Much cooler at the BOL than in Houston. I’m sure it will still be hot in the afternoon, but it’s very nice in the evening, and got chilly last night.
I got through my errands yesterday and finally got the truck loaded, and my butt in the seat. Made it to the BOL without incident. It’s a DUI “No refusal” weekend in Texas, so there were a lot of cops out and several people pulled over. I just locked the cruise control and drove like normal.
Of course it was dark when I got here so I don’t know for sure what I’m facing today for maintenance, but I’m assuming all the normal things- cut the grass, blow the leaves, then start on the projects. I don’t mind the work and it feels good to look at the completed job and know I did it. Still, there is a lot of work…
There’s plenty at home too, and sometimes there is something extra. I had to clear ice out of one of the freezers before I left home. It was keeping the door cracked open, and everything had defrosted except the roasts. Fortunately I saw the water on the floor and investigated. We didn’t lose much, one bag of pot stickers, and we might lose the bread when it re-freezes. That particular fridge/freezer is mostly convenience foods and they are all vac sealed and pre-cooked so should be fine as they never got warm. We’ll be eating the roasts soon anyway, just to be sure. Could have been bad to come home to it in several days so I’m glad to have caught it. Still, it was a task that wasn’t on the list and pushed everything back.
One thing I don’t recall sharing is my belief that you should have enough empty coolers to move one whole freezer to coolers if you have a problem. I buy them cheap at yard sales, estate sales, and occasionally in the returns auctions. We use them to move food between home and the BOL, we use them for drinks for the kids’ sporting events, and if we have a party. You can use them for “hay box” cooking too in bad or in normal times. It’s a great way to cook corn on the cob, for example.
Coolers are an essential prep. If you don’t already have several, think about stacking a few more. At least keep your eyes open for them. And BTW, all the parts that break are available and fairly cheap, so it’s easy to rehab one if it needs a latch, hinge, or drain plug. I keep parts for Colman and Rubbermaid in stock, and I always buy them if I see them at a sale. I consider cracks in the interior to be a no sale, but you can just seal them with marine sealant, if you are looking for a really cheap one, or you fix and keep one for backup. I also don’t think it’s necessary to buy a yeti or similar. Ordinary Colman, especially the better models, work just fine for a day or two.
Backups for your major systems are a Good Think ™.
Stack ’em up.
nick
Ruh roh. Just in time for the first big weekend of college football.
The Mouse continues to turn over the sofa cushions in Burbank, looking for the dimes and nickles.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/disney-channels-like-espn-dropped-from-charter-spectrum-in-ongoing-dispute/ar-AA1g5ZHp
What? Linear TV isn’t dead? “Ahsoka” must have taken a ratings lightsaber to the gut, but unlike Sabine, Disney+ may not survive the wound.
Dogs whine, children whinge. Simple.
DIS closed at 81.64 yesterday and still has a PE of 66.
This weekend, linear TV.
Next weekend, physical media. Season three of “Picard” hits DVD and BluRay on Tuesday.
RIP Mississippi native Jimmy Buffett.
https://apnews.com/article/obituary-jimmy-buffett-4295f355b39237f40663d485c4c6d557
Well, that sucks. I worked a Buffett show. We were all hustling to get them wrapped up and out, when one of the road crew stopped me and said “Hey, slow down, take it easy, no one works hard on a Buffett show…”
Very low key and relaxed atmosphere for a major star.
RIP indeed.
n
popup:
Microsoft Windows: The program is not responding
missing choice: Give MSW programming staff another enema to improve throughput.
Sunny, and temp is rising. 4 degrees in the last hour- currently 82F.
Got a night’s sleep, bacon and an egg, and most of a cup of coffee in me. Think I’ll sit on the deck for the rest of the cup, then get to work.
n
There have been 22 lots of Jimmy Buffet cd’s sold today on eBay. Most of them were pretty inexpensive per disc,
August total was 15.
John Mellencamp is an ass. A big one, which is where he keeps his made-up liberal facts.
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/09/01/only-1-2-of-black-people-live-better-than-slaves-n575312
He’s also a cowardly ho-ar who allowed his name to be truncated by the record companies to reboot after the failure of his first two albums.
