Category: Uncategorized (Page 6 of 29)

–Biked to UPS to pick up WCu Chelsea spinner. Nice, but too heavy.

–Rolex 16618 (Gold Submariner) came in from Tropical Watch. Beautiful dial, case okay, ran okay. Crown logo on bracelet clasp had been polished down to almost nothing–worst I’ve seen. Told Kirill Yuzh to return. He will, but says no more deals–Tropical Watch won’t sell me any more watches. This would be kind of humorous if it weren’t so enraging. These guys both exemplify all that’s rotten with salespeople.

–Went to New York Bagels. They fixed their oven last night and so had a dozen sesame bagels ready for me.

–Stopped at S*T Strawberries for a triple.

–Stopped at UPS for an abundance of flippers. Good stuff.

–No ride today–too cool.

–Picked up a seatpost clamp at UPS. Very nice, though requires a tool to use–there’s no fat part on the end of the bolt that you can turn with your fingers to get the right tension before closing the clamp. Also got the Oral B “double” toothbrush. It’s a fine piece of work, and both halves of the bristles move, but it’s really too big for my mouth. Will continue to use it with standard brush heads, as it seems a little more aggressive than my current one.

–Started falling asleep in the living room around 4; took a 1.5 hour nap.

–Sold some more Bitcoin and sent it to the bank. I think I’m finally ahead on this game.

–Paid State Farm $386.82 for Honda.

–Marie chicken pot pie for dinner.

–Cool and a little rain today–weirdest April-May ever.

–Went to Home Depot to pick up another birdbath bottom: a squirrel jumped off the frogs, knocking them against the birdbath and breaking it.

–Stopped at Bel Air for coffee and lunch cheese.

–Tried washing the new (old) Osprey pack, which reeks of aftershave or something, in Woolite, then vinegar.  Better, but still needs work.

–Walked to Bel Air for cream cheese and corn.

–Barbecued the corn along with turkey burgers. Good.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Bought many spinners today.

–Picked up the bright blue Osprey pack at UPS. It has the spray-on logo and a distinct smell of aftershave or some such. Set it out to sit in the sun for a while–it is impressively colorful.

–Resurrected the Leica M11 for the 6th time. The main picture I took, f5.6 or f8, it auto-set the ISO at 5000! Very strange metering system on the camera.

–Replaced a gushing emitter in the back garden.

–Fixed my four websites that were ailing from my attempt to prevent WordPress updates.

–Took the Beemer to Hooverville Orchards for jam and pastry. Then to S*T Strawberries for strawberries and (yes, it’s back!) strawberry jam.

–Grip strength meter came in. Was looking a reading > 33, got 100, thought I was Superman. Then read the directions and set it for kilograms instead of pounds: 42. Good stuff, but not Superman.

–Took Grace shopping at Bel Air.

–Thread checker came in. Three sizes so far: 3mm x .5, 4mm x .7, 4-40.

–Put gas in the BMW.

–Went to Target to pick up the Zagitor anti-histamine eye drops Grace ordered. They are miraculous.

–Went to the Sutter lab in Folsom for a major blood draw. Finally got results: with a couple tiny exceptions, everything (including A1C) is in the normal range. Whew!

–Took a 10.4 mile bike ride. For some reason (wind?) I flew out and crawled back. I checked the tires before going; they needed a fair bit of air. The new Nitto seatpost performed flawlessly.

–Hot and super windy; my allergies are terrible.

–Watered plants, which are looking good.

–Went to UPS for (a) Vader zircuti; easily the best zircuti I’ve seen. I recall this was one of the first spinners I put on a want list early on. (b) Pose Cocoon, medium, ti skelly MF.

–Stopped at Bel Air for pork chops, corn, and antipasto salad. Barbecue was good.

–Got the drill press out and fabricated a spinner button polishing tool from a 3/8″ aluminum rod and a 3mm x 14mm grub screw. Worked great. Now I need to find out what sizes all my other button screws are and order some more grub screws.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Went to Home Depot looking for a brass rod to turn into several spinner button polishing tools. Zip. Bought an aluminum rod, will try it.

–Took Grace shopping at Costco for various stuff.

