So once again yesterday Cindy did a lot of work in the guest bathroom getting the wainscot on the walls. I came home to an almost completely finished space. There is some minor finishing and touch up to do and we are waiting for the matching sink side splash to be delivered from Home Depot.
Cindy really worked hard on the room. My only involvement really was swapping out the sink, faucet, and countertop along with making a few cuts in the wainscot. She did everything else. I certainly appreciate her efforts to keep our home clean, modern, and fresh.
It’s funny how so many people seem to get very uncomfortable living in the same house for a long time. They always are looking to move into something bigger and better. I can safely say that in the 16 years I have lived in the house I never felt dissatisfied with my accommodations. Sure it isn’t extravagant or luxurious but it is uniquely mine and through the years it has been modified, tweaked and enhanced in a way that just fits me like a glove. Whenever the day comes that I no longer call this place home will be a sad one indeed.
I like millions of other Americans, including our big league President, went outside to take a look at the solar eclipse. Unlike our president, I opted to use glasses that are designed to protect your eyes, because well, that is the smart thing to do.
I have to say, at least from my Florida vantage point which only had something like a 70% eclipse, it was a bit underwhelming. I thought that having only 25-30% of the sun exposed would result in a significant drop in daylight but it didn’t. The biggest thing I noticed was the sun did not feel as intense as it normally does on an August afternoon.
It was cool to clearly see the outline of the moon as it crept across the face of the sun climaxing in a crescent of light. I saw video of locations where the eclipse was totally full and that did seem pretty amazing where day turned into night, at least for a couple minutes. Too bad I will likely be dead before the next one comes around which should have a more southern track.
Cindy was busting her ass most of the day yesterday in the guest bathroom, painting it a deep blue color which is quite the change. When I got home I helped her do some of the cutting of the wainscot and chair rail. I lugged out my table and mitre saw to try to get cuts as clean as possible. Certain spots I had to use my jig saw and a steady hand.
When making the cuts we again ran into some issues with walls that were not straight, requiring us to try to cut at slight angles to accommodate them. The end result was not perfect but I think a generous application of caulk to the finished product will cover up the small imperfections. I’m looking forward to this latest project being done-done.
So I went into this weekend with a lot of ambitions. Not only did I want to get the yard fully manicured to take advantage of the temporary lack of standing water I also had a number of Prius maintenance tasks to do such as changing the transmission fluid, inverter coolant, and replacing yet another dead headlight. My plate was full enough that I actually had Cindy come outside with me when I got home Friday to knock the weeding out to help clear the deck for the other work to some degree.
On Saturday after we got the chicken maintenance done we headed out with Elsa in hand to run some errands. It turned out to be one of the longest errand runs in recent memory. We hit Home Depot, Pinch A Penny, Dunkin Donuts, Racetrac, and Rural King which took us all morning. However a big part of the reason it took so long was the time we spent at Home Depot. Out of the blue, despite my already having more than enough to do to hit my quota of work for the weekend, we spontaneously picked up supplies for two additional projects, a ceiling fan for the great room, and a new quartz counter top/sink combo as well as a new faucet for the bathroom. No, I’m not kidding.
I had given Cindy the go ahead to do a small remodel on the small bathroom but we did not plan to work on it this weekend, at least I didn’t. The fan was another knee jerk purchase because I wanted to have additional lighting in that area for the NFFL Fantasy Draft party I am hosting once again this year. We wound up getting a sweet looking three blade model with a bright LED and remote control.
So although we returned with all of these goodies, we still had all of our original list of things to get done first before we could be concerned with the next projects. Mowing/weed whacking the grass was pretty brutal. It was well into the 90’s and since I have not been able to do a full lawn session in several weeks due to rain and vacation it took even longer. I probably spent at least two hours out there whacking away in the stifling heat. Cindy spent three hours plus on the tractor mowing the regular yard PLUS the rear section which was reaching jungle like status.