Overall, 5-stars on the “made out of ticky tacky” scale.
Bill Jacobson on Jimmy Buffet:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/09/jimmy-buffet-r-i-p/
The intro for the Come Monday video is perfect Buffet.
Danish Wind Energy Giant Crashes 25% in One Day, Blames “Severe” US Market
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/01/danish-wind-energy-giant-crashes-25-in-one-day-cites-us-market-woes/
A tax credit is a subsidy for something that has no prospect of competing in the marketplace, but has political support from pols who are:
–stone ignorant of economics
–terrified that they can’t get re-elected if they don’t give taxpayer’s money away
–ho-ars for political contributions
–intent on destroying capitalism any way they can
I’ll go with correlation, not causation. Increasingly, government acts like everyone’s helicopter mom. Which is a problem in so many ways….
We watched the first three episodes of “Ahsoka” last night.
I am not impressed.
I am also not impressed with “Secret Invasion”.
Agreed on both counts.
To be fair, I only made it about 10 minutes into Secret Invasion before I gave up.
Watched all 3 Ahsoka’s though.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a41911824/star-wars-novelization/
Interview was published Nov 11, 2022, so it is about a year old. I wonder what he really thinks, now, or if he follows it at all? (Also, considering that he had to sue Disney for royalties on the book, I’m sure his real opinion is closeted behind the settlement agreement.)
I read the Star Wars novelization in early spring of 1977 and thought the plot was carp. I had read at least three of Foster’s first four books and some short stories, but did not id him as the writer. Lucas’s satisfaction with the novel was doubtless a huge factor in Foster’s selection for subsequent novelization work–overall he did about a dozen.
But despite the lucrative nature of the MTI’s (movie tie-ins) such are footnotes to a good author’s career*. Foster’s reputation as a science fiction author rests on his other fifty or so novels, particularly his creation of the Commonwealth universe and the Pip and Flinx characters.
*And also the TVTI’s. Neither has ever made an author’s reputation, and some of the best names in that sub-genre business are little recognized unless one has made a study of it. Gary Lovisi called Michael Avallone “The Fastest Typewriter in the West” for his many contributions to serialization, and series books, but his best-known creation–Detective Ed Noon–is not well-know even to fans of the genre . OTOH Keith Laumer’s novelization of The Invaders is arguably a much better book than the story filmed for tv and in many cases, including mine, his name on the cover was the reason for the purchase.
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/a/michael-avallone/
“Ken Hoffman recalls the most memorable moments he shared with the legend Jimmy Buffett”
https://houston.culturemap.com/news/city-life/jimmy-buffett-dead-ken-hoffman/
Spaniels, Terriers, Schnauzers, Labradors, and Pointers are all great dogs.
Just moved the chicken coop and run today. I normally move them every ten days or so but they’d been in this spot for 20 days. Been busy. Hosed off the “easy remove” metal tray and the floor of the brooding bay, which is a pain to remove and to replace, and then covered them with nice, clean straw … and as usual the hens threw most of the straw out of the coop as soon as I let them back into the run. No idea why they prefer the bare metal or wood. They do the same with clean wood chips, so it’s not just straw that they don’t like. Doofuses. I wonder what they’ll do come Winter, when a nice layer of straw is all that’s protecting their fluffy behinds from the cold? I prefer to have a layer of straw or chips to make the trays easier to clean, but do the chickens care about what I want? No, of course not. They’re self-centered jerks.
The rooster is afraid of me, though he’ll come and get treats from my hand if they’re especially yummy. (It’s a toss-up which is best, dried mealworms or diced Spam. All of the birds prefer Spam to real meat, presumably because it’s softer and doesn’t have texture.) He attacks just about everyone else who comes into the run. Not so much when the birds are in the garden. Wife and mother-in-law can do whatever they need to do without being attacked. I’ve been trying to get my daughter to be more aggressive in defending herself when the pint-sized velociraptor attacks her but the most she’ll do is push him away with hand or leg. A few days ago I smacked him in the shoulder or neck when he jump-flew at her (he’s too heavy to fly but he can get a high or long jump by flapping his wings) and he did a 360 degree barrel roll, landing on his feet and then running away squawking. Not especially notable but it’s impressive that a basically flightless bird nevertheless has the instincts to land on his feet from a disruption like that.
