Good morning!!!!

[txdon]

Good morning! 70˚ heading to the 90s.
Mowed the roads at Dad's yesterday (with his tractor) so he won't be needing a hi-rise kit on his truck. He has about 1/2 dozen trees down so I get to take my tractor on a road trip and do some grapple work. When I offered he said "we can get that", meaning him and Mom, I had to tell him that it would take him 3 days and then they would be sooo sore and I'd spend a half day taking them to the Dr. and it would be best to spend that half day doing grapple work. He finally agreed so I won't have to sneak over there and do it.

My internet speed is down to 1mbps about 1/3 what it is suppose to be. They think my antenna needs re-aligning - it is setting parallel to the ground aimed at an antenna 7 miles away on the horizon, I hope that is all it is, I don't want to cut trees. If needed I can raise the antenna pole another 10 feet. I'll just need more cable.

How does my internet speed compare to others?

 

[daugen]

Don, you are crawling compared to urban areas. I'm at 75mbps down and 8 up. On a cable tv line. You are on a satellite and they are much slower. When I lived outside Philadelphia, I was 75 down and 35 up with Verizon fiber and they were offering me 150 down just before I moved. So...that's what you get when there is fiber optics or cable nearby.
But not apples to apples, you need to compare to other satellite users.

If you could get about 8 down and 2 up, that would be a good goal. Wireless indoor routers are often limited to about 4mbps, but please someone else more knowledgeable chime in here. So maybe the best you get on wireless is about 4.

 

[farmer2009]

73 this morning and headed to 96 today here in Ocala, Florida. Only a high of 90 at home. Did some sight seeing yesterday and didn't get as far as we'd liked. But will be going on home today. Lucky that as long as traffic is light my wife will drive. So I don't have to do it all. Figure I'll drive through Atlanta then let her have a stent, then I'll go through Nashville and we'll see from there.

Will have to say this central Florida is flat straight and full of cattle farms and trees. One huge dairy farm and rest seemed to be smaller beef cattle farms.

Larro. We had sweet tea in Okeechobee before I seen your post. Lots of cane down there for sure. When I asked for sweet tea she said yeah we have it. Wife said she'd been trying to order sweet tea all week on the coast. Only to get we have sweetener. When will people learn tea with sweetener is not sweet tea.

Dave not a good solar month. Maybe it'll get better.

 

[Buppies]

Riptides be safe while you are gone going to miss your comments

79 this morning high of 95 later today

One more full day in vacation land then back to real world

 

[riptides]

Hey all, my morning for outside work is on hold. Yep, rain event. I need to drain my pool again. That is a new record for us here. Makes five times this year. I normally take it down an inch and a half from just below the tiles. That's a lot of water.

70 and me no care....

Buppies enjoy the last day on vacation, going to miss following you and wngsprd in the AM status reports. My VA brethren. LOL.

I am going to follow Roy's advice in a few hours. After I sand down a closet door and repaint it. Now to my coffee, Ron should have finished his by now.

Have a great day all! Be safe.

 

[wngsprd]

Riptides, we'll miss you.

Raining hard here all day - well over an inch this morning...I'll go check the gauge after it slows down, and bet our station will be in the top of the Virginia CoCoRaHS reports tomorrow morning.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

69F @ 8:00AM. Sunny to partly cloudy. High 88F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.

Rip, good luck with your new job!

Dave, sometimes it's just easier to bury a rock than it is to dig it out, but it might take a LOT of dirt to do it! :laughing:

Wasn't there a rash of bad Chinese capacitors in computer hardware a few years ago? Thousands of dollars of equipment felled by a ten cent part.

Roy, always good to let the auditors/inspectors find a few little things wrong, just to let them show that they're doing their jobs. If they don't find any little stuff, rest assured they'll keep digging until they find something!

Don, 8 Mbps down, 1 up, 600 ms ping on Excede satellite internet here. If I run the test at noon, it's a small fraction of that. Satellite Internet truly sux, and if there were any other option available here besides a modem on the land line, I'd be all over it. The satellite service is aptly named: I exceed my 10 Gb data cap almost every month!