After that fun I wasted little time before jumping into two of the Prius maintenance items, replacing the transaxle fluid and the inverter coolant, neither of which I have done since we have owned the car. Since both things are supposed to be done roughly every 50-60,000 miles I was WAY overdue. As always there were bumps in the road and lessons learned doing the work. I made a pretty big mess in the driveway.
So we were both BEAT from the long day of labor, however a little before 9PM I looked at the outlet cover on the ceiling where the fan would go and told Cindy I wanted to try to install the fan now. I am not sure what drove me to suggest it at that point, well I do, my relentless, unyielding inner taskmaster. Cindy was excited about the fan enough to be enthusiastic about getting it done, even at that late hour, which was nice.
I have installed every ceiling fan in the house, a total of 5 or 6 but they were all the exact same model. This fan was much different in appearance and installation technique for sure. Cindy did most of the work required on the floor, I was the one working at ceiling height, hanging the fan and making the electrical connections, it was not an easy install.
The fan from the diagrams seemed to be designed to be attached to full size junction box. The fan outlets in the house are roughly half as deep as a full box which created a lot of challenges getting all the wires stuffed inside the casing. In addition to all the wires, the remote control receiver, instead of being integrated inside the fan body was a separate thing that had to get jammed into the already limited space as well. To be honest, I am not quite sure how I got it all in there but after a ton of struggle I was eventually successful. Both of us were very happy with the outcome, it sort of finishes off the space and helps keep the air circulating in the large open floor plan.
So normally I would have drug my ass out of bed and forced myself to run this morning but I had to wave the white flag today. I was so sore and aching from Saturday’s work it would have just been plain stupid to try to run. I was walking around like a veteran AARP member when I crawled out of bed. Instead I again headed out to say hi to and tend to the chicken chores. After I finished I came in and worked on editing and publishing my YouTube content from Saturday as well as printing a case for the Raspberry Pi 3D printer related project I will be working on soon. (more on that later)
Katie decided to join us for an EUC ride out at Ave Maria. We all had a lot of fun. Katie is simply amazing on her wheel. Not only is she gifted, being able to ride forward, backwards, and one legged with ease, she is also fearless. She rides backwards much, much faster than I would ever feel comfortable with doing. Cindy rode her Inmotion V5F as well instead of the Msuper. She is getting much better as well. She is taking the baby steps towards learning backwards riding and also successfully rode on one foot for short periods of time. She really has the natural ability to be a better rider than me.
So once we got back our attention once again turned to the bathroom. Years ago Ali and I repainted the bathroom and installed some updated fixtures. It was the first room of the house we ever painted so it felt like a big deal at the time. However the bathroom sink still had the plain veneer topped counter with a decidedly dated and unattractive faucet. In addition to replacing the sink countertop Cindy wants to paint the bathroom a happy blue as well install wainscot.
While I was replacing the headlight bulb in the Prius Cindy started cutting the caulk on the backsplash pieces and the countertop to aid in the removal. When I came in I got under the sink to disconnect the plumbing and four screws that secured the top to the cabinet.
Like so many other things in the house, the shoddy workmanship in the guest bathroom was evident. The unsquare walls were revealed once the backsplash pieces were pulled that hid the gaps. The sink itself was centered on the cabinet but not on the countertop itself. As a result all of the plumbing lines were stretched to the right.
So the removal of the old sink was not as difficult as I feared. After removing the screws the old top lifted out pretty easily. We had identified a potential issue with the new sink. The integrated backsplash was about 1/4 inch too high to fit under the big mirror above the cabinet. In order to address it we decided to use a 1/2 in thick backing board under the mirror to attach the backsplash to. We did not have a suitable board so we made yet another trip to Home Depot to grab the board as well as nice package of wainscot.
We picked up a few other things like some liquid nail, caulk, and some screws I need for my Pi project. When we got home we jumped right back in, attaching the countertop and backsplash.
