Neighborhood Garage Sale

Yesterday was our annual neighborhood garage sale. I usually jump in my car and make a pass through the neighborhood, in the past I have gotten some good deals.

This year there was everything from a really clean 55 Chevy Sedan Delivery,

to a barely used Bocee Ball set.

A block from my house I found this brand new bike with a $20 post it note on it. I didn't really even look at it before pulling cash out of my pocket. After a quick conversation with the owner he told me he had been given they bike at work and had never ridden it.

After explaining I would be back to pick it up I started walking to the next house, thinking I would now need to find one for Tania as well. I had been looking for a his and hers set but nothing I had really pursued.

Next door there were two his and her Schwinns that I was not sure if they were for sale or if someone had ridden them there. I looked around a bit and then asked the home owner if she was selling them. At this point I was just curious since I had just bought a bike. She informed me they were for sale for $10 apiece.

Now I have three bikes...

I looked them up online last night and found the Polaris is currently available and sells for around $240.00. The Schwinns are about 8 years old and sold for just over $200.00 apiece. I think I will sell the Polaris on Craigslist (the Schwinn is a better bike) and use the money to buy some lights for the Schwinns.

There is trail head for a bike path about .5 miles from our house that I would like to start riding on.

Spring has Sprung

Ten days into spring and after a 30+ degree temperature swing from this morning, this hits:

Its forecasted to be in the upper 50s again tomorrow.

Water Leak

A few weeks ago we had gone out to eat for supper and on the drive back home Tania mentioned she thought there was a water leak on the side of the house. Its street side on which I don't normally drive so I wouldn't have seen it. When we got home I walked over and seen fresh water running from our lawn, over the curb and into the storm drain, not exactly normal for 18° weather. After looking around a little more I notice water coming out around the cover to the water meter.

Our water meter is inside a 30 gallon barrel buried in the lawn. I took the mini man hole cover off of it and seen it was not only completely full of water but over running. Like an idiot I took my coat off and stuck my arm in the pit to see if I could feel any leaks, I could hear it leaking but it was so cold my hand and arm went completely numb in about five seconds.

Not having any way to drain the barrel, I called a buddy and was over at his house at 10:30pm borrowing two of his sump pumps. One made short order of draining the barrel and within three minutes I was able to look down at everything, there was no leak in the barrel and no movement on the meter. I could see the water running down the inside of the barrel from the street side so it was obviously leaking on the water companies side of the street some five feet under the dirt.

After putting away the pumps and cords I came inside and called the emergency leak number for the water company. I told the nice lady on the phone what the problem was and what I had done. She commented on most people not going to that extreme before calling and I explained I wanted to validate it was their problem to fix and not mine. That's when she informed me the line isn't drawn at the meter its where ever the easement is, great...

The next day they sent a guy out in a van, he looked around a bit and pulled out a 12v pump that looked like it belonged in a fish tank. We stood there for 20 minutes while this pump tried to drain more water than was rushing in only for him to come to the same conclusion I had the night before. He informed me that he would need to send out another truck that could locate the leak by sound.

A week later I came home and found this:

It looks like they fond the leak under the slabs, the main shutoff for the block is about 30 feet south of where the slabs were removed. They also managed to break one of the slabs with the backhoe so now Ill have three that dont match.

It will probably be a while bfore they come out and pour them, its too cold to do it now. The more important thing is, I still don't know if they are paying for this or I am.

Trump Rally

Yesterday I was afforded the opportunity of attending a Trump rally as a VIP. Originally it was going to be held where I work and at the last minute, Southport High School became available. I don't know all of the logistics but I'm guessing something as simple as not needing to obtain chairs for everyone would be a big deciding factor between hosting it in a hangar versus a gymnasium. Because we had expended some effort they gave us three VIP passes. Because it was last minute these were passed down from above until I got one of them.

