I have been slow in posting for the last couple days. This post is for April 6th, that would be Monday. Not much to write about today, basically the painters “finished” on the house and Climber had a well visit at our new vet.
First, Climber’s well visit. Yup, she has officially been told she is overweight and needs to go on a diet. She needs to loose 9 pounds. Ooops, that may be my fault, but I also blame Res. We will work on it and maybe at her next vet appointment she will be back to the weight she should be. She has a build a lot like Lady did and she can put on weight before I even know she is.
Then, the painters have wrapped up the outside of the house. Well, sort of…. they have a bunch of touch up to do as they were sloppy on their last day of work. But, we went from the brown trim to our awesome burgundy that we have used on other houses.
This is going to be a short post today. I got up late, took the dogs for their walks, and really didn’t do much else for the rest of the day.
The above is Res’s walk, we did what he wanted to do and by the time we were done it was about 3.66 miles. Not bad. He’s asleep now.
Climber ended up doing a little bit of a longer walk, by about a mile, but that girl knows where she wants to walk and that is were we were going. No questions at all. I just sort of followed her, gave be a little bit of guidance when we needed to turn, and pressed the crosswalk buttons for her. The girl likes “going” but would go way too far, At least I got my steps in.
Today was a “no swim” day for me. Not by choice, I got to the Rec Center and the lap pool was full. I think the trialtholon group was in it again. I was going to wait for a lone, but… oops, helps if I remembered my swim trunks, so no swim for me.
Anyways, this one is short, I will see you all tomorrow, goodnight.
The photograph I am starting this post with showed up on my Facebook page today, it’s a set of photos I took 9 years ago when were in Florida. At that time we had six greyhounds, and unfortunately they are all at the bridge now. I firmly believe that I will be re-united with Mindy, Peanut, Ranger, Rambo, Lady, and Leona sometime in the future, hopefully far in the future. Missing from this photograph are three other Angel pack members: Raven (she hadn’t joined us yet when this was taken), Bracken (he was long gone by the time this photo was taken – he went to the bridge during a dental that I still blame myself over – I tried a newer vet, closer to the house that we should have never trusted with him), and Gizmo (she was hiding someplace). Sometimes Facebook memories are good, sometimes they suck. I think this is one of the better ones.
Started off the day at close to my normal time, well…. maybe 30 minutes late because I just didn’t want to. Did my normal routine, let the dogs out, gave them their snacks, and got my coffee. I did sit down and just preview my work email real fast, I had some techs that I had excepted some responses from and I wanted to make sure I received them. I am glad I looked, I had one urgent issue that I needed to take care of. I also made sure that I caught up on the last two days of new technicians and got them added to Alpine Intel University so they could do their training. Note to self, I need to send out reminders next week to techs that have not logged in yet to do so before they get turned off.
I do one of my normal “over the weekend” tasks, and that is to do my Moodle and system updates. I don’t like doing that during the week in case I have to shut something down, but over the weekend is always a good time to do Linux upgrades and Moodle LMS upgrades. Another one done and now everything is current. OK that’s it for work today.
After Jesse got up I started walks. Saturday’s and Sundays are lone walks for the dogs. I think it is really important to remind them that they can go places and come home without each other. We also work on walking manners and get some distance in. Res always goes first, today we did a little over three miles because he did not want to stop. For some reason he really wanted to do the same walk I do with Climber, it was almost like he knew where she went lest week and he pulled me in that direction.
It was a nice day for a walk and I listened to one of my Podcasts while we were out and about. He was a little slow near the end, but I think I finally may have figured him out. he likes to be outside and when we are heading back to the house he does not approve.
Climber was next, now Climber is a pup on a mission some times, she knows exactly where she wants to go and she makes it very clear when she is unhappy about our directions. I got to the end of the part today and I wanted to turn left and go down the hill as I had a specific walk in mind for her. Nope, that was unacceptable, she wanted to cross the street, turn right, and do our walk past the credit union. Actually, think she wanted to go further, but I vetoed that as I didn’t really want to cross that intersection with her this week. So, she got part of what she wanted, just not all of it. She was a little stiff today as well and I didn’t really want her to be hurting so I did the best I could to keep her walk under 4 miles, we ended up with 3.7 miles by the time we got back to the house.