I then crawled underneath once again to hook up the new faucet. We got the same Kohler faucet we put in the master bathroom however the chrome version to match the other fixtures in the guest bathroom. Since I already installed this faucet last year I did have some familiarity with the process but I still did lean heavily on the directions at times. The end result looked great though.
One negative about the countertop is it only came with 8 inch spaced faucet holes instead of 4 inch. We plan to fill the holes with either chrome fill pieces and/or a built in hand soap dispenser which might be cool. Other than that, Cindy and I are really happy with the way the new countertop, sink, and faucet look. Most of the remainder of the work is going to be in Cindy’s court with me assisting where needed. The end result should be a pretty significantly transformed space. I’m anxious for the end result.
If you are wondering why this blog is coming out late in the weekend, it’s because yet again I am expecting another hell week at work, a rather common occurrence nowadays.
Saturday morning instead of running we were out in the mucky yard bright and early getting chores done. The daily downpours during the week has made portions of the yard pure muck, it’s disgusting. I got out on the tractor later in the afternoon to mow what I could without mud bogging.
I also did two projects on the Prius. For the second time in four months I had a headlight go out, this time the passenger side. Despite doing the job not too long ago, I struggled again with the task that requires a lot of working blind, relying on feel alone.
I then threw the car up on ramps for an oil change. Thankfully that was a much more straight forward job.
During the day I also had time to design my first Fusion 360 3D object from scratch, not following a tutorial. I struggled mightily to get the software to spit out what I wanted due to my lack of experience, but by the time I was done I had a custom sponge holder bracket that did EXACTLY what I needed it to do.
Saturday night we stayed home and watched our Netflix rental, Underworld, whatever the latest iteration is. (I think there are six of them at this point) Of course to me, Underworld is all about Kate Beckensale in tight leather outfits beating up werewolves and vampires alike. Even with this going on I found this sequel only average and would rate it a B-, still ok to rent but a waste if you saw it in theaters.
Sunday I drug myself out of bed and to the track for a VERY humid 5K around the track. I was joined by a guy walking laps at an extremely slow pace. For every one lap he completed I ran between two and a half and three laps. I was glad to be able to complete the distance without any bad pain from my right side.
When I got home I cleaned the coop and was absolutely disgusted to how mucky the front of the coop area had become. I made a snap decision that I had to do something about it. After calling the Bonita Home Depot to verify they had sod, I hauled ass there and filled the bed of the Tacoma with 15 bags of top soil and 30 pieces of sod.
I used the supplies to fill the small trench in front of the coop that gets the most disgusting. The chickens were very happy to help me spread the top soil. Anything dry is very appealing to them at this point. On Saturday I dumped 5 bags of sand into piles in their run without raking it so they would have dry stuff to dig around in.
After taking a quick shower to rinse the sweat and dirt off me we headed out to meet Katie and Daniel for an EUC ride. Daniel just got his brand new Gotway ACM this week so he was anxious to show it to us. The wheel more than doubles the speed, power and distance of the Ninebot One Daniel had been riding up until this point.
We had fun zipping around the North Collier Park grounds, taking turns switching wheels. I rode the ACM for a bit and to be honest wasn’t all the comfortable. The wheel felt small, short, yet fat between my legs. I felt a little wobbly on the wheel and much preferred the fit and ride my two larger wheels provide. Like anything, I am sure I would get more used to it with more pedal time but it really made me rethink my idea to buy a 16 inch Kingsong wheel. I may instead look at the 18 inch Kingsong wheel instead.
Late afternoon we piled the dogs into the Prius for a Rural King run which they were very excited about. It’s always fun to bring Sadie and Elsa along anywhere. They are quite the entertaining canine couple.
My work week is once again looking super busy, hence the reason this is getting punched out on a Sunday evening, an extremely rare occurrence.
