Month: April 2025

–Moved plants around on back patio for better aesthetics. Hope they grow.

–Rode the canal. It wiped me out.

–Took Grace shopping at REI in Folsom for Will Cantelon’s birthday.

–Two spinners came in: NJT Handpower NeBu 2 in basketweave zircuti and superconductor. Ludicrously expensive, but extremely pretty.

–Got a haircut at Great Clips.

–Another really dank day. Did nothing.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Cool, dank day.

–Spent a while polishing the Modusworks mokume bar. It’s shiny, but as with a couple other polished mokume spinners, there’s a LOT less contrast bewteen the different metals. I see why makers etch these.

–Made pizza for dinner. Pretty good.

–Went to UPS to pick up (a) Nexium, (b) LIC EDC crystal ti Chonky (very nice, but finish is sort of dull, not highly polishable, and doesn’t really grab me). Stopped at Bel Air for coffee beans.

–Did a fairly major trimming of front patio plants to free up the abutilon. It’s really going bananas.

–Cool, windy day. Didn’t do much except polish spinners.

–Lubed the bike chain.

–Took Grace to Target to get a birthday present for Cindy.

–Biked to UPS to pick up (a) A couple of stainless steel Modusworks Ergo fidgets, bi and tri. Super nice. (b) A Modusworks Ergo bi titanium in oil slick finish. Has some marks, but also nice. Came with “standard” buttons and Ray Gun buttons, also in oil slick. (c) A vintage NOS Interplak toothbrush. It rotates rather than the oscillates, which I like.  It expressly comes apart (“Open Here”), maybe for battery replacement, which I also like. Mostly, it has no timer. Brush has short bristles and feels harsh, so will look for something a little softer.

–One of our many alarms went off this morning. We couldn’t pin down the source, so I got out my big ladder and climbed to the ceiling. Nope. Turned out to  be the CO alarm next to the thermostat. Got a new one at Home Depot and installed it.

–Stopped at Bel Air for Grace’s “fill-in” shopping.

–Took a shower and shave. I look and feel much better. Cautiously optimistic about sunspot on forehead; too soon to tell about cheek and nose.

–Red Baron pizza for dinner.

–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final.

–Picked up stuff at UPS: (1) Copper superconductor fidget from eBay from China, long time shipping. Super nice piece, especially fro $115. (2)Two Modusworks from Dan Ketcham: OG copper Spinamathing with superconductor buttons (big and impressive, but not well balanced), and mokume Ergo (nice, not exciting). (3) KAP Rose XL in mokume. Super nice, but looks like it’s had six previous owners, four of whom abused it. Takes a nice polish, and I’m on the fence about grinding out the dings and dents.

–Kenny Whitcombe’s brother died in a bike accident in Davis. Wearing a helmet, hit a vehicle hard enough to put him in a coma, so they pulled the plug.

–Bruce Franz’s wife Tucky died. She was three weeks younger than me.

–Walked to Bel Air for turkey burgers, potato salad and corn. All good, the corn surprisingly so.

–Bought a boatload of spinners.

–Started noticing issues with new posts not showing up on my websites. May have to go with a more modern/standardized theme than Hemingway. What a pain.

–Went to UPS to pick up Gareth Bull Hatchling knife. Beautiful scales, some scratches on blade. I took it apart and fixed (a) centering, and (b) slam shut –> nudge shut.

–Rode the canal. Learned (a) that riding upwind is really draining, and (b) I still have claustrophobia. Tried riding straight through outbound; had to stop and turn on light. Stopped to let my eyes adjust inbound; still had to use the light. It’s not as bad as it was before cataract surgery, but it’s there.

–Stopped at Bel Air for protein bars, cream cheese, mozzarella cheese, garlic and shallots.

–Made pizza for dinner. Made sauce with a can of San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, shallot, salt/pepper. Pretty good.

–Bel Air had fresh corn. Barbecue season has begun.

–Took a photo of Kenny’s upstairs bed and gave it to him so he can try and sell it. Also had Walgreen’s print up my three DV photos for framing.

–Stopped at UPS to pick up Fellow steaming pitcher (okay, not perfect) and Modusworks SS Machinamathing–from eBay, claimed to be NOS and was. A bargain.

–Took the BMW to Sacramento Eye to get my lens prescription. Took the prescription to Eyecare Optometry on Sunrise to talk about potential changes. They were pretty non-helpful. Couldn’t tell what brand my current lenses are, couldn’t/didn’t look up anything about VSP. A reddit thread said Hoya lenses are the best, but then it turns out Sac Eye carries Hoya, so I might already have the best. If so, I can’t say much about their scratch resistance (or their quality control on the first set).