Trump was not scheduled to speak until 7pm but we decided to be there by 2pm. Even arriving that early I had to park a half mile from the school. Walking from where we parked there were numerous street vendors much like a NASCAR event all selling various types of Trump paraphernalia. Once we arrived at the school it took a bit to find where we were entering. Even that early there were still at least 20 people in the VIP line. I could see at least three general public lines, this is a picture of just one of them.



This is a shot of of my good friend Jack as we waited in line.

At 4pm they started letting people in, we were given wrist bands and went through a metal detector. On the other side of the metal detector was an agent dressed in full combat gear searching people. After I passed through I walked up to him and raised my arms just like everyone before me had done, he then waved me on past, and people say I am intimidating.

We were then escorted to our seats which were just to the left of the stage. Apparently this is the area that the governor and other dignitaries would be sitting. As we were walking down the stairs I asked our escort what the yellow wrist bands we were given meant (they weren't visible under the sleeves of our jackets). He stopped and said oh you have those, you can sit wherever you want. Jack told him he wanted to sit directly behind the stage. He then passed us off to another escort that seated us in the first row behind the stage.

The next three hours were fairly mind numbing as we waited for the rally to start. With so many people in that area there was no cellular service and about once every 15 minutes our escort would move us either to the left or the right along the row we were sitting in as more people were seated. In the end after moving at least five times we ended up in the same exact location we initially sat at. During this time MAGA hats were handed out along with multiple sign boards that we were instructed to enthusiastically wave during the rally. There was also much discussion about placement of children and removal of various adults from the area immediately behind the podium.

About 15 minutes before the rally was to start our escort came over and informed us if we needed to use the restroom we should now and for the next two hours we would need to stand.

All of the pictures I took were on a loaner Iphone 6 which didn't work well with the stage lights pointed directly at us, but I still managed to get a few good pictures.

Here you can see the teleprompter, this was right before Vice President Pence gave his speech.

In this picture just next to Trumps left elbow is Medal of Honor recipient Sammy Davis. Trump actually pointed at him when he walked out and saluted him. Prior to the rally start he had a continuous line of people wanting to shake his hand and meet him, going all the way up the stairs on to the mezzanine.

This was taken with no zoom, we were that close.

Trump actually stayed on que with his speech for the most part. It was neat to be able to see what he was reading and when he went off on his own. During his speech he brought out Bobby Knight, but before he came out Trump went off on his own for so long that they brought a chair into the entry tent for Bobby to sit on.

One other thing bad about where we were sitting was the acoustics, basically I could only hear about 50% of what the speakers were saying, so I tried to follow along with the teleprompter.

After the rally once I got to my truck, my phone exploded with emails, texts etc. as it started getting service again. I got messages from people who said they saw me on TV and some even took pictures of their TV and sent them to me. Tania recorded the rally on TV and I watched it last night to see how much I had actually missed. Each news feed had a different camera angle which dictated wither Jack, David and I were visible or not.

This morning Trump tweeted this picture.

Vacation - Chicago

Last year I had the opportunity to take one of the "Architectural Tours" on a river boat while I was in Chicago on business. It was late fall and literally a week or so before they stopped running for the year. I thought Tania would enjoy it as much as I did so we decided to go to Chicago for the weekend.

I used some Marriott points and we stayed in a new Marriott on the south side of Chicago. Rooms facing the lake or the city were $40.00 a night more than the rooms facing south or west.

We spent the first evening there signing up and buying tickets for what we wanted to do on Sunday.

The Museum of Science and Industry was just a few miles south of our hotel. We signed up for the "Giant Dome Theater" and the U-505 exhibit in the morning with just under two hours to get to the dock for the "Architectural Tour".

The Giant Dome Theater was good but the U-505 was awesome. As you made your way to the exhibit there were long hallways that had everything from signboards to holograms that told the story of how the U-505 was captured. Just as you get to the point of capture, you turn a corner and this is your first view.

You could literally reach out and touch the sub from the mezzanine.