So even though my CR-10 printer will likely not arrive for a couple weeks I have already been printing some parts to enhance it. The CR-10 user community is huge and active. As a result they have quickly identified potential weak points in the printers design and come up with solutions that can be 3D printed, ironically. I printed a cable strain relief bracket and some enhanced leveling knobs so far but there will be more stuff to come for sure. I can’t wait to start trying to print some bigger objects. The 12″x 12″ x 16″ print volume has some huge possibilities. One of the first things I want to try are printing tray inserts for the center console of the Tacoma to give the big space multiple levels of organization.
I think the pump I have in the back of the chicken coop yard is definitely help to accelerate the removal of standing water. Last night I turned it off. If we can get a few days without rain I would like to dig a hole in the absolute lowest spot back there which is maybe 20 feet from where it is now. I can then put a bucket in the hole and the pump in the bucket to maximize it’s water relocation potential.
Over my adult life I seem to have hobby or interest phases where I get very focused or interested in something and dedicate a LOT of time to it. Some things totally fade away, others just see less time dedicated to them. Some of the things that have rotated on and off that list are volleyball, cars, bar fitness, WoW, race timing, RC planes/drones, and electric unicycles. Well it seems that 3D printing may be officially on that list as well.
After buying my FlashForge Finder a few weeks ago CIndy and I have been on a 3D printing tear. The majority of that printing has been stuff for Cindy’s Widowmaker costume for Supercon but I have made a lot of other cool things as well. There is something very satisfying about being able to create an object out of nothing.
Well I expanded my 3D printer collection by ordering a printer that is taking the 3D printing world by storm, the CR-10. It is so popular because it is able to produce HUGE prints in multiple materials with very good quality. There are lots of printers that make really nice prints however what makes the CR-10 so crazy is it is only $400, $100 less than what I paid for my FlashForge printer.
This printer does require some minor assembly and is definitely not as targeted to the 3D printing novice as much as the Finder is. I did a decent amount of reading and researching on the CR-10 and unlike so many things in life, it actually seems to not be to good to be true. It’s a high quality, huge volume printer for a very affordable price. I’m really looking forward to digging into it once it arrives and see what I can do. I expect some more technical challenges with this type of printer but nothing that I can’t handle.
Speaking of 3D printing, Cindy has been busting ass getting the dozens of 3D parts I printed assembled for her rifle. She is almost there and it looks great. It amazes both of us that we were able to create something of this detail and realism ourselves, as complete 3D printing novices.
So I wanted to do a different kind of EUC ride for the 4th of July. I suggested to Cindy we drive all the way down to Marco Island to ride around the hilly area, something we never tried before. Cindy was enthusiastic about the idea. The drive took between 45 minutes and an hour so it was significant time investment.
We parked at the same spot the Marco Hill Run is based out of, a race I timed for years. I was initially frustrated when I turned on my GoPro and realized I left my micro-SD card in the reader at home. However I was able to run into the Publix and grab a 16GB card to save the day.
The ride was really fun, scenic, interesting, and challenging. I have NEVER ridden any EUC on hills that big. I have seen a number of videos of fellow riders on the internet pushing their wheels up and down big hills and having the bot overheat or implode. As we were riding I was using the app on my phone to make sure both the Monster and Msuper were not getting too hot from the added load. Both wheels stayed safely in the normal operating range thankfully.
Riding hills requires a different technique. Depending on the length and degree of climb you have to really pitch your body forward and shift your weight to your toes to keep the wheel going. It also feels weird going down steep declines as your speed can very quickly ramp up to uncomfortable levels. Cindy got a bunch of seated riding in too, despite the terrain. It was a great ride and I hope we can take the wheels down there again to explore other parts of the island.
So when we got home after lunch I went directly outside to mow the back yard, the area I missed on Saturday due to a downpour that submerged the yard once again. I gave the back yard a matching haircut and finished up just as it started to rain, again. By the time it stopped the standing water was back again.