No doubt the worst thing about vacations is coming back to work. But then it wouldn't be a vacation without there being a job, right? On my last job I avoided the problem by banking my vacation days for the last two years, taking them at the end when I retired. So I stopped working in April, but didn't collect a pension check until July. Now people think every day is a vacation, but my new boss never gives me a day off, the pay stinks, and he's never happy with what little I do get done. I'd fire him, but he is me... :laughing:

Got the injectors back into the fuel rail yesterday, put a clean paper towel under them, and cranked the starter. Saw little puffs of fuel, so I put it all back together and the bike started right up. :cool2: Very cold blooded, but I think that's pretty normal for old BMW K-bikes, and smoked more than a little, also normal as I recall. The engine sits on its side and oil tends to run down the valve stems into the cylinder when it's parked, especially if it's left on the side stand (which this one was not). Anyway, let it idle for a while to warm the oil, then changed it along with all of the rest of the fluids. Everything except the brake fluid looked fine, and the brakes are nice and hard after flushing. Nothing but dust on the drain plug magnets, either. Decided I will continue with the painting, so got the fairing side panels off but haven't decided if I should take the main fairing off or just paint it in place. I'll know more after I get the windscreen removed. It was a huge relief when the engine fired, as it's a lot easier to sell a runner than a roller, and the added work of new paint will bring a nice return.

Celebrated with a few fingers of Buffalo Trace on the patio, followed by a Bass Ale and tritip. The Yes Progeny box set also showed up yesterday, so listened to the Ottawa concert (first of seven recorded in '72 that are included in the set). Brought back some fond memories from that era. The recording quality was better than Yessongs from that same time, and the reviews say that other concerts in the set sound better. There's even a radio broadcast coming through Wakeman's Mellotron captured on tape, with Anderson telling the audience Rick will be playing a duet. :laughing:

Hope you all have a great weekend, and that our travelers return home safely!

 

[sodamo]

72°F and .3 inches rain last 24 hours.

No work done, but granddaughter and grand niece enjoyed the volcano, walking thru the lava tube and frolicking in the black sand beach surf yesterday.
Today I think we are taking in the keiki program at the astronomy center before hitting the farmers market.

Be safe
Have a great day

David Sent from my iPad Air using TractorByNet

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Just finished sweating a boat load putting the kid's swimming pool up. Had to pull weeds and re-level the sand base (which I didn't use my level and it might be a few inches off on one side), spray the sandpad for weeds and insects, put the heavy plastic tarp down, clean the pool liner with a soapy wide soft brush broom, rinse out and turn over, put the metal poles about the diameter and upright poles last. As you start filling it, you have to pull the wrinkles out of the bottom.

Should fill in about 3 hours total. I think it adds about $20-25 to my water bill.

The kiddos are chomping at the bit to jump in.

I now declare it to be Beer O'Clock and too hot to be outside working hard in the sun here. Whew.

 

[dave1949]

84F, that qualifies as a hot day here. How hot is it Kyle? You are a good Dad.

RNG I have on occasion dig a pit and pulled a big rock into it. I don't think covering my rocks will be feasible without a winning Megabucks ticket. Rocks build character. I must have been in Maine long enough now to get used to it because the build project pics people post where there are no rocks are starting to look strange.

Well, I dug rocks for a while this morning and I'll go back out later this afternoon although it isn't supposed to cool off much before dark.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

84F, that qualifies as a hot day here. How hot is it Kyle? You are a good Dad.

RNG I have on occasion dig a pit and pulled a big rock into it. I don't think covering my rocks will be feasible without a winning Megabucks ticket. Rocks build character. I must have been in Maine long enough now to get used to it because the build project pics people post where there are no rocks are starting to look strange.

Well, I dug rocks for a while this morning and I'll go back out later this afternoon although it isn't supposed to cool off much before dark.

I think the heat index is 92, but the lack of a breeze is the hot part.

 

[dave1949]

I think the heat index is 92, but the lack of a breeze is the hot part.

Our heat index now is 85F, not bad, but like you the breeze is not much today. Stirs a bit now and then but a lot of calm.

 

[daugen]

92 here, feels much hotter, thunderstorms popping up all over.
I went out for the mail and couldn't wait to get back inside.
My houseguest friend is hard at work on my malwared laptop.
Hopefully he will get it going again. He's a serious techie but more importantly is patient.
He will kill off the bad guys one at a time. Keeps rebooting to save his efforts.
We might watch a movie this afternoon while the thunderstorms boom since I do believe it is Beer O Clock here too.

Had a good trip to the farmer's market down by the harbor this morning, bought some beautiful foot long plus string bean looking beans, longest beans I've ever seen, and they are cleaned, chopped in half and in the steamer just waiting their destiny. Also went to the local meat market where as I've reported before every conceivable piece of pig is presented, and we even found entire corned pig's heads, plus my favorite, corned snouts. I can just see one of those things start to move on my plate, assuming they ever got on it which is seriously unlikely. We did pick up some nice ground chuck for burgers just as it came out of the kitchen from the grinder. And the burgers are made, the onion and tomato sliced, and the buns are fluffing themselves in excitement...