The lighting under the sub flickered to give the illusion of it being in water. Around the base of the sub there were multiple displays set up which contained artifacts from the sub. It was amazing the amount of items they still had that were in the sub as well as what they found years later when it was moved into the building.

The conning tower shows the damage from both small arms fire as well as a deck gun.

If you have ever been in a sub before, I would not recommend paying extra to tour the inside. Its a pain to schedule and not that much to see.

After you leave the display there are more signboards that explain how the sub was brought to Chicago, the time it spent on the lake and how it came about to be where it is currently housed.

We were able to leave the museum and make it to the dock with 30 minutes to spare. The Architectural Tour I would also highly recommend, even with doing it a year before, because I went on a different companies tour most of the information the guide narrated was new to me. The tour takes about 90 minutes to accomplish and it was a perfect day for it.

Because we went in the afternoon I didn't get any good pictures, they were all washed out by the sun. This is a picture from the last time I went.

The following day we had planned to drive though Rockford and follow the river down to St Louis. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and driving a scenic route 500+ miles in the rain didn't sound like a ton of fun so we headed home.

Football

I walk a lot at work, even if I spend most of the day in my office my walk is a minimum of a mile. I was also going though dress shoes like I owned stock in their companies until I started buying Red Wings. Yesterday I was walking across the hangar and realized the ball of my right foot hurt. it felt like my sock was bunched up in my shoe, I took it off and found nothing out of the ordinary. Later in the day I found myself taking it off again to check the sock. I then stuck my hand inside the shoe to feel the insole and it felt weird, when I flipped the shoe over I found this.

Immediately I start thinking to when I bought these, because they are expensive shoes and have a year warranty on them. Convinced they weren't a year old yet I jumped in my truck and drove over to the Red Wing store all puffy chested and mad.

The nice young lady working the counter convinced me that it was almost two years since I had bought them. Now that I documented it here I can just check the date when the next pair wears out.

Range Fun - Update

I spoke to my boss today about the AR-15 I sighted in for him yesterday, and through that conversation the mystery was solved as to why the windage was full right. The scope is a UTG Bugbuster and it has a lighted reticle for which he believed there was a spare battery. Instead of screwing off the cover on the left side of the scope he turned the windage knob full CCW on the right side of the scope.

At least I know now why it was so far off.

ATS Allignment

Three weeks ago I took Tania's ATS in to a shop near work for an alignment. The place is very reputable and they have done at least three alignments for me in the past.

That afternoon they called me for what I was expecting to be a notification of the car being ready. Instead it was to let me know they had damaged it. Apparently the alignment tech left the alignment fixture still attached to the passenger side front wheel as he drove it off the rack. It hit the fender just behind the wheel and then pulled the fixture off the wheel, scratching it.

 
The Manager was very apologetic, had already contacted his body shop and had someone over to look at it. I was concerned not knowing who his "body shop" was, so I set my expectations of only OEM parts and let him know how particular I was. We mad arrangements for me to bring it back in just over a week and how they would pay for a rental.

I picked it up yesterday and looked it over closely. Even with the knowledge that it had happened I could not find any indication of it being repaired, I was very impressed with the quality of the work. When speaking to the Manager I thanked him for replacing the wheel, I found out they had it "repaired" and had used a wheel repair shop I have used twice in the past. It looked perfect, actually better than it had before because they removed the road rash from it as well.

Vegas Vacation

Its been a loooonnnng time since we went on a real vacation. A few months ago Tania purchased a Southwest Vacation for Vegas, basically plane tickets and a hotel. I've been in Vegas a few times over the past few years for various reasons but Tania hasn't been there since our vacation in 1993.

When we arrived in Vegas it took us a while to find the Uber pickup area for the airport, its on the second floor of the short term parking garage. We were staying at the MGM and once we dropped off our bags we hit the strip for something to eat. I did a Google search for what was rated as a good buffet and the one listed on multiple sites was at Caesars Palace, so we headed that way while taking in the desert sun and warmth I have missed so much. I haven't been to that area of the US since we moved back to Indy from Tucson.

