Category Anything and Everything

Last night after work I hurried home to load up the two EUCs that I am trading which have been sitting boxed up in my kitchen for several days. I was shipping them via UPS. I had prepaid labels on them from my Stamps.com account. There is a UPS store less than a mile from my house.

I took the truck as I needed to also take my dolly as the one box was close to 100lbs. When I got in the door I was greeted with a long line which was less than ideal. However as I was standing there I got to observe the absolutely miserable personality the one clerk had. She was grumpy, condescending and just plain mean to the customers I saw her interacting with. She also was careless with the packages people were dropping off to ship, casually tossing them into a pile along the wall. Thankfully when it was my turn I got to interact with the second clerk that was missing her miserable attitude. The two boxes are now in the system and I am trusting that my partner in this barter deal does the same. (he will)

Yesterday my car woke up with an April Fools gift from Tesla, a free month of FSD (full self driving). FSD is an add on feature that can either be purchased up front for $12,000 (um yes) or paid on a month by month subscription for $200. Either choice is prohibitively expensive.

When I bought my first Tesla Model 3 in 2019 I actually bought FSD with it. At that time it was an additional $5000. I thought it was cool at the time but it was buggy and downright scary at times with some of the things it would do with sudden direction changes or even worse abrupt braking. When I bought my first Model Y I did not get FSD as a result and I did not buy it with my second Y either.

The last time I had experience with FSD was when I bought a one month subscription when I drove to Texas as it was helpful in long distance driving scenarios. Yesterday was the first time I got a look at the revised and updated FSD which I believe is now close to what has been in beta testing for a very long time. I was pretty amazed at how much better it has become.

The first thing I noticed was the greatly improved visualization of the cars surroundings. Without FSD you get a much more sparse representation of the environment around you. With the feature turned on you get a full appreciation of what the car actually is aware of around you and how quickly it recognizes it. I was very impressed.

As a test I allowed FSD to try to navigate me home from the office last night, turning it on in the office parking lot. It did surprisingly well, confidently navigating the rush hour traffic. I only had to briefly cancel FSD when it picked one of the two turning lanes that would have been a PIA to get out of since another left turn was coming up shortly afterward.

I allowed the car to take the multi-lane turns and it was rock solid. When I used to do this the car would be unsure of itself, slowing down and making scary direction changes as it tried to get it’s bearings. This did not happen once. This morning I allowed the car to once again handle the driving and again I only had to take over once when the Tesla was unwilling to make a right hand turn with intermittent traffic coming as it will always err on the side of safety. But once I was out in the flow the car again had zero issues, despite a high volume of traffic. I plan to do a video about how much better FSD is soon. Too bad it’s just too expensive because I would really like to have it day to day.

So last night I had an idea that just popped into my head, I was going to make an April Fools video. I rarely do anything related to April Fools but I thought this idea I had would be funny. I recorded a video announcing that after much thought I decided to move to California. This was done with one take and no script. Evidently a lot of people don’t bother looking at calendars or watching videos to the end (where I revealed the joke).

I had some serious replies from people shocked by my decision. It was entertaining to say the least.

Today I have yet another round of defective vein destruction, can’t wait.

Friday evening I grabbed groceries shortly after getting home but I felt motivated to get out on a ride too. I grabbed my Patton and zipped over to the Cabana where I enjoyed a couple beers as I talked to a few people about the wheel. I didn’t stay all that long because I had not had dinner yet. By the time I got home it was after 8 but there was still frozen pizza to be made which I enjoyed, despite the late hour of the day.

Saturday I had a fun pickleball session in beautiful weather conditions. The woman I am friends with that has me on her permanent guest list there so I can play is moving soon so I am not sure if these weekend sessions will still be a thing or not once that happens. A lot of the residents there know me and enjoy playing with me so we will see.

Saturday afternoon I got into one of those get things done sort of moods. You may recall a couple weeks ago I bought 25 bags of mulch to freshen up the landscaped areas around the house. I wound up being short and had a good portion of unrefreshed mulch remaining. I made a rough estimate in my head that another 25 bags should get the job done. I was surprisingly accurate in that guess as the last bag just covered the remaining square in the backyard garden area. Miller Lite helped power the project.

