go ride Victoria Park, which I intended to do originally on Thursday but got rained out. By the time I got down there it was after 8PM. As I have said, in the past we have ridden there on Halloween and had miserable experiences with way too many people. I figured getting there two nights before would be much better. It was amazingly so.
I still thought a decent amount of people would be circling the community, but I was wrong, I almost had the entire place to myself. I circled around for probably 45 minutes taking stuff in. The wind did a number on many of the inflatables, many of which were on the ground. Still there were a number of very cool homes to see. I sort of lost my path during the ride, sometimes inadvertently going down the same street multiple times.
When I rode back to the truck I continued past it in the other direction. I decided to just roll around the adjacent shopping center which just underwent a massive renovation. There are multiple outdoor dining options that would be fun to enjoy, probably a bit awkward for me to do solo however. I guess that is what bar seating is for. I got home close to 10, both Sadie and Elsa acted like I had been gone for days.
On Saturday I didn’t have to mow the grass since I tackled that during the week. I instead handled a number of smaller items that had been annoying me for awhile. I was able to cross a bunch of them off my mental checklist. Around 5PM I took my One Wheel XR for a DD run which also gave me an opportunity to talk about my GT purchase. The One Wheel community is WAY bigger than the EUC community and you can tell from video views. It already has 4500+ eyeballs. On the way back I detoured into the OrangeTree development to see how their decorations compared to Victoria Park, they didn’t.
On Sunday instead of watching the Eagles/Lions game I got to hang out with DJ at the beach for a couple hours. Since I had not seen him in quite awhile it was extra special to hear “Pop Pop” come out of his mouth when he saw me. We did all sorts of fun things while there like play with his trucks in the sand, I built castles so DJ could run around and/or stomp on them and we played in the water where I was his life guard. It was great hanging with my little buddy once again.
When I hopped back in the truck I saw the Eagles games was over, which I was listening to on the way there. The Birds got their first dominating win of the season, smashing the shitty Detroit Lions, 44-6. Ironically the Eagles did this by RUNNING the ball, something they have hardly done at all this year. They piled up the most rushing yards since the 80’s, I think. Hopefully this is a light bulb moment for Sirianni, stop putting so much demand on Hurts to be a precise and efficient passer, because he isn’t one. Run the damn ball.
Ali and Shugs got back from their flight Sunday evening. I offered to drop Sadie off since Shugs made the long drive on Wednesday to the house. I had not eaten dinner yet and it was getting late so I opted to just drive through McDonalds for a fish sandwich. If I am not mistaken, this may have been my first McDonald’s meal of 2021. The greasy/salty food tastes good going down but once it is ingested the general feeling of grossness ensues.
This weekend I finally started watching Squid Game,a Korean series that is bizarre to say the least. Generally speaking, I like weird things, and I like this, so far.
