45 years ago today

Happy birthday, Stephen Michael Flora.

You make me proud.

The Swiss Legend Neptune–a wristwatch for a gorilla

I’ve been on the lookout for an attractive, inexpensive watch with an easy-to-read analog display that I could wear on motorcycle trips, letting me leave my more expensive Breitling Chrono Avenger at home.

So when the Amazon Vine program offered me a Swiss Legend Neptune watch to review, I jumped on it.

Sure enough, its analog face is easy to read, but good God, it’s absurdly big and heavy.

I thought my Breitling was heavy at 5.5 ounces. The Neptune weighs in at an astounding 10.8 ounces – more than two-thirds of a pound!

I’ve been fiddling with the clasp trying to take some slack out of the band, but it appears the only way to get it down to the size of my wrist is to remove some links. It turns out that link removal is pretty simple and straightforward if you have a set of tiny screwdrivers. Which I do. I removed four links and now it fits my wrist.

I had no illusions that this watch is a fine Swiss chronometer like the Breitling. The back reads “Swiss made movement” but the Amazon listing says it’s from China, which makes sense.

I don’t have diminutive hands and wrists – I wear an XXL size motorcycle glove – but this thing looks and feels ridiculously big and awkward on my wrist.

It would probably look ok on a gorilla’s wrist.

Another Windows 10 installation in progress

I’m upgrading Maria’s desktop computer from Windows 7 to Windows 10 this morning. So far, so good.

The good news is…

Plastic grilles for the 2004 Lexus RX330 can be had for less than $30.

Ditto, the Lexus emblem that is mounted in the center of the grille.

And it looks very easy to attach both.

I ordered them this morning.

The State Farm adjuster called this afternoon. I told him to close the file since we have a $500 deductible and the fix will be less than $75.

WTF?

Maria called about 11:15 a.m. today to say she just noticed the grill is missing from our 2004 Lexus RX330.

We have no idea whether it just fell off or was stolen. Falling off seems unlikely, since one would almost certainly notice when it happened. But who steals Lexus grills?

State Farm Insurance is on the case.

At last! Paper funnels and they were free!

I had given up on finding paper funnels to carry on my motorcycles for use in low oil emergencies.

None of the auto parts stores here carry them and the ones I could find online were crazy expensive and sold in huge quantities.

I bought some paper funnels at an auto parts store several years ago, but when I needed one last July on the way home from Montana, I discovered the glue holding them together had disintegrated.

Then this morning I found myself in Sam’s Club passing a free sample machine hyping Mobil Delvac motor oil and distributing paper funnels – one to a customer.

Happily, three other people decided they didn’t really need a paper funnel and left their freebies lying on a case of Delvac.

Now I can sally forth into the 2016 riding season secure in the knowledge that I have paper funnels.

Hey, Dad! There’s a deer in the garage!

Dora heard the garage door closing as Maria left for work this morning and stood up at the door to the garage to investigate.
Then her head snapped around and she froze - she noticed the mounted deer head I have propped up and peering out of a garage window.
She growled and barked, but the deer ignored her.

Hype

I wonder how many celebrities who think it’s cool to be seen wearing Beats headphones would do so if they knew they only cost about $14 to make and are obscenely overpriced.

New photo checks

I just ordered new personal checks featuring these four photos. Can you tell I really love Jack and Dora?

Really?

This is how the Fusion Media cable system channel lineup has looked since about 6:30 p.m. yesterday.

O, frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

Einstein Bros. Bagels is high on the list of things I miss about Indiana and I try to visit one of their places whenever I’m back in the Hoosier state.

I was resigned to the idea that I’d probably never see an Einstein Bros. Bagels in Jonesboro.

Until Monday when I saw a Facebook post referencing an Einstein Bros. Bagels in the new Humanities and Social Sciences atrium on the Arkansas State University campus.

I drove down to ASU yesterday morning, grabbed what turned out to be an illegal parking spot (luckily, I didn’t get ticketed) right in front of the building and found an abbreviated version of Einstein Bros. right where I expected it would be.

It’s not a full-blown franchise – they don’t sell mugs and other paraphernalia – but they have the essentials of bagels, coffee and breakfast sandwiches.