–Stopped at Bel Air to deposit my state tax check ($167 resulting from a complex and mysterious foul-up in estimated taxes, or refund, or…). Also picked up milk, cookies and pizza for dinner.

–Biked to UPS to pick up Rotablade tri. Fine spinner.

–Took a 6.5 mile bike ride on ARP. Cool and windy.

–Nugget Margherita pizza for dinner.

–Seems Monterey BMW sold (or got rid of) my 330i trade-in.

–Though IRS sent me a refund different from what TurboTax calculated, they apparently haven’t yet “processed” my return. Crap.

–Went to New York Bagel for a dozen sesame. Got navigation working on the Z Flip 5.

–Rode the ARP west for 10.46 total miles. Nice day.

–Noticed my Indy Thicc copper Chelsea spinner has all kinds of nicks and dings in it. Looks like it was the first “real” spinner I got (1/1/25, maybe a fake date), with no record of seller or price. Might have to buy another one just to get “perfect.”

–Warm: 86 today.

–Went to Philz Coffee on R in Sacramento to get a pound of Jacob’s Wunderbar. Could not get Android Auto to do anything except turn on the radio, so used the built-in BMW navigation. Might be all I’ll ever need…

–Stopped at UPS for (a) NJT Vertical Cut Superconductor spinner; most beautiful I’ve ever seen; and (b) Thys Meades mammoth-scale knife that Had sent back to South Africa for him to add a clip. Also beautiful.

–Stopped at Bel Air for lunch cheese and cookies.

–Spent all day inside working on websites. FINALLY may have gotten them all cleaned up and optimized so they won’t show any more Google Search Console errors. Meaningful errors anyway—the Console finds stuff that can’t really be changed, and has no impact on anything.

–Went to the Sunrise framers market for tangerines.  Stopped at Bel Air for milk and cookies.

–Played around some more with flame-coloring spinner buttons on the Pose. Had a scary moment when (perhaps from overlong heating) the button turned colorless, then golden. It might even have glowed red hot briefly. Anyway, after another polishing routine and heating, it came out out a real nice green.

–Another warm day.

–Biked to UPS to pick up (a) Torqbar copper/tungsten spinner, pretty cool, and (b) Pose DSC titanium spinner, with GRAIL pouch and dog tag. Yow! There were scratches on the Pose buttons, so I sanded them out and put it on the buffer: the beautiful blue/red timascus faded completely. Not a total surprise, but still… So I searched a bit on the web, cleaned the buttons thoroughly, then hit them with my MAPP torch for 30-40 seconds. Boom! Gorgeous blue and red coloring restored, better than when I got it. It does seem to be fading a bit now, so next time I will polish it to a super-high shine, clean it to death, then flame it again. A whole new chapter for Mr. Fixit.

–My face is starting to heal from the fluorouracil, except for the three spots I’m continuing to use it on–forehead, cheek, nose. It suggests that I might have been able to permanently get rid of more damage in general if I had applied the stuff for a month or more–but that would have been insanely painful.

–Played with websites a bit. Added Plan Retirement to Google Analytics.

–Rode the canal on the InnerLight. Revelation/Epiphany: The 300 foot tunnel under 50 Did not give me an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia, as it has in the past. I used the bike light, but I had on my very dark new sunglasses. It was quite miraculous. Pretty sure it was the lack of cataracts–like the first day after surgery I was noticing my eyelid in the far periphery. Cataracts are bad news, and they really sneak up on you.

–Stopped at UPS to pick up (a) 19mm eyeglass nose pieces; longer than the last ones, but not nearly 19mm; and (b) a KAP Rose in superconductor. Very nice.

–Warm day. Spent much of it cleaning up websites after seeing results from Google Search Console. What a mess! Canonical URLs, sitemaps, RSS feeds, etc. Soon I will be impeccable. With zero traffic.

–Watered plants, most of which are looking good.

–Went to UPS to pick up (a) Chemex filters; (b) Pose stainless spinner (nice); (c) Modusworks copper tri back from Ted Rooney spa. Zirconium honing erased all machine lines (it took so long for him to get to it he likely forgot I wanted them preserved if possible; otoh I’m not sure they were preservable). Spinner looks very nice and spins like a dream. (d) NJT Nebu 2.0 zircuti, traded on Facebook for my mokume model. Looks great, spins fine, but somehow isn’t inspiring; (e) NJT Nebu 2.0 in superconductor; also nice but not thrilling. Seems a little small, especially compared to the 2-pound Nebu I got in tungsten. We’ll see.