I haven't been in Caesars Palace before so it took us a little while to find the buffet. I was glad to see there was no one in line to get in and was looking around as Tania paid for us. While we were being seated I looked across the table at Tania, she looked like she was going to be sick. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "I had no idea this was going to be over $160,00. I'm pretty sure I was able to replicate the same look she had, so in an effort to find the glass half full side of this, I saw a flyer that said something about all you can drink alcohol. When the waitress came over to the table and asked us what we wanted to drink I told her I would have a beer, and she asked if I wanted a bucket of six, I said sure. She then went on to explain that I could do the all you can drink (pointing at the flyer) for an additional $30.00 a piece. I then promptly ordered some iced tea. The remainder of the trip was a game for us in finding the cheapest places we could to eat. The buffet was good but maybe $35.00 each good.

We spent the rest of the night wandering around and headed back to the hotel early that evening. I did find some socks for my boss who has some kind of strange fetish for ugly socks.

After deciding that purchasing them for him could potentially be career limiting, I showed him this picture when we got back. He liked them so much he immediately went online and ordered a pair.
Saturday we walked the casinos did a bunch of shopping and bought a massive margarita. I had bought some tickets for KÀ by Cirque du Solei. I have never been to a Vegas show before so I didn't know what to expect, all I can say is if you get a chance to go you must go, it was very impressive. Don't worry about getting the best seats, even though we were in the fourth row I don't think it would have mattered much where we sat.

They didn't allow cameras during the show so I took a couple pictures before it started, the area surrounding the stage was awesome.

The next day we rented a car and drove to the Hoover Dam. I have wanted to visit the Hover Dam for quite a while but even with us living in Arizona for two years we never made the trip.
We rented a car with the points I had acquired, from a hotel near by. When we arrived the agent informed me they didn't have a midsize sedan available so they had upgraded me to a Range Rover, which for 24 hours cost me $1.86.

This is something you must do if you have the chance, its like a 25 minute drive from Vegas. Going early in the morning is important, it was busy when we got there but when we left there was literally a five plus mile line of cars trying to get in.
Even though we did get there early the full blown power plant tour had a 3 hour wait, so we took the standard tour which was still very good. It took us down in the dam to where the water inlets were and we were able to see the generator room as well. Its a very impressive place with tons of the original Art Deco everywhere.

When we got back into Vegas and while we had a vehicle, we drove over to Gold and Silver Pawn.
It was much smaller inside than I had envisioned and obviously none of the now millionaires that work there were at work, There were some pretty cool items on sale though and its not far off the strip so its worth the visit. I would bet that 98% of the people that were inside were doing the same thing.

Overall it was a good trip and nice to get away for a few days.

Dead Dryer

Nothing like spending a week away from home, looking forward to relaxing a day and finding out you have a new project.

I know nothing about driers but I decided I would figure it out. After 10 minutes with the cordless impact and 5 minutes with a Fluke I found the heating element broken. The new element from Amazon will be here tomorrow, it looks fairly easy to change. 

Al Bundy

I was traveling back from Dallas yesterday after a business trip. Normally I would be on Southwest but flight availability put me on an American flight. I had just looked up from watching a movie on my tablet when I saw this.

No this isn't photo-shopped and no I'm not on a SWA flight.

How does that even happen? Its like a rerun from Married with Children and Al Bundy is trying to find his seat. I also like the very professional flight attendant who has just seen the toilet paper and is probably trying to decide how to tell the guy without embarrassing him in front of the entire plane load of people.

One second after I took the picture the flight attendant with ninja like reflexes managed to grab the toilet paper right at the guys waist and tear it off without him even knowing. He then quickly wadded it up like it was something that happens every day.

Al Bundy never even knew it happened..

