Vincent The Dragon

Just some updates on something I did weeks ago and forgot to upload

Fix one thing and one or two another breaks….

So way back in January I got 2 tires and 2 TPMS sensors for my car.
The tires, it was simply due for and the sensors was because the TPMS light came on.
The light was on when I got there and was still on when I left. I assumed the car would auto-learn and since it needed to be above 40 degree to do that I waited. 50 degree weather finally arrived and still no reset so I did what I should have done to begin with and researched. My car will not auto-learn, you have to enter the sensor information into the PCM. For various reasons I have waited until now to get it fixed. I few weeks ago I went to the place I got the tires and the sensors at to begin with to ask some questions and mention what my research showed and if they would clarify and agree but the 12 year old working there was being a smart ass. I returned a week later to ask another person but he was 13 years old and also a damn smart ass. Luckily this auto tire discount store also has a store on the other side of town and I took it there. I explained what went on thus far and what my research pointed to and if they would verify and program. The guy handling my case was older, not quite my age but he basically said...yes, you have to program in the information into the PCM pretty much for all cars and that the younger people generally do not know their ass from a hole in the ground.

Not only did the other store not program the PCM, they would not have been able to because the two TPMS sensors they did replace were keyed to the same information. His scanner showed two sensors with the same ID’s and that would never work. First, the car needs to see 4 sensors and second seeing one sensor ID with overlapping transmitted data would freak out the TPMS module.

Got the car back and no TPMS error, just a TPMS warning flashing light...which IS normal as the car needed to be driven for a while. We drove around a bit and YAY! No error lights now.

Back to home to mow the yard and...UM...nope, the tractor will not start. No crank, no lights, no nothing….battery is good, fuse is good but there is no power. Must be a wire issue or the keyswitch….I’d just push mow but that mower is also fucked. The rings are shot and it smokes after getting hot then drinks all its oil.

Oh! also the attic vent fan died...Now that its 90 degree outside and will be over 100 up in the attic crawl space, I’ll have fun replacing that thing….

United Healthcare has been trying for several years to switch those of us on Remicade to Inflectra.

Inflectra is biosimilar, not an exact copy so no guarantees, It's main side effects is respiratory infections and bronchitis so good luck with that.

Remicaide's main side effects are stuffy nose and headache.

It's only about $300 cheaper for the insurance company but considering that its an infusion just like Remicade, it's still going to cost about $30,000 a treatment anyway so I'll not see any change.

The only way I can afford to hit my max out of pocket expense every single year for the past 20+ years is a rebate from the Remicade manufacture and there is no guarantee I'll get any rebate from the Inflectra people.

Our system is broken

Well...got up early to mow the yard...Mower said NOPE

Went to our town's fireworks display - it was okay, not as good as years past.
Went to Wuf's family for a family food gathering.
Decided to grill out the next day - it was goood!

Lets see its 4:30 and all I have had to eat today is a twix bar.
Supposed to work until 11 then have a lunch before leaving to get my 8 weeks treatment of Remicade but did not leave until 11:45 so no lunch.
My service technician called in sick today as well so me leaving meant nobody is running service calls at work.
Wuf's car is back to no crank no start when the starter is hot...been fine all winter and now that its in the 80's...Going to order another new starter for it.

Round one of the covid shot.

No real issues other than my arm is sore where the shot was.

If i grow extra appendages, I'm hoping for another arm or a tail.

Well, I was working on Justin's car this weekend. It was a followup to when I did the spark plugs and noticed the head gasket leaking. It was a pretty straight forward replacement and I took my usual little videos for my you tube channel.

I put the videos together in windows as the Linux movie editors are all way more complex and feature rich than I need. I was copy paste from the phone to a folder which was going on the background while I was working on deleting no needed old pictures off the SD card in the phone. Windows decided I needed a popup notification about something unsolicited in the notifications which I dismissed at which point I hit the delete key to delete the unwanted pictures I was selecting. Unbeknownst to me windows had changed the focused window to the one containing the video files (3 windows under the visible one) and so the video files were lost. I was not able to recover them, somehow the recycle box was set to not prompt and for some reason the files bypassed it anyway nor was I able to recover them off the phones SD card ... Thanks windows for being such a POS.

This is Mrs. Niki.

She has been a stray that comes and goes for the past few years, very skittish and would run away from you and not come in close contact.
She basically just rooted around in the compost pile looking for scraps and then would leave.

She befriended the family of raccoons that visit the houses here and would get fed with them.

Over time I have managed to get her to trust us enough that she would not run away though would not let you come within a few feet of her.