We spent a lot of the rest of the day doing stuff we enjoyed, me playing WoW and Cindy working on her gun. We were trying to estimate how much time in total we have spent on the Supercon costume/gear but it would be too staggering to add up. Despite all the work, it’s something Cindy really enjoys doing so the hours don’t really matter.
I forgot to mention I have now put up a a web site for my EUC Army moniker that I established on YouTube awhile ago. I took down the running club website that I still had alive in one of my WP hosting slots on GoDaddy and installed eucarmy.com there instead, a much better use of my resources.
My thought process is when we are asked about the wheels we can simply say, “go to eucarmy.com to find out more” The site explains some of the basics as well as links to more information, a forum, and recommendations on where to buy EUC’s. I like the visuals of the site, it will be interesting to see how much traffic it will generate for me.
Our 4th of July celebration was a minimal as you can imagine. When we took Elsa out for her final walk of the night we each lit a single sparkler that was waved around for a few seconds. I had no desire to go fight traffic and crowds to witness the fireworks at the Naples Pier and there were plenty of backyard firework shows going off all around us.
I forgot to mention a call I had with my insurance agency the other day. The call was inspired by the revised monthly car insurance bill I received after adding Cindy’s Prius to my policy. Specifically, that the monthly bill more than doubled adding a 10 year old vehicle that was worth probably 10% of the Tacoma. I explained the scenario to the phone rep on the other line and how it did not make sense that my policy would increase so much more for a vehicle that is worth a tiny fraction of what the truck is. I asked him to explain to me how that is logical.
He said that the higher costs has to do with the additional safety features the Tacoma has that the Prius lacks. He said the collision portion of the policy for the Tacoma is indeed higher than the Prius but the comprehensive portion is less due to these additional safety features. I turned the discussion to the big picture cost of car insurance as for these two vehicles I am paying over $2400 a year despite being nearly 50 years old and NEVER having an accident claim or speeding ticket since moving to Florida.
I told the rep the way it used to work was as drivers get older their insurance goes down. Instead my insurance has steadily risen, despite my squeaky clean driving record. The rep said the blame for this is almost entirely litigation, specifically the mega-settlements you see TV lawyers bragging about. I told him that despite this it is very difficult for me to feel sorry for insurance companies when I read about the incredible profit margins and CEO salaries associated with them.
The rep understood my frustration and told me he was paying almost exactly the same as I was to insure his two vehicles as well. The end result of this was my dropping the collision coverage on the Prius to save a few bucks. He also said that if I opt to pay the six month premium in a lump sum instead of monthly there is a 10% savings. I did not realize the savings was that significant else I would have done it that way for a long time. I hung up not feeling particularly better about the situation but at least I got to voice some discontent I suppose.
I picked up my Tacoma on the way home last night. The recall work on the differential went without a hitch. The truck was ready to go as promised. Dealing with a different service advisor at the dealership has made my experience there much more enjoyable. I shot a video about the differential service of course.
When I got home I completed two other videos. One was me cracking open the side case of my Gotway Monster to make sure all of the wiring and electronics looked ok. The reason I did this was a rash of Gotway failures where wires and/or electronic components inside their wheels failed causing rider injury. I was happy to see the inside of my wheel looked pristine.
Finally I ripped the video of the time lapse print of the 3d lamp cover I made in Fusion 360. It was my coolest print to date, until I printed a 3D mesh skull yesterday. 🙂
The property is back to being water logged after a week of afternoon storms. I have the pump back up and running, trying to somehow stay ahead of the steady stream of water from the sky. It’s frustrating.
This weekend we will have Sadie which will make Elsa VERY happy. It makes the entire household better when Sadie and her happy go lucky attitude is rolling around the house.
