Laboring on a Funeral Day

Hey everyone, not exactly a "big adventure" here, but it is kind of a crazy set of sequences that happened over labor day weekend. First on Thursday there was a major storm where I live, super rain and tornado warnings, all while I was at the doctor. Right after I finished my appointment and checked out, everyone's cell phones went off with emergency alerts, so I hung out at the doctors and pulled up my local news channels on my phone. It was kind of crazy. I didn't suffer any damage, but a lot of people did, which will lead into big things of the weekend.

The main thing for the weekend was mskate's great aunt's funeral. She had dementia and was failing. One of my favorite memories of her is Easter 2024 where she and my grandma, who also had dementia, just talked the entire time and had a lot of fun together, enjoying each other's confused company. She passed earlier this week and her funeral was held on Friday. After my doctor's appointment I went up to mskate's parent's area and went to the church where we were having the funeral. Everyone was setting up the social area for the luncheon and my job was to scope out and test out the live streaming set-up (because live streaming funerals for the family has kind of become my thing). Well, they had a lot of storms and it took out the power at the church, which meant everyone was setting up the decorations in the dark by flash light. The funny thing is her daughter took her to the dollar store before she went to assisted living to pick out the decorations she wanted for her funeral, and everyone was putting those up. For my thing I took my laptop up to the balcony of the church to see if it would work, and it was a good place to do a set-up, but the lack of power meant I wasn't able to get on the church wifi, or see what I was REALLY doing. I did some tests using different hot spots and they worked, but we were hoping that the power would come back in time for the funeral. After the test things were pretty low key, just watching movies with IRA.

OK, it's funeral day Friday, and the power is still out. I get to the church and there's no power, so I said "OK, I guess we can do this off battery," but my batteries were kind of low for some reason, so I went back to mskate's parents house and charged my laptop and video camera. Here's where things got weird, my video camera had 40 minutes of charge when I checked while it was charging and then let it charge another 20 minutes or so, but then when I got to the church it said 17 minutes of battery, which was really weird. I ask vikingpolak to see if he can get a battery backup, and our dad has one for his cpap, so both of them go to my parents house and get the battery backup like 10 minutes before the service starts. So because my video camera is basically dead I'm running the live stream off of my built in web cam, which being in the back row balcony seat is not great for the start of the funeral, but thankfully they get back quickly so I'm able to set up my camera and do a good feed. The funeral itself was pretty basic, but then right at the end my laptop battery decides to give out, so I have to plug my laptop into the power inverter on the battery backup and because the power draw was so great the power inverter was kind of whaling. In general though, it went off pretty well, just was a rather frustrating process of live streaming due to the lack of power.

The luncheon was pretty good, we had chicken, ribs, sausage and kraut, macaroni and cheese, potato wedges, bumpy cake, cookies, and some other thing. The funny thing is I had 2 plates of food because I kept hearing my grandma saying "you need to eat more." I guess one of the great aunt's things was punch bowls, so they had that. Can't say I've had "authentic punch" before, so that was kind of neat. Everyone else had a good time as well, and everyone was thanking me for the live stream. I didn't know a lot of people there, but there was one guy I went to high school with who kind of knew me and knew vikingpolak better (because they were the same age).

The afternoon was pretty low key, but around 3PM we went to see the Cars rerelease. For the 20th anniversary Disney gave it a wide rerelease, and IRA really wanted to see it because they had special popcorn buckets and drink cups; the popcorn bucket was Lightning McQueen and the drink cup was the Piston Cup. I'm pretty sure I saw this movie back when it was first released, but it's been so long and wasn't like a "core memory" so I don't remember seeing it in theaters. Since there was a local festival going on by our normal theater we went to one that used to be a cheap last run movie theater by my grandparents. We got to the theater and they only had the popcorn bucket. We still saw the movie, and got the jumbo bucket of popcorn that came with the novelty bucket, and I ended up eating most of the popcorn since IRA and mskate didn't want much. It was pretty fun watching the movie on the big screen. After the movie we went to another theater (one my grandparents took us to frequently and mom-in-law would take after school care kids too on field trips) to see if they had the cup, but they didn't. In a last ditch effort we went to the normal theater but with a twist. Because of the festival the parking lot was closed to normal parking (but you could park for $25), so I dropped IRA and mskate off close to the theater by pulling into a blocked off area so they could go in while I could get moving without causing , and then I drove around the square mile of where it's located so they could have enough time to wait in line. Thankfully they had the cup, so I drove around and got back to the same place I dropped them off, and got them to jump back in the van and got home. I had a single taco for dinner since I had so much popcorn earlier.

Saturday would have been a simple "go home" day, but I don't know if I would be writing this for pokematic's blog and not your 3 minutes if this didn't also happen. With all the storming, something must have hit the windshield of the company lease car, which caused a chip on the top of the windshield, that became quite the crack as it grew down the windshield that I first noticed after the funeral and just grew throughout the day. Since it's a company lease with full insurance, including windshield replacement with Safelite, I called and set up an appointment at my in-laws, so we're hanging out until the tech comes and replaces the windshield and calibrates the safe driving features.

After getting home mskate went to sell raffle tickets for our church's Oktoberfest, and I went to chuck e cheese to use our fun pass. Recently they removed some games and put up signs saying "new games coming soon." Well, they added the new games, and they're really fun. There's a minions land the token game, a "knock the balls in the holes" game, an elephant ball drop game, the fidget spinner game, a "bounce the balls in the dog's mouth" game, a paw patrol "stop the spinner on a location" game, and my grandma's favorite "spin the pirate wheel and land on the jackpot like wheel of fortune" game (she loved wheel of fortune, and when we took her to chuck e cheese for an outing she loved that one). I played all the new games and some older ones, and got 2 cards from the minions game.

Sunday was really low key, pretty normal Sunday for us. Mskate sold raffle tickets since it's Oktoberfest at our church and we have basket raffles. Mskate and I each made one; I made a chuck e cheese basket, she made a disney bath and bodyworks basket, and mskate's mom donated a loungefly backpack that she didn't want. Our baskets aren't going super well, but her mom's is doing well, and hopefully we win a couple of things we could use for our new house. I bought some things we need for the new house from Lowes. We went to CEC and mskate really liked the new games. I watched a fair amount of cartoon network and adult swim, didn't really plan to but good to use my sling subscription. I especially "needed" to do that because there weren't cartoons on FOX tonight, so I watched Bob's Burgers on Adult Swim.

Now for Monday Labor Day. Mskate and I spent the day doing some furniture shopping, since Labor Day is when furniture stores do their sales and we have a new house that needs some furniture, and we just like going to IKEA and the chuck e cheese that's close by. We got a Billy media shelf, Trofast cabinet thing, an as-is Kallax (came from the display sections or something, fully built), and some containers for the Kallax and Trofast. We were going to get a couple of other things, but they didn't have them. We also got lunch at the cafe, and I really liked their pasta and marinara, and the sparkling raspberry drink. IKEA is fun because the display sections are so well crafted, and some of the things are so fake. Like, they had a gaming set-up, and it was an empty XBOX 360 shell.

Chuck e cheese was fun. They have some games that we don't have at our local CEC, and those are fun to play. I got a couple jackpots, and our pass had 500 free tickets for labor day. We used some of our tickets to buy unique prizes for the easter egg fundraiser we do every year. On our way back we stopped at BJ's Wholesale and got gas and frozen broccoli. It was a fun time. Once we got home I unloaded the stuff to our garage to move later.

Labor day is normally a day for grilling. However, I grill very often so it's not too special of a thing; plus, I want clear out my freezer which means my tenderloin, and when I grilled that last time it didn't turn out great. I "slow" cooked it over a period of about 1.5 hours in the oven, and it turned out really good. I made some of the broccoli while I waited for the tenderloin to cook. I also made mskate an omelet. It was a good dinner. Now I'm just enjoying some TV and calm night stuff. Overall a pretty good weekend. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

My Adventure at the 2019 North American International Auto Show

Hey there everyone, I'm back with another adventure. This time, it's the North American International Auto Show. For legal reasons, I must say "I am not an official spokes person of the North American International Auto Show, the views and opinions are solely my own and do not reflect that of NAIAS or any of their partners, I went to the public show with a general admission ticket and all information I will present is open source and freely available to anyone who would want it." Some years ago I read I needed to include a disclaimer like that if I were to blog about it. I don't want to get sued, so here you go. With that out of the way, time for the fun.

First off, my video camera was dead. I didn't charge the battery enough and it wouldn't turn on. However, I was REALLY scared I broke my camera. I have a 12V DC to 120V AC power inverter for my car (allowing me to plug in normal wall outlet devices into my car) and I plugged my camera into it on the way to the show. Well, when I got to the show it wouldn't turn on, and then I remembered the manual said "do not use this for charging electronic devices." I was really afraid I fried my camera. I plugged it into an outlet outside the auto show, and it wouldn't charge. Thankfully I must have just been using an outlet they turned off, because when I got home it took a charge, and turned on, but that limited what I was able to record and capture (because all I had was my phone). I'm also not uploading all my photos here. You can see all I took here on my myspace (because yes, I still have myspace). With this explanation out of the way, here's my adventure.

So I got to the show about 15 minutes before they opened, and just waited around for the doors to open. I looked around at some of the outside promotions, but mainly just waited in line. When I walked in this was the first thing I saw.