–Stopped at UPS for Modusworks Spinamathing in brass, and Pose Cocoon in superconductor with an NJT SC button. Both nice.

–Went to UPS to pick up spinner buttons with abalone inlays (too heavy: tungsten); o-rings for Omega bracelet (got the right size the second time around); vintage NOS Braun/Oral B toothbrush, made in Germany. Hefty. Didn’t last long on a quick charge, so I try to follow directions and leave it charging for 16 hours.

–Went to Bel Air for dessert, corn, potato salad. Barbecued turkey burgers. Good as usual.

–Hot day. Didn’t do a lot.

–Got bagels.

–Tried another LIC EDC drop. Nope.

–Warm day. Went for a ride on the ARP, found it blocked for maintenance about 2 miles west.

–Hoping to stop bike creaks, I took the bike seat off the post, put anti-seize on most parts, put it back together (non-trivial). We’ll see.

–Dr. Firoz says there are orders in for fasting lab work, then we’ll meet to discuss. Getting really tired of medical obligations.

–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.

–Rainy, blustery day.

–Went around and around and around with consent banner plugins. After 43 failures, I MAY have discovered that Litespeed cache OR Ghostery ad blocker was interfering with the plugins. With both disabled, Plan Retirement now works perfectly. I ran into some issues with Dizziness and Nausea that took a LOT of work to resolve–database issues mostly–but it seems to be working now. I learned that I can’t delete databases in the Nixihost cPanel, so I opened a ticket. Curious to see if they’ll just delete, or raise my permissions. [edit] After further work on Dizziness, it really does look like Litespeed was the culprit. I can go back and forth now between admin and site and everything I changed shows up instantly, instead of requiring a cache purge to work. If I’m right on this, Litespeed is a plague. [edit 2] Okay, the ad blocker Ghostery also interferes with cookie consent–but only for Dizziness at the moment. What a bunch of crap. [edit 3] Both sites work now after a reboot. Maybe good, maybe it’ll act up later. Frustrating.

–Set up Plan Retirement this morning. Worked the first time I navigated to it! And Nixihost is blazing fast, even when all plugins are added and active. Tried many different cookie banner plugins (again) and finally found one (Pressidium) that seems to be compact, easy to set up, etc. We movin’ now…

–Discovered (via reddit) an app called Commander One, which replaces (and appears to totally blow away) Finder and Filezilla/Cyberduck. Local files on the left, anything you want in the right panel (iCloud, FTP, etc.). Wish I’d found it a while ago–Filezille drives me crazy with its timeouts, and Cyberduck’s interface is kind of impenetrable. Finder is fine, and may still be the only thing that lets me find a word in any file I own. [edit] Okay, spoke too soon. Went to copy the Plan Retirement WP Content folder from wsf.ac to local WP folder. Took a few minutes to start moving files, then estimated an hour and a quarter to complete the copying. Oh well…

–Went to Smart & Final for Cara Cara oranges, Honeycrisp apples, cream cheese, Triscuits, Pellegrino and Coke.

–Red Baron personal pizza for dinner.

–Limescale.org finally went through at 11:15 AM. By 8 PM, nothing else had come in. [edit] Sent a ticket to iWebFusion around 9 PM saying “Help, only one of my domains transferred.” They replied 15 minutes later saying, “Well, it looks like they all transferred, so there’s nothing more we can do.” I panicked, thinking all my domains were in limbo. Five minutes later, notices started coming in saying “ABC domain transfer is complete.” Within 10 minutes, all had transferred. Unbelievably suspicious timing.

–Won another spinner with fast fingers and Shop Pay.

–Watched the last episode of Reacher, Season 3. Pretty good.

–Forgot to mention that yesterday, while updating my password at the Franchise Tax Board (at their request), I noticed they claim I have a “balance” of $167. I figured out this was balance due, and paid it. They gave no hint and I have no idea what the issue is. Turbotax? Estimated payments? Crap.

–Did pretty much nothing today. There was a tiny bit of rain.

–Website hosting still hasn’t migrated. When they say “by the 28th” they really mean “no sooner than…”

–After 5 applications of FU-5, still no reaction. [edit] When I looked back at the last application (November 2021), it seemed to be nine days before things looked really rough. That’s not exactly the way I recall it, where after a week I would look horrible. We’ll see.