She did give me a little bit of a hard time on the way back up the hill next to the park as we were headed to Power Line Trail. She did that the last 3 weekends. She is fine once we get past that spot, but for some reason that area is not good for her, and I am not sure why. She’s curled up asleep now, maybe I wore her out? Nah. Not a chance.
After Jesse and I had a late breakfast, I decided to take a chance and go swim. Why take a chance? Because the pool is a nightmare on Saturdays, it has way too many people and the lifeguards work real hard to make sure open swim in the general and kiddie pool does not spill over into the lap pool. Anyway, I was able to get in 2700 yards in a total time of 57:50 minutes. I should have tried for 3000 yards and done the hour, but I just didn’t feel like it. I think tomorrow I need to work on pace rather then distance, it may be an hour of so of 100 yard swims. If I can do 25 of each of Freestyle and Breaststroke I would be happy. But, let’s start small and see if I can even do that.
I am happy were I am at with swimming right now, but I really need to get some of my times closer to the 1:30 per 100 yard pace and down from the 2:00/100yd. I am pretty sure I could do the 2.5 miles needed for the Mountain Lake Swim, but I do need to improve my pace a bit. I also need to, for pool swims, not make a fool of myself when I work on my flip turns. Yeh…..I’ll think about it. Maybe.
Onto other news, we ordered the Droplet Water monitor from Hydrific Water and it showed up today. It clamps on the main water pipe coming into the home, after the meter, but before any splits and you train it to recognize what fixtures are being used and what fixtures are not being by identifying what is running over a few days when it is showing water flow.
I think it is a little confused on it’s first day and hopefully it will get much better at this. It is currently showing that we used 9.58 gallons today with a shower at 5:45PM this evening. There is just one problem, nobody has showered today yet, that happens in the evening, and more recently I am showering at the Recreation Center after my swim. I think it may have gotten the washing machine right, and I think some of the other appliances, but the shower???? Not really. Maybe that will fix itself in a few days.
Jesse and I are a little concerned about this Summer when our water use normally increases. Our water department, Aurora Water, has us under drought restrictions. This means that we are going to pay a surcharge per 1000 gallons over our Winter water use. We use an average of 2000 gallons per month during the Winter months. This changes drastically in the Summer when we start to irrigate the lawn and gardens. We have already made some changes to the irrigation system that will help, but we got a ways to go. As you can guess it also varies a lot with my travel. On weekends after I come back from a trip we have more heavy laundry. On weeks where I am traveling the daily usage is lower. We are also going to do a lot with hydroponics this year for our vegetable gardens and greens. So, I will keep you all posted on what’s happening with that.
Anyways, it’s time to wrap up today, I will be back tomorrow, I am going to sit back, relax, recharge my Garmin watch, and sit here read and watch TV for a bit. There is probably another 100 things that I need to get done, but I just don’t feel like it. Anyways, goodnight and talk to you tomorrow.
I think the best way to describe today is “quiet”. I got up this morning to some very urgent dogs, both of them were in a hurry to go out for their potty breaks and then they wanted treats. It was a cooler morning, probably around 35 degrees, I forgot to look. After they had their snacks and stuff I went to go get my coffee. Ooops, I forgot to set the time last night. A 15 minute wait on that coffee.
I was able to get out to the rec center today to swim, it was a shorter swim then yesterday as I do not want to hurt myself, and I also needed a recovery day after my long push yesterday. I did 1700 yards. My goal was to get my mile in, and I did it.
The rest of the day was busy with work. Hang on, I have one more email I need to answer. Anyways, today’s stats:
8 email requests for file reviews
2 tech support incoming phone calls
10 pricing requests / 4 of them commercial electrical
14 Cause of loss determinations
14 New tech support requests, all of these handled, 11 of them already complete
12 Older tech support requests handled and closed.
That leaves me with 3 in progress, and 3 sitting in my “need to discuss with management team.”
I think a good day overall.
Now I am going to spend some time with Res and Climber. Res is being a bit of a crate baby tonight so I am wondering what that’s about. He grumped at Climber a little bit earlier, again not really sure why, in this case she was innocent. Not that the grumping wasn’t deserve red for past actions.
