Month: July 2025

–Went to UPS to mail off the Magnus slider to Kevin Hann for anodizing. Picked up the eBay Torqbar clone (okay, but heavy (tungsten, duh) and the beautiful zircuti button is miniscule); and the Kuko slider from Plants (nice slider, especially for the money).

–Soaked Jan’s plants and herbs.

–Polished a set of Magnus plates several times after they developed large fingernail-evident scratches. They scratched right up again. Don’t know what’s going on–there’s nothing there that could scratch like that (he said).

–Made some “1-hour bread.” It was pretty darned good.

–Played with sliders. Figured out how to tell weaker from stronger magnets of the same size: see how strongly they attract my stainless steel forceps. Magnet swap in the two Ultems didn’t work. Back to original: one works fine, the other not much at all. I might be able to tune the bad one with different magnets, but I don’t know if it’s worth it.

–Barbecued pork chops, corn and fresh bread for dinner. Tasty.

–Helped Kenny with his new Buick a little.

–Went to UPS for portafilter gaskets (Maximatic is good now); two Magnus Duck V2 sliders, neither of which is very cool (looking at a cool one on Facebook); stuff from NJT: two Vader spinners, two sets of buttons (nice, but somehow unexciting).

–Went to Bel Air for milk, cream, corn, pork chops.

–Watered Jan’s plants and our herbs, both of which were surprisingly dry after a recent watering.

–Vicolo pizza for dinner.

–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final.

–Celebrated Kenny’s new Buick Ensomething–looks nice.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Walked to UPS to pick up Fushi spinner bearings. They work as advertised: smooth, quiet, long-spinning. At $1 each with quick delivery, they’re likely going to replace the Unquiet Hands Jupiter bearings from Taiwan I’ve been using.

–Built a “tool” for working on sliders. Put some polyimide (Kapton) tape on one of my powerful bar magnets, then put the Pyra slider on that and disassembled it. Worked fine. The Pyra isn’t much of a test, though, given its construction, so more excitement awaits.

–Walked to UPS to pick up shop scissors and brass Magnus Gator.

–Stopped at Bel Air for pizza doughball, mozzarella.

–Made pizza for dinner. Left the doughball in the warm garage for several hours, and that seemed to make the difference: it was much easier to roll out. Cooked at 450 for 12 minutes. Came out good, but soggy crust–perhaps due to overly-wet mozzarella.

–A little warmer today.

–Picked up a Magnus “No Ring” slider at UPS. Attractive, good action.

–Cleaned off my desk a bit.

–Watered herbs and Jan’s plants, which were quite surprisingly dry, given how much I watered them Sunday.

–Another mild day.

–Bought another couple of Magnus sliders from his website.

–Walked to the Fair Oaks bridge. No turtle.

–Barbecued turkey burgers and corn, with Bel Air potato salad. Corn was good.

–Rode the ARP for 15.5 miles with Tom Eken.

–Took Grace shopping at Bel Air.

–Cupronickel Love Nugget spinner came in. Heavy, shiny, with dead-silent bearing, but (a) it looks like nickel, with no copper color, and (b) spinning it doesn’t fill me with joy.

–Made pizza with a Raley’s dough ball, Rao sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni. It took a LONG LONG time to stretch out the dough, but the pizza was pretty darn good. Will try the dough once more, letting it sit at room temperature for like eight hours.

–Took Grace to the DMV in Jackson to renew both of our licenses.

–Went to UPS to pick up five sliders. Thank God all were actually in the box, given the recent theft.

–Marie Callender for dinner.

–Walked to UPS to pick up diamond spray (tried on strop, realized for the 8th time that handheld strops are useless, tossed strop), 49mm portafilter gasket (prior o-ring type is way too fat, this one is way too thin; will use it while ordering a couple of flat types from Orphan Espresso), and Revlon nail kit (very cool; shockingly, the cuticle cutter works incredibly well–no more knife wounds for me).

–Watered plants.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Picked up a Magnus Sweep at UPS. Okay, not amazing.

–Started gathering papers for upcoming DMV visit.

–Made a pizza with Bel Air dough, pepperoni, Thao tomato, mozzarella. Looked weird (huge cheese bubbles), tasted pretty good.

–Walked again to the Fair Oaks bridge, this time following a slightly longer and more circuitous route that I saw a couple do a few days ago. Took me (surprise!) by Buffalo Creek, which was nice. Still wiped me out, though.