New Hooptie

After another long week in beautiful Rockford IL, I was looking forward to going home and spending a night in my own bed. The drive between Brownsburg and Rockford has to be one of the most boring drives a person could make. Most notably the stretch between Normal IL and Rockford IL. The trees along the highway are bent at their tops permanently, indicating not only the prevalent wind direction, but also a place I would never want to live. Apparently I am not the only one that thinks that way because there is nothing out there except some wind generators.

After making the 270 mile drive back home my son was waiting in the GMC at Hertz when I pulled in to drop off my car.I have made the drive enough times now that when I leave Rockford I can call him and give him a five minute window in which I will be arriving home.

After turning in the keys I climbed into the truck and Matty said, "Is it ok if we go look at a car"?

Not really my first idea of relaxation after driving through the snow for 270 miles.

I know he has been looking for a while, so I said "sure where is it"? to which he replied "a little north of South Bend".

The only thing north of South Bend besides Canada is Michigan. To make matters worse it was 5:30 and we would need to drive through some of the heaviest traffic in Indy during rush hour to get there.

Immediately I started formalizing reasons for why this would be a better trip to make on Saturday. Which he clearly expected because he had logical answers for everything. You can sleep and Ill drive. Its a Friday night he might sell it tonight. If we go tonight it wont ruin your day tomorrow.

Most of that was true except for the sleep on they way up part.

Once we got there and he looked at the car I knew right away I would be driving the 150 miles home so he could drive the car back.

He managed to find a two owner 2004 Jetta GLI with 27k original miles for $6500.00. I was skeptical as he was telling me about it on the drive up. But once we looked at the car it was apparent it was the original mileage. There are simple things you can look at such as the leather on the steering wheel and shift knob, the wear on the Recaro seats and the condition of carpet and sill plate, all of which looked new.

We both drove the car a few miles, it ran well and had no squeaks or rattles with very little wind noise.Apparently the seller was related to the original owner who purchased the car as more of toy / project / weekend car. He had done a lot of modifications to it, a Stage III turbo kit (you can see the massive intercooler and ducting though the front bumper), Euro headlights, lowering struts, stainless exhaust and a massive stereo with a overhead drop down screen. The modifications were the only thing that concerned me about the car, the wiring for the fog lights was very poorly done and some of it actually looked damaged. The had acquired the car intending to keep it but apparently his wife didn't like it or something so he had only had it a few months.

Other than a small paint blemish on the front bumper and the passenger mirror cover missing, the car looked like it was 1-2 years old. The paint on it is in really good shape for being 14 years old. The underside was clean, the brakes looked good and the tires looked to be fairly new. It was obvious it was well taken care of.

The previous owner also de-badged the car and put in an aftermarket front grille, which at a glance makes it look as much like a old BMW as a Volkswagen.

The day ended with me traveling almost 600 miles, but it was worth it for Matty. This should be a good car for him and last him quite a few years.

Christmas Present

The wife unit got me a Kobalt 1/2" cordless impact for Christmas this year. I already have a 1/4" impact, 3/8" drill, flashlight and three batteries.

I wont go into details on why these are great tools, there are plenty of detailed reviews on the internet for them. What I like about them besides how powerful they are, is how cheap the batteries are for them. The smallest battery is 1.5Ah and sells for 10.99. These are so cheap that people are buying them to take the 18650 battery cells out of them for projects, tactical flashlights, etc. There are six of them in the 1.5Ah battery, made by Samsung and generally sell for $2.50-3.00 a piece. I'm sure whomever is making these for Kobalt is getting some volume discount but it appears to be a loss leader to me.

What I do know for sure is I can buy four of the 1.5Ah batteries and it is half the price of a single battery for most any other quality brand cordless tool. The battery cost is why I never had cordless tools before, I just don't use them enough to justify a $80.00-90.00 battery that will go bad in 3 years.

Now that I have them I do use them more than I thought I would, especially the 1/4" impact and the flashlight. Even with the small 1.5Ah battery the life is pretty impressive. Plus for the cost you can have more than enough extra batteries charged and ready to go.