–Spent some time optimizing this Journal. Got rid of “Edit,” “Comment,” etc. under the post title; cleaned up the sidebar (Search and Archives only); set each “page” to show 100 posts rather than 10; and made it private: anyone navigating to it other than me is shown a login screen.

–Cool and breezy day.

–Went to Bel Air for milk, cream, dessert.

–Watched Robot Monster. Not bad, a little surprising.

–Hot day today.

–Went to Bel Air for plain bagels.

–Stopped at UPS for yet another spinner bearing tool.

–Stopped at Home Depot to get some of Kenny’s paint matched for the fences/gates.

–Finished touch-up painting on fences/gates. Looks good.

–Went for a haircut at Great Clips, but 30-minute wait was too long.

–Started the Fluorouracil regimen–twice a day.

–Moved all Bitcoin from Binance.us back to Coinbase. The Binance interface is terrible, and their choice of networks for transfers is extremely limited. Now all I have to do is wait for the price to skyrocket, then sell. Yup.

–Initiated a move of all domains from iWebFusion registrar to Namecheap two days ago. Just got emails today saying “move will happen by 3/28 unless you object.” That’s five days. A change from Porkbun to Namecheap took 30 minutes. Something weird about iWebFusion, despite their claims that it’s all in ICANN’s hands–it clearly isn’t.

–Went to Dr. An Yen in Sacramento for another Mohs procedure. He got it all on the first try. It hurts now.

–Then to Mimosa House in Gold River. Pretty good brunch.

–Put some Spackle in the holes left by fence gate fixing yesterday. Tried some of Kenny’s paint: Not a great match. Will get a different shade tomorrow at Home Depot.

–Marie for dinner.

–Kenny’s handyman Mike called around Noon and came out an hour later to work on our two back gates. He finished around 6 PM, charged $340 (I gave him my Italian switchblade as well). Mammoth amount of work on the side gate because of rot; installing striker on patio gate also was not trivial due to spacing issues. The guy is insanely conscientious about having everything square, level and plumb. All good now, and likely for a long time. I am totally wiped out just from standing around. I will caulk and paint tomorrow.

–Took a Tramadol, shower and shave.

–Spent the day on web hosting. Moved the Journal to Namecheap on wsf.ac. Took some doing, but all my fault. Not sure how fast Namecheap will be, but there’s so much baggage associated with every other hosting service I can find, so…

–Of note: Went back to Filezilla (Cyberduck is limited in some ways) and learned it can see iCloud files, but not some directories: those starting with _ and some others at random. Super annoying.

–Took Grace’s shopping list to Smart & Final and bought stuff, as she’s not feeling good.

–Stopped at UPS for the brass Modusworks Machinamathing. Spent a while with it on the buffer. Main cool thing: the serial number is engraved in Roman numerals.

–Spent a while reconciling spinners. Moved the Union tool chest from the garage to my bedroom. Starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.

–Spent much of the day organizing spinners. Did good.

–Biked to UPS for (a) KAP superconductor buttons (beautiful) and (b) Modusworks Ergo tri (magnificent).

–Learned yesterday that Bert Cooper likely died in 2022: saw a Toastmasters remembrance, with a note to send cards to Heidi Tomlinson (his girlfriend was Heidi). I had many chances to re-connect, but didn’t, because I’m a jerk.

–Had breakfast at the Holiday Inn (pretty good), got gas at the nearby Chevron, then drove home. The mpg showing on the dashboard kept rising—to 46.9 near Sacramento! Mind-boggling. The drive(s) really tired me out. Might have to do with dehydration from constantly having cool air blowing on me.

–Had corned beef/cabbage, potato and carrots donated by Kenny for dinner. Yum!

–Spent a while trying to reconcile fidget spinners.

–Took the BMW to the coast. Dropped off two Creminas and an ECM at Great Infusions. Had an egg salad sandwich (same maker from 5 years ago) on the bluff at La Selva Beach. Checked in at the Holiday Inn in Watsonville. Drove to Carmel to visit Carmel Cutlery: they’re closed one day a week—Tuesday. Walked to McDonald’s for a not-too-satisfying dinner. Really conflicted about coming back here some day. When the weather’s nice it’s incredible. But great weather is rare, and there’s minimal access to health care or shopping, no neighbors, no biking, etc.