Tomorrow my friend and I tackle the Northern Tools orchard sprayer whose brand new Honda engine won't run properly or produce pressure, and then we'll try to get the engine on my aging Swisher rough cut mower going. I had it going back in February but it wouldn't go for me recently. It's been sitting for a pretty long time, so the gas is suspect, even with Stabil and Sea Foam. But I didn't smell flooding so that makes me think the carb is plugged. My friend was always my go to mechanical whiz so it's really nice to have him here now.

 

[Redneck in training]

Rocks are valuable in Iowa. Many people have to buy them. Fortunately we have enough land to to find our own. Yes you have to look for them. When I find some I marked them on my GPS or if they are small enough dig them out right away and carry them to a place I can easily find them for pick up. So far we have about truck load of small boulders. Many of them are pink granite brought in by glaciers from Rocky Mountains during the ice age. I suppose the source mountain was somewhere in Canada close to Banf or Lake Louis. The mountains there have the same color as rocks I find on my land.
Not all boulders found in Iowa are small though. I remember a story about a farmer who found a small boulder sticking from his field. When they dug it out it was a size of small house.
Erratics: Glacial Boulders in Iowa ? Iowa Geological Survey
http://www.uiu.edu/ocm/news/2011/feb/glacier.html

 

[300UGUY]

We have rocks of all sizes here. When the pad for my barn was being leveled out, a rock stuck up, it turned out to be over 4 feet in diameter. The excavator guy dug a hole next t it, then pushed it in.

Going out to mow the front yard in a bit. Spent the morning painting and scraping at a rental we have. Hope fully get new tenants next month.

Have a good one!

 

[Thomas]

Headed outside just after day break for trimming,dump run,staining before high temp arrive...87F now.
Looks like slow motorcycle country ride and ice cream this evening.

Enjoy the day all.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

92 here, feels much hotter, thunderstorms popping up all over.
I went out for the mail and couldn't wait to get back inside.
My houseguest friend is hard at work on my malwared laptop.
Hopefully he will get it going again. He's a serious techie but more importantly is patient.
He will kill off the bad guys one at a time. Keeps rebooting to save his efforts.
We might watch a movie this afternoon while the thunderstorms boom since I do believe it is Beer O Clock here too.

Had a good trip to the farmer's market down by the harbor this morning, bought some beautiful foot long plus string bean looking beans, longest beans I've ever seen, and they are cleaned, chopped in half and in the steamer just waiting their destiny. Also went to the local meat market where as I've reported before every conceivable piece of pig is presented, and we even found entire corned pig's heads, plus my favorite, corned snouts. I can just see one of those things start to move on my plate, assuming they ever got on it which is seriously unlikely. We did pick up some nice ground chuck for burgers just as it came out of the kitchen from the grinder. And the burgers are made, the onion and tomato sliced, and the buns are fluffing themselves in excitement...

Tomorrow my friend and I tackle the Northern Tools orchard sprayer whose brand new Honda engine won't run properly or produce pressure, and then we'll try to get the engine on my aging Swisher rough cut mower going. I had it going back in February but it wouldn't go for me recently. It's been sitting for a pretty long time, so the gas is suspect, even with Stabil and Sea Foam. But I didn't smell flooding so that makes me think the carb is plugged. My friend was always my go to mechanical whiz so it's really nice to have him here now.

Drew, my harbor freight 6hp engine on the tiller nearly wore out my arm and elbow. And that, is was with starting fluid. It has been parked since before it started raining here so much back in April IIRC. I should have parked it with AvGas....

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

It is 94 in the shade here right now. less than triple digits, but it feels plenty hot and sultry.

 

[mostly_gas]

Good afternoon all. 92F here HI of 94F and bright sunshine. It was low 70's this morning. Weed-eated stepdaughters lawn this morning. Going out for Mexican for dinner with her and a former co-worker of her's for dinner so no work on the house. Suppose to hit 100F Monday with HI 105+. Methinks summer is here!

 

[mostly_gas]

RNG nice work getting the Beemer running, I have never messed with FI yet.

Drew, good to hear your Office is cool once more! On wireless routers, encryption has a big effect on speed. I get 8mps on an old WG series linksys router. My e900 linksys router would do 30 mps on WEP encryption and faster if I used WPA2.

Riptide hope your merc job goes well.

Don have 5 mbs by choice on a cable modem hook-up ($35/mo) in STL had 100 mbs ($40/mo)

Buppies,Farmer safe trips home!

Roy, good to hear you made it through the audit. The company I worked for had only 2 minors one time seems like average was about 4.

RS you caught up on your repairs?