71F and 95%RH, with sun and fluffy clouds.
Nice day, if a bit humid.
Picked up 8 bags (2cu ft ea) of soil yesterday to refresh my raised beds. Got some pepper plants, and zucchini in pots. Need to pick up some manure. I’m working at a customer’s today so I won’t be getting them planted yet.
Got 2 more coats of cold galvanize on my antenna mast (pipe) and found 2 fence clamps that will work very well to mount it.
Ordered some hinge parts for the driveway gate project.
Spent an hour talking to an old friend on the phone. If the universe butt dials your phone to someone you haven’t talked to in a while, consider it a gift, and TALK. Don’t pass up the opportunity, you might not get it again.
Stuff to do, better get to work…
n
This has been bothering me for a long time. Why do you have gates on your driveways? Around here, the only gates around are on the 3-ft fence around the pet yard. Other than that, few fences, no gates. What gives?
The gated drive lets the kids and animals play on a hard surface without playing in the street.
It also limits access to the rear of the house, back yard, and garage.
In my case, it will hide the 7 pallets of “inventory” I have stored under tarps in the driveway.
n
this is typical but NOT my house
http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/gate-Copy.png
It makes a nice enclosed area next to the house.
I picked up some more Life Straws ™ personal water filter devices in yesterdays WOOT Off for a good price. I carry Sawyer filters in my Bug Out Bags as they are smaller but Life Straw ™ is a good item. I will be taking these down to my son for his prepping kits later this month.
“‘How many Jews were in the ovens because they were unarmed?’ Alaska congressman sparks outrage by suggesting Holocaust victims may have survived if they had guns
Alaska congressman Don Young said the Holocaust could have been prevented by arming Jews
‘How many Jews were put in the ovens because they were unarmed?’ he asked ”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5443307/Alaska-congressman-says-guns-couldve-prevented-Holocaust.html
Why on earth would a statement like this be controversial, let alone cause the apparent “outrage” it’s causing? Is it because it is “victim blaming?” Or because lefties won’t accept that there is ever a time for armed resistance?
Different oppressor, but the idea certainly isn’t as new as DM makes it out to be, or as fringe….
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
@harold, where’s the love for the ferret? No link for your pals here YESTERDAY???
n
Gated drives are good security features to keep good stuff (kids & dogs) in and bad stuff out. However drive gates, and most fencing, are not allowed by our HOA. If I weren’t planning to relocate in a year I’d run for HOA and make changes. Will NEVER live where there is a HOA again.
@harold, where’s the love for the ferret? No link for your pals here YESTERDAY???
OK, that’s a complete non-sequitur. Ferret ?? I guess I need to spend more time reading this site. 🙂
Sorry, dotcom era commercial. something to do with pets.com and a certain sock puppet. I guess it’s like “Old Style’s better than Bud, much much better!” or winking at the existence of “artesians” that live in artesian wells, and what they have to do with making beer. Some stuff stuck to my brain better than other things… not everyone shared those experiences.
n
HOA can be a nightmare. My daughter moved into one back in June and the biggest headache is they can’t take cash or any kind of card. She finds herself having to drop by the management office and leave a check (I guess she could mail one.) Biggest issue was while both she and her new husband have bank accounts neither had checks. People her age just grew up like that. Only thing they actually have to pay by check. I never write true checks anymore either. Some things I pay by pseudo checks, online or phone.
I’ve never been in an HOA . I live in an unincorporated 100 year old neighborhood. I’ve told how last summer I had a county code compliance office show up because I have hedges higher than 48″ in front of my house. Houses all over this area have high fences walls and vegetation around them. Of course they couldn’t tell me who complained.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxLWd_RKNPevQ1Nhb293T2FUa0k/view?usp=sharing
So why do you have such high hedges at the corner? I might complain about something like that. (Probably knock on your door, first). Blind corners bug me. I’m always afraid a kid will be coming down as I pull out & I can’t see them.
That, and because so many on the right are holocaust deniers, or say it was justified, or say whatever other stupid thing comes into their empty skulls.
Well the corner is not hedge it’s tall juniper and not blind. They are three feet above ground and you can see under them. Besides by the time you come to the gutter dip you have a clear view both ways. It’s also a 25 mph area (so who speeds? the skateboarders coming down canyon go faster). I’ve lived here 28 years and there has never been an accident at this intersection. It is a weird K shape where two streets dead end together into my street.
And yes talking to your neighbors is a better idea.
It’s also a 25 mph area (so who speeds? the skateboarders coming down canyon go faster).
What’s a “skateboarder”? The mexican’ts (yes, spelled that way for disrespect and to differentiate between the good Mexicans) that only drive souped up (engine and stereo) low riders.
I live on the corner of a cul de sac. The mexican’ts are going flat out as they leave my street. I have sent video recordings (with sound) to the cops. The mexican’ts movements are predictable so a couple of times a month the cops park up on the side street and nab the law breaking mexican’ts. You would think that they would have enough tickets by now to be getting lifetime 3-hots and a cot in the County Jail.
Ah – google’s 3d render is not so good, then.
Funny – when I knock on someone’s door, the response is usually a little reluctant, and I try to be as pleasant as possible. I tend to scowl a lot, and I don’t want to put people off when I’m trying to be nice. My wife would rather do the talking for me.
We live in a neighborhood with a HOA. We built, and the neighborrhod was less than 1/4 built when we built. It’s mildly restrictive, and have only had one major issue. our covenants specify a single style of wood fence. The fence can either be natural wood, or be stained in an approved color. My fence was installed as part of our hose construction, and we left it natural. The builder was the HOA board, as it was a new development.
Several years ago (been here almost 8 now) a couple of residents in the neighborhood got on a kick about how they wanted all the fences to be stained. They absolutely hated the untreated fences and how they naturally gray. They tried pushing the issue at the annual HOA meeting. Our HOA is managed by a hired company. A couple weeks before another HOA meeting, they got the manager to send out a letter to all residents stating that we had x number days to have our fences stained our we could have a lean place on our property. Yeah, I was hot.
As I just happened to have a copy of the neighborhood covenants, I quickly located the section pertaining to fences. It stated that all fences must be made of wood and be of a shadowbox style. IF the fence is stained, it must be either in the trim color of the house or an approved color.
So, armed with this, I went to the meeting. Needless to say, it was heated. One of the guys kept wanting to say how my fence will last longer if stained, and would cost me less money. I thanked him for his concern, but also mentioned that until he started paying my mortgage, he had no say in it. My final comment to the group was fine, if you want to proceed with this, I’ll just lawyer up. Amazing, this happened several years ago, and the issue has never come up again.
Interestingly, our HOA board had its first group of non-builder members appointed (not elected) and two of the three were the fence nazis (I think I’ll copyright that.) Yeah, politics is rotten all the way to your neighborhood level. This also reminds me that we are supposed to have elections sometime…need to check on that.
What the fence nazis also failed to realize is that I’ve actually thought about staining my fence. But after their shenanigans, I will never do it, just for spite.
Another aside…the HOA management company is buddies with the neighborhood builder. Coincidentally, he has most of the HOA management contracts for the neighborhoods in our area. Apparently he tried the fence thing in other neighborhoods, and was also threatened with lawsuits.
So if you have enough on your side get a new board by elections. The builder has received his money and should be out of the picture.
Yes google 3d renders buildings pretty good. Vegetation not so much.
This was my house in Canberra from 1985-2014. Note there is no front fence – they were more or less illegal I thought – very few houses have them.
https://www.realestate.com.au/property/26-yarra-st-kaleen-act-2617
Now, the couple who bought it are selling, they rendered the exterior brickwork and spent a boatload of money on the interior. I can’t believe they’ll get it back. I hate the fence.
https://www.allhomes.com.au/ah/act/sale-residential/26-yarra-street-kaleen-canberra/1317470212411
This has been a crazy day at 3 of the high schools and the WSU Tri-Cities Campus here. The high schools had reports of armed students and a rifle being pointed at building on the WSU Tri-Cities Campus. All false alarms but a major tie-up of police resources; city, county, and state.
IMHO students are looking at the current atmosphere regarding guns and using it as an opportunity to be a disruptive as possible.
And here is a cartoon that shows just how not effective the NRA shaming is going:
http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/nra-membership-rolls/
Full disclosure, I have been a Life Endowment member for 25 years.
