Good Morning!!!! 51F @ 5:30AM. Periods of rain. High 52F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Sounds like you've got it figgered out for today, Dave.:thumbsup:
The rain is coming down pretty good right now, enough to wipe out any chance of using the satellite internet connection. The iPhone is getting LTE, which the Verizon Wireless rep I "chatted" with yesterday told me was the same as 4G. So I turned on the Personal Hotspot, and am using it from the laptop to make this post.:confused2: I asked the rep lots of other questions about how to improve cellular reception here, and after going 'round several circles, finally got he/she/it to log a trouble ticket with the engineering team to see if there's something they can do to improve it. This isn't the first time I've asked for help in that area, and I won't be surprised if the answer comes back the same as before: Sorry, nothing we can do. There was a lot of news coverage of AT&T bringing in mobile hot spots to restore cellular coverage in Paradise right after the fire, but the English as a second language person I spoke with yesterday at AT&T didn't have any info on cellular coverage or recovery. She suggested I drop by an AT&T store, which I'll do tomorrow. If the store is anything like the Byzantine labyrinth I encountered trying to negotiate the AT&T telephone support system, I'll come away empty handed. In fact, it's so bad my gut tells me to dump my AT&T stock because any company that can't find its own butt with both hands has no chance of growing and making more profits into the future. Before the call, I used the AT&T web site to find the trouble ticket I'd logged right after I returned from the evacuation orders were lifted to let them know that the land line wasn't working. I learned that it had been marked as completed as of December 6, but there's still no land line connection working here. So I logged another trouble ticket, and the AT&T lady was able to tell me that I'm all set up to have a technician visit on January 30.
Really? I get to wait three more weeks for work to be started that wasn't done correctly the first time? And I'm still thinking about purchasing cellular service from this same company? I must be either crazy or desperate...
Since it was a run around day, and not raining too hard, I went up to the gate to get the mail and learned that the gate opener isn't working again. Took it apart and it was full of water again and the fuse had blown. Managed to get through to Mighty Mule on the phone, ran their check list of causes and it shouldn't be leaking. So I disconnected and removed the opener, and will call back today to make arrangements to return it for repair/replacement. I remember a fellow customer at Tractor Supply warning me he'd gone through three of these openers in the past two years, all failing because water got inside them. And sure enough, with I did a little googling, lots of people are using silicon seal to keep the water out. Of course the Mighty Mule tech had never heard of such a thing. Just what I need right now, another trip down the rabbit hole.:confused3:
Up at the gate I also noticed that the garbage can hadn't been emptied, even though I'd put it out for pickup the night before, this time in the pouring rain. Managed to make another phone call and was told that pickup day had been changed to Tuesday, and that the truck was on the way. I asked when the change was made, and was told it was when they resumed operations after the evacuation orders were lifted. I asked why I wan't notified, and if I'd be billed for the time between then and now, as no trash has been collected. She said she'd make sure a credit was issued, and that she'd make sure that the driver knew to for sure pick up the trash next week if I don't find the can empty when I go up again this morning to get it. More Alice in Wonderland stuff!
I did manage to find a company called Easy-Set that makes prefabricated concrete buildings. Smaller ones come preassembled and are simply lowered into place by a crane, larger ones come in slab like pieces that are held together with steel tensioning cables. Floors can either be poured concrete or additional slabs laid on a gravel bed. The latter is pretty attractive because hauling charges for concrete up here are almost as much as the concrete itself. There was no pricing info on the web site, but I did find a manufacturing facility in Sparks, NV, which is only a few hours away. If the phone is working today, I'll be calling them for more info.
I also get to pickup the inline water separator/fuel filter I ordered for the Kubota side-by-side on Monday; the shop called to tell me that it was in. That and a bottle of Power Service Diesel 911 should cure the stalling problem, according to the gurus on the Interwebs...
Happy Hump Day, folks!