Rental

I have been traveling to Rockford IL for work, every week for the last six weeks. During that period I ended up putting about 700 miles a week on rental cars. I usually end up with a Hyuanda Elantra or a Nissan Altima with an occasional Malibu, the only one I actually like getting. Going into this I did not realized that you can be a Hertz Gold Member simply by signing up to be one. The change in how I was treated at Hertz was night and day once I signed up.

This week when I showed up the Manager was all excited to show me he had a premium rental for me at the same cost as my normal rental, it was a 2017 Mustang GT. Me not being a Ford fan at all was less than excited but with the alternative being one of those horrible Hyuandas, I took it.

Five miles into the drive I was ready to take it back, the wind noise coming from the passenger side was like the window was cracked 1/2 open. It was loud enough that I pulled over, looked at it, Googled the window sync procedure for a Mustang and tried stuffing napkins in the seal. In the end, the best fix was for it was turning up the nice infotainment system to a level that I couldn't hear the wind leak anymore.

The Hyuanda waiting next to it.

Its nice having a rental with remote start in Rockford when the temperature is below 20.

 The car ended up getting about 26mpg average for me, I really don't do much in town driving during the week there. I will admit I had fun driving it, the exhust tone on the car was awesome and the rev matching made it sound even better. The car felt very heavy to me and even in sport mode settings it was a bit piggish around corners with the rear of the car feeling mushy. Unfortunately for the Mustang my other car is a Corvette and well at least against this Mustang there is no comparison.

When I returned the car, the Manager came out again. He all excited wanting to know if I liked the car and enjoyed it that week. I told him no not really, I complained about the wind noise hoping that would end the conversation but he pressed on. I then went on to explain that my daily driver was a Corvette to which he responded "Oh I see" and walked off like I just kicked his dog. I fully expect to have a Hyuanda waiting for me next Monday, thats ok because I still hate Fords.

Fishing Trip - Fort Lauderdale

I took a some guys from work along with our customer on a fishing trip in Fort Lauderdale this week.

Its not something I was necessarily looking forward to, I have never been on this type of fishing trip and probably had some preconceived notions to what it would be like.

I ended up having a great time, with some good memories. I am not going to show pictures of who went with me or list names. I will say we got there the day before, went out the night before and one of the group didn't make the boat the next morning. He had to retrieve his cell phone from someone named George that was texting our group text when we thought we were chatting with our friend...

I sent Tania this picture just to show her the view from our hotel bar at the marina, she thought I was sending her a picture of the boat we were going out on. It happens to be the Sovereign a little boat with 8k square feet of living space. Its also for sale for a paltry 32.5 million.

 Our boat showed up a few hours later.

The following morning we headed out at 8am. The houses in the area were quite impressive.

This was one of the many superyachts  we passed on the way out of the marina. Out of curiosity I Googled "Vibrant Curiosity" and found the superyacht had its own wiki page. Apparently the $111,000,000 superyacht has a fuel capacity of 285.000 liters which at $2.50 a gallon for marine diesel would cost around $189k just to fill her up. Note what appears to be a Eurocopter on the helo pad.

The first hour or so while we were just off the coast trying to catch bait this was all over the place apparently on maneuvers.

 Cell phone coverage was pretty impressive, at one time we were 30+ miles out.

We ended up catching limit of kings and one albacore. It was a beautiful day and the water was very calm till we were returning around 5pm.

We passed by these at the end of the day on the way back into the marina. This is the "Seven Seas" and apparently belongs to Steven Spielberg. When I looked it up the information I could find was he is building another one because this one is too small. In the interim he rents it out for 1.2 million a month. At that rate with no interest it would take him 13 years to pay it off.

 

This military looking yacht is "Scat" which belongs to a former Microsoft software engineer.

This is me with one of the kings, I caught two, but which two who knows. All the fish went to the motel and they cleaned them and had a big fish fry. They served the albacore raw it was very tasty.

I wont explain this one, the right people know what it is.