It's Been Awhile!

Six days since my last Hive post! Did you miss me? I sure did miss posting and interacting with all of you. All is good, it’s been an extraordinarily busy week in this corner of the world.

The hardwood floor project is finally complete, only the baseboards need to be replaced now. The crew had to come out and use wood filler in the cracks and divots and buff out a few problem areas and reapply the topcoat. It feels great to have this phase done. The crew installing the floor has been out to our house a total of six times now. Although we’re thrilled with the final result it took a lot of pushback from us to get to this point. I’ll just say pride in workmanship is definitely not as common as it used to be.

IKEA Loses Their Crown (this isn’t a bad thing)

Also, we also managed to find furniture with even more steps to assemble than IKEA. We’d been searching for a sectional to put in our lower level TV room and my wife found the LoveSac brand.

This sectional is modular and can be reconfigured into separate chairs, a traditional loveseat, couch, or a sectional. It also was delivered in almost twenty separate boxes. Even the fabric covers had to be put onto the separate pieces. All in all, this couch took a total of about six hours to put together, from start to finish.

It’s surprisingly the highest quality couch we’ve had in the past twenty years. I’m very happy with it. The covers can also be removed, washed, or switched out for different colors if your decor changes. This thing will be with us for a long time to come.

Maroon 5

Last week my wife and I were lucky enough to see Maroon 5 in St. Paul.

Although Adam Levine had a somewhat rocky start after the first couple of songs he cleared up his voice-issues and it ended up being a really good show. Adam isn't exactly a young man anymore. It’s always nice to change up the usual routine and do something different on a week night.

And, I'll say it again, the Loop 2 earplugs are a gamechanger when it comes to live music. I enjoy concerts so much more with these.

Bitcoin Rewards

Some of you might remember my plan this year of converting my credit card cash rewards into Bitcoin. When I saw Coinbase was launching an AMEX that actually pays rewards in Bitcoin I decided to streamline my dollar cost averaging process and sign up.

This card works like any other regular rewards credit card only you earn Bitcoin directly. The advertisements say you earn 4% rewards but beware that to get the full 4% you must carry a $200k total balance with Coinbase. This is very steep and a little deceiving but you still get 2% with little-to-no balance and pay just $49 per year for the annual fee.

Props to Coinbase for including a glimpse of the BTC white paper on the packaging.

Tesla Shareholder Meeting

In two short days I’ll be making the pre-dawn trip to the airport for the flight to Austin, TX. With the government shutdown still in full swing and flight cancellations and delays beginning to pile up I hope I don’t encounter any snafus on my travel day.

I’m truly excited to be visiting a new city and get to take part in this meeting. There’s a very small chance the new Tesla Roadster will be unveiled next week as well. During a recent podcast appearance Elon Musk said the new Roadster will fly. The jury is still out as to whether or not what he said is literal or figurative. Either way it should prove to be entertaining.

Last But Not Least

If you use Gmail be very careful! Hackers are getting way more sophisticated. Despite using 2FA, I discovered today that my email was hacked in June and someone using a Kansas IP address has had access to my inbox for for months. So far I don't see any irregularities anywhere else or evidence that my accounts have been compromised but I'll be doing the proper sleuthing this week.

With all of the data breaches that happen on almost a weekly basis now be sure to change passwords frequently and turn on 2FA wherever you can.

All for now. Thanks so much for reading.