Yesterday we got past a big hump at work, completing an annual procedure that used to be handled exclusively by my buddy Don who retired in February. It was a team effort to replace what he did solo but it looks like we got through it successfully. Considering it involves roughly 1.4 billion dollars, it’s sort of important. In retrospect I am glad I did not book the trip to LA, I would not have been able to go because of the delay in this process thanks to Hurricane Ian.
Yesterday I received a response to an email I sent to the Wyoming District Attorneys office a couple days prior regarding their attempts to squeeze $500 from me a second time for the Yellowstone drone incident that was settled in early 2016. The response I got back made it clear she was not understanding my point regarding how one of the two fines was already messed up because the wrong case id was used when paying them, hence I assumed the same thing happened with this $500 check. After a couple back and forth emails I decided to just call and speak to this woman in person.
Within the first 30 seconds I knew I had a real peach on my hands. She gave me attitude from the get go, claiming my point about another case number had nothing to do with my fine. Repeatedly she cut me off as I tried to explain which of course turned off my nice guy switch. This became a loud, heated argument that I am sure others in my vicinity in the office heard. She refused to try to process what I was telling her and why it mattered. The call ended with her hanging up on me after she said someone from the attorneys office would call me back.
I was pissed as you can imagine. I immediately called my bank again to press them on getting the documentation I need to prove the check was written and cashed by Yellowstone in 2016. The rep said he could verify the check was cashed by them on 3/30/16 and it appeared on the April 2016 statement. He began the process of getting this document sent to me which hopefully happen in a couple days. I wrote one final email back to this miserable woman, because I wanted her to think/listen the next time before she assumes she knows a situation. The email I sent is below:
The check was cashed on 3/30/16 by Yellowstone, I will be sending you the bank statement that shows this as soon as my bank gets it to me. Whatever bank Yellowstone deals with may have an image of that check.
I really do not appreciate the attitude you gave me during the phone call. I understand this original mistake was not made by you and I’m sorry if you feel I was blaming you for it, I don’t. However, if you had paid a fine 6 years ago, was told you didn’t and then when reaching out to address it had someone that was unwilling to listen to the explanation, I doubt you would appreciate it either. Both the CVB mistake and this one are because the wrong case ID was on the judgement that you sent to me yourself. I referenced this ID when making both payments. Your failure to understand why this is significant is hard to understand. Or maybe, you just didn’t care.
Treat others as you would like to be treated Ms Grumpy. I hope you have a good day.
I did a quick video in the series I have regarding this incident.
This morning I had my first ever chiropractor appointment with a guy I used to go to the gym with 15 years ago. It was good seeing Tim, who is the same age as me and like me, put considerable effort into staying fit. I explained to him my back pain and how it was worsening. He said my symptoms are one of the most common he sees at his office. He gave me a number of stretches/exercises I can do on my own. He also put me on the table for some manipulation. My problem is caused mainly by muscle tightness and weakness in certain errors. As he had me do certain movements he would be pressing on muscles which generated a ton of pain, as they are supposed to as they release. I was sweating and controlling my urge to yell in pain at various times.
There was only one sudden adjustment where he had my right foot pinned between his legs. He jerked backward which startled me more than hurt. Again it’s an effort to release the tightness in the joints causing the pain. When he was done I had less pain than when I walked in there. I set up another appointment in a month to see how I do after working the movements Tim gave me. I really hope I can knock down this pain, it gets very intense at times.
This weekend I once again have a number of smaller things to do. One big thing is getting the tires replaced on the Tacoma. The truck now has 55k miles on it and it’s rubber is not in good shape. I am getting some more aggressive tires with raised white letters, which I always liked. I am having Costco do the work. Their pricing and warranty is good. The only thing that annoys me is they do not do alignments there, which I definitely want done with new tires. I will have to schedule that to be done separately. Now that I am past the work hurdle I’d like to start giving myself some long weekends, I could use them.
