Good morning!!!!

[scootr]

A day to dry out before the next wave of rainfall. It's a muddy mess one or two steps off any improved surface. Watched an Amazon delivery car get stuck in the road yesterday evening. Went out to see if we could help but the car was dug in (too much tire spinning already) and the front bumper was becoming buried. Tow truck was on the way so we offered our sympathy and told her to come to the house if she needed help. That was about 9:30. Tow truck got her out around 11 pm. What is Amazon thinking sending old women drivers in their personal cars out into a rural area at night after a storm to deliver? Gee wiz
Everything has greened up again. Weeds growing so fast....... you can almost hear them growing. Time to get the weed sprayers tuned up for the new season.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! 47F @ 6:00AM.
Rain likely. Becoming windy in the afternoon. Potential for heavy rainfall. High 58F. Winds SE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
We're also under a High Wind Warning, with southeast winds 30 to 40 mph with gusts of 60 to 70 mph expected. Then to top it off, burn scar areas nearby are under a Flash Flood Warning for tonight, with 1"-2" of rain expected. It'll be a day spent inside.

Except for a hopefully quick visit by an insurance adjustor, who's supposed to be here at 10AM to look at the flying porch cover and the debris strewn all over the back porch. Should be interesting.

Trip went well, a little wet weather wise, but no snow this year, which was a relief. Pot luck with friends is always fun, but none of us stayed up long enough to cheer in the New Year. We had to be out of the cabin by 11AM New Year's Day anyway, and with the main road out closed due to fallen trees and rock slides, we had to get an early start. The alternate route was narrow two lane , sometimes one lane, mountain and canyon road, and it too had several places where we had to drive around boulders. It is fun on a summer day on a motorcycle, not so much in a three quarter ton pickup truck.

Speaking of which, the truck I think needs new ball joints again, as it's starting to have a mind of its own wandering from side to side as it goes along. The last set lasted 80k miles, so no surprise there. Poor thing broke through 200k miles on the trip, the first half carrying a half cord of oak firewood in the back.

We also missed the rocket launch in Lompoc, as SpaceX delayed it by a day and we were headed to the cabin by then. Got home yesterday with no issues, except for heavy fog for the last few miles, which left everything outside wet. Was going to give the truck an oil change while it was warm, but that's on the back burner until it stops raining. The 10-day is calling for rain every day, so it's gonna be a while.

A belated Happy New Year, and Happy Hump Day!

 

[m7040]

I actually have one of those CTEKs and never used it as a trickle charger but will start to hook that up since I have it

View attachment 776966

This battery charger is the most sophisticated charger that I have. It will recondition and desulfate depending on mode selected. Have other simpler chargers as well including starter chargers that can crank with a dead battery

 

[Rich B1]

Good morning! 53 now and light rain. The predicted high is 60. Not holding my breath.

Gonna load the trailer today, head south tomorrow. Plan on being back Sunday. The race promoter and I have become friends, we “plan”on having a beer Saturday night after it is over.

I went with DeWalt for my cordless. So far, I have been happy with battery life. My wife got a DeWalt oscillating tool for me for Christmas. Used it Monday for the first time. Wish I had gotten one sooner, made short work of a cutout for an outlet.

Got a feeling moving the trailer from where it is parked to the driveway is going to be a mess because of the mud. Everything is soggy. Haven’t had a fire in the woodburner for a week now.

Everyone stay safe out there!

 

[RedNeckGeek]

The only advantage to Prime is free shipping as far as I can see.

I enjoy the heck out of streaming free video on Amazon Prime.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

I have tried a lot of Samuel Smith’s brews and enjoyed them all. I have a S. Smith’s Imperial Stout waiting it’s turn in the the fridge

To each their own, but I like my stout (and porters) at cellar temperature. I guess if you have a Lucas refrigerator, you could put stout in there, though.

