Month: March 2024

Home in Houston, and it is more grey on the way. Got a smattering of drops yesterday, after the huge storm blew through around 5am… but we even had some sun too. In any case it dried out enough I could mow. Mostly dried out…

And by mostly I mean ‘not really’ but I cut the hill on an angle, so I didn’t need the brakes as much, and I only spun the wheels a few times when turning back up hill…. the grass came out in lumpy chunks. In the end, the lawn looked pretty good short, and it should stay ok looking for a while.

I also did a bunch of sprinkler work. I ran hoses and put up “impact” sprinkler heads. I dug up the yard where water was coming from the ground and fixed a pipe. Then I fixed another place on the pipe, and tightened two other joints on the pipe… I didn’t quite get all the areas I wanted to get covered, but I’ll tune it next visit.

Took a while to get cleaned up, put stuff away, and prep the house for some alone time.

I finally got home about 1030pm. Didn’t see many wrecks or pulled over vehicles, did see a lot of cops on the road. Maybe they were effective preventing the drunk driving extravaganza this year.

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Spring Break is over for my kids and we’re back to school today. Early to rise…

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I’ve got auction stuff to do today, and some follow up from the hamfest. I promised two guys I’d look for stuff in my storage, and both called me to see if I looked yet. I better look. Then I have at least one pickup locally. Three more pickups later in the week too. I won some good stuff, and at rock bottom prices. Dunno what happened to the other bidders, or maybe I just want stuff no one else wants.

Either way, I have a bunch of small stuff to get.

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I’d like to drop off some stuff too, but we’ll see if he has room for it. And the normal chores have piled up while I was gone. Gonna be busy for a couple of days.

Stack something for yourself, and something for your loved ones. You’ll feel very satisfied when you don’t have to shop at the last minute for that special something…

And you’ll be glad you stacked when you open the beans to go with the road kill stew…

nick

Possibly rain all day here at the BOL, with moderated temps. It was grey with occasional drizzle most of yesterday with temps in the mid 60s F.

I worked anyway. It’s just a little moisture from the sky. I did spend the morning doing auction catch up stuff. Starlink doesn’t love the rain. And latency is an issue for me. The auction site, hibid.com has an incredibly bad website, that seems to have lots of problems with slow connection timeouts, and with high latency connections. It was nearly unusable last night with latencies around 40ms. They seem to be using a strategy of loading the whole page, then unmasking parts of it, and it suxxx. Even on my fiber connection at home it sometimes sux. It was unusable on 4G lte. With starlink and my older lappy, it’s maddening. If it doesn’t load immediately, the best strategy is hitting reload until it does. Waiting for the pieces to load, especially if there is some sort of race condition error, is crazy making.

Hot Skilzz- they don’t got um.

I did finally get out of the house and I worked on the pump and sprinklers. Got the pump primed, got the inlet out of the silt, and viola! water spewing forth… a mighty gusher…

Continued running hoses and setting up the sprinklers. They are not actually called “chucka chucka chucka” things, apparently they are called “impact” sprinklers. Who knew? Each hose run will only supply 3 heads, but the pump will fire all of them at the same time. I may double some of the zone connections to keep the back pressure down, and cut my watering time in half. The lesson is that I will use big trunk lines when I bury pipe, and then 1″ branches. The pump is clearly oversized, but it is also pushing water up 30+ feet of elevation. Better to have more than I need, I think.

Today I’ll do more sprinkler setup, and maybe a thing or two indoors. If it’s dry, I’ll wait as long as I can and then try mowing before I leave. I don’t want to have the next week or two of growth start from the point it’s at now, or I’ll need a scythe to cut it and some kids to stack the sheaves.

At some point, I’ll close up the house and head home. It hasn’t been the most productive week, but it was a nice break for me 😉

One other thing I’ve learned having the computer set up and actually using it- I need to find a good chair and set up a workspace for my bride, or she’ll be crippled up like me…

Take care of the folks around you and plan for the future. That’s prepping in a nutshell. Oh, and STACK what your plan calls for, of course.

nick

Wet. Cool or warm, but probably wet. Yesterday started with an inch of rain and thunderstorms. The day cleared with occasional short spatters of rain, but ended with a beautiful sunset, and a pleasant night. Today might get rain, might get lots of rain, or might not. I’m hoping ‘not’.