If HOAs are bad, try living in an upscale 84 room apartment building full of Amazon millenials. Got home from a 6 week trip and couple had moved in across the hall. Kept their door open, made lots of noise, even had a friend’s 3 year-old running up and down the hall. I asked politely a few times, and when that didn’t work after a few more episodes, I opened my door wearing nothing but skimpy little jockey briefs and stood there pretending to text on my phone. Guess what? They’ve been a wee bit more considerate since then.
Well, now I’ve got that image in my brain. Where’s the brain soap???
n
_Grace Under Fire: Book Two In The Locker Nine Series (Volume 2)_ by Franklin Horton
https://www.amazon.com/Grace-Under-Fire-Book-Locker/dp/1978345550/
Book number two in a two book dystopian series spinoff from a five book dystopian series. I read the well printed and bound POD (print on demand) book from Big River. I will order and read any more book in these series from the author, this is the good stuff.
If the USA rapidly spins into an apocalypse, getting home while at college or elsewhere might be difficult. This is part II of that journey home from college for a young lady.
I note that the author is very concerned about the current level of drug (legal and illegal) usage in the USA contributing to a apocalyptic scenario. With the recent focus on the opioid crisis, this concern might be valid.
The author has a website at:
http://franklinhorton.com/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars (118 reviews)
I am back in Texas ! Yay ! Oklahoma is nice but it is not home. And it rained on me all of the 150 miles to Texas. Highly unusual for OK, normally a very dry area. And, I was raised in Norman from 1963 to 1969.
You know, driving my land yacht (2005 Ford Expedition Eddie Bauer) 480 miles in one day is getting tough on me. The stint through Dallas, TX in the rain was very tough especially since I left my father-in-laws nursing home in Lewisville, TX at 4pm. Driving through downtown Dallas in rush hour and the rain was not a picnic. Plus, I got honked for a swift lane change, bite me !
The thing with HOAs: The reasonable people have real lives, and don’t want to mess with stupid stuff. It’s the bored control-freaks, the ones who like to play neighborhood Nazi, who have the time to invest in this crap. As always: Anyone who actually wants the job should be disqualified…
It’s the same thing everywhere. I invest a little bit of time at work, resisting the politics, because it would affect me directly. “We need more women!” No, folks, we need qualified students, and let’s ignore the plumbing. “We need more diversity!”. No, folks, we need qualified students, and let’s ignore everything irrelevant to that.
Just yesterday, I was informed that all the failing students from my first semester programming course would be allowed to take part in the second semester course. I informed the administration that this would definitely _not_ be the case, seeing as the first course is a prerequisite for the second. I’ll be interested to see who shows up…
Sand to the Saudis? Ausies almost beat Texans at BBQ… 🙂
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-01/barbecue-championships-see-australians-cook-texans-reputation/9496350
Mmmmm, barbeque…. mmmmmmm……
n
Lynn wrote:
“Oklahoma is nice but it is not home.”
Ever see An Officer and a Gentleman?
“Only two things come from Oklahoma: Steers and Queers. Which one are you boy? I don’t see no horns so you must be queer.”
Y’all know there’s a reason why Texas is windy. It’s ’cause Oklahoma sucks.
All my family comes from the panhandles, both Texan and Oklahoman. Ranchers and farmers, some really good, some couldn’t even get weeds to grow. My one grandfather was pretty well off until the Great Depression – he was a rancher and also owned a grocery store. Couldn’t stand to see people go hungry, so he sold “on credit” until the store was bankrupt.
On the ranching side, well, the feds wanted to stop deflation, make prices start rising. So they figured shortages would help. They went around his ranch shooting cattle, paying him $5 per head. Then they stayed around long enough to be sure that the carcasses were left to rot. So the ranch didn’t do so well during the depression, either. Funny, how he didn’t have much use for the feds.
“Only two things come from Oklahoma: Steers and Queers. Which one are you boy? I don’t see no horns so you must be queer.”
When I lived in Norman, OK back in the 1960s, there was a sign out on I35, “No nXXXXXX and Indians allowed in Norman”. My mother was incensed. Needless to say, that sign is no longer there.
The wife has frequently threatened to make me into a steer but has never carried through. Of course, last night I got home about 10pm and asked where were my washed socks in my sock drawer. The answer was “bite me”. Ok, I might have been a little whiny (I was tired !).