So I had a LOT of stuff I wanted to get done this weekend. I gave Cindy my potential list and she busted ass on Friday getting a number of the indoor components of the list knocked out which I greatly appreciated. Friday had been bright and sunny for the most part and the forecast was for Saturday to be much of the same. I was hoping to be able to get a pretty comprehensive mowing session in to take advantage of the receded water.
The weather forecast was accurate for the most part and the end result was a monster chore day on Saturday. Not only did Cindy and I mow and weed whack the normal portions of the yard, I also took the tractor out back and cut everything back there as well. There were a handful of other small projects we threw in the mix. The end result was my not coming back inside until after 4PM.
When we ran to Home Depot earlier in the day we also stopped at Walmart for Cindy to grab some Zima, yes, Zima. After around a decade hiatus Coors has decided to bring back Zima on a limited basis which was awesome news to me. You see when I started drinking at 24 years of age Zima was my alcohol of choice. I had not acquired a taste for beer as of yet and the smooth citrus taste of Zima made them go down very easily, possibly too easily as I had MANY Zima induced stupors in my mid-20s.
We had several bottles in the fridge getting cold during the afternoon. After a long, hot, sweaty day of work I couldn’t imagine a better time to give Zima 2.0 a taste test. I thought the moment was important enough to capture on video. The ridged side bottle was exactly as I remembered 20 years ago. When I cracked open the bottle my first taste was not a sip, it was a guzzle, I was so thirsty.
I immediately was in a taste time machine, transporting me back to the 90’s. The clear beverage tasted exactly as I remembered and that means it was goooood. Cindy somehow missed out on the Zima craze back then but she was more than willing to give it a try this time around. She was quite pleasantly surprised, she really liked the taste as well.
About halfway into her bottle she added some chamborg to it. By the time she finished that she was full blown drunk. I finished my first bottle before the video was over and followed up with three more bottles in short order. It was the perfect reward for a day of hard labor. I can only hope our hardcore patronage of Zima over the summer is enough to make Coors carry the magical drink on a permanent basis.
My Zima induced mild drunkenness helped me enjoy our Netflix rental, The Great Wall a little bit more. Cindy said the movie had gotten awful reviews and it didn’t take me long to see why. The story and plot was just silly and I was really surprised an accomplished actor like Matt Damon would have agreed to be a part of it after reading the script. It had good action and visually cool cinematics at least to keep it in the C range. Cindy stopped watching about halfway through and worked on her gun instead.
Speaking of her gun, at this point we have pretty much all of the individual parts 3D printed and they look cool. However this was only the first and possibly easier portion of the gun creation. Assembling the dozens of pieces in a clean way is not going to be easy at all but I am letting that part of the process completely in Cindy’s hands. The gun is held together by a combination of glue, metal rods, and magnets.
Over the weekend I also downloaded and installed Fusion 360 which is software that allows you to make your own 3D objects from scratch. I played around in it a little. It seems very complex but powerful. It will require a lot of time of mine just playing around in there to get the hang of things.
Sunday morning Cindy and I set the alarm to get in a run, hoping an earlier start time would help minimize the oppressive heat and humidity. Despite taking our first stride around 6:45 it was still a miserable slog. There were many times I felt like stopping during the 5K but I had designated the run as a psuedo tribute to Tuki in my mind. Everytime I felt like stopping I just thought about Tuk and the anger I feel towards myself about it. The physical discomfort I was feeling was only a small portion of the punishment I felt I deserved.
Although we just ran a 5K I had another type of endurance activity in mind for the electric unicycles, the 20 mile round trip ride to Dunkin Donuts. When I suggested it to Cindy I sort of expected a knee jerk negative reaction but instead she seemed sort of into it. She had never ridden much more than 10 miles before and never in a sustained high speed commuting type of scenario on main roads. We strapped on our safety gear and headed out into the steamy morning air.