Anyways, goodnight all. I will talk with you tomorrow.
Not all that much going on today. Got up this morning and had a 7:30AM conference call. One of the challenges in working remote from another timezone with an East Coast company. This happens every other week and I am used to it.
Spent the morning working on various projects at work. It was pretty busy, but not as busy as yesterday. I had:
18 Cause of Loss Determination Requests
6 Direct tags for quote/invoice and resolution review
12 Pricing requests
15 New Technician Support Requests
24 Total Technician Support Requests closed.
4 Technician Support Phone calls.
I finished off the day with some problem emails, but that is sort of expected when you are trying to maintain high standards of inspection and findings. For many tradespeople do not take correction or coaching well at all. Anyways, another day done. I will have probably need to have a conversation with my manager about two technicians (probably only if they complain – but I may give him a heads-up, I will see how I feel about it in the AM).
I did take my lunch/swimming break today around 11:15 or so and went down to the Rec Center. I had one of the best swims I have had in a long time. First. I was able to complete an 1800 yard freestyle (crawl) swim. I haven’t done that in over 3 years. Second, I was able to break my personal record an the 1650 yard portion of that. And finally I crossed another Swim.Com challenge for April off the ‘To Complete” list. I did my 3,000 yard swim today. So yesterday I completed the 1,000 and the 2,000 yards. Today I also completed the 1 hour challenge on Swim.Com and also wrapped up April Swim Month on Garmin. That makes me happy. I have April Swim Week left to do on Garmin, but that doesn’t start until next week and is much shorted than what I have already done. For Swim.Com my next major stepping stone and goal is the 5K swim.
This evening is a rest period, and now we are sitting down watching some TV, watching Climber be crazy, and watching Res nap. I think that will be it for today and I will see you tomorrow.
I set today’s feature image to a photo provided by NASA of the Artemis II liftoff from Florida. Best of luck to all of the astronauts aboard the ship, and may your journey be eventful, but not dangerously eventful. For many of us we remember the first steps on the moon, I think this is the first step in the path to return 50 years later, with greater technology and maybe pick up where we left off.
Anyways, today ended up being a busy day at work. Not sure why, maybe it was a full moon. But, logged in around 6:45AM, took lunch from 12-1pm, and then I finally finished what I could do around 7:00pm (I did take a break to go walk the dogs and for dinner.) My stats:
7 Commercial pricing requests
27 Tech support and coaching requests
All 9 that came in today were addressed
2 tech support from the past are still in progress
22 Cause of Loss Determinations completed
5 inbound calls for tech support (from techs)
8 separate requests for file reviews from our resolutions team
And my standard task of enrolling new technicians to Alpine Intel University
I think that just about wraps up the work tasks for the day.
I made it to the pool for lunch and was able to get a lane, had to share at first but then the person I was sharing with snagged another open lane. It was a good workout today. I managed to do 2075 yards according to my watch, but looking at my stats/interval I can see where it missed a length and this should probably have been 2100 yards. Regardless, I accomplished what I wanted to do as my average workout should be a minimum of 2000 yards. By the end of April I am trying to go to 3000 yards per workout. Slow progress is a good thing.
Came back and finished out my day. Took the dogs for their evening walk, fed them, and then us. We had Chicken Tenders and some really good potato salad. And now I am sitting here, writing my daily blog, and watching Res and Climber nap. Climber won’t stay this way long, she is really good at getting in trouble. I need to get some time to run her around a bit.
And it is the end of another month. I think March was a good month overall. I was able to get a few answers regarding my shoulder pain, and it makes sense. At work, my promotion was finalized this month, and I am getting used to the new role. I have traveled less this month than I have in prior months, and I am starting to see some results with my tech coaching. However, this promotion did come with an increase of work load.
My fitness this month has actually been awesome. I did not get as much swimming in as I wanted to, but I was able to complete all of the Garmin Connect+ fitness challenges this month.
