Drones, Mavic

Win one, Lose one

Leave a comment

One week after getting a new Mavic 2 pro drone I lose the same. I take 100 percent blame for this and is why I am not all that upset. I decided to fly the new drone without doing any compass calibration, no calibration at all. I took off at night which is ok because you can do that as a hobbyist also I’m not in controlled airspace but and this is a big but, I was under the influence of alcohol. Stupid I know and I flew until the battery was depleted and it dropped out of the sky. Being at night I had no luck finding it when I went looking. I know I was close but no luck.

I promptly went in and ordered a new one to be delivered on Thursday the 22nd of August.

On a brighter note, I was notified that my Ronin-SC would be arriving by 10:00am on Monday which I was not happy about because I was going to be home on Friday the day I was originally told was the arrival date. I got my memory card cases on Thursday, my variable 67mm ND filter Friday morning and my lens in just little bit later and then surprise of surprises fedEx arrived and had my Ronin!!

I spent the rest of the weekend just staring at it completely petrified to rig my camera up to it and balance. I was very intimated by this wonder piece of engineering.

I turned on a YouTube video I had saved just for balancing the gimbal and started following his instructions and found the process very easy and was able to balance my camera in about 15 minutes. Now the fun begins 🙂

P.S. The mistake Thursday night cost me $1,300.00

Photography

Going to SC in September

Leave a comment

Taking a trip to SC in September for Ricks and Barbara’s anniversary. Leave on the 20th and return on the 25th. I even applied to get TSA Pre-Verified. I won’t have to take off my shoes, get in a shorter line etc. I think it will be a good time.

My new Mavic 2 Pro arrived on Friday and a new 7.5mm wide angle lens arrived on my birthday Saturday. Clouds were out at night so I couldn’t take any astro photographs maybe next weekend.

Blender

Bonus plus a bunch of new toys!

Leave a comment

Finally the ‘End of Program’ has hit. What this means, I can finally talk about the papers I signed a year and a half ago. For sticking it out on the program I have been working on I was to receive a retention bonus of $54,000.00, $14,000.00 of which I received early and ended up giving it to Angie to pay off all of her stupid loans, the money she stole from her mother and the money she stole from her dads headstone fund. That being the entire reason I am no longer speaking with Angie or her kids. She took that money with the understanding she can no longer get any money but that never stopped her making me unable to save it back up.

Well, last week I received a paycheck in excess of $28,000.00. I spend $1,497.00 on a new electric bike from https://lectricbikes.com. Then I purchased a new Mavic 2 Pro drone and payed off the Ronin-SC from my PayPal Credit. All three of those totaled over $4,000.00 and I still might purchase a DGT Bluetooth chessboard. I haven’t decided on that one yet. Now, the Ronin-SC should show up within two weeks or so, the bike should be shipped sometime early September and the drone, the last to be ordered will be the first to arrive on the eighth of August, just in time for my birthday (the bike is my real birthday present). I can hardly wait for all these for finally show up.

I’m left with $26,600.00 in savings and by the end of the month this should top out over $28,000.00. Nice to have a cushion there for if I get laid off within the next year or so.

Great times ahead!

Miscellaneous

Visitors this weekend

Leave a comment

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.

Angela, JavaScript

How to make her stop

Leave a comment

Yes, I’m talking about Angie. She won’t go a couple of days without trying to contact me. I told her that I was not going to answer anymore emails. In fact I told her I was going to automatically delete them. The problem is before they get deleted I’m notified of them on the phone or iPad.

Finished 50% of the JavaScript Beginners class with Mosh. I completed the set up of my new computer in about five minutes and hit 100 straight days on the Chessable.com site.

Today I also won another game of chess playing Black. Playing Black is much harder than playing White but it also presents such a beautiful game. In war games with Glenn when I was younger I always did better when I was playing a defensive game. With Black you start out playing a defensive game and them need to try and turn it around into an offensive game when the time comes. This is the challenge and it is fun.

Angela, JavaScript

Happening all over again

Leave a comment

Angie is getting me down. They all are insanely emailing, texting and trying to call and get more and more money. Now I get an email form LeeAnne because she has set up a ‘GoFundMe account’. The reason she stated was to fix up her house and get it ready to move into otherwise they would be homeless. Well, that is the exact same thing I was told at the beginning of all of this when I finally gave them around 3,400.00 over a couple of months. This, is the proof I needed that they are all liars and thieves. I wanted to go onto the page and out them but I’m taking the high road here now and just ignoring them.

New toys coming today, a NUC7 Core i7 low profile computer kit. All I need to do is provide the memory and SSD, both of which I already have. I’ll be putting everything together when I get home and playing the rest of the weekend. I’ll take some pictures of this little thing when I’m done.

Oh, on another note, I have now moved into the downtown offices. It will take some getting use to but I think I’m going to like it. The one down side right now is calling the guard every morning when I get there to let me in. It’s a bit of a pain but a small one.

Signing off for now.

Miscellaneous

Should have done this long ago

Leave a comment

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!

DCIM100MEDIADJI_0061.JPG
Weightloss

The weapon is now in use

Leave a comment

We will see what happens regarding the weight loss now. My secret weapon was to cut down alcohol consumption significantly and this weekend went very well. Much better than I had hoped. The only problem was I ate a bit too much. I’ll combat that this next weekend. I think I was just so happy to start and the cut back went much better than I had hoped.

I did some video shoots with the Osmo Action and my Lav mic but realized that when I did my sound check point by clicking my fingers I had forgotten to click my fingers in front of the camera so there will be no visual clue to use when I sync the audio. oops. Another try this weekend will need to be done. Additionally, I purchased a Rode Wireless GO microphone which should be here this week and will be much better than the wired lav mic. I look forward to this video shoot and the experience using Premier Pro for the first time. If Ken can do it, I can do it.

Hopefully my Robomaster S1 will ship soon, everyone else seems to be getting it. How come mine is taking so long to ship. I think some people were fibbing a bit when they said they ordered it as soon as it was announced. They got theirs in two days and I ordered mine at the same time and the website said it would ship 20 – 25 days after receipt of payment. Anyway it will be a fun project to put together on a Saturday afternoon when it finally arrives.

New site covering miscellaneous activities including my favorite activity: Blender