At first I thought Cindy would demand we stayed on sidewalk for most of the ride however she actually suggested we use the Immokalee Road bike lane for most of it instead. The idea of criss crossing the six lane road multiple times to stay on the sidewalk did not appeal to her. She did quite well maintaining a steady 18+ mph pace on the Msuper once we go into the long straightaway portion of the ride. Having the seat for the Monster also was a big plus as it allowed her to ride probably 8-9 miles of the 20 in the seated position which she is really getting adept at.
There were parts of the ride when she was on the Monster that she was riding quite fast, fast enough that my Msuper gave me a “hey, slow down” warning beep a couple times. It was a fun ride and Cindy pulled back into the driveway now much more confident in her ability to ride the wheels longer distances.
We had a nice rest of the day at home outside a brief run to Rural King to grab a couple things. It seemed like an almost perfectly balanced weekend where we worked very hard on Saturday but worked hard on Sunday doing what we wanted to do instead of what we tasked ourselves to do. Cindy wound up the weekend with a good dinner and an even better homemade chocolate cake. A couple more Zima’s helped put a happy exclamation point on the two days.
I have a good chunk of vacation time to use up before my annual rollover in mid-August. I also have a bunch of small projects on my mental to do list that would benefit from taking a few long weekends. I actually had hoped to either take today or Monday off to facilitate just that but can’t because of various work commitments both days. Don’t get me wrong, having to find ways to jam in vacation time is a good problem to have but it is a problem nonetheless.
Last night in addition to cranking out more 3D prints I recorded a video about a recent safety issue with newly produced Gotway wheels. Well actually I recorded the video twice. The first time I neglected to remember that I had the camcorder set to time lapse mode so my 10 minute video got compressed into 10 seconds of footage. The video talks about the very dangerous problem where going over a very minor bump can cause a Gotway wheel to oscillate violently back and forth, throwing the rider to the ground.
Marty, one of my online EUC buddies had just received a brand new Gotway Msuper and was filming as he took it out for it’s first real test ride. As he crossed a small bump between the road and sidewalk ramp his wheel shook rapidly and tossed him hard onto the sidewalk. He screwed up his wrist pretty bad as well as his shoulder. Anyway my video outlines my thoughts about the whole ordeal and why I plan to get a Kingsong 16S for my next wheel instead of dipping back into the Gotway world. I have plenty of ways to hurt myself already, I don’t need a wheel failure to do it for me.
This weekend has a lot of 3D printing and a lot of sweaty work ahead of it. Yay.
So Cindy and I have been 3D printing day and night, printing parts for her Widowmaker gun. Yesterday a flaw in our set up was revealed when one of our frequent summer power blips killed a print that was over halfway done. I immediately ordered a small UPS that should prevent this scenario from repeating. I also ordered another Night Owl camera to add to the house security DVR that will be focused on the 3D printer so jobs can be monitored remotely. Otherwise we seem to have a good system in place.
We are pumping out parts pretty regularly, at least two per day. My main job is getting the 3D models configured and printing. Cindy has been doing the post print work which includes cleaning up the pieces after removing the support material and eventually assembling it all together. The printed parts look really sharp, I’m hoping for an equally sharp outcome. At this point I have almost entirely consumed my one kilogram reel of silver PLA filament. It’s a good thing I have another one on the way.
So once again there were some downpours yesterday at the house, retarding my battle against standing water in the coop yard. The pump I have back there seems to be very good quality. It has been running around the clock for close to a week without issue. The forecast calls for roughly a three day break from precipitation which would be fantastic. The combo of bright hot/sun combined with pumping water elsewhere should be able to empty out the water in that period of time. hopefully.
Of course the long term solution to this problem is to raise the ground level in that area. Trying to do it one 40 pound bag of topsoil at a time would be rather brutal but might be the eventual route I have to take.
So once again yesterday Cindy did a lot of work in the guest bathroom getting the wainscot on the walls. I came home to an almost completely finished space. There is some minor finishing and touch up to do and we are waiting for the matching sink side splash to be delivered from Home Depot.