–Got Grace’s phone working with Visible Cellular. For some reason we didn’t need the transfer PIN that Verizon gave us a couple days ago. It was nerve-wracking though, and took almost an hour. All good now with phones I think.

–Went to UPS for (a) GAZ Big Minus Short, another really ho-hum offering from this company; (b) a Modusworks tri copper something in really rough shape–cuts, scratches, divots, etc., very frustrating. Got another one coming soon which should be nicer. Annoying, since much of the damage is such that it can’t be repaired without seriously altering the lines of the spinner. (c) LIC EDC polished zirc Edamame, a real treat; (d) polished titanium LIC EDC Chonky–my second. First one was a hot mess; I tried to take out the cuts and dings and polish it up a bit. This one looked nice but had a long deep scratch. Since the seller claimed it was 10/10, I have to assume I scratched it with the scalpel while cutting open the bubble wrap. Spent a fair while making the scratch disappear and polishing it up.

–Stopped at Bel Air for milk, cream, cream cheese, anti-perspirant, bagels, dessert.

–Packed two Creminas and an ECM into the trunk of the BMW.

–Got taxes filed. Tried Free Tax USA to verify Turbotax; it said I need to enter crypto (I thought Turbotax said I didn’t need to enter stuff, even after I told them I did crypto). Anyway, back to Turbotax, where I had to upgrade to Premier for another $35 so it could read Coinbase and Robinhood .csv files without me having to hand-enter data. I had to fiddle with both files, as they had incomplete info. I can’t imagine how the IRS is going to deal with all this crypto stuff–83 exchanges, people moving stuff, buying, selling, swapping, converting, etc. Transaction files from any one exchange will be absurdly misleading. I suppose, truth be told, it’s on the individual taxpayer to keep good records. So I’m doomed: when I last tried to reconcile everything a few weeks ago, it didn’t work. It’ll be worse going forward. Maybe, if I stay with Bitcoin, and don’t sell until 2026, I can fake it.

–California Pizza Kitchen Margherita pizza for dinner; not bad.

–Went to both farmers markets for tangerines (yup) and Balsamic for Grace (nope).

–Walked to UPS to return the 14th Senkichi pick Mattock handle.

–Went to UPS for (a) yet another pick mattock handle from Amazon with no head, and (b) LIC EDC Chonky in titanium. Seller had said no fingernail dings; in fact there were many. I spent a while on the buffer with it and cleaned it up okay. Not highly polished yet, but I’m working on it.

–Spent much time and frustration changing phones from Verizon to Visible. Mine is switched; Grace should be getting a new SIM in the mail tomorrow.

–Got peanut butter/chocolate-dipped cookies at Bel Air.

–Went to UPS for KAP bearing tool (simplest/nicest yet), also copper Paradigm razor (nice).

–Re-re-re-visited taxes. Discovered I had put Grace’s union pension 1099-R in the 2023 folder. That explained a lot, and dropped the Federal refund from $6k to $3k. Good to go now, I think.

–Made pizza for dinner.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Did taxes. $6k+ back from Feds, $950 from State (applied to estimated payments this year). Will re-check.

–Wind blew all day; downpour finally came at 4 PM. Seems we have another clogged downspout, Grace reports.

–Right upper back teeth are starting to ache. Probably time to get the 2nd and 3rd root canals that Creekside Endodontists wanted to do. Speaking of which: I called Delta Dental to ask about DD PPO vs. DD Premium. Turns out that (in theory) we can go to either one. Dentist is supposed to do the billing. PPO costs covered 100%; Premium costs covered at 50%. So when dentists say “We don’t take PPO,” what they’re really saying is “We won’t go to the trouble of billing when we only get 50% from Delta and have to fight for 50% from the patient.”

–Went to Smart & Final for dessert and tangerines.

–Picked up many things at UPS: 3M sanding pads, and tiny Vader superconductor spinner (utterly useless), a Damasteel Mothership spinner with “stump” buttons (nice), Koala microfiber cloths (they seem nice; we’ll see).

–Took my InnerLight wheels to Bob’s Bikes on Fair Oaks, as the front tire was dead flat. I suspected the valve had torn off the tube from all my Silca pump testing; true. They put on two new tubes while I waited. Great shop–they even remembered me and the InnerLight.

–Got the Rolex 1680 back off to Rolliworks via FedEx. Hoping they can make it nice, then I’ll put nice dial and movement in the recent 1680 case and have a 100% original 1680 in a nicely-polished case.

–Daylight Saving Time.

–Didn’t do much except change clocks and buy spinners.

–Took Grace shopping at Bel Air.

–Picked up at UPS: (1) Link 2.0 spinner, long time coming, pretty nice; (2) Senkichi pick mattock, handle only. Unbelievable. Tried to get the head from Amazon, but their impenetrable help system had me return the handle and they’ll send another pick. (a) They’ll probably ding me for the head, and (b) they’ll probably just send another handle. (3) Indy Thicc Yeti in bead-blasted brass (ho-hum) along with a gorgeous set of timascus buttons (nice). Won in a drop, thanks to the speedy Shop Pay.

–Checked out the plants in back. A couple seem to be getting nibbled by snails, and the Clementine was getting no water at all: I had two drippers going to the Bird of Paradise. I routed one over to the Clementine. I need to check if water is actually flowing: I upped the schedule to every other day, and the BoP is looking miserable.

–Made pizza for dinner. Pretty good.

–Took Grace shopping at the nearby Smart & Final.

–Went to UPS for (1) Tekna regulator (tilt needle seal gone, plastic collar broken, etc.); (2) Nossa coffee beans (from Shop Pay rewards); (3) NJT tungsten Nebu 2.0, oil slick (WAY too heavy, will sell).

–Took a shower and shave, after cleaning the shower.

–Had my tele-visit with Dr. Firoz. He was 30 minutes late, and I could see no discernible reason for the visit.

–Red Baron for dinner.

–Went to New York Bagel for bagels and bagel dogs; Koreana Plaza for chicken thighs.

–Stopped at UPS for a couple of spinners.

–Bagel dogs for dinner.

–Rolex 1680 came in. Very nice. Runs okay on the Timegrapher. The current 1680 (Rolliworks had it for 6 months) is now running terribly: amplitude and beat error are okay, but timing is all over the place. I have a vague recollection that this is what caused them issues and was so hard (expensive) to fix. Back it goes.

–Went to Sac Eye to pick up the Ray-Ban sunglasses. They seem okay; I haven’t put them under a microscope. I showed her the smudge on the Flexon lens, and she quickly agreed to get new lenses. It was hard to talk her out of UV and anti-glare coatings, but I did. She also said (I think) that the smudge was a scratch. Possible, but I’m skeptical: it’s quite wide, not like a grain of abrasive but more like a piece of sandpaper.

–Stopped at UPS for the KAP Mothership mokume (nice, but not compelling) and the bronze Pose XL (nice). Then to Bel Air for dessert.

–Spent much of the day over at Kenny’s, watching Mike the contractor replace a couple of trellis beams. He did good work, and so we asked him to look at our gates. He suggested cheap fixes for both, so we’re on in a couple of weeks.

–Went to UPS for (1) Hiroshi Nagai books (great artist), (2) MonoSkate spinner bearing tool (nice tool), (3) TwoEDC copper Soft Triangle spinner: really nice.

–Visible phone service seems top-notch so far. I was able last night (after some issues) to get my iPhone working as a hotspot (fast) and got a nicely transcribed voice mail from Kenny this morning.

–Red Baron for dinner.

–Showers off and on all day; and hail!

–Starting a 15-day trial with Visible by Verizon cell network. Cheaper than Verizon, unlimited data and hotspot. We’ll see.

–Went to the Sunrise farmers market for tangerines and oranges.

–Won another spinner drop with Shop Pay.

–Picked up a fountain pump at UPS; works just like the current one. Picked up the Edamame copper spinner buttons as well. Nice, but the spinner itself is not very engaging: really heavy wobble when changing planes.