So while I was at Home Depot I also was looking for ideas on how I was going to mount the new softer LED panel I bought for the guest bathroom. When Dawn was here she correctly identified that the light I had in there over the sink was too bright and too harsh. When I moved in the light that was there was weak and shitty, so I overcompensated, evidently.

The smaller LED panel I bought had adjustable brightness and color. It’s a surface mount fixture, the problem was the existing space had no surface as the light was up behind a piece of diffuser plastic, which looked shitty. I took some measurements of the spot above the sink and started wandering around Home Depot.

I have this weird ability/defect (depending on your point of view) to ad lib projects where they twist, turn and mutate in my head which is the only place the plan resides, I rarely make any formal plans. So as I was walking down the lumber aisle I spot some white shelf boarding that is 2′ x 4′, almost exactly the size I need for that space. It’s thick enough to be able attach the light panel too as well, I think I can make this work.

When I got home I cut about 6 inches off the 4 foot side to make the piece fit snugly. I then dropped a 2 inch wood screw in each corner to secure it. I drilled a hole in the center of the board to fish the wires through and then attached the mounting plate. I made the electrical connections and tried the different light brightness/color options until I found one that seemed warm but not too bright. After sliding the panel onto it’s base I flipped the power back on and smiled as the final lighting was just about perfect, in my book at least.

I will need to put some sort of trim piece around the edge of the board I installed to clean up the appearance but that should not be a huge problem. I took pride in yet another improvised project that had a positive outcome. I have had countless examples of this over the years.

I took care of a couple little annoying things that have lingered for awhile as well like sanding the corner of the front door where a small amount of rust was and painted it. It took in total maybe 5 minutes yet I had not got around to doing it for the year that I have lived here already, baffling.

Sunday morning I had another good pickleball session playing a full two hours. During the afternoon I met up with Ira who I met when I rode on the east coast with Dawn a month or so ago. He lives on the east coast so he had close to a two hour drive to get over to Naples. I took him on a long and winding ride through various parts of Naples. I stopped at two places, one of them being DD to hopefully grab some refreshments. They were both closed due to Easter. We did luck out and was able to grab something at Starbucks.

For part of the ride Ira and I switched wheels. I never rode a Begode Extreme and he never rode a Veteran Patton so it was interesting to be able to contrast the two. The Extreme had good power but the suspension felt like shit compared to the Patton. I also preferred the tire on the Patton. We rode enough that the Extreme started giving off low battery beeps.

When we got back to my house we hooked up Ira’s wheel to the new fast charger I bought a couple weeks prior. It was able to bring his wheel back up to full charge in roughly an hour and a half, impressive. We hung around and talked for awhile before Ira pushed back east. Hopefully the next time he comes he will bring his girlfriend who also rides.

I finished off the rest of my weekend finishing up the video that I shot from the day. Sure, it was a unconventional Easter weekend for me that was devoid of any formal celebration with family or significant others. I however enjoyed it all the same, which is all that really matters in my book.

Last night was volleyball night. We had a full crew of 16 people which was split into four teams of four across two nets. It was extremely windy last night which can make doing even simple skills a lot more difficult. In total I played seven games and again my team did very well, winning every game. Since I started playing with the higher skilled group this has been a recurring theme with most nights my team sweeping or losing maybe a game or at most, two.

Despite the wind my core skills remained solid and I had a bunch of hustle plays that kept my exposed skin covered in sand most of the night. I really enjoy playing with this group. I know I have said it before but the difference in my enjoyment since joining this group versus when I was playing with the Tuesday crew that had some players with skills barely above picnic ball is like night and day. I look forward to playing every week and I am thankful that my body with the help of Advil is still allowing me to do it.

After playing I went to Carrabas to grab dinner. I don’t normally go there on a Thursday night but I felt like mixing it up. I had a nice dinner with the other bartender, Helen, that knows my name, drink and food preferences. I didn’t hang all that long as I was pretty tired.

My Easter is pretty much just another day on the calendar as I have no local family and no significant other to spend it with. It’s not a woe is me statement, just a fact. If things work out as planned one of the guys I met on the east coast might be coming over to ride with me Easter afternoon which would be cool. In addition I have pickleball sessions scheduled for each of the next three days which I always look forward to. The weather this weekend is supposed to be pretty spectacular with cool mornings and low humidity. I’m anxious to get it underway.