–Went to UPS to retrieve the box and letter saying they had witnessed me opening it. Meanwhile, Jason Tierney at facebook said he thought he could wrangle me a replacement slider, as opposed to refunding my payment. That’ll be nice. I’m on pins and needles though about Monday, when a boatload of sliders are due to come in, all USPS, a couple of them pretty rare. Fuck this asshole thief at the Post Office.

–Barbecued turkey burgers, Amaize corn (really good this time, phew!), rosemary potatoes.

–Nice morning, so I walked to the Fair Oaks bridge again. Got a picture of the local turtle, who apparently was fed a boatload of fries. Right heel, which I bruised in flip-flops, didn’t bother me in Hokas–until later when I went back to flip-flops.

–Took Grace shopping at Bel Air. Went to UPS  and picked an empty box (FidgetBoy Swoop). There were other untouched packages, so I guess it’s not 100% certain it was stolen, but I still feel violated.

–Vicolo pizza for dinner.

–Quite a mild day. Should’ve ridden; didn’t.

–Went to New York Bagels for bagels. Didn’t see my older friend there; haven’t seen him for weeks.

–Picked up a Magnus Duck at UPS. Nice slider.

–“Won” an LIC EDC cupronickel Love Nugget. I had just apprised Kory Sean that the scratch on the Magnus slider he was selling was a machining mark, not a flaw. The Nugg win notification never mentioned the SUS or “winning;” it was just a chat from Kory saying “Go here, use this password, and buy one Love Nugget.” Probably was the SUS, on second thought, else how would he know I wanted a Nugget?

–Rode Cummings Park in Folsom with Tom Elken, just under 12 miles. Tons of people on the trails. And it seemed to wipe me out for the rest of the day.

–Took Grace to KP Market for cheap meat.

–Red Baron pizza for dinner.

–Google turned down planretirement.com for Adsense: low-value content. There are other revenue sources besides Adsense, but then there’s the hassle of trying to get sites to rank high on Google search. There’s Youtube, but I’m not exactly videogenic.

–Picked up sanding pads at UPS.

–11:30 eye appointment canceled: gas leak or something. Re-scheduled to 1:30. Took a while, but great news: intra-ocular pressures are 10 and 12, where 16+ is worrisome. Come back in a year.

–Picked up two new Magnus sliders at UPS. Both slide nicely, and the teal-ish color of the golf ball finish on one is gorgeous.

–Going riding with Tom tomorrow: got tired of putting it off. Pulled the car way forward in the garage, and was able to mount the rack and put the bike on it. Inflated the tires, charging now—easy tomorrow.

–Puttered around a bit with plants and sliders.

–Took Grace to Home Depot so she could get filters for the monster shop vac.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Vicolo pizza for dinner.

–Yet another hot day.

–Watered many plants, not all.

–Took Grace to the Sunrise farmers market and got stuff. A lot of really expensive stuff there.

–Went to Bel Air for corn and dessert. Amaize corn has come in.

–Barbecued frozen turkey burgers (fresh are better), Amaize corn (regular Bel Air corn is better), patapan squash with rosemary butter (potatoes are better). All in all, pretty unsatisfying.

–Hot again.

–Went to UPS to pick up (a) Magnus Sweep Ultem slider (not bad, but doesn’t swing easily); (b) superconductor buttons (laughably small); (c) Motta pitcher for frothing milk (thought at first it was much bigger than my current Motta, but they’re the same).

–Polished some slider plates. Aside from leaving some gunk on them, it did nothing. I guess the best way to smooth sliders is to slide them. I did notice that screws in all five used sliders were a tad loose. Tightening them didn’t affect action, but it felt reassuring.

–Chrome (Google) shut down my Paywall avoider and Cookie finder. I switched to Firefox, as much out of spite as anything: it doesn’t support the Paywall app. I was reminded that archive.ph is still good for reading WSJ articles.

–I noticed that my Coinbase account went up > $5,000 last night, so I sent $5k to Heritage. I don’t know what’s going on, as I dropped out of various reddit crypto groups a while back.

–Too hot this morning to take a walk/ride. Also messed up my heel a little as well as put a fair-sized cut on my right second toe walking yesterday.