–Went to brunch at Mimosa House in Folsom with Tom and Sandy Elken.

–Finally got Kirill Yuzh to buy the Rolex 1680 from Tropical Watch for me.

–Internet was on-again off-again all night. A couple of calls to Comcast/Xfinity were comical.

–Tried to clean my new glasses. Made (or revealed) a big bad smudge on the left lens, in addition to a tiny bright spot (chip?). Noticed a purple tint to the lenses. Could be anti-glare coating or (as receipt says) UV coating. Did I scratch the lens? Possible, but I doubt it. On the other hand, NOTHING would remove it: dish soap, alcohol, lens cleaner, camera sensor cleaner, etc. I guess I’ll try for replacement uncoated lenses, but I’m not optimistic.

–Went to Sac Eye in Folsom to pick up my new glasses (sunglasses are delayed). Pretty spiffy. Not as good at close-up as they are at distance; understandable I suppose.

–Stopped at Bel Air for milk, cream cheese, dessert.

–Took a shave and shower.

–Took Kenny in the BMW to pick up a couple of Pizza Guys pizzas. Tasty.

–Tried last night and today to get Kirill Yuzh to buy me a Rolex 1680 at the Tropical Watch site. After some email glitches he went silent. I don’t know what’s going on. Don’t know if I want the watch enough to pay tax on it.

–Clone Pose mokume fidget spinner came in. By every metric I can use, it’s identical to the genuine Pose. It even seems to spin a bit better–more balanced, maybe. Hard to believe it’s a clone, but without a COA it’ll never be worth much. COA’s seem hyper-critical, since few makers add branding to their spinners–and even if they do for this one, they don’t for that one. Strange business.

–My ankles seem swollen again, and I’ve gained weight, and I get winded really easily. Wondering about congestive heart failure.

–Cleaned up Cremina, Maximatic and ECM, took photos, and asked Great Infusions if they’d consign.

–Rode my bike to UPS to send off a Modusworks fidget spinner to Ted Rooney for refinishing. I am woefully out of shape–no surprise. Hope I can work back into something a little fitter.

–Went to UPS to pick up three Modusworks fidget spinners and one set of Modusworks tungsten buttons. Pretty spiffy. Also a Focusworks “The Thing” spinner, not so spiffy.

–Stopped at Bel Air for cookies.

–Boboli pizza for dinner.

–Another quiet day for Mr. Bill. Watched another episode of Reacher, season 3. Good stuff. Watched another episode of Tracker. Don’t know if it’s the comparison with Reacher, but I find Tracker almost unwatchable now.

–Went to the Sunrise farmers market for tangerines for Kenny and me.

–Kenny palmed off more plants on us; someone had left them on his giveaway table anonymously.

–Played a lot with WordPress sites. Tried a million different cookie consent plugins (again). Going back to Lightweight Cookie Notice.

–Picked up the Pose spinner with extra superconductor buttons at UPS. Nice.

–Got dessert and apples at Bel Air.

–Got a free plant (cutting) from Kenny; planted it.

–Walked to UPS to pick up (a) KAP tri fidget, blue ano–really beautiful and great spinner; and (b) Bull Carbo-Quartz knife, with gorgeous red scales. Knife was “cheap” ($1,800) because blade was off-center; I took it apart and put it back together in a way that should straighten the blade, and it worked: knife is flawless!

–Worked on WordPress Adsense sites. Realizing that premium themes are a total waste for me; WP by itself is extremely modifiable. Dizziness and Nausea will never make to Adsense (too medical), but Plan Retirement might have a chance. I’m playing it safe with no photos, no quotes. We’ll see.

–Slow day. Picked up Tipper fidget spinner at UPS. Got milk and cookies at Bel Air. Played with website privacy/cookies/etc.

–Took Grace shopping at Bel Air. Got caught in a minor bit of rain.

–Binance.us finally was allowed to link to banks (after 2-3 years), so I got back on and hooked up with Ally. Yay! As has happened in the past (I believe), I get an error message from Plaid when I try to add Heritage. Now to move everything from Coinbase, carefully, cheaply.

–Atorvastatin came in via Amazon. Also GAZ copper spinner (too heavy) and Unquiet Hands bearings (very nice).

