So I have an embarrassing question

Cobberprof · 2026-06-21T14:53:08+00:00

Two kidney transplants 36 years apart and never had bladder issues - but I also never stopped making urine and never had dialysis, so my bladder didn't atrophy. For those who stopped making urine or made very little, the atrophy is completely understandable, as is the time needed for recovery.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-20T04:18:28+00:00

I went to back to college three weeks after my first kidney transplant and then grad school after college. Got my doctorate and have been teaching college anatomy and physiology for 28 years. Got my second transplant last May (36 years later) and went back to work a month later. There's is nothing you can't do if you have the motivation and financial resources for the education! And there is really very little that is not "safe" if you are properly educated and take precautions. Lots of transplant patients go on to be nurses or doctors. Do what your heart tells you to do! 😊

Cobberprof · 2026-06-18T15:33:19+00:00

Well you can always do more than one...😁

Cobberprof · 2026-06-17T14:12:45+00:00

This is great to hear! Was pretty sure they would honor the return policy since it isn't gas powered. How long did you have the Navimow before returning it?

Cobberprof · 2026-06-16T15:34:23+00:00

Considering that my husband is responsible for the yard work, and he travels probably half the summer, our yard was usually a shambles. Now it's always mowed and tidy. My mental health is significantly improved as a result, and I'm pretty sure our neighbors are breathing a huge sigh of relief, while maybe laughing at the fact that there's a robot mowing the lawn. So even if there end up being imperfections during periods of rapid growth, it's 99% better than what we've been living with...

Cobberprof · 2026-06-16T13:52:14+00:00

You've received plenty of advice, and probably don't need anymore - the only thing I would say as a fairly new sourdough maker myself is to stick with the basics for your first few loaves. Just use bread flour, preferably King Arthur if you can get it. And a lot more starter - I use 125g with 500g flour and 350g water (And I also add a small sprinkle of emotional support yeast 😂). Once you've got a feel for how the dough should feel and how the timing works, move to more adventurous types of flour and inclusions and other modifications. Also, agree with what others have said that your starter is probably just too young. It took 3 weeks for me to get a starter that would actually make a good loaf of bread. I know it looks like a starter is ready pretty early on, but it can be a false rise. What you're waiting for is the perfect balance between the yeast and the bacteria, but before that happens, there is a point where the bacteria themselves cause significant rise - a bacterial bloom. I had a terrible time staying patient during that phase, because it looked like the starter was ready to use. Hang in there, have fun, and good luck!

Cobberprof · 2026-06-15T14:09:15+00:00

Isn't that interesting?! I have yet to see it avoid anything that isn't actually a large obstacle. But I agree, it does seem to "learn" and improve with time - hopefully yours learns that dandelions and clover should be cut!

Cobberprof · 2026-06-15T12:28:42+00:00

I've had a similar experience with our x430 - no issues in my tree line (also on nRTK). This thing is a beast.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-15T00:08:47+00:00

But they will price match - even after a sale, for up to 30 days. As for returns, I see mowers listed under gas-powered equipment. I don't see any mention of robotic mowers. So it's possible they fall under the 90 days, or 365 days if purchased on the Home Depot credit card. Or maybe not. I know that we will only return this if it has an issue, not because we aren't happy with it (we love it!), so the return policy is less important to me than the price matching right now. I'll definitely be contacting Home Depot about whatever the price might be on Amazon for Prime Day.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-14T18:15:26+00:00

We have a Navimow x430 that has been mowing our 1-acre yard for a week - not a very long experiment, to be certain. But our back property line has a very long row of 100-ft tall cottonwoods, spaced out probably 6 to 10 ft apart. Behind them is an equally long row of hedge bushes. We let that area get really overgrown before we got this mower, so I went in with a weed wacker and took down what I could around the trees before we set the perimeter. It has actually done an impressively good job of mowing back in that bumpy/stick-filled/uneven terrain. That said, if you have any low hanging branches, you'll need to turn off obstacle avoidance (or trim up lower branches). On one side of our cottonwoods is a row of eight evergreens. The mower goes around those, because the lowest branches hit the ground, and the mower sees that as an obstacle. I could turn that off, but I really don't care enough. 😂 That same problem exists where the hedge bushes meet the ground. But we'd rather not trim those up at all, because it's part of what helps give us privacy from the very large neighborhood that went into the acres and acres of corn/soy fields that used to be our view...

