Another trip to another doctor, and now they want to put a tube in my ear just like when I was a kid. It's an outpatient thing for adults, so I just go in and get it done. Scheduled for next Friday, the soonest they could get me in. Meanwhile, the med pile continues to grow:

I replaced the spark plugs in the van yesterday, and two of the spark plug wells were filled with oil. The valve cover gasket is leaking on the inside edge and letting oil flow into the plug area. Annoying, and surprised it's not caught fire. I cleaned it out best I could, but a lot of oil ran into the plug holes when I removed the plugs. Huge clouds of smoke on start-up.

Tiny progress on the van battery project, got the foam cut and installed in the box so now the battery is nicely secured inside the box. The lithium is just slightly smaller than an actual 'group 24' battery, but better that than slightly too large.

Went to FG&G to trade in the P380 on another LCP MAX, assuming I would get a black one since they were sold out of the oddly cheaper stainless version. They had one left, but raised the price up to $380, from the $340 dad paid last week. I wasn't having any of that, so I just left it there. No sale.

Eds lists the stainless one on their web site for $300 so I emailed them about a possible trade. He said he's got 6 of them. I drove down today, and for the P380 I figured I might get $150-175 for (kahr are not popular anymore) he actually said the best he could do was an even swap for the MAX. Uh, OK. I'll take that deal. Including tax that's $322 for it, I'll totally take that. Now, I have dual MAXes.

I offered dad to trade for his black one if he wants stainless, but only until I fire it. Once I start putting rounds through it to verify function I don't want to have to start over. 380 ain't exactly cheap, and I don't have that much. I picked up a case, and with what I have cached away... I have 2000 rounds. that's it. That's nothing really.

Overcast this morning and not hot nor too humid so I quickly cleaned the truck interior. Leather conditioner on the seats, detail spray all the surfaces after vacuuming and a wipe down of the door sills. The outside is still gross, but at least I rinsed the worst of the pollen off, you can actually see through the windows now.

I also took the Jeep out and rinsed it off and vacuumed it real quick. It's actually pretty clean inside, and I stored it with a full tank of gas. Probably should have put some stabilizer in there had I known it was going to sit for a few months.

My traded P380 is already on Ed's web site, and it looks like he pulled the extra magazines from the box before taking the photo. It's probably $50+ retail for those extra 2 mags. I'm still happy enough for the deal... as long as I stop looking at it. :)

Finally made it to a match after missing the last 3 due to sickness or whatever. My overall finish was not as good as usual, but considering I'm out of practice and was in a lot of pain due to my ear infection, I'm going to just think of it as a good thing.

First stage, and maybe, just maybe I actually should have been DQ'ed for breaking the 180. I came around the back of the minivan and missed my mark and brought the gun around too early. RO called me on it, but let me continue because they like me I guess. Whew.

Here's me losing time dropping a magazine. Can't just leave it there or it's a 3 second penalty. Sigh. You can't tell but I'm grabbing it while moving, so at least somewhat athletic vs. just totally stopping and grabbing it like an old fart.

Replaced the valve cover gasket, or rather the 4 gaskets in the cover, on the van. The 4th plug hole had oil in it again, so clearly the leak wasn't a 1-time thing (had hoped the overheating had temporarily warped the valve cover or something). Hopefully the cover isn't permanently damaged, but we'll know shortly.

The coils had oil on them and 147k miles so I figured I would swap them out while I had everything apart. The blue ones were cheaper than black, so I went that way. Looks kinda snazzy now.

Went to the ear doctor yesterday for my quasi-emergency follow up after a week of my blown ear drum leaking fluid everywhere. The new doc used a shop vac (basically) to suck a bunch of crap out of my ear and declare that yes, my ear drum is ruptured. Called it "natures tube". So the constant pain and total deafness are normal for this condition. I'm on two antibiotics now, one a repeat of a previous one that didn't seem to work and one via ear drops. So far the puss level has lowered, but nothing else has changed yet. Could take weeks to clear up.

Another of the deck step joists was rotted. Apparently you need pressure treated wood not just for ground contact but anything close to the ground. Moisture down low is a real threat. Won't make that mistake again. Anyway, replaced this one piece and things are back to solid. Hopefully I didn't use too much reclaimed non-pressure treated stuff... hopefully.