A 1:1 scale Chevy Silverado, made entirely of Lego bricks. The sign said something like "25,000 Lego bricks, a team of 20, and 1000 man hours." That was super impressive. That's what I call a Lego set. I didn't go to GMC first, because I like to start on the perimeter and snake my way around the show floor and GMC was not on the perimeter. First was Ford, which was pretty neat. I sat in some cars, but the one I wanted to sit in was "locked for our protection." It was basically a commercial van that was a mini-RV.

I mean, I understand why, but man that looks like it would be fun to explore. I also saw a local news station set-up. That was really cool to have a little look behind the scenes.

What was really cool this time was they had vehicles actually running on the show floor. Granted you couldn't drive them, but Ford had this virtual reality thing where it took you over a course. Here are some things I managed to capture.

Then there was this. Ford unveiled some cars with this cool show thing. Cars came through the screen.

Unfortunately my phone died before the coolest reveal. They had a mustang drop down from the ceiling. I really wish I could have shown that to you good people, oh well.

Here's something that was fun. Last year they had a "build your own Lego figure" thing, and they did again. Here's me putting it together.

Then afterwards you could put the guy in some scenes. I had a little fun with it.

There was also a life size Lego racer. That was pretty awesome.

I saw some cool cars. I took a couple pictures, and enjoyed the cut-aways.

After Ford I went to Fiat-Chrysler. What was fun is all the awards they had out.

That last one was the truck of the year. Really cool. I also liked the engine displays.

I sat in pretty much all the cars, and one that caught my attention was how big the touch screen on this one was.

One cool things I did while I was there was I tried their driving simulator (sorry, no picture). It was a Forza race game, with shakes, and full cabin display with 3 monitors, that was a 2.5 minute ride. The annoying thing was the break wasn't working, so I couldn't make the turns without crashing. It was really fun though. That was basically Fiat-Chrysler for me. Before I move on, here are some pictures of cars.

After Fiat-Chrysler I went to Kia. The main thing I want to show off is this awesome off road demonstration.

It was really fun. I've never done off roading before, so it was really cool. I saw some other cars at Kia, but they didn't really impress me enough to take some pictures. I went to GMC after the Kia exhibit, and I sat at their one display because I needed to charge my phone. What they did was have a big truck display with someone talking about all the cool things it had, and they had chairs and such with phone charging cables. It was really ingenious marketing if you ask me; people need to charge their phones, so while you have a captive audience tell them all about the new truck. I gotta say, if I was a truck guy, I would be really impressed. I spent probably 20 minutes listening to the spiel while I waited for my phone to charge.

After I got my charge, I went to the "build your own Lego Silverado" thing. Here's the little adventure of getting it.

Apparently the sponsor was The Lego Movie 2. OK cool I guess. Now I have something for my Ford guys to sit in. I wasn't super interested in most of the cars they had on display, so I didn't sit in any. There was this virtual reality home run derby game. It was really cool; virtual pitcher throws you a ball, you swing the bat, and if you hit it so it doesn't become a grounder, you get a home run. I scored like 5-8. I would show you the video they took of me and sent me, but they screwed it up and sent me the kid that went before me. Oh well.

Now Toyoda, they had quite the display. They had some concepts for autonomous cars, which was awesome.

They also had their hydrogen filling station on display (or at least I think it was hydrogen).

I also saw this cool back-loading thing on display for people that have difficulty getting in an out of cars. I saw this the past couple of times I was there too.

I also did this thing where you're a news reporter out in the artic and the only car is the new Toyota Prius. I really got into it, and played it up really good. The lady that was running the display really liked how much I got into it. Unfortunately there was something wrong and they didn't send me the video. Oh well, at least you were able to see the Kia video. There were some other cars too.

I think this is about when I got the half pound of fudge; salted caramel. Oh, it's good. I think this is also about the time when I had lunch. I had pizza. It was pretty good; not sure if it was worth $8, but definitely the preferred thing they had there. I'll also take this time to mention the donut maker. It was this automatic donut conveyor thing, where it drops some batter in the boiling oil, then drags it along, and halfway through it flips it, and finally dumps them in a bowl. I remember I saw one of those years ago when I was like 10. The lady saw I was fascinated by it, so she dropped a couple of donuts in for me to watch. Really fun.

Now there were some other concept car companies. They didn't have much to show off, so here are the few displays they had.

There was also this company that I guess specialized in off road. I say "I guess" because all I knew nothing about them but they had a bunch of off road stuff.

It was pretty cool. Around this time is when I started running out of steam. I mean, I'd been there for about 4 hours now. Here are some of the other things I saw. There was this really cool thing from, I think it was Honda. It was this flipping screen, that tracked your movements and such.

There were also some displays of classic cars. That was pretty cool.

After leaving the show, I went down to see if there was anything in the basement (sometimes they have the "enthusiasts and specialty club cars" in the basement). Unfortunately, nothing this time. I did see a local news reporter signing autographs.

It was a really fun time. I'm glad I was able to go and experience it. Again, this isn't everything. To see all I took, you'll need to check out the myspace mix. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.