Good morning!!!!

[PJSprog]

59°F and light fog this morning, going up to 85° today. Super nice day for the first day of August around here. "Normal" temps are about 10° warmer. However, we'll take it.

Carpenter finished the roof on the well house yesterday, and even remounted the guy line for the weatherhead. Wife called the electrician to see what he can do about the now stretched power line. It's definitely hanging too low. We can't get the tractor into the yard now without turning off the power and lifting the line (I made a Y-end 1x4 for this).

Tree trimmer also came out yesterday and took down the oak in front. He left me quite a mess after grinding the stump. A little disappointed in that. The first time he did a bunch of trees for us, he leveled and compacted all the areas. Since he found out we have a tractor, though, he just leaves it for me. Strangely enough, his pricing doesn't reflect that.

Sounds like a winner, David. I had to work my Wife for some time to get a new tractor. We both agreed we needed one, but she wasn't real keen on spending new tractor money. Once I started talking about finding an old Ford 8N, I think that swayed her. She didn't want an old tractor that might require constant tinkering. I'd still love to have an 8N, but definitely happy with the new one. Happy tractor shopping.

 

[PJSprog]

What is wrong with this picture?View attachment 565091

I have a similar picture somewhere that my Wife took last summer of my stepson standing on the road looking at his car sitting in flood water. We still give him a hard time over that.

Some people just think they are immune to the consequences of poor decisions.

 

[sodamo]

70°F and .12 inches rain.
Wife scheduled lunch in town with her brother and gf.

Prayers for all
Be safe
Have a great day

 

[daugen]

finished mowing the roadsides and then the last of my own fields, sky was awful dark, came in for lunch,
kaboom and whoosh, got over an inch of rain in half an hour. I could hardly see the barn. House gutters overflowed, just too much.
My timing was perfect, five minutes after I came inside. Too wet to weedeat or bush hog now. Though sun is now about to come out.
Suppose I could pull weeds.
suppose I could take a nap...

 

[txdon]

What is wrong with this picture?

The water's not deep enough, a car got through.

 

[riptides]

The water's not deep enough, a car got through.

LOL.

My sheriff complained that she got that far. That was the second sign she passed. And that's not bad where she got stuck. Around the curve the bridge is under water too.
The rescue squads cannot keep up today.
Never seen it this bad before.

 

[ronjhall]

Come to find out they don't make replacement parts for old trailer beaks. You have to buy a new hub and backing plate and have that welded on or buy a new axle. Going to look in to that today and see what is the easiest way.

I bought a new axe made to my spec’s from Southwest Wheel. Trailer Axles
Good place to deal with.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! (again).

Got a couple more hours of shut-eye, then gave up and made breakfast. Apparently re-heating the transmission case cured the tight bearing problem because this morning it runs smooth as glass now, with very little stiction when starting to turn. Yesterday I put the whole thing in the over set to 240F, then kept hitting it with the pyrometer to make sure it didn't get too hot. After two hours, the areas over the bearings were 180F, and I'd lost my patience. Took it back out to the garage, fired up the air/acetylene torch, and warmed both areas up to about 210F. Put some gloves on and twisted both input and output shafts, and they turned smoothly and with no stiction. Then I tried moving them in and out along their axis and was surprised to feel about 0.020" of play. Clunk, clunk. The case is about a foot front to back, but I'm surprised it grew that much. I'll have to do some calculations to figure out how much the steel shafts grew with respect to the aluminum cases, but the bottom line is that when up to operating temperature, there will be no bearings binding.

A while back we were all lamenting how horrible delivery services have become. Well, here's a new topper for me. I've been trying since July 6 to take delivery of a motorcycle part I got from Amazon, that apparently came from France. They shipped it via DHL, who then contracted with an outfit called OnTrac to deliver it here in the US. Two weeks after purchase I got an alert from Amazon that the wrong shipping address had been supplied for the package and to contact the shipper. That's when I found out about the OnTrac swap. Contacted them, and they assured me it would be delivered the next day. No package came, and their web site said it would be the next day. That went on for another week before I called them back. That clerk told me that they had attemped to deliver it to a place called Pulga, farther north from here, and again claimed the address was wrong. I offered to send her a URL to a google map showing the location, but she declined. She put me on hold while she contacted the delivery center, and told me that a supervisor there had promised to deliver it the next day (last Friday). No package Friday, and again the delivery date on the web site was updated to the next day (a Saturday). I figured it would be delivered Monday, but sure enough, no package, and not even an update on the web site. So yesterday I called and was once again told that a supervisor would make the delivery before the end of the day. Yeah, right. Once again there was nothing in the box when I checked at 5PM, but just as I was sitting down for dinner the phone rang and someone left a message. Turns out it was the supervisor with something about a delivery problem. So I called her back, got her voice mail, but but my phone rang again in a few minutes so I picked up. Instead of the usual threat to issue an arrest warrant because I'd committed fraud against the IRS, it was April, the OnTrac supervisor. And she was upset because they only deliver as far north as a tiny town called Honcut, which google maps tells me is about 35 minutes south of here. She wanted me to get in my truck and meet her in Oroville. I told her that the price I'd paid for the merchandise included shipping *to my door*, and I was not able to leave just then to meet her. She went off on how she wasn't even getting paid to make the delivery, and how there was some other, likely irate, customer pulling up to her car just then, and how she'd have to call me back. She hung up, and next time the phone rang I just let it go to voice mail, thinking that once again there would be no package and I'd contact the shipper and DHL the next day to relate what happened and complain. I had a couple of DVDs to put in the mail back to Netflix this morning, so I took them up to the mailbox while breakfast was cooking. Lo and behold, the lock was locked on the lock box, and when I looked inside there was the package from France. I guess whoever April called read her the riot act about salaried employees doing what the job requires, regardless of the hours or inconvenience involved. At least that would have been my response to her had I answered her call. So there's a heads up for you folks out there that deal with DHL: Avoid them at all cost. And the same with OnTrac, which should rename itself SideTrac or LostTrac.

Gotta go, just got three emails alerting me that the good ol' USPS just made delivery of three more parcels up at the lock box...

 

[Ed of all trades]

Ron, Glad to hear the good news, hope and pray we hear better news soon.

Farmer, I worked a poultry rep that would come in the turkey house and lay down on the floor. Said he wanted to know what it was like down at turkey level. Strange man, or I guess I don't need to say that.

Rip. one of the funniest things I ever saw was a guy try to ride a moped through a flooded road. He rode into the water and it flooded out in about 10 ft. So he peddled about 50 yards through the water. After he got it started he turned around and rode back into the water and flooded out in about 10 ft and peddled 50 yards through the water to the other side where he started. Worked on it for abour 10 min and got it going and went back the way he came. A bunch of us men stood by our trucks and laughed the whole time. Ed

 

[PJSprog]

Wow, RNG ... I'll go ahead and assume that, like I would be, you are anxiously awaiting that email asking you to take a short survey regarding your recent purchase/delivery.