More money being spent on things I use every day. Ever since I saw those gigantic monitors at Costco I've been wondering if I should upgrade. The 11+ year old monitors I've stolen form work are 'fine', but maybe a higher refresh and higher pixel density would be easier on my eyes? Could I get away with 1 big monitor instead of 2 and not have to sit at such a funny angle on the desk?

I started by just ditching the 2nd monitor and trying that, worked OK but sometimes it was annoying to have lost that real estate. Not being able to put up a browser and my editor side-by-side so I could use the AI editor and cut-n-paste back and forth was a loss. Now I can do that with both on the same screen. The first real loss with the 1 big one (which could be tweaked if it really bothered me I guess) is not being able to have a video up playing on the small screen while I work on the other screen.

I ended up not getting a 'gaming' monitor, those tend to have really fast response but narrow aspect ratios and the last thing I wanted was to loose 250f my screen height. I also didn't get curved because every review (and Hiers confirmed it) says that glare is an issue. With a wrap-around screen something somewhere is always going to be catching the light. This productivity monitor is only 75MHz refresh so it would be limited to 60 fps gaming, but my GTX970 won't be able to drive it anyway. Too many pixels / card is too slow for 1440p gaming (vs the 1080p gaming it's struggling with on the old monitor). If I upgrade the gaming system I'll get a proper 24" gaming monitor for it. The pros apparently use 24" so they don't have to move their head around when doing FPSs and while I won't be playing those games 24" is a solid 'value' size for the good gaming stuff and it will fit on the desk next to this 32" behemoth.

Working on the ergo setup, I think I need the monitor just a touch higher but the stand isn't adjustable for height. So... leftover cutting board practice scrap, complete with poorly routed edges. Good enough, fits the room motif of old stuff and unfinished lumber.

Johnson Hyundia moved out of the old building and into the new dealership down the street. I may have mentioned I spent a Saturday moving cars down there, but now it's official. They'll rebuild this one into the Genesis new car sales area and the old Genesis area which was the Subaru area before will be Genesis used.

Hatchback on the woman's car was falling down and hitting me in the head. $20 for new pistons on amazon and we're back in business. These look exactly like the ones on the Jeep too, so I'm hoping it's a trivial a job there when it's due.

Secret squirrel prepper meeting, I was early and it was just after lunch so I got some real food. Not worth the money, but a slight treat.

Notice the increase in food pictures from crap in restaurants and gas stations. Starting to slip into old habits!

Forgot to mention this morning. Went to fight club, came home, cut down a few trees (some just needed to come down because they were dead, 1 was for the mushroom log project) and had to use the winch on one that got hung up, then blew the entire yard/driveway/circle, then planted the garden. I'm tired. Did too much.

Almost have all the macs backing up to the security PC now. Put a 4TB SSD in place of the SATA drive and am running some shares off that. Sparse bundles on the shares, doing the command line trick to make time machine use them... it seems to be working. Tried it on the USB SATA drive and it was too slow and just timed out all the time. Now as long as it says connected it works. The wifi on the mbp15 seems to be getting worse, drops and/or freaks out every few days even just doing web browsing. Hope that thing doesn't fail on me.

That hot biotech company that I gambled on? Gone, delisted and supposedly doing a liquidation cash out to shareholders. In theory I would have gotten $22 for my shares but it should have happened in December. So, looks like I get nothing. Must have not been the right kind of shareholder. Live and learn for sure. On the plus side, the other random investments I made for the old blog posts have done well enough to cover over that loss.

We went to the candlelight string quartet tribute to Nirvana last night. It wasn't a bad show at all, small venue with lots of street and lot parking and no security theater. Nice.

A sample of the show. They allowed filming during the 2nd to last song, the woman captured a bit of it but I didn't try.

I've got an annoying dry cough and my throat tickles / hurts. I could be sick again, or it's just allergies. The woman keeps insisting it's allergies and I hope she's right. I went by CVS to get some meds to see if they work. Using the CVS insurance there I got $25 off the OTC meds. Look at that value for the $1000+ per month we pay for that insurance. Sigh.

