2024 July - 5% diary

It's a diary of my normal life, the 5%. Just posting my replies to the monthly newsletter questions between the family and cousins. Dragon comments are after, "in the record".

David --

The Olympics are nearly upon us. Will you be watching? Yes, Which events do you like the most? As many highlights as I can.

What other summer sports did I do? In my hey day I use to do triathlons and open water swimming with my swim club. There is something to be said about wet Lycra swimsuits. Nothing is hidden. The swim club is where I meet Susan. 

Have you watched any of the UEFA European Soccer matches? Also, I forgot to mention the COPA America Games.  I actually did watch the Euro soccer highlights. Fox Soccer is a great place for football highlights. In the Spain v. France game, Lamine Yamal made an impossible goal at 2:11 in the highlights. Watch the video above.  Lamine is the youngest goal scorer at the age of 16. 

Do I do gardening? I spread by accident bird seed on the ground and wheat and millet grew. See pic. I am not sure what to do with it. I thought about threshing the wheat but the animals seem to be eating it. So I will let them have it. Remember in the last month newsletter I planted nasturtium by the fence to grow up the twine. It works. The key is to place the leave away from the sun by the twine. The leave will turn to the sun and wrap itself around the twine. See pic.   

 

 

  

There are many, many hobbies and interests that can reduce stress and improve mental health. What is yours?  I play online with my Bro Mike in Treadmarks, TM, which is a tank game. Mike host three TM server and we play twice a week. Well, I sort of do the opposite of stress reduction. We increase the stress and up the number of tanks and speed. It is a fun time. Go here to see some old clan videos highlights I made.  Above is a five minute TM video I edited to music where I evade a nuke. My TM name was GA 666. Below is an example of the speed up version that Mike and I play now. 

In the record, avatar hack goes on through out the game. It is weird to see a nuke heading straight to you all of a sudden veer off via avatar hack. Its a game of who knows their timelines the best.

Speaking of gardening, do you have a favorite tool for working in the yard?  I recently got a knock off Dewalt brand of cordless pruning shears.  I decided to do the knock off to test if it made any sense since I already have the Dewalt batters. Yes! It is well worth it. And there is a 2m pole extension you can put the pruner on. Double yes! Here is the one I purchased.

Are there any handy-dandy computer or phone apps that help make your life easier? The nice part of a smart phone is there are so many things on it. The camera, text, phone, music, health tracking, and more. The one I use a lot is the Crunchyroll app for watching anime on my 4K TV monitor! Oh yes. 

Do you have any favorite games that you play on your phone or computer? If not, do you play old school style (cards, board games, etc.)? I play Pokemon Go on 4 phones. Yes 4 phones.  See pic of rig. I started with 1 phone, then two. Then I was tied of not being able to raid gyms. So 4 phones. The only issue is you need to have your main phone be the WiFi hot spot for the other three phones. The two mounting holes in the middle of the board allow me to bolt the rig to the bike handle bars.

I also do two game nights during the week on Board Game Arena. On Tuesday it is from 6-7:30 and Friday from 5-7 pm, both Pacific time. Anyone is welcome to come.  Go here to see pic at the bottom of the page for some of the games we play online.

Are you a morning person or do you like to sleep in? Here is the weird thing. I used to be a morning person for decades. Then I retired. Then I started to binge watch Anime late at light. I live in a basement where there is little sound or light, so now I am a night person.

And lastly, what are you up to lately. Projects and tool buying. Folks recently ask me, "What makes me happy?" I told them buying tools. Last month I bought $800 in tools, cordless new hammer drill, rebar bending tool, cordless pruner, concrete finishing trowel, and a rivet nut tool.  I was happy. I had an old hammer drill and it was painful to use. The new Makita rotary hammer drill is pain free tool to use. Most excellent.

 

I have three projects: roof and stucco mold, garden concrete beam, and drainage of the pit. 

 

Well, the north side of the roof always had mold, but now the stucco had mold. So I went online and looked up reviews and the best one was 30 Second which can be used around plants. See the pic of the before and after. I was quite impressed on how well it worked. After I did the stucco, I did the roof and it is now free of the lumpy mold.

 

 

The rebar bending tool finally came in and it was worth the wait. We drilled the holes into the house concrete and did a pencil shadow of the holes to bend the rebar warps. As you can see in the bottom pic some of the wraps are off a little but just tie them at an angle. I decided to use concrete caulk to seal the rebar into the drilled holes because the beam was sandwiched between the patio wall and the house. The caulk was easier to work with than epoxy. The block on the right are concrete dobies to hold up the rebar. A side note, there was a timber where the beam is now but we took it out because everything moves in the Berkeley Hills. I thought it would be best to pin the patio in place against the house concrete which has 26 concrete piers to hard ground. The pic below are the four stages of the garden concrete beam: caulked rebar tied to dobies, forms, poured, rubberized.

The pit. Well, where to start. You see I had planned to install drain board in the pit, then I decided to not do it and just dump gravel in. A year latter and the pressured treated timber started to show signs of mold which we 30 Seconded off. But now there was a layer of gravel in the pit. Argh! Now I had to install the drain board, drain pipe, and rubberize the edges. This now meant that we had move all the gravel from one side to the other side as you can see in the pic below. We got it done. The main change we did was to make our own termination bar for the top of the drain board. We used 1"x8'x1/8" aluminum bar. We had to paint the aluminum because we used zinc washers and galvanized #10 nails to hole the drain board in place.  And I forgot that the zinc and aluminum should not touch because of galvanic corrosion, so we painted the aluminum bar. We rubberized the term bar, washers, nail, and end of the drain board to water proof the pit. 

Take that mold! 

BTW, the termination bar is very expenses. $41 a piece, since it is made of 6000 series aluminum which is weather resistant. But, if you are going to coat the term bar anyway, then 3000 series aluminum will suffice. 

 

Well the steps are next. In fact we put the first step in today, which is Friday. 

Everyone have a cool and safe summer. 

 

Update: