When I tried to update graphics drivers on my Surface Pro 3 this week I was presented with the wonderful news that my computer was no longer capable of updating to the latest drivers.

Off I went to Microsoft and purchased a new Surface Pro 7. This computer is a beast. 16gig of memory, the latest i7 processor and a 1tb SSD. When running Media Encoder for the 360 bike ride videos and creating some proxy files so Premier Pro would play without skipping frames the process took over an hour and 30 minutes. Do in the same process with the new computer took less than 10 minutes. It was great.

This weekend was partially spent loading all the software for the new computer and sitting side by side with the home computer I was able to get both start screens exactly the same.

To, hopefully, complete all my camera purchases on Amazon I am getting a ‘set’ of light boxes, two of them battery operated, and I received 5.5″ and 7″ field monitors for the camera. The lights will be here Tuesday and the monitors arrived on Saturday.

Bike Ride: I took another ride on Sunday (Saturday was spend updating computer). This one was for 9+ miles with a 45 minute digital Peloton workout included.

Hello fresh this weekend included a plant based (veggie) burger and a hoison pork burger. Both very good with picture of the pork burger coming as soon as I do the Photoshop magic. I haven’t done last weeks yet.

I still have two Hello Fresh steaks to cook sometime this week. I need to get on the Peloton today so the steaks may come tomorrow or later this week. On second thought I’ll freeze the steaks and have them on Friday.

Saturday I went for a ride about 2:00pm. I spent a half hour out on the bike with all my gadgets all hooked up; phone, action camera (GoPro Max), phone charger and smart helmet.

This time around all accessories on the bike worked great. The only problems were one, the action camera holder came loose and was not upright the entire ride. The second which make the first completely moot is that I had the settings on the camera wrong, shutter speed was set to 1/60th of a second which is too long for how bright is was. The footage was completely blown out and unusable.

Sunday went much better. I corrected the problem with the camera mount. It wasn’t actually the camera mount but the handle bar extension mount and I corrected he camera settings. This time the footage came out great. All 58 minutes of it. Yes, that is right, I as out almost an hour and had a fantastic time.

Two rides over the weekend totaling 15+ miles and used about 1/2 of the battery. That looks to be close to 30 miles on a charge. I spent most of the time on PAS (Pedal Assist) level 2. Level 1 will keep you at approximately 8 – 10 miles per hour. Level 2 keeps riding at a good clip of 11.5 – 12 miles per hour. I jumped it up to level 3 a couple of times and I would rapidly accelerate to 20+ miles per hour. If I leave it at level 1 and 2 I could probably top 30 miles on a charge.  I also pushed it using only the throttle and not pedaling for just a small portion of the rides to see what it would do.

I cooked up some more Hello Fresh this weekend. I’ll post a picture of the hot and sweet chicken when I get the picture masked and adjusted in Photoshop.

This week I’m going to try a new method of creating my blog post.  I will be using my phone to dictate of via voice to Microsoft word and then from word I will copy and paste this document into my blog post.

So far this is working really well and I what I have to say so far is that this weekend has gone very well it’s only Saturday right now but I’m enjoying it very much a recap of last week will be following.

Saturday night did not go so well I was very sick and I got up 3 times and getting sick. It was very bad. Today being Sunday I was recuperating this morning from last night’s bout with the stomach flu. Today I have been using my camera with my new lens (20mm with ultra wide adapter) with the Crane M2. I’m getting better at using the gimbal and all of its different functions. I’m also in the process of charging all my batteries and need to figure out how I’m going to pack everything in my camera bag and what exactly am going to be taking with me on vacation.

This last week went but went fairly well Jasmine has been gone and I had been the boss for this entire week and all of next week. Dan told me that he and interview down in Texas for a new job contracting and then he told me had a interview this Monday the 16th at Nordam for an ME position and then he told me that he got the job for design engineering here in Tulsa. I’m not exactly sure what he is doing, I’m getting confused with his actions.  I think Dan is upset with Jasmine for some reason he finds her not trustworthy and is having a problem with the way she’s managing the group. I’m not sure I can agree with a lot of things that he says but he is my friend and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt with how he feels.

Jeff Raley went in for surgery on his cancer last week I think he is doing rather well although he is in an extreme amount of pain and having problems getting medication that will last for any length of time.

This week I need to get my medical screening done and get my expired Oklahoma ID renewed (I can do that the Monday after I get back).

I have decided that I’m going to create to E books to sell on Amazon one of those books is going to be a log book for drone flights and another book is going to be a log book for chess games. At least one of the book’s, the log book for drone flights will also accompany an app that I will create for yourself to track your flights, flight time, batteries, number of charges on each battery etc..

Right now I’m creating this blog post for my blender travels.com website using word and my Samsung phone and I just saw on a computer popup that the Seahawks are beating the Steelers right now! Go Seahawks. OK that was a little bit of an interruption but like I said I am using my voice to record my notes for my blog  tomorrow. I think this works really well.  Come Monday I will have a lot to post, I’ll have a lot to edit but I also have a lot to post.

I think this experiment worked quite well. I need to speak more clearly into the phone when dictating. I did have a lot of editing to do.