I was thinking about going to practice a little volleyball with Kerri last night (the woman I play pickleball with) but the plans got canceled. I wound up spending a good portion of the night trying to catch up on House of Dragons, I had managed to fall three weeks behind. It’s a weird thing, despite cutting down dramatically on the stuff I record to watch later I still have a sizeable backlog of content to get through. I have already talked about how it seems I hardly ever have time to go into VR or play WoW anymore. It seems like just sit around and veg time is becoming a more and more scarce commodity in my life. Last night I welcomed the opportunity to unplug the brain for awhile as it is crunch time at work this week.
Tomorrow I am making my first ever visit to a chiropractor, a guy I actually have known for years as we used to go to Powerhouse Gym together. I have always avoided chiropractors as the sound of bones and joints cracking as they get adjusted has always bothered me. My mom went to a chiropractor for much of her life and always felt better afterward. I am going specifically to see if I can be given some sort of stretches or exercises that can stop the lower right quadrant back pain that has kept increasing in intensity over the last 6 months. I have not seen Tim in years, possibly a decade or more so it will be good to catch up.
When I got home last night and took the dogs out Sadie seemed to be feeling pretty spry. Of course she was still extremely gimpy but she was acting playful and even tried to “run” which I discouraged. I think the combo of the various pain meds she gets plus the additional exercise and more limited food she gets when she is at the house does her good.
I took her back to Ali and Shugs place last night. Her and Elsa rode side by side most of the way in the back of the Tesla, it was cute. We hung around at their house for a little while but with the hour long drive back we couldn’t stay very late. Elsa loves Ali and Shugs so much. She even was being friendly with Shugs dad and girlfriend last night as well which was a pleasant surprise.
Late last night I had inspiration for my latest YouTube short which I personally think is one of my best so far.
It’s sort of ironic because unlike last time I was single, where I lived and died on dating apps for the most part of that year, this time outside of maybe a two week period, I have avoided them completely. I thought dating online would be perfect for someone like me, the exact opposite turned out to be true.
I also realized that at this point I have officially been single for the longest period of time since I was 17 years old. The pros are definitely catching up with the cons in certain ways.
Yesterday we had an employee inservice day where the entire organization gets together to go through various presentations and education. It’s an all day affair that had highs and lows. I was stationed with my laptop to monitor communications and deal with a few ongoing projects we have. It helped me break up some of the monotony.
Last night was the last night for Sadie to be staying over and unfortunately it was the least restful for me. I woke up around 2:30 AM to see Sadie standing near the bedroom door, I assumed it meant she had a bathroom emergency. She went outside and peed but it definitely was not an emergency. When I went back to bed my mind had flipped back into active mode. I laid there for what felt like forever trying to fall back asleep. I’ll be running her back up to Babcock tonight.
I made a request to my bank to see if I could get an image of the check I used to pay my fine back in 2016 to Yellowstone. Unfortunately they said they only keep check images for 5 years however they should be able to get me the bank statement that has that check transaction on it which should be good enough to get the DA from Wyoming off my back, hopefully.
So Friday morning I get a call from the med clinic, finally. I had been asking for my CT results for two days, all I wanted was a phone call with the results. Well I got the call but instead it was to schedule an appointment to go over the results, wtf. I protested, asking why can’t they just give me the results now. They said it had to be done via an appointment, which I scheduled for 2:15 Friday afternoon. For the first time since this all started I had an oh shit feeling in my stomach. If the CT was ok, why would I need an appointment? Did they see a tumor? Am I going to die? All of these thoughts poured through my head in a short period of time. I felt emotional thinking about the possibility that something serious was going on.
As the morning went on my anxiety eased a bit. My buddy at work said how he had to go into the clinic to get the results of his x-ray which was totally clear. I’m not sure if this is a HIPPA thing or just a way to post another office visit to insurance to keep the dollars flowing. When he told me that I felt more inclined to think this was the same scenario. Yea I have lost weight but otherwise I don’t feel like I have any other symptoms. I tried to keep my mind off the results during the day, playing pickleball at lunch and keeping busy.