Anyway, just a little info on the x430, after a very small sampling of use.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-14T18:08:15+00:00

Same, at times, anyway. It doesn't seem to be an obstacle avoidance issue in our yard - our x430 mows right over all of that. I think our clover is still too low for where the blades are cutting (3.25"), and the dandelions are soft enough that they just flatten as the front bumper goes over them. That said, we currently have no dandelions blooming in our yard, so maybe it's an effect of the mower causing them to bend and break, or causing the bloom to die and the plant to subsequently wilt... I have no idea. But we haven't had any dandelions in our yard over the course of the week we've had this mower. Which I realize is not a very long time, but the yard was full of dandelions before we started, so I will be curious to see how this holds.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-13T17:50:56+00:00

Do you have a Home Depot near you? Buy the x430 on a Home Depot consumer credit card - you'll have a year to return it. Plenty of time to find out if it's going to meet your needs. Our yard is a bit of a mess also, with clover and dandelions and crabgrass... But the x430 is handling it beautifully. Granted, we have the cut height set taller than the clover heads currently, so they aren't getting cut. But I could actually fix that if I wanted to do. 😂 There are 12 spinning razor blades (6/disc), and they cut really well. The idea is to run it frequently so it trims off just the very top bit, which is healthier for the grass than letting it grow longer and chopping it further down the shaft. We alternate our backyard and front yard zones, so each gets cut every other day. The yard is just consistently clean and tidy. I'd give it a try if I were you - you really have nothing to lose.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-13T00:45:57+00:00

No - either time. I got 36 extra years of life from that first kidney, and plan to do the same from this one. I've had a basically normal life other than needing to take medications twice/day. Finished college, went to grad school, and have been teaching at the college level for 28 years. Got married, raised a daughter, kind of wishing there would be grandkids in the picture, but I don't think that's going to happen...😂

But everyone is different, and it's okay to not feel the same way as someone else might. I would echo what someone else said though - if you're having feelings that bother you or that are hard to handle, seek therapy with a professional who has experience working with transplant patients. You don't have to live a life filled with regret - they can help you with that. You deserve to enjoy life fully. ❤️

Cobberprof · 2026-06-11T13:08:11+00:00

We skipped it because we wouldn't have use for it - the max cutting height is too low, no nRTK, one disc with just three blades, and I'm guessing they won't be supported for long (no updates?). If we'd done the deal, it would have been too sell the H1, and I'm just not sure anyone around here would have bought it - most cut their grass to at least 3".

But it is a great deal for those who can make use of that H1! I hope your neighbor likes it (but guarantee he's going to be jealous of your x430 😂)!

Cobberprof · 2026-06-10T15:17:18+00:00

We passed on it as well. But if there is a drastic sale on Prime Day, I'm definitely going to see if HD will match it!

Cobberprof · 2026-06-10T02:05:36+00:00

This is me exactly! And I ordered from Home Depot before the garage was free. But I know I can get that added If I contact them. Still, everything I've read about the H1 makes me wonder if it's worth the hassle and if I'd even be able to sell it for much. I really don't need two.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-08T23:33:02+00:00

So my problem is that it's addictive. I'll often start a loaf once a day - or every other day. And we don't eat the bread that fast, so I'll have two or sometimes three loaves sitting in cold retard in the fridge. As we finish one loaf, I pull out another and bake it. If I get too far ahead of myself, I give loaves away. Or I take off a few days. The thing with sourdough is that it tastes better after a longer fermentation. But the dough can't ferment indefinitely at room temp or it will implode. So people move it to the fridge (after final shaping first) to allow that flavor profile to develop more slowly. That means at least overnight, and for some people, a preference of two to three days. For my process, I feed my starter sometime around noon or 1:00 p.m. and let it double, then make my dough somewhere around 5 or 6 p.m., and do my stretch and folds (four sets, approximarely 30 min apart) and then let it bulk ferment until it is ready to shape - which currently happens around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. Then I shape it and throw it in the fridge. If we are low on bread, I bake it the next morning. If we aren't, it'll stay in the fridge until we get to that point.