The little red hen, by contrast, really likes me. She’s friendly enough with any human and likes being petted, but she runs up to me when she sees me, pecks at my feet to get me to pick her up or scratch her, and sometimes nestles down at my feet if I bring my laptop outside to work for a while. If I’m scratching one of the other birds, she’ll often come up and peck at my arm. “Hey! Pay attention to me!” Great. I’m being henpecked by a jealous redhead.
We’re getting about three eggs per day from six hens, but I think only five are laying. I don’t think that the smallest, dumbest hen is doing anything. I’ll wait a little longer to make sure she’s not doing anything useful, then she’ll probably get the axe. Though when I killed the smallest rooster a week and a half ago, my wife told me later that she had nightmares for the next several nights, of the rooster staring at her accusingly. -sigh-
The younger rooster is about the age that the older rooster was when he started doing rooster things. When they’re all out running around in the yard, not confined in the run, the younger rooster will sometimes jump on a hen and “do rooster things”. The squawking invariably draws the attention of The Rooster, who runs up and drives off the younger rooster … and then jumps on the same hen. My daughter is quite put out at this behavior.
Gave a half-dozen eggs to a neighbor. None of the neighbors really mind Dumbhead crowing but he mentioned that he’d appreciate some fresh eggs. Fair enough, so long as the requests don’t get excessive Also, it was a simple request, not a veiled threat to complain about the noise.
And that’s this week’s TPS (Thrilling Poultry Status) Report.
College Students Are Struggling With Basic Math and Professors Are Blaming the Pandemic
“We’re talking about college-level pre-calculus and calculus classes, and students cannot even add one-half and one-third.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/09/college-students-are-struggling-with-basic-math-and-professors-are-blaming-the-pandemic/
The profs are minimally 95% Democrats and have been for years. The state of the university, as well as the secondary school system, is squarely their fault. When the “graduates” can’t get jobs to makes payments on 4-5 years of $30-50k and up loans, the U.S. taxpayers have a right to discount the debt back to the universities as overpriced goods.
“Tesla Debuts New Model 3 In China Ahead of US”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/tesla-debuts-new-model-3-in-china-ahead-of-us
“The long-awaited refreshed Model 3 has more range, a sleeker design, and a higher-end interior. It’s currently only available in China and Europe, though likely to hit the US down the road.”
Everyone has a boss. And that boss in China is leaning on Musk.
“The “Ocean State” or the “Windmill State”? A Resignation that Speaks Volumes”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/02/the-ocean-state-or-the-windmill-state-a-resignation-that-speaks-volumes/
“In a recent and rather dramatic turn of events, the Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board (FAB) has made a bold statement by collectively resigning from the Rhode Island Ocean SAMP process. Their letter, addressed to Jeff Willis, the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), pulls no punches in its critique of the Council’s approach to offshore wind development.”
The global warming crowd will stop at nothing to meet their end. After all, the end justifies the means. And if the fishing gets destroyed on the upper east coast, oh well.
In case your day has been lacking excitement…
https://electrek.co/2023/09/01/we-finally-have-a-clear-shot-of-the-tesla-cybertruck-with-frunk-open/
Math isn’t my thing. Sure, 9th Grade Algebra was a great class, she slid us into doing trig and calculus and it was interesting and it all made sense. I actually made an A. To my surprise. 9th Grade was along time ago. In Mobile. I never had any kind of math class during high school in Texas.
Anyway. I guessed the answer was 5 or 6 eighths. A little less than ¾ of a cup. Like of cups of sugar. I googled and the answer is 5 6ths. A bit over ¾ of a cup. Close enough. Not enough to ruin the cake.
If I really want the exact answer I would use a measuring cup.
I’ll go with correlation, not causation. Increasingly, government acts like everyone’s helicopter mom. Which is a problem in so many ways….
Everyone now expects the government to be Uncle Santa Claus. I give you Social Security and Medicare. And the hundreds of other government programs.
In case your day has been lacking excitement…
https://electrek.co/2023/09/01/we-finally-have-a-clear-shot-of-the-tesla-cybertruck-with-frunk-open/
Wow, that is a small frunk.
One of my employees has a 2022 Nissan Leaf Plus with the big motor and big battery. The front has the motor and the heat pump for the interior. No frunk.
@steve, redheaded females are trouble. Always have been, always will be.
😉
It’s currently around 100F in part sun. I’m trying to stay in part sun as I work but I feel some tingle so I might have been in full sun too long.
Since I don’t have a spotter, I decided to delay the electrical work, given that the old man has tried to kill me from beyond the grave already. I decided to do some more work on the sprinkler system. I am backfeeding what I suspected might be the end of a run, and digging up all the wet spots to patch or terminate what I find. It would be nice to find ways to connect various parts of the property without digging new trench and water them.
The first several were easy and straightforward. Then I got side tracked and too focused on the next. I found a buried valve that is leaking and has been for some time. I THINK it is for a flower bed zone, but don’t know yet. I will cut it out and bypass it but first I have to dig around it. I’ve been using water, as it’s easier and cooler, but it is slower. I also don’t think the little bit of leakage explains the flow I’m seeing. SOMEWHERE else is still leaking pretty much like an open pipe.
I found what I think is a landscape drain, broken, and completely filled with a 5″ root. Dunno what it’s supposed to drain, but I know it isn’t doing it….
I decided to eat something and cool off so here I am.
There are a lot of people up here this weekend, which makes sense. Most of them seem to be running their boats and having a good time. I’d be surprised if anyone else was trying to trace buried pipe and fix irrigation… such is life.
n
added– is it a freudian slip that I first typed that as “suck it life”?
n
@Lynn
“The global warming crowd will stop at nothing to meet their end. After all, the end justifies the means. And if the fishing gets destroyed on the upper east coast, oh well.”
Off-shore wind turbines are not as vulnerable as London traffic cams. Without making an actual study, mind you, a 2-3 minute visit with a 20v hammer drill and $20 worth of supplies would have a seriously deleterious effect on the operational lifetime.
The death throes of Disney-Marvel and Lucasfilm under Disney ownership.
@Nick – with the age of your irrigation system, and the issues involved, it seems to me that it would be faster and maybe cheaper just to get a trencher and install a completely new system. If the trencher hits a buried irrigation pipe, no problem (assuming it’s not a supply pipe). And don’t they have trenchers that bury a pipe while trenching? A couple of long-range impulse sprinklers would cover large areas.
You could use the ‘811’ guys to find current pipes in the property, maybe. At least the supply pipes.
Right now, it sounds like you are playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with trying to fix the system. Maybe better to just start all over.
But I am 2000 miles away, so just guessing.
@paul
An excellent practical insight into the particular problem. Many things can be expressed in math-free or nearly math-free terms. Mixing gas and oil for the chain saw comes to mind: Stihl sells a small container of oil to be mixed into a gallon of gas, and it matters not what the ratio is.
Other things are not so forgiving. I vividly remember a pharmacist at a hospital shaking his head over a nurse’s drug dosage calculation.
The primary reason for math education is twofold: so that people can better understand and not be lied to about a) the natural world, and b) money.
Everyday examples of the latter abound in showing us that our society is deficient in math. So-called college graduates who presumably did have the prerequisite math to get in have no clue that the loans they signed up for cannot be justified by the jobs they will get. In my high school balancing the check book and calculating laon and mortgage payments (with a rate book in those days) was “Consumer Math” and the course was not for the college-bound.
Math is only one part of understanding the natural world, but if you don’t have any concept of what one-part-per-billion is, and someone tells you that your drinking water is deadly, you are more likely to accept it at face value that ask: What else is in there that I can’t see and you’re not telling me about?
I never had anything like “Consumer Math”. If it had been offered I think it would have been like taking Home Ec in 7th grade and expecting to learn something useful, like “how to cook” ANYTHING beyond making cookies, but no, we’ jes gonna sew stuff. Shoot, I knew how to sew stuff already.
