The CampFI group photos were posted to FB:

Didn't take photos during the process but here's the deck fix results. There was a lot of rot in the boards themselves and the joists. Not sure what's going on, could be just too much water and not enough sun because that's where the tree hangs over the deck or... it's because I didn't use pressure treated lumber for all of the framing I did for the corner steps.

Doesn't look like much but that was a larger project than I expected. About four hours of solid work.

Before we moved downstairs I could practice before the woman got up just by going downstairs. Now she can hear me in the music room even with the doors closed and the electric unplugged. If I want to play quietly I've gotta go into the dirt room behind 3 closed doors. It's awkward and annoying, but I can play here at 6:30am without disturbing anyone (in-laws are in town so going upstairs isn't an option).

Since I see it every morning now I finally cleaned up the camera system. It's still a mess of wires, nothing I can do about that, but at least it's all 'mounted' to a single board and tidied up as much as possible.

My jalapeno plant had 1 large pepper on it and a few tiny starts so I picked the one so it would have enough resources to maybe grow the others. Now it has 6 starts on it. Impressive little plant.

Got this at Lidl today, and it's potent.

Took the two 100oz silver bars in to a local metal shop and sold them. .92 of spot but no IRS paperwork so that's worth it. The purge continues.

The 10 G17 mags I've been using in everything since 2017 are pretty worn out. Even with new springs and followers they're getting tired. I have at least 100 G17 mags so zero reason I shouldn't break out the set of poop brown mags I collected to be the 'next 10'. Baseplates are painted and numbered 0-9 and ready for class this weekend.

Survived the Tim Herron 2-day class in West Virginia. Scary Motel 8, but the class was OK. I say only "OK" because I think I've maxed out on what I can do with the level of effort I'm willing to put in. Could I get even faster even at 'my age'? Yes. Am I willing to put in 10x the effort and get 1.1x the results? Realistically not.

Now I am going to make my practice more purposeful, I did that today at the range trying some of the drills from class on the timer along with a few I made up (but still on the timer). I won't be able to do them with other people there obviously because the timer will pick up all the other gunfire but I can still do the motions even if I can't record the results.

The sample USPSA stage video from the class. I ran it twice, once under strict IDPA rules just because I thought it would free my mind up to do the new stuff not worrying about what I was doing target wise and then a second (faster smoother) run using USPSA rules but still running 10 rounds in the mags.

And a few days later he posted the class photo:

After the class and a few days of drills, the G34 hit the 50k round mark. I thought at this point I would retire it and switch to the Gen5 G34, but I traded that in. I also thought I might switch to the CZ9c, but I traded that in as well. So, in light of not finding anything else to try I'll just be running this a bit longer. Maybe at 75k I'll replace it. They don't make the G34 any longer so whatever it is it won't be any new Gen6 G34 since that won't exist.

Book club John invited a bunch of us to dinner. He hosted us at Lucky 32 rather than at his house because of a variety of dietary restriction (quasi-vegans and whatever). It was unique, he wanted his friend groups to meet and claimed that 'everyone had a story'. That appeared to be true, everyone was fairly unique having taken different paths in life that all lead to success. A fun time.

What wasn't fun was the food. Lucky32 used to be pretty good, but tonight... not so much. Not pictured is the cold cucumber soup that was gritty and served in a hot bowl so it wasn't quite chilled. The catfish wasn't cooked very well (mushy inside and out) and the flourless chocolate cake was unpleasantly warm and served with a spoon. A spoon? Who eats cake with a spoon?

Maybe I'm a pretentious douche still, or maybe their quality has just gone down. Even the service was sub-par with everyone having to ask for drink refills.

I had ordered a 'used' battery off Amazon for the UPS that died, it was a screaming deal for $15 and who returns a battery? No one, I don't even think they allow that so I could only assume it was an open/damaged box. Whatever it was they delayed the shipment twice and then canceled it.

Not wanting to pay the crazy price for the proprietary sized under capacity battery that fit inside the UPS (which was clearly designed 1/8" too narrow just to not fit the standard batteries) I just got the next size up and planned to run leads outside the box. Turns out, with just a hole drilled in the side the leads reach. That took 10 seconds to do.

The edge of the PRS is starting to really hurt my arm. It cuts in to my bicep and has bruised it. Getting it reshaped isn't a viable option (I've asked two places now) so I just put some tape on the edge. Maybe that will be good enough.

I finally got a hitch basket to hold a box on the back of the van. This will let me keep all the cooking gear, stove, fuel, etc outside and not have to move it around to setup the bed space. Plus if we're going to get rid of the truck at some point being able to carry a little extra chicken chow or a bail or two of emergency hay would be handy. The basket was cheap, the box wasn't too bad, but I did run into a problem. The exhaust points directly into the carrier.

Online there are photos of melted luggage, melted tarps, etc from the exhaust cooking whatever is there. I toyed with one solution of putting a heat shield there; easy enough to bend up a piece of Home Depot aluminum plate and bolt it on. Jason suggested instead I get an exhaust tip extension and run the outlet below the level of the carrier. The other idea was to get a 4" hitch riser but with that on I wouldn't be able to open the van doors with the carrier on even if it was empty.

The extension seemed OK but they looked dumb. Instead I took it to a custom muffler shop and had them remove the original and put a curved outlet in place. Won't fall off like the bolt on extension and doesn't look dumb. They could have made it maybe 2" longer but as it is it should work.

Moving the truck around and washing it I noticed the fender rot is getting much worse on the bed. I knocked the rusted parts off and hit the rest with the 'rust reformer' spray. At some point it's going to be a real problem, but today is not that day.

Also on the fix-it front we replaced the kitchen faucet. It had apparently leaked just a little inside, enough to rust out the mount and freeze it in place. When you went to swivel the faucet it would just spin the mount in the hole rather than moving the faucet like it was supposed to. It was a total bitch to get out of there as everything was rusted and seized in place, but it's done now. New one has.... plastic parts so they won't rust but at some point in the next 10 years it's going to crack and fail. At least it will be easier to remove to throw away.

Internet is down, has been for about 3 hours now. Tethering works with mint now so I was able to get some emails out via the laptop instead of trying to type on the tiny screen.