March Calorie Burn
March Battery Booster
March Photo Share
Low Stress March
March Heart Walks
March Speed Walking
March Epic Hikes
March Time To Swim
March Walking
Active March
March Step Month
2026 Walking – Stage 1
90K Step Challenge (x4)
On Swim.Com I also completed several fitness challenges:
March 1K Challenge
March 2K Challenge
March 3K Challenge
5 Swim Activities in March
10 Swim Activities in March
1 Hour of Power Challenge
I finished out the month with a decent swim today. Did a 1750 Yard swim, 36 minutes, 32 of those are the actual moving time. I felt pretty good about it when I was done. The only reason I didn’t get to 2000 yards is that I started to get worried about time.
Anyways, as we wrap on the month of my fitness, some things to share:
133 miles of walking – 38 hours 18,925 yards (10.75 miles) of swimming – 6 hours 41 miles of hiking – 11 hours
I also have some health gains as well. Significant loss of weight while maintaining muscle tone and bone mass. I lost 10 pounds over the course of the month, and for the most part my blood pressure has stabilized in the normal range. May have something to do with my traveling as well as the fact that we are really trying to watch my salt intake and balance out the diet as well. In terms of weight, we hare wondering if I have been not eating enough. It sounds stupid, but the weight watches diet that we try to follow may not be aimed at really active people. We are starting to follow a different version of the diet that is heavier on the protein intake. It is really possible that I may have been not taking my fitness activities into account. We will see what happens over this next month.
So, what is happening this next month? I have several goals, all with the aim of being ready for the Mountain Swim Series in June. First, I am cutting back on my non-swimming activities. Believe it or not I think this may have been part of my shoulder tightness and pain. I am limiting the Garmin fitness challenges in April to mainly swimming:
April Swim Week – 3281ft of swimming in the first week of April
April Swim Month – 13,123.4ft of swimming in the month of April
April Battery Booster – Maintain a body battery of 76 or higher for 7 days in April
Low Stress April – Maintain a daily average stress level of 50 or lower for 7 days in April
April Calorie Burn – Burn 8,000 active calories in April
April Photo Share – Share photos on 3 activities in April
I am also going to make sure I complete the Swim.Com fitness challenges:
April 1K Challenge – Complete 1K of swimming in a single activity
April 2K Challenge – Complete 2K of swimming in a single activity
April 3K Challenge – Complete 3K of swimming in a single activity
April 5K Challenge – Complete 5K of swimming in a single activity
5 Swimming Activities in April
10 Swimming Activities in April
20 Swimming Activities in April
One Hour of Power – Complete one hour of swimming in a single activity
10 Hours of Power – 10 hours of swimming in multiple activities
And then, finally I am going to complete the following US Masters’ Swimming challenges:
2026 USMS April Fitness Challenge – 1000yards of Freestyle in a Single Session
Anyways, that wraps up today, I have some end of month cleanup to do on my laptop, I move my Download directory to a archived Download Directory, I clean out my mailbox and start a new month of work related emails. I move my sent mail to a monthly sent mail folder. And in general do some regular maintenance so I can find things. Keeps me out of email and download hell.
Anyways, I think that is about it for the day. We are home, all is good, and I will see you tomorrow.
Not all that much to talk about today, it was Monday and work took up most of the day. For some reason I did not sleep well last night, Res was sort of unsettled, and I am trying to figure out why. He is out like the proverbial light bulb right now, but last night he kept getting started and boofing overnight. I didn’t hear much from Climber, I think she was letting Res take care of business.
But, got up this morning to a bunch of email and work projects. Yup, that pricing project I thought I got rid of last week…. it came back. I had to spend most of my morning to make it go away again. Hopefully it is gone for good this time. After I finished that I did a few Cause of Loss Determination requests, some pricing, and by that time it was 12:00pm. Lunch time, or should I say swim time.
Got to the Central Recreation Center, and found the pool disaster from yesterday was not done yet. The only pools that were open was the lap pool and the hot tub. Thankfully as I was coming in someone else was wrapping up their workout. I got a lane with only about 5 minutes of waiting. I didn’t swim as long as I wanted to today, but I did OK. I got in about 1200yards, a little short of the 1700yards I was hoping for. But, people were waiting and when they are having pool issues I try to be nice. I will make it up another day.
Also, as usual my watch is missing some pool lengths. When we look at the stats I can promise you I never end on a x75 yard. It is always on the 50 or 100 yard mark. I never end on the other side of the pool from where I started. I am not sure why all of a sudden my watch has decided to not count every length.