I got the “Consumer Math” stuff from Dad. He had a huge sheet of paper, like 3×5 feet, where he kept track of all of the bills and payments and income. This is years before Lotus123 existed. It made sense to him. It made sense to me. I just sorta keep it all in my head and not on a sheet of paper. It’s like a stamp collection, I know if I have that stamp or not. Doing it on the PC, nope, too distracting. Yeah, I know folks swear how great Excel is, and being able to sort by this or that is a cool feature, but I can do that in my head.
Taking a class in HS to learn how to balance a checkbook? Not including you or anyone here, but that’s a class for the dummies that can’t read. Just an easy credit so they can graduate.
Re chainsaws and the like…. some want 40 to 1 oil. Some want 50 to 1. I use the little 2 ounce bottles of two cycle oil. Because, lazy. Sue me. Pour it in, add a bit of gas to rinse the bottle because that’s what Mr Buffalo Nickle says to do. Then fill the can with a short gallon. Like, point 95 gallons.
It works for me. I’d much rather have to clean a fouled spark plug once is great while (like never) than replace an oil starved machine.
Looking at another online auctions with a garage full of rusty tools and a double wire brush setup right there that the guy evidently never used. Toolbox drawers are filthy, too. WTF?
I’d guess that the guy was older, and probably not able to use his tools at his age.
I could be like that. There is stuff in the rolling Sears tool cabinet that have been there for years (maybe decades) without being used. You accumulate stuff over the years, and then you don’t use them. Dust happens.
And it takes a lot of effort to get rid of stuff.
I have to disagree. I was in college prep and college and grad school mathematics classes, so math theory is something I get.
But it was my accountant brother who taught me how to balance a checkbook, and why. Spoiler: It’s not just so you don’t spend more than you have, or bounce checks, although that’s a powerful reason.
A real consumer math class would also teach you things like calculating unit pricing, and all the basics of reading ingredients labels on food items and cost/benefit analysis on warranties. A bonus would be the ability to analyze future value and net present values for controlling your own personal inventories. Preppers have a different perspective of risk, of course, but in the general case buying vast quantities of infrequently-used items incurs costs: opportunity, storage, risk of what retailers call shrinkage.
Update to the TPS: Discussed the egg production numbers, cost per egg, and so on w The Child. (Currently only one kid in the house, with no more projected to stay with us. Subject to change based on family situations.) Even before I suggested that the probably-not-laying hen might not be earning her keep, daughter asked that I give her a little longer, because she’s smaller and may be delayed and and and. A few minutes later she said that she doesn’t want me to kill her even if she never lays eggs and even though it didn’t realllllly bother her when I killed the one rooster, it bothered her.
The chickens have become pets who happen to lay eggs, rather than livestock.
-sigh-
Why, it’s almost like I warned about exactly this, six months ago. Why, it’s almost like my family kept animals (not chickens, but several kinds of rodent) which never did get eaten. It’s almost like I’ve been around other families which raised an animal with intent to slaughter, then weren’t able to.
-sigh-
It’s not a real problem. The cost is not a concern, now that I have everything set up; cost of feed and straw is negligible. I still resent that 100% of the care has been dumped on me on account of everyone else being unreliable (eg, forgetting to open the coop in the morning, leaving them inside with no food or water for six hours plus the eight hours of night) but it’s not a problem in terms of hours put into it. The only problem is that I’m tied to the homestead, dawn and dusk. The run is mostly secure enough to keep predators out, so the coop doesn’t absolutely have to be closed up, but the cameras have caught raccoons and some kind of canine trying to get in and they may manage it one day. I prefer to have the sturdier protection even if the critters get inside the run. (Happened once, a raccoon, but I remedied that gap. Lately the only critters able to get in when the door is shut are chipmunks, which fit through the holes in the chicken wire and go after stray pellets and corn.)
@RickH
“I’d guess that the guy was older, and probably not able to use his tools at his age.”
I’m sure the guy was older, but it was grubby grime in the toolbox drawers, not just dust. The grimy interior of the vernier caliper case was a clue, too.