 

[pennwalk]

"Be careful working at mail box"

I am thinking I have seen a mailbox that spins around but I can't call to mind how it works exactly.
My neighbor has one of those mailboxes that has a back door.

Chris

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Good morning to all! Low of 26°, gong up to a high of 38°. Sunny, but windy at 20-30 mph, gusts to 40. Was windy after midnight, highest gust was 34.
no more precip in the 7 day forecast.

Rip, glad to hear the wifey is doing good. Keep moving forward. Sorry to hear of the struggles running the wire. Hopefully you'll find an easy route.

Bruce, sorry I missed your new milestone. Belated congratulations!

Kilroy, funny you mentioned " might have to wash a cat" ......My son has a cat, about 6 years old, that loves to get a bath! He actually plays in the bathtub.

RNG, nice to hear you had a good trip. Too bad you didn't get to see the launch. That would be something I'd like to see. A favorite hobby as a kid was launching Estes rockets.... I had a big collection, including the Saturn V model rocket.... I still have it in the attic. It would cost about $15 a launch for the engines today.

Rich, have a safe but fun trip! Is the son racing?

Today is dog food day. Wifey started at around 06:30 this morning. Hopefully we'll finish before noon. Then I'll pick up the GS's at school.... an early dismissal day at 13:00. They'll have dinner with us this evening. The son is working late until around 18:30.

Went to fire up the pellet stove last evening.... heard the normal 'startup' sounds (exhaust fan and pellets tinking).... mmmm, a few minutes later, no flame. The igniter went out. Learned my lesson a couple years ago and had a spare. This one lasted 2 years, 2weeks, according to the receipt for the replacement. I will order 2 more today. At least it happened early, not in the middle of the night.

Need to change the oil in the car and truck again already.... seems like I just did that....

Our mailboxes are "clusters" right at the corner of 2 major 2 lane roads. The cross road is 'offset' about 60 ft. Usually about once a year (sometimes more), someone traveling late at night, doesn't see the big 3'x5' orange and white striped sign warning of the offset or the cross street stop sign..... yep they take out the sign and all the mailboxes. 3 years ago, the PO got smart and moved them to the back corner away from the street. Now just the highway signs get taken out.

Gotta go ---- some big pots need stirred.....
Everyone have a great day!

 

[Mark P.]

Good Morning - currently 66° with rain going to 72°

Ron - great crane pic

Wife's mother went back to her sister's house for awile. Hope the weather is not as bad as predictions..
I'm down 8 lbs. so far, hope to continue this trend..

Hope everyone has a great day..

Mark

 

[sodamo]

65°F and no rain.

Another day of modest success in tractor shed yesterday. Somewhat embarrassing I let it get so bad which makes for very very slow progress as well as lots of walking back and forth to my tool area to relocate stuff. A future result of all this will be an area in TS for a set of tools to call home, but not there yet.

Today will continue on.

Lowe’s rescheduled todays delivery to Sat.

Prayers for all
Be safe
Have a great day

 

[sodamo]

Don’t ya just love a frustrating challenge, Mike?

Glad wife is doing well. That’s most important.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Wife put mail in the mailbox this morning, and I got my email and text message from the mailbox. So resetting the indoor unit to my WiFi fixed it. Don’t have to risk life and limb out at the road today. Overall this mail sensor has been great. I’ve used it over a year, batteries at 88%. Because of the distance I got the LoRa option, which connects to a WiFi unit in the house. The lower cost option is WiFi from the mailbox and no other unit inside.

MySpool

Smart Alerts and Notifications

myspool.com

Still can’t see IP address for my geothermal monitor, so have an email into them. I think this is same thing that happened years ago and they had to reflash with a cable. The cable is $54, I have the bin file, asked if I could do it
Guy makes and sells these from his house in western MD.

Low Cost Temperature Logger: The Web Energy Logger

 

[wngsprd]

Still can’t see IP address for my geothermal monitor, so have an email into them. I think this is same thing that happened years ago and they had to reflash with a cable. The cable is $54, I have the bin file, asked if I could do it
Guy makes and sells these from his house in western MD.