–Sawed off all the dead branches from the Japanese maple in our side yard.

–Took a 6.5 mile bike ride; came THAT close to getting up Heartbreak Hill.

–Found that the key on my dresser fit the clubhouse lock; found that the pool is quite cool.

–11 AM stitch removal appointment moved to 2 PM. In and out quick, scar is still really red and hurts a little.

–Two KAP zircuti spinners came in. Both beautiful, but both too small and light for fidgeting.

–Newman’s Own Margherita pizza for dinner. Not bad.

–Warm day.

–Took Grace shopping at Bel Air.

–Tried to refinish/balance the copper Modusworks tri. Finish is okay, balance still not good.

–Took a shower and (electric) shave.

–Face looks really bad. Hurts, too. It took aspirin and vaseline to get me through the night.

–Went to add Plan Retirement to the Google Search Console–couldn’t hurt, and might have some useful statistics. Had some issues, so I got annoyed and took Litespeed off all my sites. If WordPress starts nagging again, I’ll find a way to turn off the nags.

–Picked up a FidgetBoy PezzBoy copper spinner at UPS. Not too impressive. Also picked up some UQH Dark Moon bearings. Also not impressive. Not sure why I bought them. THEN: I stumbled onto a Facebook listing, 40 minutes old, for a Pose DSC Ti tri spinner, my number 1 WTB. It was $925, and there had been a couple of posts before I got to it. I messaged the guy, who was slow in responding, then again, then a third time offering $1k PP F&F. He went for it. This thing is like new (he says), comes with a dog tag describing it (I’ve never heard of Pose dog tags), and a Pose pouch that says GRAIL!!! Unbelievable. That, along with my timascus Yeti, will be the crowns in my collection.

–Woke up at 4 AM with itchy chin; couldn’t really get back to sleep. No more FU-5 on this round.

–Did a bagel run in the BMW, then Bel Air for milk and cream.

–Went to UPS for (a) Indy Thicc Yeti in SS, very nice, and (b) Modusworks Spinamathing which had a lot of dings, so of course I put it on the buffer. Now it has no defined edges, AND it’s out of balance (may have come that way). The recommended fixer on Facebook said there was nothing he could do with it. Will see if Ted Rooney has any ideas; may end up trying something myself. May end up tossing it.

–Watered the plants, which needed watering.

–Day 10 of FU-5. Face really crusty. Will quit soon.

–Installed Quic Cloud CDN (Content Delivery Network) on all Adsense sites. It’s connected to Litespeed cache, and the nagging wouldn’t stop. I really don’t think it’s possible to speed up my tiny sites any more, but the nags got to me.

–Face is really starting to hurt and itch now–Day 9, just like the FU-5 application 3-4 years ago at Tunnel Hill. Will try for maybe two more days; don’t think I could actually do 14. I maybe should do a couple of spot applications on left cheek and forehead, now that I think of it.

–After some limescale.net/org fiascos last night, all websites seem good now, with optimized Litespeed and such. Time to do some linking within sites to make them look cared for.

–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final.

–Took the BMW to Nugget Market in El Dorado Hills. Unbelievably, there were at least four Margherita pizzas there; I bought three and put two in the freezer. Hope they freeze well.

–Another day of wind and a little rain.

–Face hurts and is starting to itch.

–Spent some time cataloging fidgets.

–Spent some time rebuilding/perfecting websites.

–Marie for dinner.

–Got into a huge mess with limescale.net and .org. One kept edirecting to the other, regardless of WordPress/database configurations. Still not resolved. Will change the .org nameservers back to Namecheap and drop (not renew) the domain. Hoping that will solve it. [edit] Solved, though it took a minute.

–Another bustery, rainy day.

–Face is looking grim, starting to hurt.

–Picked up tiny little Gareth Bull Jellybean knife ($3,000) at UPS. WAY too small for me. Crap.

–Picked up KAP Horizon mokume bar and SS Rotablade at UPS. Horizon is nice; Rotablade (like Jellybean) is kind of small.

–Did a swap on Facebook Fidget Marketplace: my mokume Nebu for a zircuti Nebu. Hope it looks as good in person as in photos.

–Lots of mischief going on with ad blockers, cookie consent plugins and Litespeed cache in WordPress. Finally found what might be a good solution via Google AI search. Hope it sticks.

–Picked up a couple of Red Baron pizzas at Bel Air. Had one for dinner.