Some years ago I bought a roller cabinet at a sale that was greasy and dirty. I used almost an entire can of carb cleaner (safe for paint) in cleaning it up. I just don’t understand the attitude. Guy washes his car and wouldn’t think about driving around with a pile of goose crap on the hood, but hasn’t cleaned a tool or toolbox in years.
I have two roller cabinets that were new more than fifty years ago and still look pretty much new, despite a lot of use. No grime in the drawers, and no rusty tools. We used to salvage motors with double shafts and set them up on 2×10’s that could be clamped to the bench. One with polishing buffing wheels, another with two wire wheels. And yeah, I was taught to sweep up the sawdust.
And as I’ve mentioned before, if you live in a humid environment, one of the cheapest things you can do to take care of your tools and toys is get acquainted with Bull-Frog products:
https://www.bull-frog.com/
Bull-Frog is the consumer brand for CorTec, a pioneer in volatile corrosion inhibitors.
https://www.cortecvci.com/
@SteveF
“Happened once, a raccoon, but I remedied that gap.”
In one night they can dig under a fence or a building wall and clean you out. With your mobile set-up a solar battery powered security light is worth considering.
@SteveF
Umm… There may come a time when the combination of obligation to and resentment of your poultry outweigh your sense of responsibility towards your
petslivestock and your offspring’s feelings.Oh, and the limited supply of fresh eggs.
At that point, you have a ready solution with plausible deniability.
Let the raccoons and canines win. Lapse a bit on the mainenance and repairs. When called on it, repair it again, only fail. Raccoons will wipe out a whole small coop in one night.
It will require resoluteness against your compassion for the animals and the movements towards restocking. I propose explaining the “sunk cost” fallacy to that one.
Don’t underestimate the severity of resentment. I was in the worst part of my life, divorcing, in the worst work situation I had ever been, and in counseling. When asked why I continued to work at that job, I said for my children and to support my coworkers who were in equally toxic circumstances.
Counselor told me that only leads to resentment, and I should make other plans before it got that bad.
I got fired before I could make changes, but I remember later summing it up like this: “At 2:30 PM I had a job I hated. At 3:30 I was driving home with a cardboard box and, ultimately, a smile on my face and a load off my back.”
I use to set an unbaited livetrap for the coons. One summer I shot uh, 47?, I’ll have to go count the .22 shells. The buzzards would be perched in the trees waiting for their breakfast.
Raccoons are nasty.
We did have a solar-powered, motion-activated light but it was going off constantly, to the point that it didn’t even make the critters run away. We now have a low-light, motion-activated camera and every few days my wife checks for activity since the last check. Raccoons and the canine thing nose at the run once or twice a week and sometimes the raccoons probe a little more systematically. The one raccoon which got in had found a section of chicken wire that I hadn’t wired to the frame.
The soil around here is heavy clay. Can be dug but even most burrowing animals don’t much bother, instead scratching pits under half-exposed roots and calling it good enough. None of the predators have even tried, judging by both camera and condition of the ground. (The heavy clay was a real pain when it came to gardening, requiring huge amounts of sand and topsoil before anything would grow. Those “free vegetables” sure cost a lot, in time and money. But it got Grandma fresh air and exercise for more than ten years so I guess it was worth it.)
For now, before Winter comes, I’m not too worried. They’d have to dig under the wall of the run and then dig under the coop and then figure out how to open the sliding door. (The side doors and the brooding bay have locking latches, probably too stiff for a raccoon to open even if he figured out how.) With other food around, I’m sure that it’s too much work. Come Winter, the plan is to move the coop onto the stone patio under the deck, with the run around it. Any predators would have to lift up the edge of the run, squeeze under, then either lift up the side of the coop and squeeze under or smash through the side of the coop. All this, right outside the window of my room in the basement, and I’m there most of the time. (I may have mentioned that I barely sleep.) It’s not impossible that something would get my birds but I’m going to make that something work for it. After all, they’re -sigh- the family’s precious pets.
You talk real mean for being such a softy. I say that as a compliment.