I didn’t get a lot done, but I did finish one repair. Got the sprinkler pump connected to the piping. The local hardware store didn’t have the exact replacement fittings, but I was able to make a combination that got the job done. I wasn’t the only one standing in front of the limited stock holding pieces up and trying combinations…

Since I was chatting with my fisherman buddy, and working on the dock anyway, I decided to work on a low priority but also low involvement project- fixing one of the propane patio heaters. SHOULD have been straightforward. The gas pipe that goes between the tank and the burner assembly rusted through at the tank end. Yes, the chinese made all the rest of the commercial grade product from stainless steel, brass, and copper, but chose to make the one crucial tube out of steel. Fuskers. I figured to replace the pipe with a hose. Simple fix. Except that out of 20 pounds of gas fittings, I don’t have the miniature one they used at the top of the pipe. So there is a box of parts waiting for next time.

I mention it because that sort of design cheapness really chaps my nether regions. The pipe could have been a rust resistant metal like all the other pipes in the heater. Or it could have been a stock or semi-stock hose assembly. But they chose to make a custom part, and made it from inferior materials. It’s very far from a “green” or renewable approach, and probably didn’t even make economic sense compared to a stock part. And it failed, rendering the entire multi hundred dollar device unusable. I’ll fix it, because I like fixing stuff, but it should have lasted for years longer.

Oh, and there was ONE steel screw in the whole heater too, and of course it was rusted solid. Quittin’ time in Shenzen, ‘just get it out the door’ mentality.

In the plus column for me, while I was poking at the heater, my buddy was fishing, and giving me a lesson on baits and hooks. Staying on the dock so I could chat with him was a big part of my decision to spend time on a low priority task.

It’s also an example of how even if you buy quality (and it’s a very heavy duty commercial grade patio heater) you aren’t guaranteed long service life or repairability.

It’s Spring, time for spring cleaning and all the start of the season maintenance tasks. Take a good look at your stuff and make sure it’s in good repair. If not, fix it, or make sure you have access to the parts you’ll need. Or plan to do without if it breaks. That’s why “two is one, and one is none.”

Stack some backups.

nick

Warm and moist. Overcast with a chance of thunderstorms. That’s what they said for yesterday too, and we got only a few little sprinkles. The garden could use some rain, but I’ve got stuff to do outside. Hope it doesn’t pour down.

But if it does, I’ve still got stuff to do.

Spent yesterday piddling around. Back flared up a bit, so I didn’t want to aggravate that and lose any more time. Cleaned and organized while looking for stuff I needed. Put stuff away on shelves, cleared up some boxes of random stuff. Did do a little on the sprinklers, but didn’t get anything finished.

Got my little fire and radio time last night. It’s the part of being up here I love the most. Quiet. Fish splashing. Hard to reconcile having the radio on with the idea of quiet, but maybe “stillness” is a better word. I think we all need a bit of quiet in our lives right now. We need time with ourselves, still, quiet, contemplative time. I’ve seen the idea in several other places recently so the zeitgeist is saying the same thing. Stack up a little quiet and space for yourself in your day or your week.

Today, if it’s not raining, I’ll do more work on the sprinklers, something with the trees, and maybe something with the dock. Depends on how I feel, how hot it is, and how things go. If it’s raining, I’ll probably sleep in, and do some indoor stuff. Maybe play pool with my fisherman buddy. He grew up with a pool table in his bedroom, but hasn’t played in a long time, so I might have a chance… or I’ll get my butt kicked. Should still be fun.

Time feels short, but it’s hard to keep up the pace all the time. Stack while you can, but live too.

nick

Cool and partly cloudy, with a chance of rain later, but who really knows? Yesterday started a bit warmer, got to be very nice, and stayed warm until about 1 am. Then the wind which was gusting and variable got a chill to it.

I started the day by finishing up the starlink install. I dressed the cable and ran it into the house. We put the base station on a little shelf in the main part of the house. I’ll move it to an equipment closet later, when I put the rest of the stuff in place. Works good enough where it is, and is out of the way. It’s all planes and angles, like the cybertruck, and each piece runs hot to the touch.

I spent the rest of the afternoon installing the door between the garage and the house. It was just 1/8 th inch too big, but that made the job a lot harder. While I was there anyway, I added a bunch of reinforcement to the jamb. Got it installed and tuned up, but need to get the threshold and trim back in place.

Had a nice dinner, played several games, and had a fire on the dock to end the day. Not much activity on the bands, and the sky was black but mostly cloudy, so we just enjoyed roasting some Peeps ™ over the fire.

Wife, kids, dog, and inlaws head home later today. I’ll be here for a while working the list. I’ll admit that I miss the quiet time when the house is full. Which is dumb, because the whole point of how I’ve organized my life is to be with the kids and family. Adding the inlaws changes the dynamic and it’s a lot more noisy and a lot less fun.

I’ll be finishing the door, and working on the list for the rest of today. Which things get addressed depends on my mood, and the weather.

Always be working to improve your situation, and stack. Whatever you need, stack it.

nick