It’s Presidents Day and despite the fact that the presidents aren’t really worth celebrating, it was a nice day. We started the day off getting the house cleaned up a bit which always gets me in a better mood. Then my friend Tim came over and we looked over the plantings and hung out for a bit. Then Sandy and I threw the bikes in the Xterra and headed out for a 10-mile bike ride.
Finished off the day with breakfast for dinner. Life is good.
So our friend Jen left her dirt bike here when she left because there just wasn’t room. I had completely forgotten about it when out of the blue I was compelled to ask my wife about it, after some gumshoe work, it turns out the bike was still here and still in need of being reunited with the title holder. Since we had nothing going on, we volunteered to get it.
It’s a nice bike and my only lament is that the bike is exactly what I wanted some 40 years ago and as neat as it seems right now the fatal flaw is that I would hurt myself on a machine like that. Very badly I fear. Sigh, I’ll stick with the eBike, it may not be as cool but it’s much cheaper and has no engine to contend with.
It got cold again. That’s okay, it’s probably the last blast of winter and while I’m no huge fan of cold weather, it’s certainly cheaper to heat a house than it is to cool it.
Was super excited that I figured out how to put music on my watch and then hook my headphones up to my watch via Bluetooth. This allows for unencumbered running at the rec center. It feels good to push as hard as you can for a tenth of a mile and get the heart moving. It’s a game to see how high you can get your heart rate up to. I can usually get it in the 150s. And let’s face it, I start having a heart attack, what better place to do so? It would probably take only a couple of minutes to be found and 911 called, the ambulance knows exactly where the rec center is and it is only 1.5 miles away in a straight shot.
We’re off to get a dirt bike tomorrow. Jen’s old boyfriend still had her dirtbike and for whatever reason I reminded Sandy who reminded Jen and now we’re on recovery detail. Should be interesting.
19.55 miles is my new longest bike ride of the modern era.
Sandy and I went biking on the Cotton Belt Trail mostly. We started in NRH and went 8.2 miles west into Colleyville. I was mostly manual on the way out and then e-biked it back. A good time was had by all.
The issue reported yesterday with the clockspring replacement has made some progress, it was the connection that I thought so I pulled it apart and made sure that those connectors were properly seated. So the horn is now working but the airbag light is blinking and the VDC/Slip lights are on. I think the latter is due to unplugging the steering wheel. But no idea about the airbag. I’ll research that and finish addressing it tomorrow.
So the Xterra is due for inspection and I don’t have a horn. Everything seems fine from a fuse point of view and in reading an article on what it could be it said to hold the horn and turn the wheel and if it beeps then you have a clockspring on the way out. Clockspring??? Yup, never heard of it either.
I ordered and have the part and found a video on how to do it. I’ve got it changed out but still no horn and there’s an airbag error. Grrr. I think I know what it is though, I just have to take it apart and check the connections to make sure that they are plugged in right. Such fun…
The KC Chiefs are the Superbowl champs and it was a nail-biter of a game. I was happy about the outcome. While the 9ers were an amazing football team through the season, they just haven’t paid their dues. A big payment was made last night and they’ll be back.
Sandy and I went to exercise class today and then came home, got changed, and went to the Bell Station to catch the train to Dallas to see the Perot Museum. It was nice although a little cold walking from Victory Station to the museum. The museum was nice, I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t anything that blew me away. I learned a couple of things. There were a lot of kids there and I had to calm myself and remember that this place is actually for them to hopefully create a spark for the love of science and STEM. But they’re still annoying.
We had lunch there, chicken strips and fries with a large soft pretzel with cheese. Nothing to write home about and the best thing was the ranch LOL. On the way back we noticed there were a lot of homeless that hang out on the train. Nothing scary but makes you think.
Ah, another Superbowl Sunday. This was an excuse to party in years gone by but like most of those other drinking holidays, this one has faded too. I still don’t understand why the game hasn’t been moved to Saturday. They should have done that for 50 and then on. But it’s the audience that would benefit most from that as it really doesn’t matter to the teams, they’re both off the next day no matter what day it is. It’s KC vs 49ers this year. I’ll be rooting for KC as I dig their vibe this year. I like the TK & TS angle and thought that Brittany’s SI rookie shoot was pretty wow. Conversely, 9ers are just too ‘golden’, need to rub some dirt on their jerseys and pay some more dues. And this game will be one of those dues. Go Chiefs!!!
I had a really spirited debate with myself on whether or not I should get a new laptop. My current one is a Dell that’s 5 years old and the keyboard is starting to go. Now that should have been about $50 or so but I got to thinking that it’s time for a new one. I know I’m between jobs but Sarondy LLC had about $3500 in an account and I decided to run with it. Picked up an Asus FA707XV-MS94 from Microcenter in Dallas along with a 32GB RAM upgrade.
So far it’s a screaming laptop and I’m happy with it. Doesn’t seem to have an access port to install the memory upgrade but I’m still digging into it. This laptop should last me through the rest of the decade hopefully.
So a couple of days ago, we had an issue with the NAS. It was beeping and complaining that it had a power issue and that the data needed to be scrubbed. I got that fixed and up and running again but then today, it crashed, and when it came back up, 3 of the 4 drives had error conditions and it was telling me to backup everything and click here to fix. Grrr. So I did a quick backup of the pictures and while it was doing that you could hear the sickening spin-down of the drives. With only the photos backed up, I shut it down and was going to reboot.
Fortunately, because I had a power supply crash before, I had an extra power supply at the ready. This is needed because you cannot get a Synology power supply locally. Long story short, when the new power supply was put it, the drives were reinitialized without issue and then I ran the data scrubbing operation (~16 hours) and now all is good. I need to come up with a backup strategy for the NAS.