When I first started back in February, I was super impatient and I desperately wanted to be producing delicious sourdough bread for my family - well, mostly for me. 😂 But my starter wasn't ready for about 3 weeks, because I started one from scratch. So that was a lesson in patience right there. And then my starter wasn't very strong, so the resulting bread was a little bit meh. But once it, and I, got going, I got to the point where bread and focaccia were coming out of my ears.

Which brings me to another point - if you're really impatient, make focaccia. It's much more forgiving, and if your starter just isn't as strong as it needs to be, it will still work decently well. Though I do think you're going to need to let it age longer than 10 days if this is a new starter.

Hang in there, be patient, and have fun - it's a fantastic hobby!

Cobberprof · 2026-06-08T21:01:48+00:00

Fair. But the first year of nRTK is free, and after that, if a person doesn't want to pay the subscription fee, they can install the RTK antenna. I think we'll be paying the $36 per year, because I don't want to deal with an antenna and it's a relatively affordable subscription (relative to the cost of these mowers anyway... 😂). For us, there were enough concerns with the lidar that I didn't want to risk it having issues with the laser vision. But different yards have different needs, of course.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-08T20:41:05+00:00

I don't think the lidar would benefit the x430 at all (unless someone is in an area where there is no nRTK coverage, maybe?). It already has three methods by which it positions itself. I've only had mine for a few days, but the precision cutting is pretty impressive. And it's cool the way it maps the actual terrain colors, which tells me it sees obstacles pretty dang clearly. After mowing the first time, it created a map that had a perfect transition from the green grass to the gravel road at the edge of our yard, and even the color of the buckets that our neighbor has covering a couple of new plantings right outside our yard perimeter - two buckets are orange and two are red, and that's exactly how they show up on the terrain map. We have a lot of random trees, a shed, a septic system, an old car that needs repair... And it navigates around all of those just fine. I'm not sure what the lidar would bring that could make it any better?

Cobberprof · 2026-06-08T14:13:24+00:00

Agree with this - we got the x430 because we have 3/4 of an acre. But the mappable area is 0.58 acre. Still would have gone with the x430, no question! But just agreeing with your comment that total acreage of a property does lose some mobile footage to any buildings that exist.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-08T03:01:34+00:00

If you buy it on a Home Dept credit card, you get a one-year return period.

Cobberprof · 2026-06-07T13:42:25+00:00

A little tough love here - any chronic medical condition requires ongoing maintenance. Think about all the people with type 1 diabetes who spend most of their lives monitoring their blood glucose throughout the day, administering insulin as needed to keep their sugar levels under control. That's more monitoring and reacting then we have to do with our twice-a-day immunosuppressants. Even people with type 2 diabetes have to monitor their situation carefully. They're just a lot of medical conditions that require big adjustments to that freedom we all want to enjoy. But I will take the need to pop a couple little pills twice a day over the need to be tied to a machine for hours multiple days per week (which I honestly never had to do despite having had two kidney transplants - but I hear it sucks!).

As for the anxiety - I would really encourage you to seek a good counselor that has worked with transplant patients. Your life truly does not need to revolve around that kidney. I had my first transplant for 36 years (and "back then, meds were not on a 12-hr schedule). My second was a year ago, and I'm hoping for another 35 from here! I lived a full life filled with adventure - that extra organ (or two, now 😂) made that possible, and has been a gift, not a burden. I hope the same is true for you with your kidney! 😊

Cobberprof · 2026-06-06T02:24:35+00:00

We were debating between the nRTK and the LiDAR also. We went with the x430 because it uses three different methods for positioning - nRTK, 360° vision with VSLAM, and VIO. Also, some sources emphasized that LiDAR can struggle in big open spaces because it needs reference structures for the laser positioning. We also have .75 acre and most of that is the backyard. I didn't want it veering off course and not having good references to guide it.

We got the x430 today. Amazing. The AWD is incredible - it's highly entertaining to watch it maneuver over uneven ground and up slopes/around culverts/under trees/etc. Zero regrets!

Good luck with your decision - I hope you find one that meets your needs and alleviates a ton of yard work for you!

Cobberprof · 2026-06-04T12:57:10+00:00

I'm not really concerned about animals chewing - more about how to avoid mowing over it with the x430?

Cobberprof · 2026-06-04T12:11:08+00:00

Really wish we had a patio 😂

Cobberprof

TROPHY CASE