Of course the Garmin App has it a little different, which is OK.
After my swim I came home and worked for the rest of the day, while I was away from my desk someone left the Cause of Loss request queue and pricing requests alone in the dark and it had babies. I was buried for the rest of the day and worked until 4pm and then again for another hour or so when we got back from walking the dogs.
Dogs had their full walk around the park and then they had their dinner and now it is nap time.
I am working on getting caught up on Greyhound Data race entry, and once that is done, I am going to call it an evening. I may not upload them all this evening, but at least the time consuming part will be done.
Anyways, I am going to wrap it up for today and say Goodnight! I will see everyone tomorrow.
Started off the day with a wake-up “call” from Climber. She was getting inpatient. The sun was up and her people weren’t. OK, I got up, let Res and then Climber out. Got them their snacks, and had my coffee. Spent some time trying to figure out a problem with APRS on my handheld radio, it will not auto beacon and it’s supposed to when it has a good satellite fix. After that I read for a while and went down the social media / YouTube rabbit hole. I really like the Savannah Bananas, I think they are the best thing that could ever have happened to Baseball. What a boring ass game, and they have brought life back to it.
After Jesse got up and I had another cup of coffee it was time for walks. Weekends are lone walks, I always take Res first. Res gets to go as far as he wants, within reason. He just hasn’t figured out yet that no matter how far away from the house he goes, he is required to walk back home. He also hasn’t figured out that we cannot stop and smell and pee on every clump of grass or tree he comes across. Doing so becomes counter-productive for this length of explorations.
And once Res and I got home after 2.8 miles, it was Climbers’ turn. Climber and I always do longer walks, she’s younger then Res and she is full of energy. Today she was a little bit skittish, the fire engines and loud car yesterday scared her a bit. But, we did a little about 3.8 miles, up along the park, down Buckley to the Power Line Trail, up the hill, around the school’s soccer field, and then back to the house. She did OK, but I am not 100% sure she was into it today. Once we get back to the park from the Power Line Trail she knows exactly where she is, and pulls me back to the house.
We spent a little bit of time cleaning up the backyard today, I think the painters are coming sometime next week and one of the first things they are going to do is power wash the entire house. Had to put a bunch of stuff away from the patio and around the shed. I think we may be tempting the snow Gods by putting away the snow shovels, but then again we could use the snow.
As I was wandering around the yard I found some new flowers and signs of Spring. Take a look here….
I just hope the apple tree is not flowering too soon this year. Last year it started blooming early and we had a frost while we were at Spring Meet in Abilene, KS and we didn’t get any apples. The Fall before, our first year in the house, we got tons of apples, we just didn’t know what to do with them. We found out near the end of the year that they made awesome apple sauce.
I did get a chance to go for my swim today. I was sort of crossing my fingers that I would get a lane, so when I came in I went and checked with one of the guards first, as 1 lane was closed for a swim lesson, another lane looked like it was also being used, and the two other lanes were questionable. He told me that the center lane was about to open up so I had a chance. OK, run to locker room, get changed real fast, and just as I was getting in the water all hell broke loose. They had to move a lap swimmer from the other lane to share mine (OK, that’s fine it happens) and then they had to do an emergency closing of the main open swim pool. Someone dropped a dirty diaper into the pool and left. So, it takes them about an hour to sanitize it, and make sure the water is OK. In the meantime they took two lanes of the lap pool, opened it for open swim, and then gave 1 lane for us lap swimmers, and left one lane for the one kid that was having a swim lesson.
Added another personal record on the 500yard today, still not where I want to be, but getting better. My main goal right now is not speed but rather endurance. I have 11 weeks until the start of the Mountain Swim Series with the Summer Solstice swim, and I need to get myself up to a 2 mile continuous swim. If I can do it in a pool I know that I can do it in open water. Actually, I know I can do it in open water, I have done it before, but doing it again after 3 years of being away from it is the issue. It’s a self confidence issue more than anything else.