Not needed. We know several families with chickens and could give ours to them. Worse come to worst, I’d just kill them all, grit my teeth and defeather the blasted things, and plop them in the freezer.
Your point about resentment building is broadly on point, though.
Not legal here. Or rather, anything besides releasing them after trapping them is in effect not legal. Can’t shoot them (discharging a firearm within 10,000 miles of a residence, or whatever the revised state code says). Can’t beat them with a stick until dead (cruelty to animals). Can’t transport off your property. Can’t release onto anyone’s property other than your own. Pointless to call animal control because they won’t do anything. Of course, there’s shoot-shovel-shut up, but there are a few Karens living in hearing distance and a fair number who go for walks at any time of the day or night – safe residential cul-de-sac. Anyway, the raccoons don’t bother me except for nosing around the chickens. They get into the garden sometimes, if the gate was left open, but it’s the rabbits and woodchucks (gophers? I can’t tell them apart, seeing one in isolation) who do the damage.
“How the Sausage is Made” Published by Divemedic
https://areaocho.com/how-the-sausage-is-made/
“OK. My ED sees between 200 and 300 patients per day. We are seeing about 50 to 60 people who have respiratory complaints each day. The majority of them wind up with cardiac, emphysema, COPD, and other infections like pneumonia and the flu. About 15-25 of those 50-60 wind up being diagnosed with COVID. How does that happen? The following is going to be a bit heavy in technical details, but I will simplify it as much as I can, so that it is more understandable.”
Wow, they are seeing 15 to 25 a day of people with the Koof. So the ongoing muttering by various governmental idiots is not without reason.
@rick – you are absolutely right that the whole thing needs to be redone. At the moment, I’m running hoses to “impact sprinklers” (chucka, chucka, chucka) and can cover the back yard (or most of it.) The repairs and exploration are because the main line from the pump at the lake to the front yard is 280 or more feet and that’s a lot of digging around the buried septic field… I’ve got that repaired now and can get water to the top of the hill and the patch of grass on the one side of the driveway.
Did I mention the old boy loved concrete? Foot thick concrete? Pretty much everywhere? There is a “planter” in the middle of the HUGE driveway that has existing sprinklers. They don’t work so there is a gap somewhere… It is a LOT easier to tie into any existing run than to break the concrete or tunnel to the island in the middle of the concrete ocean, so that is one of the parts I’m trying to find. The other is a 20ft wedge of grass, between two driveways and several raised beds which also has an existing irrigation hose bib. The stuff I found today should let me tap into that, and a couple other places where sprinkler heads would be nice, without doing much trenching. I didn’t find any indication of where the “planter” line or break is though.
I’ll end up burying a new “trunk” line up the long side of the property opposite the run that goes to the front yard along the other side. Eventually. And adding a bunch of properly sized heads, and zoning the whole thing in a way that makes sense, just exactly as you suggest…
But not today, or this year… and I don’t want everything to die in the mean time.
So hose and temporary “impact” heads and trying to find existing paths to the stuff I’ can’t otherwise get to kept me busy most of the day.
More fun messing with water than several other things on the list, especially when it’s hot…
n
Wasn’t Divemedic an alarmist three years ago, predicting doom and gloom until it didn’t happen?
We’re screwed if enough people get scared to the point that they accept the mask Kabuki again.
And Corn Pop really means it about the next jab actually working …
From Divemedic’s penultimate paragraph:
At one house I had there was an out in the yard faucet that didn’t work. I ran a hose to it and back fed it. I soon found the broken spot in the line and then a second break and finally was able to eyeball where the valve/line that fed it had to be. Dig up your irrigation outlet and put on an adapter on it to back feed the line…
Regarding balancing check books. My second wife was not good with numbers. I taught her to subtract the bills she paid just after payday from amount of the pay deposit. That was the amount she could spend before the next payday. She kept a running total of the checks she wrote that pay period. Before Christmas I would check her statement balance and tell her how much money she had for on Christmas. Worked for us.
Sat on the dock and listened to the rest of “Fool Moon.” Didn’t mean to, but it kinda barrels along to the end so there wasn’t a good stopping point.
Moonrise was late, so we had a fairly dark sky, but also pretty hazy. No good for viewing, and not even a meteor.
And while it did cool off, it was still 82F when I came up to the house. The breeze actually felt warm. 82F was pretty nice after 100+ all day though, just not as nice as mid 70s.
n
>> @steve, redheaded females are trouble. Always have been, always will be.
(not for pre-teens…or work)
https://youtu.be/-5c-tGH-J4M
From my favorite acoustic set by him.
>> Can’t shoot them (discharging a firearm within 10,000 miles of a residence, or whatever the revised state code says).
22 with a nice quieter should suffice…
>> I could be like that. There is stuff in the rolling Sears tool cabinet that have been there for years (maybe decades) without being used. You accumulate stuff over the years, and then you don’t use them. Dust happens.
Yeah, but think of the satisfaction when you need that one specific tool you bought and used but once when you remember you have it in the back of a drawer, saving to yet one more trip to Home Depot.
predicting doom and gloom until it didn’t happen?
– don’t forget that it DID happen for a whole lotta people. Italy. NYFC. Various south of the border countries. Even here, the hispanic community saw very heavy losses, far more than whites based on conversations with people I know personally, especially in the beginning when it was more virulent and the treatments were not effective.
We had ebola in Dallas, where they managed to infect two of the guy’s nurses while treating him, yet his family was fine, and we had ONE bed left in the whole USofA rated for BL4, which means two more cases would have put someone in a normal hospital or an improvised facility with the potential for disaster that that implies. Yet most people would tell you it was a non-event even if they remember it at all. It was certainly a disaster for the nurses, the Vice cameraman, and patient zero… and narrowly missed becoming a disaster for a whole lot more people.
Point being, while it might not have ended up where people thought it might, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad. That applies to hurricanes and the chinese bioweapon too.
n
think of the satisfaction when you need that one specific tool you bought and used but once when you remember you have it in the back of a drawer, saving to yet one more trip to Home Depot.
–or the frustration when you finish the project with your new Home Depot tool, only to discover that you already owned the correct tool, but didn’t remember, or couldn’t find it…
n
>> –or the frustration when you finish the project with your new Home Depot tool, only to discover that you already owned the correct tool, but didn’t remember, or couldn’t find it…
That’s why my dad lined the walls behind his workbenches with pegboard and used magic marker to outline every tool that hung in its place on the pegboard. I still have one of the markers and it still writes.
The older I get, the more I miss him.
This. You never quite know what you are going to need. Every few years, I do have a massive cleanout. Moving to the new house covered that need for a while – I got rid of all sorts of stuff. But the odd screw, the weird tool – usually it’s the ones you *don’t* expect to need, that wind up coming in handy…
Just as an example: I bought a hundred meters of reflective paracord, to run along the top of the fence around our old property. Turned out that the paracord was only reflective if you used a lot of imagination – certainly didn’t reflect the headlights of the cars driving by, which was what we wanted. But I kept the roll, and most recently used some of the paracord to hang up an archery net.
I could see myself doing that if I had more space. I don’t, so tools live in boxes on shelves. But the boxes are labelled by category, so…
In the end, nothing was effective in the end to prevent the spread, and a whole lot of people have become part of a mass study in mRNA “vaccine” tech, which ended up being one Supreme Court decision away from not having a Control and slapping figurative or, possibly, literal gold stars on the “unclean” who chose to take a personal risk after weighing the evidence for themselves.
The armband -er- mask establishes and reinforces the fear, which makes more control possible.
How much DM schadenfreude about ebola have you seen since Corn Pop was sworn into office?
Surely, there have been outbreaks in Africa and close calls in the US.
@greg, I hear you, but you moved the goalposts.
WRT ebola in africa, there was an outbreak reported and Marlburg iirc. It’s worth checking out allafrica.com occasionally for african news. Of course, when I do, I post links here to save others the trouble.
n
Covid happened for a lot of people, and the demographics who took the worst hit continue to have statistically unhealthy lifestyles and/or serious FOMO issues. They’ll take the worst of it in a resurgence since nothing will change in those communities.