My favorite – the Santa Fe breakfast sandwich – has mutated into a wrap, but the girl taking my order said they would be happy to make it with an Asiago bagel instead of a wrap.

So one more Yankee amenity has come to northeast Arkansas. There’s a CVS drugstore on the way and now I’m hoping for a Dunkin’ Donuts.

I’m more impressed than I expected to be with the UP2

I’m evaluating the UP2 wireless activity and sleep tracker by Jawbone for the Amazon Vine Program.

(And by the way, I understand Amazon is under fire for presumably having fake product reviews. I can assure you that every product I have received for evaluation and review has legitimately earned whatever review I gave it. There have been some products that I thought were absolute crap and I said so. At the same time, if I like a product, I’ll say so and to what degree.)

I decided to review the UP2 after seeing it and its big brother, the UP3 at Sam’s Club and becoming intrigued by the promotional material. I evaluated another activity tracker, the NUYU, about a month ago and declared it wildly inaccurate and of little value in a fitness regime.

The UP2 is easily the most stylish, least clunky device of its kind that I’ve seen. It looks like a piece of understated jewelry and is light enough that I hardly notice it when it’s on my wrist.

I’m particularly impressed by the free UP2 app, available for iOS and Android platforms.

Here’s the summary of my sleep and activity on Oct. 18. The software has set goals for me of 8 hours of sleep and 10,000 steps per day. You can see that I’m better at sleeping than I am at stepping.

Here’s the detailed look at how I slept the night of Oct. 17-18.

And this is the analysis of my steps/calorie burn. I disagree with the “Longest Active” category considering that I put in 30 minutes on a treadmill that afternoon. But the rest of it seems reasonable.

At least the UP2 and its app motivated me to get onto the treadmill three days in a row.

I think this is something I can stick with for awhile.

No more international sales on Ebay

I sold Maria’s old iPhone 5 on Ebay last week.

At least I thought I did.

The high bidder was a guy in Germany who says his name is Dawit Balajan. After a couple of days of non-payment, I sent him a query and he responded with a cryptic, “Ond.”

WTF?

I replied that I don’t understand what he’s trying to tell me. No response.

I suspected there would be problems when I noticed he had zero feedback in his Ebay profile. The name doesn’t sound German to me and I wonder if he might be among the hordes of “refugees” currently destroying the German national identity.

So I sent him another message this morning, noting that it has now been five days since the auction closed and I have not received an intelligible reply from him. I told him he has until midnight tonight Greenwich Mean Time to pay, otherwise I’ll cancel the sale and re-list the phone.

And this time I will specify no international sales.

Gone but still in our hearts

I blogged this four years ago today:

This is me saying goodbye to Ruthie at the vet’s office.

I told her how much we love her. I told her to go into the Light and I told her we’ll see her on the Other Side.

(I’m typing with tears in my eyes.)

As a Catholic, I believe euthanasia and assisted suicide are murder when it comes to people and Ruthie always felt like a little person to me, so having her put down yesterday afternoon left me with a horrible guilty feeling. She trusted me and I had her killed and I’ll never be OK with that.

But the vet, Dr. Jon Huff, did his best to make us understand we were doing the right thing for Ruthie. Her Canine Cognitive Dysfunction (Alzheimer’s for dogs) was filling her with confusion and terror, especially at night when she roamed the house endlessly, scratching on doors whether they were open or closed, panting hysterically and trembling uncontrollably. Increasingly heavy doses of Valium did little to calm her.

I did my best to make sure she enjoyed her last day with unlimited treats and petting. We spent her last hour at home sitting on the back porch with her gazing out at the woods through her cataract-hazed eyes and me petting her.

She climbed eagerly into the passenger seat of my Honda del Sol and we drove down to Maria’s office where we transferred into the Subaru. Ruthie sat on Maria’s lap and poked her nose out the open window, taking in the kaleidoscope of city smells on the way to the vet’s office.

Dr. Huff gave her two injections – one to sedate her into unconsciousness and the second to stop her brain and heart.

She was trembling violently as she lay on the table for the first injection, but began to relax immediately. The right side of her face, contorted for the last five years or so by something akin to a stroke, relaxed and she began to look like a puppy again.