–Took a shower and shave. Turns out the new Wolfman WR1 razor, with .48mm gap, is way too mild.

–The appointments keep multiplying: the recent biopsy is a basal, and Mohs surgery has been scheduled; Firoz’ office called to set up a follow-up (I think that’s what she said) televisit. Though evidence goes both ways, I fear it’s because I blew the clock question on my annual Medicare Wellness exam recently. Crap…

–Walked to UPS to pick up Tamsulosin and another spinner. This one is a crystallized ti tri, beautiful but too light for me I fear.

–Had the last Roncadin pizza for dinner, thank goodness.

–Walked to UPS to pick up a couple of fidget spinners. One (Tipper) kind of blah; the other (mokume Dark Vader) very nice, and a compelling spinner to boot.

— Someone at Badger and Blade has been looking for a Charcoal Goods brass handle called “Stinger” (version 1) for a few days. I knew I had a handle with a bee on it, but didn’t think it was that exact one. Dug it out, and it’s that exact one. A commenter on the B&B WTB said “Well, you’d better be ready to spend a lot of money.” Guess that means I can sell it and retire now.

–Cleaned up the bird bath fountain yesterday and got the pump working (spurting periodically) and today it saw many visits from birds and squirrels. Don’t know if they’re drawn by clean water or spurting.

–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final in Carmichael. Later she went into an enormous snit.

–Transplanted rosemary, thyme and dill into a large pot. Cleaned up the bird fountain.

–Watched to SNL 50th Anniversary show. Pretty lame.

–Got tangerines for me and Kenny from Sweet Tree Farms in Fresno at the Sunrise farmers market.

–Helped Kenny briefly, rotating the front wheels on his electric trike.

–Made pizza for dinner. Pretty good: used fresh mozzarella rather than thawed shredded “pizza blend” cheese.

–Went to Sacramento Eye for a checkup after cataract surgery. All good, great pressure in both eyes. No more Latanaprost. Put in an order for Flexon glasses and lenses for the Ray-Ban sunglasses.

–Lunch at McDonald’s–$15, and the soft drink machine has been disabled.

–Chicken pot pie + Kenny’s potato for dinner.

–Another windy, rainy day.

–Picked up Japanese pick mattox at UPS. Kind of large, but I think it’ll work.

–Also picked up Big Poe spinner, allegedly in titanium. Feels like aluminum, and doesn’t spin so good.

–Got dessert at Bel Air.

–Won a couple sets of spinner buttons at a Not Just Toy drop.

–Made pizza for dinner. Good one. Need to give more serious thought to cheese and sauce.

–Went to Pacific Skincare to see Olga Karaputa for a skin check. Many lesions frozen on face and head, biopsy taken of something on neck. Got a prescription for fluorouracil.

–Stopped at Bel Air to deposit the $1,480 check from Great Infusions from the sale of a Cremina. Picked up at UPS (a) a 608 spinner bearing that is .2mm too large and doesn’t fit the spinner; (b) some zircuti buttons from NJT that are beautiful; and (c) a Wolfman razor from Damn Fine Shave that is really nice.

–Stopped for gas in the BMW at Fair Oaks Arco, where the cheapest was $4.59. I swear it was $3.95 a few days ago at a no-name station on Sunrise a little farther north. Oh well…

–Video Medicare Wellness visit went okay, except I blacked out when describing a clock at 10:35: hour hand halfway between 10 and 11, minute hand, uh, not sure what the number is, halfway, 30 or 35 (they wanted to hear “minute hand at 7”). What a freaking joke.

–Picked up the Tri tungsten spinner from Hungary at UPS. Total joke: very high quality, but it must weigh 2 pounds. And it cost $575. Oh well…

–Stopped at Bel Air for milk and cream.

–Pizza for dinner.

–Picked up the Modusworks Thinamathing at UPS. It’s nice, and seems to spin freely, but doesn’t seem to spin for long.

–Stopped at Bel Air to get some Fish Oil for Grace.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Played more with the Astra theme at Dizziness and Nausea.

–Super Bowl Sunday. Chips and nacho cheese, Eagles clobbered the Chiefs, Red Baron pizza for dinner.

