Good morning!!!!

[Eric Salop]

I almost enjoyed painting the wall yesterday, at least until the sun worked it's way around and made it that bit too hot. My wife used a brush to paint the inch below the wall capping stones and I did the large areas with a roller. We set ourselves reward points and stopped for an ice cream, then a cool drink, as we reached each each one. Fortunately Julie was satisfied with color, once it had dried, so it's back to the store to get another 20 litres today.

There is one advantage now that most paints are going water based - I can clean my brushes in seconds with a Karcher power washer. Like mostly_gas, this time my power washing didn't go quite to plan (Drew, after you read this, you may need to reassess where I sit on that stupidity scale). For the first time in my life I had a go at cleaning a roller brush with a power washer. If you haven't tried this, it works really well, however I recommend you press the brush against something else to stop it spinning. I didn't ...

I held up the roller, pointed the pressure gun at it and pulled the trigger. For a couple of seconds, maybe even three, I was so pleased at the way the paint was blasting off. Then my aim went slightly to one side and the thing started to spin at an incredible speed. It was like standing next to a dog that has just come out of the water, except dogs don't go swimming in paint. By the time my brain had registered what was coming my way and persuaded my finger to let go of the trigger, everything around was coated better than the wall. Good job I had put a visor over my face, so I could at least laugh without tasting the stuff too.

 

[Eric Salop]

Valves = Tubes on this side of the pond.

Right, not many call them "tubes" over here, apart from those pre-LED and pre-LCD alphanumeric display "Nixie tubes" that some collectors are now paying a lot of money for their aesthetic qualities (at least I thinks it's aesthetics, could be some of them get a thrill out of being zapped too).

 

[daugen]

beautiful cool morning out, mid sixties, going up only to mid 80's today in clear weather.
Definitely need to get outside today.

I wish my friend's inspection of the boat in MD would have gone better. Another neglected boat sitting at a private dock of some wealthy guy who apparently was pretty clueless about maintenance. At least nothing was seen that wasn't fixable. My friends bought a home in Florida and offered to look at a similar boat in Stuart FL next week, and for sure I'm going to ask them to compare. I may lowball this guy for now; the boat needs work and this buyer is not paying for it. If bought right, anything has value. Otherwise with 430 hours in 14 years, the boat has relatively hardly been used. So I have a lot of number crunching to do this afternoon.

Otherwise I'm going to take my old Panasonic receiver out of the house today and take it down to the barn woodshop and hook it up to some speakers there. New Pioneer receiver coming in late this week, surround sound. Finally hooking up my little Klipsch surround sound speakers. My late wife refused to have those little black boxes in the living room, so....have been waiting a while to do this. Klipsch powered sub, center speaker, all with some age on them (20 years?) but everything should fire up fine. Main speakers are not Klipsch, cheaped out with some fairly high rated BIC tower speakers, but the midrange is just not in the same league as the fidelity heard with the Klipsch speakers. I'm hoping when all five speakers come on(not fiddling with 7) they will blend together nicely. Frankly I have a Klipsch speaker system with tiny sub on my pc and with a 27 inch monitor and a comfortable chair, I am quite happy watching a movie sitting right where I am. But sometimes you just want to get in the recliner with a bowl of popcorn...

hope you all have a good day.
And let's all be thankful for what we have.

 

[ronjhall]

Coffee has been poured. 64° with light rain this morning. Heading to 81° clouds most of the day. I don't know where yesterdays forecast came from. Never got above 70° with rain off and on all day. Not much planned for today. Some NASCAR in the afternoon. My 20 year old Bose system is still working good enough for NASCAR races. Been through a couple of different amplifiers over the years. Mostly for added features.
Gary, weather is much better when you work weekends. :ashamed:
Drew, boat shopping is much cheaper when you do not buy. Keep looking.
Good Morning All.

 

[RoyJackson]

2015-08-09, 0612

54 right now...high of 78 predicted. A beautiful weekend!
Guess I'll mow the field today, since I didn't get to it yesterday.

Added:
For you westerns fans...both Tombstone (Kurt Russell and Sam Elliot) and Open Range (Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall) have been uploaded to YouTube. The visual quality of Tombstone is really good...Open Range is outstanding. I would think these still have copywrites, so I don't know how long either will be available.

I use Freemake Video Downloader (Free Video Downloader by Freemake - YouTube Downloader) which is free and works quite well

 

[wngsprd]

61 headed to only 86 and mostly sunny.

I hate to admit this, Dave, but I experimented with rocks yesterday...built the small retaining walls next to my bridge...had forgotten how hard mixing mortar can be in a 5 gallon bucket and how heavy an 80 pound bag can be.

I declare today to be take it easy day, and enjoy the nice weather.

Nice reading about stereo speakers...brought back great memories...friends trying to outdo each other building even bigger speaker cabinets. It is amazing how much smaller they can be today and still produce great sound.

Bought gas for 2.30 yesterday at Sheetz...are prices coming back down again?

 

[RedNeckGeek]

68F @ 4:00AM. Plentiful sunshine. High 93F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.

One thing I can always count on is a chuckle or two when reading this thread. Eric, thanks for relating your paint roller cleaning story. It reminded me of the polisher buff that unloaded on me earlier in the week, leaving my glasses coated with compound and water spray, and the rest of me as well. :laughing:

Drew, I hope you enjoy listening to music while you work as much as I do. Nothing better than combining two favorite pass times. Well maybe watching a movie on the big screen with the subwoofer rattling the windows comes close. But I haven't figured out how to hook up the rear speakers without running unsightly wires to them, so for now it's a 3.1 system As far as the boat, don't let your eagerness to get out on the water overcome the potentially painful reality of dealing with the deferred maintenance issues and weather induced decay. And there may be some deeper problem that caused the boat to sit idle for so long a period to start with. Good to know going in about repair costs, but putting a price on frustration and the potential for unanticipated trouble is a lot harder.

Thanks for the heads up, Roy. Just added "Open Range" the the Netflix queue; "Tombstone" was good, too.

For the past few weeks, the stereo receiver in the living room has had a mind of its own. After about twenty minutes, the volume will increase all by itself, then stop at a level just below ear shattering. If the volume was already up when this happens, it's all I can do to grab the remote and mash down the button to stop it before I lose a window. Once dealt with, it's OK for a minute or two, then it'll do it again. And sometimes a third time, after which it's OK for the rest of the evening. I have three of these receivers, so yesterday I swapped the one in the living room with the one in the office. The office one sees much less use, and the nasty habit will be easier to deal with there. But switching wasn't just a matter of swapping all the cables and wires, as some of the inputs are from RCA jacks, some from coaxial cables, and some even from optical cables. And each type of input needs to be specified with a menu system that can only be accessed by using buttons on the remote, and it's not at all intuitive how they should be set. I ended up with both receivers on and paging through the menus on the old one to transfer the settings to the new one. Maybe I'd better write them down somewhere so I can do it again if I lose the replacement? But it's a caution that when buying a used component, make sure you also get the remote control that came with it, as it may be relatively useless without it. And that problems may not present in a short demo that could appear after extended use. But then reading through the reviews at Amazon shows that the new units are prone to problems, too...

Oh, and here's a tip for you audio/video guys. Sometimes the connectors get a little corrosion on them that reduces the signal strength or causes it to be intermittent. An easy cure is a drop or two of ATF, yeah automatic transmission fluid. It's high in detergent and will break down the offending oxides very quickly. Making and breaking the contact to apply it helps, too. And the oily film left behind helps keep the connection clean for a long time. Just don't spill any on the carpet, especially if it's white!

Hope all of you have a restful Sunday. I'm going to start right now by trying to grab another hour or two of shut eye.

 

[KevT]

Good Morning to everyone. 78 at 6 am with a high of 98 which means the feels like will be close to 110. But no storms. Friday night the storm that passed through blew 2 big oak trees over in the driveway. So yesterday morning I had to use the tractor to move them out of the way enough to get the trucks out. Then went to work for about 4 hours. Came home and grabbed the Husky 450 and the tractor so I could move the downed trees to the burn pit. Wife tried to help and she did, but the heat really takes a toll on her. After we came inside and cooled off she was playing around on her puter / facebook and informed me we are driving to Lake Wales Sunday morning (about 3.5 hours away). I guess we just bought a Bull. She found a 3yo Zebu bull for sale and made arrangements to pick it up (me). So for the rest of the evening she spent looking for Zebu cows and I had to find a stock trailer to borrow. Luckily a friend / neighbor is going to trade trucks with me today, his trailer is a GN and I don't have the hook-up for it yet.

Yes Drew, I know exactly what you mean. I put my system together about 5 years ago and it is still awesome! First I got a Samsung 55" 3-D TV, Then an Onkyo 9.2 channel receiver and then went for sound. Front and rear surrounds are Bose 501's, the 2 subwoofers are Klipsch as well as the front pair of mid speakers and the mid surround towers. And a Polk center speaker. It is wild to listen to things fly around the room when watching a movie. But last night instead of popcorn, we had homemade cherry pie. We wont discuss what I put in my truck. LOL

Roy, I agree the views of the country sides in Open Range are breath taking, one of my favorite movies.

Dave, we all have our crosses to bear, so ROCK ON!!!

Eric, That was to funny. 50% of what I do is painting and buy my paint in 5 gal cans. I just get a new roller cover with each bucket, and between jobs I store them in the paint. Not worth cleaning.

RNG, when I was in HS, they would not let me take typing or Home Ec. They knew why I wanted to go I guess. LOL

Drew, Keep in mind that boats come down to FL in the winter and go back north in the summer. I have a friend that captains boats from the great lakes down here and stays pretty busy every spring and summer. I know he tells me that clients sell their boats rather than pay him to take it back.

 

[dave1949]

61F. Mid-70's today and dry.

I'm leaving for Ohio around mid-day. Solo trip since our older dog has too many health issues to put in a kennel for a week or so. I'm taking the scenic route over to Vermont then south through Roy's area to the Mass Pike in Springfield. It takes a little longer than going down the Maine Turnpike but driving the Portland-Portsmouth-I495-Wooster stretch on a summer weekend is usually not fun.

So, I'll be taking it one day at a time, trying to resist rearranging the decorative rocks at the rest stops on the NY Thruway. :laughing:

Good luck with the bull KevT.
Happy boat hunting Drew.
Wngsprd, yes 80 lbs concrete bags are work. Not much edge to get a grip on.

 

[bakerg]

Good morning, 70F here heading to a high of 82F.