Maria and I sat on either side of the table and stroked her gently as she drifted off. I’m confident that she never felt the second injection or any pain from her heart stopping.

Knowing how much she loved to chase a laser dot, I like to think she saw the Light and went to it eagerly, reveling in the release from the limitations of her worn-out body and mind.

She came into our lives around this time in October, 1997. We chose her from dozens of dogs at the animal shelter in Crawfordsville, Ind. I had my laser pointer with me to test the alertness of dogs in the kennel and she had the most enthusiastic response by far. And she seemed to know that she was our dog. She looked at Maria as if she had been waiting for us.

She was a very very very good dog girl. Even though Pete is dozing behind me on the carpet, the house feels empty and lonely without her. Pete spent much of last evening searching for her in every room of the house.

I’d write more, but it’s getting hard to see the monitor.

I hear hunters in the woods

I finally figured out what to do with the mounted deer head I picked up for $10 at a neighbor's garage sale at the end of January.
It came to me as I gazed out the window while doing time this morning on the treadmill in the garage and noticing the deer head lying on some boxes nearby.
Considering that deer season is upon us, it seemed wonderfully apropos.

BMW Motorcycle Rally Pin of the Day

Marilyn Roberts of the Gateway Riders BMW Club graciously sent me (for the modest fee of $2) the pin from this year’s rally, which took place last weekend.

It had been on my calendar since last October, but I couldn’t make it because Maria and Morgan had to make a flying trip to Indiana last weekend, which left me to care for our combined pack of four dogs. Yes, I could have kenneled the dogs, but the cost would have been ruinous.

The anvil references the anvil shoot that has become a tradition at the rally in Potosi, Mo. This year’s rally featured a triple anvil shoot – three at one time.

Research

I’m evaluating the UP2 fitness tracker system for the Amazon.com Vine Program.

I tried the NUYU fitness tracker for Amazon a month or so ago and concluded that it’s wildly inaccurate and not a reliable tool for tracking activity.

Here’s what the Amazon.com listing says about the UP2:

A beautifully slim health and fitness tracker with the smartest app for everyday wellness. On the outside UP2 is the thinnest, sleekest, most style-savvy tracker out there. On the inside, Smart Coach generates fitness insights and activity plans that make reaching your goals that much easier. And with 10 days of battery life you'll be charging less, and living better.

It pairs with my iPhone via Bluetooth and works with a free UP2 app that I downloaded from iTunes.

I’m still feeling my way through the menus and features, but I’m guardedly optimistic that it will turn out to be a decent product. I noticed it’s selling for $99 at Sam’s Club.

Sold!

Maria’s 16GB Sprint iPhone 5 sold today on Ebay for $112.59 – more than twice the $50 Gazelle.com was willing to pay.

It’s boxed up and waiting for the buyer in Germany to send money to my PapPal account.

I always pay for my Ebay purchases immediately after the auction closes and I consider it bad manners for a buyer to let more than 10 minutes go by without paying.

I know he was present for the close of the auction because he sniped it at the last minute. (Unless, of course, he uses sniping software.)

Anyway, our resale of old 5 series iPhones has more than covered the step up to the iPhone 6.

Department of Cool Guy Stuff

My late first father-in-law was a career soldier and a World War II veteran.

He spent a few years teaching Army ROTC at Purdue University, which included teaching college kids to shoot.

Among the things of his that I ended up with was this cool ammo box in which the Savanna (Illinois) Ordnance Depot shipped 1,040 rounds for the venerable .30 carbine – the very same weapon with which I qualified as an expert marksman during U.S. Air Force basic training at Lackland AFB in Texas.

It was shipped sometime between January, 1957 and July 1, 1963 when Zip Codes went into effect.

I use it to store pistol ammunition and gun cleaning supplies.

Free samples

I was wandering around Sam’s Club, waiting for a prescription to be filled this morning, when I noticed a woman filling a machine that dispenses free samples.

Today it was Dentastix dental cleaning sticks for dogs.

She noticed me waiting, tested the machine with one of her cards, and gave the package to me, saying, “Now you can have two.”

(The machine will only dispense one per Sam’s Club membership card.)

So now Jack and Dora can each have one.