Low Cost Temperature Logger: The Web Energy Logger

That geo monitor is pretty awesome...just studied the Madison, VA and the Paw Paw WV locations. The only monitoring I have is looking at the thermostat.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Look what my neighbor just got delivered.

His wife was out there and the grandkids. It has a buddy seat. I was drooling over it also.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Discovered my water softener salt tank half full of water. Last time it happened was a 50 cent gasket, which is now 3 for $14 on Amazon if I want it this week.

Bailed the water out by hand with an old plastic container.
Also pulled battery from the non working basement UPS.

This is the geo monitor with cover off. The red board is a commercially obtained processor board which plugs into the I/O board underneath that he has built. He then writes the C program for the processor.

 

[riptides]

Don’t ya just love a frustrating challenge, Mike?

Glad wife is doing well. That’s most important.

Yes, all else is trivial in details. Thank you.

I took another stab at it, measuring the inside wall to an outside wall. Then I added the true 2x4 widths for the wall, went up in the attic and I am still entering the black hole or worm hole. It's like the wall doesn't exist in this dimension according to the attic. Yet less than four feet across from my new outlet, I have wired an outlet with success on the same plane/line.

I will give it a rest for a few days and concentrate on running the SO's other outlets. Worse case scenario is the kitchen has one outlet at counter level on that wall.

 

[rswyan]

58F with a rain shower @ 15:30, which looks like that might be the high for the day.

Set another high temperature record for the day yesterday @ 62F, previous record was 60F.

Got hopper feeder filled and the two tube feeders set out yesterday, also cracked corn scattered.

Walked out back to the edge of the lawn and took down the deer feeder and brought it up and hung it over by the bird feeders on the small oak tree.

That oak tree is actually a sucker that grew up out of huge oak tree that we cut down better than 20 years ago. It's now around 6" or so DBH.

Still need to take some hot water out there and flush out the deer feeder before filling it.

Woman ran to the grocery and pet store, took recycle bin up to the can at the road and dumped it.

Amazon delivered new air purifier, got that unpacked and set up.

Did some banking and got bills scheduled for payment, another one to do today that came in the mail yesterday.

Drew 18+ gallons of hard water for pwc's, got most of it moved into the fish room.

Got a little bit of staining done.

Checked softener salt, added another bag.

Fishies all fed.

Finished up the sausage dumplings yesterday for dinner.

Woman is going over to the neighbor's to get her haircut later. She's making up another batch of sausage dumplings and will take some over with her.

Was abruptly woken up @ around 05:00 this morning, not sure by what. Got up and took a whizz, had no trouble going back to sleep.

More later.

 

[m7040]

The old air grinders are not used much anymore. The 41/2 inch angle grinders does most of the work and the cordless and corder grinders the rest. Would like to get a cordless straight grinder as well. I use the old Craftsman corded grinder some because it has speed and torque and is very good with the flabber wheels

 

[buckeyefarmer]

That geo monitor is pretty awesome...just studied the Madison, VA and the Paw Paw WV locations. The only monitoring I have is looking at the thermostat.

Mine should be on the map, but I don’t see it right now. Maybe because it’s not reporting.

I also have a thermostat monitor that connects to it.

 

[KilroyJC]

Loudspeaker designs have changed dramatically with the availability of inexpensive, almost unlimited power amplifiers.
Where you once had designs like the Klipsch and Altecs leveraging every available watt into acoustic energy, they required trade offs that just aren’t practical now.
As far as low bass goes, speaker placement and the room itself becomes very important in making it coherent rather than just noise. Many times a high pass filter is employed just to clean up the mud.

Yeah, but those old University horns were so efficient you could get theater-filling SPLs and base response down to 6Hz in a proper cabinet with a 40-watt tube amp….