Sick again. Went to the doc-in-a-box and she said it's an ear infection, both sides. I can feel the pain and pressure. Different antibiotics, we'll see how that helps.

5 days later, still on the road to recovery. Canceled out of the rescheduled match for tomorrow, I could push it and go but I really don't want to. Both because I'm not sure I could make a whole day of moving around (just cleaning the firewood off the porch this morning was making me sweat) but also.... kinda don't want to shoot. I've not been practicing at all, maybe 1 dryfire session a week. I'm losing the desire to compete.

Sickness makes me do strange stuff, like deciding to totally clean the bedroom. Got tired of the chord mess... ha, 'chord', make that 'cord' mess next to the nightstand acting as a huge dust trap I decided to do something about it. Taping down cords, re-routing things, drilling a hole in the base of the nightstand so I could run the iPad cable up into the drawer and store the iPad there when it's not being used as an alarm, etc. Got rid of the chinesium tactical light that always gets knocked off the top and put a picture hook on the back and hung my actual surefire light on there. Just grab the lanyard and you get the light, one that's actually usable when fighting with a handgun. About time I got smarter about that.

I got these to help learn the fretboard notes, it's becoming more important that I use the proper names (think I covered that already, or maybe just in my mind I did). Anyway, they fit fine and aren't too obnoxious... until you try to play. It's a visual assault and not what I'm used to seeing when looking at the board. I'm sure I'll get used to it, and then have to get used to it after I remove them or switch to the acoustic.

Someone went to play with the baby goats today and wore them out:

Taco and I pondering the universe. Or really him just checking my ear to see if there are any treats hidden there. He never can be too sure.

Went to the "PSA Gathering" down in SC, got back last night. Drove down the night before and stayed in a hotel, sorta a dry run for the upcoming trip. Have to get used to being around people and sleeping in random beds again. That worked out fine, and the event was pretty much what I expected. Some vendor booths setup, you got to shoot a few rounds of your choice of their offerings. I tried the Springfield Echelon, it was kinda nice. Tried various suppressors (lame really since you can't take your ears off due to all the other gunfire you don't get the 'ooh.... quiet!' factor), talked to Vortex and Taurus reps and then went home. Spent about twice as long inside as I did in line. Did score these free powered headphones which will make a nice backup pair, or something to stage somewhere.

I was going to puttgen a RSA key for the lenovo so I could get in here without a password, but the key format it outputs doesn't look like the sshkeygen ones from unix. might work, but it doesn't seem to fit. I'm pretty out dated on all this technology stuff.

Speaking of tech, the kiosks as Panera are down, there is a sign there saying as such but people keep walking past the sign with their faces buried in their phones and then getting confused when they kiosks don't do anything. If only they were aware of that thing they're walking around and could read something not on a phone screen.

Ah, the religious folk and their hoards of children are arriving for lunch after Sunday school (based on the t-shirts they're wearing). Time for me to move on from Panera, the other writing people left about 20 min ago anyway. I'm supposed to now go to the other Panera for secret prepper group.

Trying to clean up the rough idle on the van. It was glass smooth after the new motor mounts, so either my cheap mounts failed in 20k miles or it's something else. Plugs have 60k on them, could be that (they're iridium 100k plugs so I would expect them to last 75k at least). YouTube also suggests it can be carbon built up on the edge of the throttle body butterfly. Easy enough to check, and there was some grossness there so I cleaned it off. We'll see if that helps. Also threw in a new air filter, the box was labeled 2021 so as that's the replacement I got for the last time I changed it... it's due.

First try at making home made mac and cheese on the stove top. Turned out pretty good, the woman even liked it. The cheese was cheap and too sharp, so I would up it a notch in quality and lower it to mild and I bet it'll be pretty much right.

Kristen's dad ended up buying that 1.2L turbo Buick. I hope it works out for them. They don't drive much so it should last them as long as they need.

They actually took my advice, the low option one with the non-CVT transmission, no moon roof and the two safety feature packages. No one ever takes my advice!

Easter photos. Not sure why this is a thing, but here they are: