70F @ 6:00AM. Abundant sunshine. High near 100F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
David, good to hear your boxer girl came through with flying colors. Hope the cone of shame, if she's wearing one, isn't too much of a bother.
Larro, thanks for sharing another slice of your paradise. :thumbsup:
Drew, I've been reading books on handhelds for a long time. Started with a Palm V, the progressed through a series over the years to the iPhone 4S I have now. I still prefer paper books, but there's nothing handier than being able to pull a book out of your pocket when you're stuck waiting in line, and the 4S is a lot smaller than even the smallest paperback. That ensures I always have a book when the opportunity to read pops up. I haven't sprung for a tablet yet, as I haven't come up with a good use case. Already keep a laptop in the headboard, a computer in the office, and when the shop is set up there'll be another laptop out there. Why use a dinky tablet screen when a laptop is so handy? Also, not sure if the dedicated readers can handle audio books, something to consider if you drive a lot and have an iPhone interface for the car (or motorcycle!).
"He died doing what he enjoyed doing". When it comes to how you die, it doesn't get much better than that. Sure beats heck out of wasting away in a nursing home. But Mike left us way too early, and there's nothing good to say about that. Thanks, Don, for letting the family know that they are in our thoughts.
Believe me, Eric, the only reason Honda sent you a recall notice is to protect their own *****, not yours. If manufacturers were required to reimburse owners for the time and inconvenience related to bringing in a vehicle in for recall related service, you can bet the need for such campaigns would drop dramatically.
Red smoke at morning, Farmer take warning. Red smoke at night, Farmer's delight. Er, sorry Farmer, that's skies and sailors, not smoke and Farmers! :laughing: Never saw an engine blow red smoke before. Google wasn't much help either. Any chance it could be loose rust getting blown out of the exhaust system? Is the engine losing power? How old is the gas? Regardless of the color, smoke is a symptom, not a cause. If it only quits when it's hot, it's probably an electrical issue. Maybe a bad coil or ignition trigger (assuming it's electronic and not points)? I have a DR mower with the 17HP Kawasaki engine, and it's been great. Sits most of the time with Stabil and E0 in the tank though. The good news is that your new helper had enough common sense to stop using the mower and get your help. Starting to sound like he might be a keeper.
Of the four items ordered last Saturday with free Amazon Prime two day shipping, one arrived Monday, two arrived yesterday (two days late), and I'm still waiting on the last. FWIW, the only one I really needed quickly was what showed up yesterday, and today I have to make a town run and won't get a chance to use it until tomorrow. Not a very sterling recommendation for Prime...
Had a chance to poke around the Social Security web site this morning, to answer my curiosity on when to start collecting benefits. They have a few useful calculators up there, and between them I was able to figure out my lifetime benefit as a function of when I start collecting and when I shuffle off to meet my maker. Here are the notes I made, which include URLs to the more useful pages:
Full Retirement Age: Born in 1956: 66 years, 4 months
Retirement Age % Benefit Received Estimated Benefit
62 73.3% $1870.00
63 78.3% $1988.00
64 84.4% $2143.00
65 91.1% $2313.00
66 yr, 4 mo. 100.0% $2538.00
70 $3280.00
Full table:
Full Retirement Age: If You Were Born In 1956
Benefits Estimator:
https://secure.ssa.gov/acu/ACU_KBA/main.jsp?URL=/apps8z/ARPI/main.jsp?locale=en&LVL=4
Life Expectancy Calculator:
Retirement & Survivors Benefits: Life Expectancy Calculator
Start Additional Life Estimated Total
Collecting Expectancy Total SSI
At Age (in years) Years Collected
59 a 24.4 83.4 $480,216
62 22.1 84.1 $495,924
66 yrs 4 mo b 18.8 85.2 $575,618
70 16.2 86.2 $716,352
a Your current age.
b Your normal (or full) retirement age.
More calculators:
Calculators
As one would expect, the longer one waits to start collecting, the larger the benefit, but then you have to live longer to come out with more at the end. The last table also shows that the longer you live, the better your chances are for living even longer. Makes perfect sense, but I'd never really thought about it in quite that way. Then again, all of these figures came from Gummint calculators, and we all know they'd like to hang onto our money as long as possible, right? :laughing: Clearly they're betting a lot of us won't make it to 70, otherwise they wouldn't sweeten the pot by almost 50%.
Hang in there gang, tomorrow's Friday!
PS
Sorry about the lousy formatting on the tables above. Apparently TBN is stripping out the spaces that align the columns, and there doesn't appear to be any way to use an HTML table...