The wifi radio on the 2015 MBP is starting to fail, several times a day now. Apple removed the ability to use USB wifi widgets from the OS a while back because reasons so the only official fixes are to get it repaired (too old) or replace it (kinda expensive). I went with the unofficial fix which is to use a thunderbolt gigE adapter running to a newly acquired $30 pocket router. It's designed for travel so you can attach to the hotel/ship wifi with a single IP (and only pay for 1 device) and then run all your devices off the back end behind the firewall/NAT setup. Cool idea. I'm just using it as an AP/bridge, so the mac plugs into it and it does the back haul to the wifi network. It works. I was using the EoP adapters temporarily and was getting 40mbps with some wonky latency. With this I'm getting 260mbps with good latency. It's actually faster than the wifi built in to the mac. Bummer it can't be powered from a USB port (USB-c yes, everything I have no) and it's another cable but at least the mac can continue to work on the kitchen table where I use it.

Some random chicken legs being grilled earlier this week. Yum. Did kebabs last night and doing pizza tonight. Outdoor cooking season is officially here.

Just noticed that the http partition is almost full, only 5GB left. Guess tossing all these images and videos in really burns up the space. It's a VM so I can just make a new drive and migrate that stuff, another IT task for next week.

I want to try wine again, I do miss it (and hard alcohol and beer aren't sitting well with me much anymore). However, I don't want to have to drink an 8oz pour every night 4 nights in a row after opening a bottle, so I'm trying this:

I've had the bourbon barrel stuff before, it's more of a 'wine beverage' than just wine but it's also easier to get right on the low end of the cost scale. We'll see. It says 30 days from opening is how long it lasts, some web sites say 6 weeks. Either way, for $16 if I get a few weeks of occasional wine out of it, we'll call it a win.

Got the rest of the garden in. The tomatoes I didn't even try to start from seed, but the peppers that didn't sprout were replaced with ones from Lowes, and added some basil, onions and a cucumber plant.

The travel guitar has arrived! Look how tiny it is compared to a normal electric.

I've put some practice in on it with the spark amp, the woman says it sounds OK. I of course can't really hear it. It tuned up pretty quick, and the action is nice and low. I don't think it needs any 'setup' unless I change the string weight which I'm unlikely to do.

I was going to expand the /http partition on the web2 vm, but that's not available in workstation for some reason. So, I thought I would add another disk in and move some stuff around. Looking in the directory there was a bunch of crap that could be deleted, so I did that instead. Now I've got 17gb free where there was just 4gb. No expansion required.

So, another day another gun. This one makes sense though! I traded in the gen 2 G21 that was just too big (the original grips are HUGE) and the newer of the LCPs (which has been replaced by the MAX) in for a Gen5 MOS G21. This will let me burn up the 10k rounds of 45 I have without having to sell them. I mean that would make the most sense, and get more more 9mm or whatever but I don't want to deal with the forum or whatever so this is the second best way. I think. Who knows, my decisions aren't always good.

I looked at all sorts of other 45s both new and used and nothing could match the utility of the G21, especially since I already had 6 more mags for it after trading it in with just 1 mag. Three of them had those dumb ass Pierce baseplates on them which make them lock into the grip on the gen 2. Why is that needed? The whole point of that notch on the gen2 was to give you somewhere to grab the mag to pull it out since they originally were not drop free by design. Once that changed, it was still a spot to pull a stuck mag out. So why would someone want to fill in that feature? The gen5 design is different so those mags wouldn't work without replacing the base plate.

New plates are either half the cost of the mag (for OEM plates) or more than the cost of the mag for stupid aftermarket ones. People who can't shoot love them some aftermarket aluminum base plates. Anyway, I just broke out the dremel and cut the stupid bump off and now they work. They're ugly with the rough cut finish, maybe I could file that a bit smoother but for range mags it doesn't make any difference.

The travel guitar lacks a volume control, to get that you have to pay 75% more to get the more 'pro' version and then the little leg that pops on/off becomes more substantial and the bulk goes up. My pocket amp doesn't have a volume control either, so it's too loud when used with the travel guitar. Traveler makes, or sticks their name, on an amp that has a volume control. Handy. So, I just got one. Fits perfectly, and the volume works. I'm not sure I love the fixed tone of this one, it lacks the 10 presets and customization of my other pocket amp where I've found the 'perfect' tone setup for me. That said, I also still can't hear correctly so everything sounds like trash right now. Maybe this little amp sounds perfect... if my ears worked? We'll find out some day, hopefully.

I finally did the transmission fluid change in the van yesterday, it was exactly as straight forward as the youtube video suggested. I'm still trying to figure out the fluid level. You can only check it when it's hot, and I did that but when you add fluid through the dip stick hole it coats the inside of the tube and then you can't get a clean reading again. It's close, I eyeballed how much fluid came out by dumping it into an empty oil container so I know I'm around 3.5 quarts in but I'll have to drive it and check it again once it's warm and the fluid has run out of the tube. You also can only check it warm because the fluid expands when hot, so if you read it cold it will be wrong.

I didn't take any photos, but here's a screen grab from the youtube video. Mine looks exactly like this.