–Picked up sanding sponges at UPS. Polished the Magnus Golf Club slider and it seemed to really improve it. BUT: after a few minutes of sliding, the plates showed all kinds of scuffs. I guess this is normal. I’m thinking sellers who mention “scratched, but smooth” don’t really know how quickly marks appear. If I ever sell one of these, I’ll polish it then immediately box it up.

–Made pizza for dinner. Mozzarella, many Thao tomatoes, our own basil. Yum!

–Walked to the Fair Oaks Foot Bridge, in my Tevas. Gotta start doing stuff to improve my weight and wind.

–Picked up a Skelly Verkk slider at UPS. Not a drill-through as I had mistakenly thought. Also too fat and hard to slide. Brought out the Modusworks Rapt again: too small, too hard to grip. Hoping I can trade it for something better.

–Tried to remove the foam from the smelly Osprey pack. Ruined it. The foam is segmented, sewn in, pretty much impossible to slip out cleanly.

–Submitted planretirement.com for Adsense review.

–Nice day; didn’t ride.

–Got a haircut at Great Clips.

–Took Grace to Smart & Final. She forgot her list. I bought a basil plant and replanted it. Looks okay.

–Played with Rolexes. Found a knob on the gold Sub that changes beat error. Got it down to .1ms. It consistently runs +25s/d, so I may take it to Ivanov, as I can’t see anything that allow me to adjust it—e.g., no screws in the balance wheel. The 1680 DOES have screws in the balance wheel, but I doubt I’ll risk it. [edit] Oops–just saw a pic of the 3135 movement in the gold Sub: it does have screws on the balance wheel–on the inside.

–Went back–for a while anyway–to the Leica SL2-S. It’s lower-noise than the Canon; is much simpler to set up/use than the Canon; has that (unusual for an SL) great viewfinder eye relief; has been reskinned by Leica and so has zero odor; and I set up a button to do quick lens definition so IBIS will always be working. I still need to test if Leica IBIS makes high-magnification focusing less jittery, as the Canon’s seems to.

–Picked up many things at UPS: Iosso polish (gritty as advertised); copper Magnus slider (beautiful, heavy, plates need more polishing); Skelly Hex Magnus slider (pretty); lemon drops; Magnus golf ball slider (best feel/grip yet); iPod MP3 player; useless Modusworks “heat sink” bead.

–Barbecued chicken burgers, corn from Sloughhouse via Ray and Sherry, chivey squash and tomato from Thao Ranch. Yum!

–Cleaned up my shower a bit with Scrubby Bubbles. Better.

–Took Grace to Safeway to get a fruit party tray.

–Went to the July 4th party at the DV clubhouse. Not bad.

–Went to Costco for muffins, Pellegrino, coffee beans.

–Stopped at Bel Air for grapes for the July 4th DV party tomorrow, since Nugget market doesn’t provide fruit trays on weekends.
–Nose is a wreck; really hoping I blasted the AK or whatever it is.

–Went for a 12-mile ride on the ARP. Busy, but not catastrophic. Wiped me out, as is becoming usual.

–Watered plants.

–Bought many sliders.

–Got bagels at New York Bagel Cafe. Took Grace to KP Market, where she didn’t find much.

–Barbecued turkey burgers, corn, rosemary potatoes. Yum!

–Went with Grace on a two-mile walk to the Fair Oaks Footbridge. It was warm, and the walk wiped me out. Training specificity.

–White Arc’teryx pack came in. Nice, but it too has a sweet odor. How do people store these things???

–Stopped at Bel Air for corn, Cuties, cookies.

–Finally got the Magnus slider back together correctly–not easy. Works a lot better now, though it highlights how weak my hands are compared to most young whippersnappers.

–Vicolo pizza for dinner. Good.

–Didn’t do much today. Went to dinner at Il Forno Classico. Quite disappointing. Tasteless baby spring greens salad, dry and tasteless spaghetti with meatballs. Also could hardly hear a word Grace spoke.

–Hot, quiet day.

–Picked up gray Rodico at UPS. Used it on a Yeti Sakmar mokume. Took a LOT of doing, as there is so little clearance low down, so had to put the Rodico fairly high. Seems to improve it, and it’s not visually distracting.

–Started playing with the ModusWorks Rapt slider I got as part of a spinner deal a while back. Oops—another addiction. Hoping to end up with 4-5 sliders, not 150.

–Red Baron for dinner.