Last year she finally let me touch her and a few weeks later she finally let me pet her. She lowered her head to give a head but and I gave her a good petting. You could see a light went off in her head and she remembered that pettings are a nice thing to have...And she wanted more. She would get petted and talked to when I came home and then before bed time as well as when William went outside to smoke, but she remained very skittish and would run from you if you moved. She now had a regular feeding schedule and mostly just hung around the house. One day she took over a cardboard box I had on the car port and that became her new hide out. I eventually moved the box against the wall of the house, then added a second box to give it a semi-roof. then blankets. I tried to get her to go into the garage which still has a cat door. She understood the cat door and would immediately vacate the garage if I took her into it and then stopped petting her. Box was upgraded to large copier box with a door opening, foam glued to the insides for insulation and a cat bed for winter. It got quite cold this year so I added a plug-in warming pad. She seemed quite content and became box house cat. we tried to coax her into the house many times but she would have nothing for it. One of the nights it got down to 6 degree and I got worried because she was gone all day, finally coming home in the night. The next morning she was acting odd, following me around and meowing. Like a typical loaner stray, her fur was not the best; she had ear mites and while enjoying the petting, regular meals of good food and a warm and dry place to live she seemed frumpy. Anyway...I scooped her up and gave her cuddles to get her good and warm and brought her inside. She was scared but did not mind and was not trying to escape the house. Prince is a pretty quiet cat and doesn't seem to want anything to do with Niki. He is an old cat and mostly stays in the office as it's HIS room. Shadow was all hissy and yelled a lot. I spent the next few weeks sleeping on the couch, Niki would come and sleep with me or near me. She got broad spectrum parasite stuff and you can tell it makes a big difference. Her ears are dirty still but no longer hot to the touch, eyes are clearer, her belly is not bloated and she is shedding like mad which is being replaced with soft clean fur. At first she would find places to hide and or face the wall but did not meow or howl or try to exit the house when we opened the door. Generally you want to give a new cat coming into a house with existing cats a room to have alone and let them come to each other on their own terms but this is a small house and I had no such room. Lots of visible play time with Shadow (when he was not being a hissy little bitch) eventually Shadow decided its play time with Niki and they have been spotted playing together. Niki is playing, running around and being a cuddle monster. She is a BIG cat, its hard to capture size without a reference but her head is fist sized. She looks to have been fixed and I think she is one of the pizza places stray kittens. At one point the place attracted a small colony which they took donations for to have them fixed and released a few years back. She has a few battle scars, missing some bits of here ears which is where her name comes from. She has a large nick missing from one of them. She has turned into a big sweet kitty, Shadow is happy to have someone to play with (Prince is not a player). Hopefully she will teach Shadow some manners as he is an asshole and she is twice his size with claws (he was front de-clawed) but i doubt it.

Things conspired.

Catching the Covid took me out at just the right time whereby I was unable to get some projects done that needed to be done at specific times during the year as well as just not being able to get stuff done these past few years.

Pompous grass cut down – I did get it cut but not gathered and mulched so there is a giant mountain of straw in the yard which must be dealt with before the yard grass awakens.
Big tractor converted to snow plow mode – During the snow storm last night I tried to get it ready but ran out of light and she would not start . I was supposed to get her covered under tarp but ice storm happened before I could. I could really use something to park the tractors under but those simple metal roof things are very over priced.

Water heater rinsed – something that needs done every year or more here due to the calcium we have in the water – I am 1.5 years behind on getting that done and still need to do some pipe work for the emergency pressure release valve.

I have several car parts that need installed – Williams car leaks oil pretty bad and I need to do some tune-up things – car is almost paid off, not sure if will keep and fix up a bit or use as trade in – will depend on what they will trade it in for. Oil leak seems to be the oil filter housing gasket– Justin’s car needs valve cover gasket and its been popping a cam shaft error that I have not been able to fix.

Tree cut down – there is a very large Maple tree WAY to close to the house. I have been slowly buying climbing gear. I have the climbing spikes, good repel rope, descender, pole saw, chain saw. . I still need a harness and the ropes to drop limbs with, tie off straps and hardware, some metal work on the tractor to attach a hitch mount and a winch. I will need to practice repelling as it’s been years and years since I last did that and have never done tree climbing though I have done some 60 foot pole climbing with spikes and a safety line. Am not looking forward to this.

Driveway fixed up – I have the box blade for the tractor and did manage to level out the gravel a good bit but the next phase is having a border on the south side of the driveway, dig out the dirt there and start adding rock. I think I worked out that 2x10’s will be the edging – Got to find someone to haul them to the house as I do not have a truck. This project is 2 fold as it also includes properly grading the front yard. There is a big dip in the grade from the front of the house to the drainage ditch. It causes water to pool in the yard and the dip is also in the driveway which makes it difficult to navigate in inclement weather. I have several large caches of dirt started but I need to shovel and cart it to the yard, do the survey lines, dig the holes for the metal poles I will use to anchor the edging (the main water line to the house runs under this section and 811 only marks up to the water meter…not sure what to do)

Garage roof – it’s shot and needs re-shingled – edges of the roof are messed up and need some wood replaced and soffit reworked. Money and parts delivery are the main factor here – the roof has been tarped for 2 years.

These are just the main ones, I have large list of smaller or not as important projects in the works as well.

Your results detect SARS-CoV-2. A positive test means that you are infected with COVID-19.

I got an email - I have been in close contact with someone whom tested positive. We spent 3 half days in close proximity working together to install some big equipment. This was Monday through Wednesday. I started feeling off on Thursday (just a migraine so meh, I get thous). Friday is a vacation day for me so I was working around the house and started feeling fatigued and yucky. By the night I feel like crap - I have NO FEVER - I still feel like crap so am heading into town for a Covid test. I have Monday off already as its a vacation day ...Man I was going to get some projects done...*sigh*

For the first time in a long time we decided to try and setup a tree.
One of our cats being an eternal asshole, we have been reluctant.
Also it's a very small house with not much room to setup such things.
Sure it's a little Charlie Brown'ish but it turned out okay.

Our turkey day is today as this is the first day in a while where were are all her at the same time and not working.

Cornbread stuffing is something I have not done before.
Pumpkin pie is from scratch using an actual pumpkin and not a can
Roasted the seeds
Basted the bird every half hour
devil eggs from a recipe book nearly twice my age.

I eated too much...