–Bought Astra WordPress theme. It’s nice, but way more than I’ll ever need and it’s another one of those naggers. Even after spending $280 for a theme you get nagged for add-ons, and when I opened a support ticket for a refund, they nagged for $4.08/month to get VIP service. Absolutely unbelievable. I finally (sort of) figured out how to get stuff out of the header and into the footer of Hemingway, so–given the small chance of ever getting one of my domains approved for Adsense–that should be sufficient. [edit] Took another look at Astra; managed to get the Pro plugin installed, which added a lot of functionality. Got the footer looking like I want now, so I guess I’ll stay with Astra and try to build an impeccable Dizziness site. Google still won’t accept it for Adsense (too medical), but the exercise won’t hurt.

–Walked to UPS to pick up another spinner. This one looks okay, but spins badly. After a lot of effort, I got it apart to learn that it uses the old-style 608 bearing, and a crappy one at that. Looked into 608 to R188 adapters, but that ship sailed a while ago, so I just bought (what I hope is) a nicer 608 bearing on eBay. We’ll see.

–Took Grace to Green Acres Folsom for plants, then Brainy Zoo for Amelia gifts.

–Played with OceanWP and Astra WordPress themes. Impressive, but 100 times more functionality than I’ll ever need, and expensive ($280). Might keep looking at cheaper ones. I mainly just want easy placement of menus and links in header and footer. We’ll see.

–Pizza for dinner.

–Got turned down by Adsense again. Finally dawning on me that I’m unlikely to ever get a site approved: original content, lots of traffic, etc. etc. The irony is that I finally got icsb-2006 up and running at Spaceship. Lotta good it’ll do me. My best bet, if I were a completely different person, would be to get the transmission/limescale sites going with a couple of youtube videos. Right. More likely, I suppose I should try and do something with Plan Retirement. Still the traffic issue will plague me. I don’t need to spend $5k to have some know-nothing SEO shop wave their magic wand and say their magic buzzwords to get visitors. I don’t know…

–It gets worse: after doing some reading, I learned that most Adsense requests are turned down, and that the the bar is set extremely high for certain areas like health (Dizziness and Nausea) and finance (Plan Retirement). These are known as YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) areas, and unless you’re a physician or Vanguard employee, your blog just won’t make it. FML, as they say.

–Sun came out; nice day.

–But not for me: played with hosts and websites all day. Found what I thought was a total winner i hosting: Porkbun. As it turns out, they have their own quirks: forcing all prefixes (FTP, DB, etc.) to some bizarre thing like llldxcdffftymn. They also haven’t responded after 6 hours to a query asking them to use a simpler name for DB prefixes. Soooo, looks like I’m moving everything back to iWebFusion for now. They’re cheap, fast, no quirks–it’s just that dang whois privacy thing that grates on me. Oh, and further: I finally got FTP set up at Porkbun and Spaceship. The directory they point to is empty; putting a file in it doesn’t show up in the hosts’ file manager; trying to move up or down a level in FTP goes nowhere. I have no idea what those cPanel-generated FTP sites are. If I can’t access public_html etc., what’s the point?

–Finally got some real rain today.

–Went to Costco for dessert (muffins), toilet paper, pizza.

–Registered the icsb-2006.org domain at Spaceship; it’s in the process of transferring.

–Messed up my WordPress journal trying to clean it up (changing database wpnq prefixes to wp). It looked good, but blew up when I tried to add a new post. So I used the WP installer at elidol.com to create a new blog, then moved the old posts into it. All seems good.

–Gave up trying to get Plesk to work at Hustly, so closed the account and got a refund. Will use iWebFusion (for a while, anyway) for the WordPress moneymakers (Dizziness and Nausea, Plan Retirement, Limescale, maybe Drywall (though it screams for a youtube implementation)) and Spaceship for registering/installing the link juice sites (icsb-2006.org, maybe waterseer.com, etc.) so the links come from a different IP. Might like to move away from iWebFusion at some point, as they are the only hosting provider I’ve seen that DOES NOT provide a free whois privacy service–resulting in many phone calls, emails and texts from wannabe site designers.