Daily - Feb. 5, 2026

Previously…

Today’s recap

Up at normal time, but instead of casual clothes it was time to put on Dickies and work boots. I didn’t have to be to our jobsite until late morning, yet I wanted to be ready early and use the opportunity to do some stuff around the house that I wouldn’t do in sweat pants. Before I could even get started my wife found our dehumidifier was leaking and had soaked the carpet upstairs. So we got it cleaned up and I had to get down a fan from the attic. The dehumidifier is kaput. Fantastic.

I did some work in the garage and loaded up the parts I needed for today. I also needed to hand off the stick trimmer I borrowed from my brother. The rest of the morning I puttered around doing misc. things until I hit the road for work.

I mentioned yesterday that this job was to put the sprinkler controller into a locking box to keep a PITA neighbor from manually running the sprinklers. The system is for all the streetscaping inside a small HOA, which is a couple small parks and the grass in the street medians. Due to this persons meddling their water bill last summer was $3,000 a month! They were watering multiple times a day and driving up the water bill for the HOA. We removed the old controller, mounted it in the locking box, and then wired everything back up. While there the new HOA treasurer hinted that they aren’t happy with who normally manages the system and the landscape. So, we might be taking (back) over.

We got our schedules aligned after finishing up and then I headed out to get parts for a job next week while my brother/partner went to meet with a prospective customer. While at the store my brother/partner messaged me to say we got it, a $12,000 new install job, which is fucking rad. With this we have all of February booked and is such an awesome start to the year. We start this job not next week, but the week after.

In surprising news my wife was also able to get me booked for an appointment with an allergist. She normally handles these things for me since I have such a hard time making phone calls. She will also prep the doctor/office, letting them know about my hearing and how to best communicate with me (loud and slow, direct eye contact, wait until we are in a quiet room). I am leery this is going to work out, but maybe?

When I got home the gorls went outside to play while I prepped my truck for the next day and then went in to clean-up.

Dinner, bed time, and then wife and I need to find something to do tonight. We finished the Dabangg series, so its time for something new. Probably not Bollywood this time.

Projects

No project tasks today.

Daily gratitude

• Thankful for my wife, my health coordinator.
• My new hip mini toolbelt. Got its first use today and I like it.
• I’m glad I went to our job today. It really wasn’t a two person project. But, it gave me time to coordinate some things and then speak with the new treasurer about future work.

Tomorrow’s big thing(s)

Going to see an allergist about my newly discovered corn, yeast, and wheat allergy.

Loose thoughts

Something I hadn’t considered for local LLMs is translation and captioning in my prepper kit. I can see how in a catastrophe it would be nice to have local tools for translations and for captioning/subtitles.Yya know, since I can’t hear shit. I will have to investigate.

Posted this on my Mastodon:

Heard a brief mention on Linux Matters podcast that some folks are using A.I. to vibe code replacements for subscriptions they pay for, but hardly use. Wild! Couple this with the rise in self-hosting and the pitch is you can save money by canceling subscriptions really, really shows just how much subscription fatigue is affecting people.

Imagine there are folks so fed up with subscriptions they, with very limited skills, have a setup an extra computer in their house and use A.I. to help them create a server and even vibe code replacements because they hate that they have so many subscriptions. Don’t get me wrong, I get it. My broke ass has 2 subscriptions and I can barely afford those.

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