Evening walks were cut short a little bit. Res really didn’t feel like it, I think he was still done from this morning’s walk. He did spend some time laying around in the back yard today, his favorite activity of all time, sunbathing. I always know when he doesn’t want to walk because he stops in the driveway, looks around, and is like, “OK….. maybe I’ll walk down to the park and back.” Only did 1/2 mile with them this afternoon.
I spent some time working on updating the SSL certificate for the mail server and all of my *.cmolnar.com domains. I am going to start dropping domains as time goes on as the costs are consistently rising to maintain them. Now it looks like we are going to have to be updating SLL keys every 200 days, and this is too much work for something I don’t get paid for.
Had an awesome dinner of salmon, asparagus, shrimp, and shrimp cocktail. Sunday dinners are always a good way to wrap up the weekend.
Now it is rest and relaxation time. I will see you all tomorrow.
Yes, I am a bad blogger, I missed yesterday(Day 086 of 2026) for some reason. I just ran out of time. Anyway, today started off early for a Saturday morning. I got up my normal time and did the dog out, snack, and watch them nap routine.
Jesse got up early as he is doing the No Kings rally today with an old friend of ours. But, first I needed to get the dogs out for their walk as I have a PT appointment today for my shoulder.
After I got back from their wal, Jesse got all of his protest stuff together and went to pick up Jennifer and I relaxed for another hour and went down the YouTube rabbit hole. I also started a Virtual Box installation of Ubuntu on my laptop. There are a few amatuer radio things that I would like to try but Windows is not behaving all that well with some of the tools.
I wasn’t able to finish the installation before I had to leave for my appointment. This involves crating Res and Climber, and putting the extra Houdini latches onto Climber’s crate. And off I went to UC Health. Where I sit now waiting for my appointment.
Reed V, my physical therapist, decided to try dry needles (acupuncture) with some electrical pulses, almost like a TEMS unit to loosen up my shoulder muscles. Felt really good. Interestingly enough the right side was in worse shape then the left side. And the right side is not the group we have been focusing on. We set another appointment for mid May, but I will need to evaluate if I am going to keep that. There are other people in much more need of Reed’s time and expertise than I am. PT resources are limited and I feel really guilty taking his time when I have a feeling I can manage this on my own now that I know what is happening.
On the way back I drove over to Vesa fitness on Quincy Avenue because I have been playing around with joining them to improve the pool situation. This is a big no! I couldn’t even find a parking space in their lot. I doubt very seriously that this will he an improvement on scheduling.
Got home from that and gave the dogs some outdoor time. Climber is eating grass for some reason. Res is sunbathing, he loves being outside.
And then I had to break up the races around the yard. Res went inside, but Climber wanted to do some more zoomies.
And then it’s time for me to work on the irrigation system. I found the leak! It really helps when you use PVC glue to put pipes together. Come on folks!
No wonder why water use was high last year. Its a good thing I was abandoning that section anyways as that is where the micro and drip system will start. I still have to bury the connections, but I am considering putting an access cover here so I can find this in the future.
I have one more of these I need to do because we have another water leak right about here:
And based in what I found in the last pit, I can tell you exactly what is happening here as well. Also this is going to become drip and micro sprayers as well because I am not going to be watering just rock.
While I was working outside Res and Climber decided to come outside for some more supervised sun bathing.
Time to do laundry and try to do something about getting my HF antenna a little higher off the ground. I decided to put one of our poles from Florida up, but not extended all the way. It is not anchored into the ground but just tied to the fence post next to it. Really not the way I want to leave it. I need a good post on two sides of it that I can anchor to. I am sort of hoping this is stable enough for the moment. While I was working on this, Climber decided to dig a bit, this is something new.
I think I am just about done with the outdoor stuff for today. The dogs will be walked around 4pm, maybe Jesse will be home by then. In the meantime I am going to sit down and see if I can make this Bluetooth connection on the Ubuntu virtual box work. Nope, still not working properly. I give up until tomorrow.
Jesse got home and it was walk time with the dogs, took them around the park. Poor Climber got scared again as there was a very loud car and then there was a fire truck, and then there was more cars, and the there was her ultimate nemisis…. pickle ball. Ouch, she pulled all the way home.
We had dinner, Jesse is off to the store. And I think I am going to call it quits for the day. We will see you all tomorrow.