I head over to the clinic for the appointment and get the news, the same news I got in 2018 when I had a CT. They asked if I was constipated, told me I had nodules in my lungs, a small kidney stone and arthritis in my back, the SAME things I was told 4 years ago. There was no tumor, which is all I cared about. The stuff they did see had not changed in appearance so I called it a clean bill of health as far as I was concerned. I told the people that knew about the test, they shared my relief.
When I got home Friday I got a piece of mail that tempered my good mood from the test results, a letter from Wyoming. Wyoming is where I was prosecuted for a drone flight in Yellowstone 6 years ago. I knew this letter was going to piss me off, I was right. The letter claimed I owed them $500, the donation part of what I had to pay. $500 went to the Yellowstone slush fund and $285 was the fine and court costs. As soon as I saw this I was pretty sure I knew what happened.
When I got the bill in 2016 to pay it included the case id I was supposed to reference. When I paid the $285 via pay.gov I got a notice 3 months later that my bill was unpaid. It came to my attention that whomever sent me the bill put the case id of the other guy that was “on trial” with me at the same time for the same thing. So my payment got applied to his account. When I contacted collections and told them this they relented and I thought all was good, evidently not.
My assumption is they did the exact same thing with my $500, applied to the other guys fine. But the fact that it is now 6 years later makes it much harder for me to document the case. I no longer have that check and I am not sure if my credit union can get me an electronic image of something that old. It’s extremely aggravating. I emailed the contact on the letter. I plan to back it up with a phone call to make sure this is squashed immediately. The letter drug up just how angry I was about how the initial incident was handled. I’m glad to see they are continuing the tradition of ineptness.
Friday night I celebrated my health win with another 10 mile ride where I posted my best time/pace for at least 6 months. I then immediately weeded the yard into darkness as Sadie supervised me.
Saturday afternoon was consumed by mowing, nearly 5 hours of it. I tackled the normal mowing and the back yard which has finally dried up from all of the rain from Ian. The grass was a jungle at spots, consuming a lot of time. During the morning I did some more chicken area decommissioning, relocating a couple of the Ring cameras to the house area, throwing more stuff out and just cleaning up. The process is far from done. Elsa is amazed that she is now allowed to go inside the chicken yard.
Saturday evening I met up with Monique and her mom. We took a run to Sam’s Club, a place neither of them had been to in years. I hadn’t been there lately myself but it only measured in months. I grabbed a few things I needed and so did they. It was fun for me to have them tag along for the shopping experience and they seemed to have fun as well. When I got back to their house I took one of Gladys’s other sisters, Margaret for a ride in the Tesla. I drove a few miles out and then she drove it back to the house. She was VERY excited.
Sunday morning I drove to DD to stage a short ride on the T4. I felt a bit out of sorts during the video and I think it showed.
Most of the afternoon was spent editing videos which got to be a bit too much eventually. I still have more work to do but it can wait. I will be leaving in a few minutes to go attend a comedy show JP, Cindy’s brother is in. I attended one other of his shows a month or two after Cindy and I split. A lot has transpired since then for everyone. All I want to do is drink a few beers and laugh. I could use a break from the serious side of life for a little bit.
I hurried home last night to quickly do the chores and feed Elsa before loading her back up in the Tesla to drive up to Babcock Ranch to pick up Sadie whom I am watching for a few days while Ali and Shugs are out of town. Shugs dad and girlfriend are staying at their house. They have a place on Fort Myers Beach that took heavy damage from Ian. They told me crazy stories about what they both experienced and some of their neighbors went through that decided to stay put. One of those stories included swimming through storm surge to grab on to the railing of a house that was still intact, insane.
I had a quick bite to eat but didn’t stay that long as I had an hour drive back. Sadie is really struggling. Her ability to walk is minimal, her one eye looks like it has a cataract and the other eye has some type of infection that we are giving her eye drops for. I feel bad for her as you can tell she wants to do all the things she used to do, her body just won’t allow it.
So I reached out to the med center repeatedly yesterday, wanting to get the results from the CT test I took. The entire day passed without that happening, which annoys me. Early this morning I got a call from them saying they wanted me to come in to go over the results. I said I would prefer to just get them over the phone but they insisted it had to be done via an office visit, which I arranged for later this afternoon. So my knee jerk reaction was that this meant there must be something bad in the CT, which could be the case. However I have had to go into the office for other test results as well which weren’t necessarily bad results. My buddy at work said recently he had to go in there just to get the results from his X-ray, which was clear. They wouldn’t tell him on the phone. So my hope is this is just a HIPPA thing where they are not allowed to disclose medical information on the phone. Mid-afternoon I’ll be turning the page, one direction or another.
This weekend I have small projects around the house. I would like to continue on cleaning up the chicken area. I can repurpose most of the Ring cameras that are out there and get rid of some more things that were only useful in my role as a chicken keeper. I may go to a comedy show that Cindy’s brother is participating in locally. I went to another one of his shows shortly after the split and it was a good time. I could use a good laugh or two.
My buddy Jeremy has been working for the state of Florida for close to a year now. He reached out to me because he was in SW Florida, far away from his home in Tallahassee. He was assisting with a state initiative to provide Starlink systems to those in need in our area. Well in this case he was supposed to be dropping some off to various out of state emergency response teams. It was already after 7:30 when I left the house but I thought it would be interesting to see this all in action.
I almost did not get to see Jeremy at all as the approximate time he said he would be on site came and went. It was funny because one of the things I have always given him a hard time about is his lack of being on time. Despite it being close to 10 years since I had seen him, things hadn’t changed. To be fair he had some issues that held him up at the prior site. He had also been present at the governors press conference earlier in the day regarding the hurricane relief efforts.
So initially I tried to get into the JetBlue Park (Red Sox spring training facility) before Jeremy arrived and was greeted by some military personnel. I explained I was there to assist in Starlink set up however when they called it in they could not verify it so they didn’t let me in. I told them I would just wait for my buddy to show up. So Jeremy and his son arrived. He flashed his credentials and vouched for me which got me in.
The parking lot had been transformed into a huge mobilization center with tractor trailers and tents that looked like yurts, complete with AC. It was an amazing display of just how many resources were being put into this recovery. I had no idea that so many other states sent personnel in. We set up systems for teams for three different states.
I never set up a Starlink system before. You could definitely tell it was an Elon product with stupidly simple set up which took less than 10 minutes to go from cracking open the box to pulling down data as fast as 150MBS. It was pretty impressive. It was interesting and cool to help with the process even on a very limited basis. It was also very cool to see Jeremy and Connor again. Jeremy and I agreed we need to get together sooner rather than later, a decade between face to face interactions is a bit much. By the time I got home it was after 11 and by the time I fell asleep it was technically Thursday morning. Despite this I woke up today feeling surprisingly ok.
I was checking all day yesterday in my online patient portal hoping CT results would be posted. There were no updates and none this morning either. I would love to get some news sooner rather than later.
My commute to work today was awful. At the county fairgrounds there are hundreds upon hundreds of utility trucks staged. Every morning right around the time I leave the police are there blocking traffic to allow large groups of the trucks to exit. So once I get past that the road is now bogged down by these hundreds of trucks. Today schools reopened which added to the traffic causing huge delays at every major intersection. However that was not the worst thing, I am used to shitty traffic. When I was a mile from the office I almost was involved in another accident.
So I am heading into an intersection with a green light, following some guy in a Mercedes. All of a sudden he basically locks up his brakes and simultaneously I hear a police siren. There were two police vehicles that were entering the intersection from the left road. It appeared to me they had their lights on but never hit the siren until they were right at the intersection, which is dangerous and dumb. The guy in front of me either didn’t see them or was trying to beat them across the intersection before he slammed on his brakes.
So the warning siren in the Tesla fires off and I simultaneously slam on the brakes as I feel the anti-lock system kick in. At first I thought I hit the guy but I apparently missed him by inches. I was already frustrated by the quagmire I had been driving through, to have this happen at the tail end of the commute was the perfect infuriating cherry to put on top. After the near miss the guy in the Mercedes put his hand out the window and waved, which I took as a “sorry I slammed on the brakes thanks for not rear ending me” acknowledgment.
Yesterday I had my chest, abdominal and pelvic CT. Prior to going I had to down two sizeable vanilla flavored barium “milkshakes”. I should have read the fine print, assuming there was some, indicating they will cause severe gastric distress. On the way home from work it felt like somebody pumped me like a balloon with colonscopy prep-like bathroom sessions later. It was awful. The test itself was a piece of cake, taking all of 10 minutes. I have had chest CTs before when they were trying anything back in 2019 or so to diagnose my mysterious fatigue I had off and on for almost 18 months. I hope to have results today but I’m not sure if that’s realistic or not.
The receptionist at this place who seemed sweet and friendly gave me a bit of a mental jolt on the way out. As I was walking out after the test she says to me in a very friendly manner “have a good day and good luck!” I know she was trying to be nice but I wondered if she had any sense of how that sounds to someone who was being screened for signs of a tumor, or anything else for that matter. Generally speaking if you are getting a CT it is not for anything you want to find. Bottom line is I knew she was trying to be nice, it was just weird.
I finally was able to coordinate with someone on FB marketplace to get the chicken equipment I was giving away last night. Before they showed up I wanted to start the process of getting the portable coop and run out of the chicken yard. I knew the four foot gate was going to be a problem. I pulled the coop to the gate and after trying a couple angles realized it was a no go. I had to not only remove the gate but also the hinge pins that are screwed into the post to hold the gate. After doing this I was barely able to get the coop out with it cranked to a side angle.
As I was pulling the coop up front they showed up. It was actually the woman I was dealing with daughter and son in law. I was worried that they would not bring a truck big enough to hold everything. I was relieved when I saw them backing into the driveway with a flatbed trailer being towed by a full size Ram truck. It worked out better than expected, not only did they take the portable coop/run they took everything else I was giving away which included the inside perch, portable perch from the run, the nesting box stand and the outdoor water shelter that I built. It was great. The only negative was I tore a big chunk of skin off my middle finger helping load that bled like mad.
As you could expect it felt somewhat strange to have all of this stuff gone, much of it having been built by my and Cindy’s hands. I did however come up with an interesting idea to repurpose the coop. I could turn it into my EUC shed , storing my wheels out there to eliminate the risk of a lithium fire inside the house. I’m not sure how viable the idea is but it’s something I plan to explore. I have utility and solar power out there which could be used to charge the wheels. My question is the negative impacts of storing wheels in the non-air conditioned shed. We will see.
So with owning chickens for so many years all of the birds in the neighborhood have reaped the benefits of the treats and scratch grains I would put out in the yard. They would even fly into the run before I got there, waiting for me to put out food. Since Kathy died I don’t have the need to continue putting food out but I do anyway for two reasons. First I have chicken food/treats left over, there is no need to waste them. Second, I like it. Even when I run out of the chicken food I can see me still grabbing bird food to put out there daily. Squirrels and rabbits have come to count on the leftover food as well so I would feel badly pulling the rug out from under them. I am sure Kathy would have appreciated my effort to keep her friends fed.
Last night I was buzzing around the house doing my normal Monday night duties as well as washing the Tesla which was getting sort of cruddy. Later at night I recorded a quick video announcing I wasn’t going to the LA EUC tour as well as two more “Shorts”. I think my theme with shorts is how to do things in 5 seconds, perfect for the average attention span of many humans.
I rescheduled my CT for today. It will be good to get it over with. I get to chug two barium milkshakes prior to the visit. I am curious what the side effect of this will be down the road, if you know what I mean. I am crossing my fingers that the imaging shows an all clear and I can move forward without further health distractions, there have been a lot of them recently.
As I tended to the relatively minor issues around the property this weekend I almost felt survivors guilt. Yes there have literally been people that have died in the storm but my guilt was just more connected to the total devastation so many people suffered. Seeing pictures and videos of what Ian transformed the coast area to were horrific. I had been to many of the locations that have now been destroyed, it’s a very weird feeling in an awful sort of way. Repeatedly I internally recognized just how fortunate I was to escape relatively unscathed.
I did have a lot to deal with related to work. I went into the office Saturday morning to investigate what appeared to be a total outage. It was that but not just for us. The outage impacted multiple carriers, even shutting down the county 911 services. Luckily by mid-morning most services were restored. The explanation I got was a major network colocation facility had a generator failure turning it and everything connected to it, dark. I was also communicating back and forth with management of our office all weekend, trying to determine our ability to open branches on Monday. Surprisingly it appears that we will be able to open every branch but one, the branch in Marco Island that had standing water inside the building. This is a far better outcome than I was expecting on Friday when almost every branch was offline.
On Saturday afternoon I dug out the Halloween decorations. I only got the blow ups for the yard as I didn’t really feel like decorating inside. When I opened the container I saw two brand new boxes. I had totally forgotten that after Halloween last year I bought two more inflatables that were on sale. You will see the new items, the black and white spider and the ghost in the foreground of the picture. Last year I recall having internal struggles regarding if I wanted to put out Halloween decorations at all since I had always viewed it as something Cindy and I did together. This year I don’t have that struggle as I recognized I put them out because I like them and that is all that really matters.
Later Saturday afternoon I road my new Begode T4 over to the park to play pickleball with a co-worker who lives down the road from me. It gave me another chance to ride my new wheel which I am still adjusting to. I think once I get a few things worked out I will be happy with it. I also produced a video going over my initial thoughts about the wheel which are not entirely positive.
A good portion of the night I watched an arm wrestling PPV event that I really enjoyed. I am a big arm wrestling fan for some reason. This event had some incredible matches that were worth the price of admission in my book.
My Sunday felt sort of lazy by my standards even though monitoring work issues was an off and on thing all day. After paying my bills and grabbing coffee with Elsa I spent some time tending to little nagging things around the house that have been back burnered for one reason or another. It feels good when you get to squash some of those small visual annoyances. As I did this work I listened to the Eagles/Jaguars game. It started out poorly with the Jaguars who are coached by ex-Eagles coach Doug Pederson, jumped out to a 14-0 lead. However the Eagles stopped the bleeding and scored 29 points before the Jaguars scored a late touchdown. The Jaguars are much improved this year so it was a solid win, keeping the Eagles as the ONLY undefeated team in the NFL. I can’t tell you the last time that happened.
I made arrangements to meet up with Monique for a bike ride. Well she rode a bike, I took my T4. On the way there I wanted to see if I could finally find a gas station that did not have a line at least 15 cars deep. I managed to do just that on a hunch. I drove up to Bonita Springs to a Racetrac that is just east of I-75. During non-hurricane times this station usually is not super busy. I was able to pull right up to a pump with no waiting, unheard of for the last 10 days. Once again I felt fortunate.
We rode over to the Greenway. When we arrived they had a gate in front of the two entrances but one of them was pulled partially open. I assume they didn’t want people on the path yet but after riding the full length into Baker Park I’m not sure why. Other than some minor damage and debris on the path, there was no problem getting by. In total we were out for at least two hours. I always enjoy my time hanging with Monique and this was no different.
I expect this week to be rather hectic as we deal with the aftermath of Ian. Keeping calm when the pressure is on is an attribute that has helped me in my job over the years. I will be leaning on it this week.