Had another great weekend with all my new items for my vacation at the end of the month to So. Carolina (Camera bag and accessories). The big screw up was that my package of food from Freshly never arrived. Fedex said the delivered to my doorstep at 12:22 but I never received anything. Not receiving your package from Freshly seems to be the number one complaint.

I had some visitors this weekend and it was not Angie. They were welcome other than they came on Sunday, mid morning and I had to stay home today (Monday) and entertain them. They will be leaving tomorrow after I go to work and head on down to Texas.

LeeAnne asked for money again this weekend. I went ahead and gave her 200.00 and hoping this will be it. She says she will start paying me back but I have no hope of that. I just want those freeloaders gone and out of my life. I just could not let that child go without any food. I’m betting Angie took the money and didn’t tell her I sent it. Well I’m not all that sure she would do that but I won’t be surprised.

I purchased a Ronin-SC which will turn my a6400 into a mirrorless camera equivalent to a Osmo Pocket! 550.00, 10 days and it should be here. It is so dang cool.

I also decided on my Birthday present. An Lectric XP. It is an electric bike for approximately 900.00 pre order price with a single battery range of 25-50 miles. I’m going to get the bike plus three extra batteries giving me a range radius of 50-100 miles or a one way distance without charging of 100-200 miles. I’m looking forward to both of them so much.

Ever since living in hotels for the last six years and then moved into my apartment I have been using laptop computers. That was the easiest when living in hotels but I did not have to when living in the apartment.
I decided to purchase a desktop computer but still wanted it small so I ended up with a small footprint Dell computer. Last Friday I opened it up to see what it would take to update the computer to something I could actually use. I got one that was the bare minimum. This computer it turns out is one of the simplest to work on.
I immediately purchased 32gb of memory, keyboard, mouse and a 27 inch curved monitor. I got the monitor yesterday with the HDMI cable which I did not need because the monitor came with one. I purchased a extension cord and set everything up last night. My table now has plenty of room without all the cables laying around for all my external hard drives. Below is a picture of the new setup (I don’t have a before photo and I’m not going to create a before photo).

I love this set up. There is plenty of screen real-estate for working in Blender, After Effects, Photoshop and my next challenge Premier Pro for video editing. I have so many things I am trying to learn there is not enough time in the day.

I had stated previously that I had not heard from Angie in awhile but that turned out to be untrue. She calls asking for 200.00 for birthday presents for her granddaughter and mother, then asks for another hundred because she totaled her car and the insurance company needed that so she could get a rental.

Last week I purchased the Rode Wireless Go microphone set. Even though I hate the word ‘amazing’ I am going to use it when I talk about this mic. This mic is amazing. When pared with the H1n audio recorder It is one of the best purchases I have made (next to the monitor).

Using the Rode and H1n I recorded my first video with the a6400. I think it turned out rather good for my first attempt and will not bring both files (audio and video) into Premier Pro for post processing. I’ll continue to record videos at least every Sunday detailing the previous week for my blog posts here and at the same time continue to get used to being in front of the camera, seeing myself and hearing my voice.

Take care till next week!

Had a great weekend along with some flying time on Friday. With so much wind blowing I had to bring her down quickly. Getting too many warnings of high wind velocity.

Played a bit with my new camera. The menu system is a little intimidating but I’ll be getting used to it in no time.

Saturday we had some crazy storms in the morning triggering a bunch of tornado warning alarms but they all turned out to be false alarms.

Speaking of the camera, I wish I had it earlier and was familiar with the menu system and how to take some video or burst shots. I could have come away with some good lightening shots. I also purchased a couple of fast wide angle lenses and the best item was a converter for the Cannon EF lenses to the Sony E lens mounts. Now I don’t have to sent my old Cannon lenses out to the pasture.

When I start collecting some video and still images I’ll post here pronto. Looking forward to playing. Next weekend should be good. It will be a long one, three days but long enough.

Another item worth mentioning, I did have not heard from Angie in over a week now. I did get a money request for 65.00 but ignored the heck out of that. Maybe she will now get the hint. I have really hated doing this to her but she would not stop, get things together and take care of herself. She is 54 years old now and you would think she would have enough self esteem to fend for herself. I miss they way she used to be and I do think a lot of the blame can fall on me for letting her take advantage like she has. But.. it’s over ‘crossing fingers’ finally.

Now lets see if they pay me back….. I’m not going to hold my breath.

Heck, Bryan sent me this note telling me how he has this spreadsheet all set up and will start paying me back $30.00 at a time. With his schedule he thought he could do it by the end of July (I think that is what he said). Well, a have received one payment of $30.00 about three weeks ago and nothing since.

At times I like to ask myself, what do they think of themselves when they make promises like that and then don’t follow up on their commitments.

I am proud of the fact that I have never borrowed any money from any person, friend or family and not paid them every dime back. Sometimes I actually paid much more than I borrowed.

ttfn

I had a great weekend with a fantastic flight on Friday that ended with the Mavic Pro reaching its max distance for some reason. This distance was just short of where I wanted to explore over the mini forest. I’ll try and post a picture from the video later this week.

What was also nice, is I didn’t hear from Angie at all this weekend. This in fact was nice because all I had in my journal was Angie requesting money, Andy getting a new phone and requesting money, Angie sending another request for money, on and on and on. I sent a letter stating I would not give anymore money until the 2,900.00 was paid in full and that did not stop them. They are relentless.