Last year I was still scrambling to get things done at my new house. I also ironically was happy about playing a decent volleyball session back then as well.

Last night after work I felt like being productive. I went to the south side of the house and capped off the spot where the second rusty and broken spotlight used to reside, giving the eave a cleaner look. When I went out to do a short walk later on I snapped this picture of the house which is possibly the first night time picture I have taken. I am really happy with how I have massaged the place over the last year to the point where it truly now feels like my home.

I also completed another improvement last night, hanging all of my full face helmets on the wall of my office/hobby room. I was storing all of my helmets in the closet and it was a mess with helmets piled on top of each other and jammed into open spaces.

Last week I got the idea of hanging some of them to both maximize space utilization and just look sort of cool, IMO. I was able to get the four helmet hooks up in less than a half hour. Having them above the LED RGB bar just adds to the vibe.

I recently have consumed three movies and have not mentioned any of them, maybe because none of them stood out as special. First I watched Ricky Stanicky, a comedy on Amazon Prime. The highlight for me is that John Cena was in it who makes me laugh consistently. I found myself focusing on how odd Zac Efron looks nowadays more than I should have which might be because the movie was only average in my book. B

Next I watched Roadhouse, the spin off of the 80’s classic that featured Patrick Swayze. The modern version instead features a ripped Jake Gyllenhaal who apparently turns into a couple notches below serial killer if you make him mad enough. His super arch enemy is Connor McGregor who is so over the top in his bad guy performance he almost becomes a cartoon character. I mean the movie kept me entertained but was it good? That’s questionable, another B.

Finally last night I finished off the second Aquaman. DC superhero movies almost always are a disappointment to me and this was no exception. I always have thought that casting Jason Momoa as Aquaman made no sense. He is sort of a terrible actor but looks like Deniro compared to Dolph Lundgren who plays King Whatshisface. I mean it’s just a bad movie, one of the lower 25% of DC movies I have seen, that’s a pretty low bar to crawl under. I’ll give it a C-.

This morning I finally got to rip off the compression stocking. I played pickleball with it on yesterday even though it probably was pushing the limits of what I was supposed to do. For the next two weeks I get to rinse and repeat this process. Two weeks from now I should be done with the vein procedures, hopefully.

Yesterday I had my second round of vein treatments. Unlike the first session that used RF ablation to close the larger veins higher up in my leg this used an injection of some chemical that closes veins. It was less uncomfortable than the ablation but still not fun as I had multiple rounds of stinging and burning as various areas were injected. He also stuck a bigger needle into the upper leg to pull out some blood that was trapped from the first procedure. That ramped up my sweat production.

For some reason I had it in my head that these injection sessions did not require the same after care as the ablation. Nope, I again have to wear a compression stocking for two days, need to walk a lot to minimize opportunity for blood clots, and restrict my activity, bummer. I have two more rounds of these injections to go, each spaced a week apart. I’ll be glad to be on the other side of it.

Last night after work as I was taking Elsa on her walk I had a sense of appreciation and gratitude hit me as I looked around at my surroundings. I just felt fortunate to be living where I am now in the situation I am in now. My life has been simplified and I have the ability to go pretty much any direction I choose from here. It’s a position a lot of people would be happy to be in. I am lucky.

When I got home from work I saw the replacement charger I bought for my V10F had finally arrived. I bought it nearly 3 weeks ago off Ebay. When I purchased it I did not realize it was coming from China, on a very slow boat. The charger was the last thing I needed to initiate the two for one trade I am doing with a V13 owner.

After verifying the charger worked I boxed up both wheels last night which took a little time. The box for the S22 is massive and heavy, weighing in a little under 100lbs. I had a live stream going while this process went on, answering questions along the way. Eventually I got both wheels boxed up securely. I will be dropping them off to get shipped later this week. I want to ship the same day the V13 ships, just because.

Yesterday I found myself thinking about rules, not the type of rules like no public urination, the self imposed rules that we as human beings place upon ourselves. I have talked many times about how I am a creature of habit with a number of routines that I exist in from day to day. That is one way of existing within my own rules.

When I got divorced the second time it was the first time in my adult life where I really examined the rules I was living my life by. This examination process repeated after I split from Cindy in late 2021. I think discipline and rules are important in life as they keep you generally moving in a good direction, hopefully. However I also found that when I have allowed myself to do things that initially could be quickly classified as out of bounds that I instead got to experience things I would have regretted missing. To be fair there have been things I would have rather missed out on as well where adhering to rules could have prevented them happening.

I guess at this point in my life with the various twists and turns it has taken I am more interested in maximizing my opportunities for new experiences and journeys. Of course I will always have rules that play a part in my decisions but I don’t want to be a slave to them. I am trying to say yes more than no to opportunities that come along. If you never ask, the answer is always no.

Today I get some more stuff injected into my bad veins in the right leg, can’t wait.

We got a ton of rain on Friday. Friday evening I was home looking out at the backyard and saw a small waterfall coming from the roof. Wait, I have new gutters, that shouldn’t be happening. Well it happens when they are stuffed with debris from the nearby huge oak tree.

Saturday morning I got up on my ladder to see just how bad the gutters were, they were bad indeed with certain segments stuffed to the top with leaves and other debris. It was a throwback to the long list of unfun tasks I had to deal with at my old house. I did not take an elegant approach, I scooped out handful after handful of debris with my hands and then followed up with a blasting of the hose to clear what was left. By the time I finished up about an hour later the house had a perimeter of wet leaves strewn around it. As I was doing the dirty job I regretted my decision to not have leaf guards installed when I had the gutters put on. I could probably attach some myself.

I ran around and did some errands. One of the stops was at Home Depot. I grabbed a couple caps to seal off the spots where old, rusty and shitty looking spot lights were. I don’t need them anymore since I installed bright LED fixtures to the front of the structure. This was one of those things I wanted to do since I moved in a year ago and just never pulled the trigger. Their subtraction was an addition.

I repainted the accent pieces for the new pedals I planned to install on my Veteran Patton Sunday. I already had the ladder out from the gutter cleaning so it made for a good painting station as well.

Saturday night I decided to go out and see Dune 2, solo. To prepare I rewatched the first Dune to refresh my memory. To me, as someone that has never read the books, the story is rather hard to follow.

Prior to going to the movies I grabbed food at Shea’s Landowne Street, a bar/restaurant very close to the theater. I knew it was a popular hangout spot but I had never been there. I liked the vibe and will likely add it to the rotation of places I like to frequent on a regular basis.

So I saw the movie at the Hollywood 20, a theater I don’t frequent often. The theater I was in did not have full reclining seats which would have been welcome since the movie was almost three f’ing hours long. Much like episode one I had a hard time understanding everything that was going on due to my lack of backstory. I mean the movie is cool but doesn’t resonate with me like other sci-fi franchises have. I’d give it a B. I was hoping this was the last film but clearly from the way this ended there has to be a 3rd installment coming, yay.

I woke up to a 6:30 alarm Sunday morning to go play pickleball. It was a great morning to play as the temps were cool and the sun was bright. After heading home I tried to get organized for the two videos I planned to do for the day. The first project was installing the new pedals on the Veteran Patton. This was the second set of aftermarket pedals I tried on this wheel. Thankfully this set worked better than the last. The new pedals finish off the orange accent look of the wheel as well as adding superior grip via the spikes.

Later in the afternoon I did a range test on the Mten Mini, a funny experiment. The Mini is tiny and actually intended for children. It was advertised of having a range of 5-7 miles with a top speed of 10MPH, both very miniscule numbers in terms of most modern day EUCs. Doing a range test would mean going very slow for a long time. I wanted to see what would happen.

I know I looked ridiculous perched on top of such a tiny wheel. I was worried about running out of battery far away from home so at first my idea was just to loop around a nearby neighborhood. However the battery appeared to be holding up better then expected so I shifted gears and decided to try to make it to Dunkin Donuts and back. Doing this would put me right at if not over the advertised top range for the wheel but I risked it. Not only did the wheel get me to DD and back home, I had to do additional riding to get the battery even lower. I wound up covering around 9 miles with 10-20% of battery left. It was a very surprising outcome for me.

Once I got home the majority of the rest of my night was spent editing video although I did take a brief break to grab a Jersey Mike’s portabello cheese “steak” sandwich. By the time everything was polished off it was after 10PM. It was a good weekend.

One thing that is less than good is the chest pain that sent me to the ER two Friday’s ago has not completely disappeared. If I cough, sneeze or take a deep breath quickly I still feel pain in the same spot. I triggered it last week trying to do pull ups as well. I’m waiting for the other shoe to hit the floor, whatever that may be.

Tomorrow I have the next step in my vein procedure where they inject something into the smaller veins in my lower leg to close them off. Supposedly it is much less annoying than the ablation procedure, we will see.

Last night I returned to the sand volleyball courts for the first time since undergoing vein ablation and the unexpected trip to the ER. I played pretty well despite missing a couple weeks. I had a lot of nice hustle plays and was solid in other areas. My team won all of it’s games except one. There were a couple young guys there playing last night, the youngest being 17. It felt good to get back out there and feel more or less normal.

After playing I headed to grab dinner at Brunina’s. Megan had my Miller Lite opened and ready to go in no time and I devoured my eggplant parm dinner quickly, I was feeling quite hungry. After showering at home I dropped into bed and continued watching Dune 1. I am doing so because I am thinking about seeing Dune 2 so I wanted a refresher. I slept like a rock.

Ever since Dawn visited I have been keeping more active in the EUC social groups. I am in regular communication with a number of the guys I rode with in the Miami area as well as other groups in different areas. I have made it known on live streams that I am happy to have more visitors that want to experience riding in south Florida. I am embracing and reaching out, making new connections is something I historically don’t do much of. A big reason for that is for so much of my life I was in long term committed relationships. When I am in that state I often find myself wanting to spend most of my time with my partner so the rest of the world was often held at arms length.

Since that is no longer my state I am enjoying just making new friends and experiencing new situations. Despite my long term preference to be in conventional relationships I currently am not feeling the drive to seek one out. If it happens, I’m open to it but I am very aware of some of the traps I have fallen into in the past. I’m going to look very carefully before I step from here on out. If I am not getting back even a fraction of what I am putting out it’s a no go.

This weekend I would like to get some time in messing around with my two new wheels. I have a number of videos I would like to make regarding them. The weather may not cooperate as both today and Saturday are looking very wet. I will pivot and make good use of my time if need be.

I realized why I did not see any prior year entries recently in the blog. This was the time period where I was moving. I basically spent 5 days doing nothing but unpacking, sorting, rigging and organizing. You can see how it went down here.

My evening was spent tending to a number of things, first order was cleaning up the aftermath of the prior night’s live stream. It went so late that I just went to bed. I had empty boxes and packing materials strewn around the space so I cleaned up the mess.

In addition I took the two new wheels out to the driveway to get an initial feel of them. The bigger V8S is a piece of cake to ride. It’s going to be a great wheel to teach people on and use in situations where I want mobility without lugging an 80-100lb wheel around. The V8S is only roughly 35lbs.

The Mten Mini is going to be more challenging. It’s tiny form factor, super wide tire and pre-installed pads made it rough for me. The pads are not made for someone with size 13 feet, that’s for sure. I might have to eventually remove them. I am hoping with some more time on the wheel I will feel more comfortable. I plan to ride both of them quite a bit this weekend as I do review videos.

I also packed and shipped two more 3D printed stand orders which once again cleared out my stock. I need to get printing again to replenish. It’s cool that I am selling some stands once again. Helps take a dent out of the boulder of spending that has been going on.

I’ve noticed that for a little while now I have no prior year entries in the blog. It was the period of time last year when I was unmotivated to do so because I think I was subconsciously trying to appease others. Such a dumb thing.

After work yesterday I stopped at Walgreens to pick up my Mten Mini. Walgreens is a FedEx drop point so it works out well since the wheel could not be delivered without an in person signature.

I decided I wanted to open both of my new wheels on a live stream. I took some time staging my office to do so as you can see in the picture. I went the extra step of setting my Ipad as a second camera for the stream so people could get a better view of the table.

If you look closely on my desk you will also see the bottle of plum wine that I drank during the stream. I didn’t even bother getting a glass dirty, I just went straight to the bottle since I planned to finally finish it.

Every time I am shocked by how long these live streams go, I shock myself a little more, the stream in total went 15 minutes short of four hours. A primary reason for this was I had three unexpected guests join me, Roger and Dawn from California as well as Tommy from NYC. The combination of all of us made for some pretty lively and entertaining content to be sure.

I got to bed at a ridiculous time and barely was able to pull myself out of bed. Every day I am checking myself for a rash. So far so good.