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Buck
(last edited Jul 20, 2018 07:12PM)
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Jul 20, 2018 07:10PM
I feel for you, Jim. We had to crank up the generator after Irma. It hadn't been used since Wilma, 12 years earlier. I cranked it up just to make sure before we fled to Atlanta. Our daughter returned home before we did and went to our house because she doesn't have a generator. She couldn't get it started. It has an oil level shut off switch. When we got back, I added oil and it ran OK, but it burns oil now. When it would shut down we never knew if we would need to add oil or gas. We had a better generator for the aftermath of Charley in 2004, but it was stolen before Wilma hit the next year.
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Buck, generators have to be run every few months under load or they go bad. I found that out with an old one we used on a construction job one time. Saws & drills would run, but they lacked power. The electrician plugged in a clock with a second hand & it only did 45-50 seconds per minute. He said that was typical. The voltage was correct, but it was running at 45 cycles per minute rather than 60.I looked into it about a decade ago. It's still a problem even with newer generators & will burn up energy efficient appliances. Rather than buying a big generator that could run the house, I opted to spend almost twice as much buying a smaller generator that I'd use more frequently & would only put out the proper power. I got a Honda 2000i which will only run one appliance at a time, but it weighs about as much as a 5 gallon can of gas.
Gas is now full of ethanol & other crap, so even with stabilizers, it isn't good to keep it in the tank. I've cleaned the carburetor twice & then had to replace it last year, so now I run it dry each time. I plug in one of the little 1500 watt heaters & put in just enough gas to run it for 30-45 minutes.
Our power flickered a lot until the wee hours, but at least we had it. The rest of the road still doesn't. It pays to be nice to the utility guys. They had to replace & add a pole where it goes across our land & they had easy access, something they fight with many others about, apparently. When they did the new hookup, they put our line on a separate circuit from the rest of the road since it was available & we lose power far less often now. The winds were fierce. Twice we got an inch of rain in 15 minutes. The flickering power meant the UPSs were beeping on & off which terrifies my dog, Lily. At some point last night she jumped out & ran down to the kids' house. They, like the rest of the road, still don't have power, but it was quiet. Erin just called & said she sent Lily home, so she should be arriving for breakfast soon.
;)
The kids got their power back at 10pm Saturday, 26 hours after ours came on. Some of that was due to recent changes to the electric system. The company changed the southern half of the road to a different route & that was fixed. There was also some confusion since my house is on a separate circuit & it was fixed, so the northern half of the road was in limbo.I talked to a few of the linesmen & I'm sure the situation would have been cleared up much quicker if our neighbor hadn't yelled at a dispatcher at 4am. I let the linesmen know who was who. They know & like me, my kids, & a couple further down the road, so I have a feeling that the neighbor will be getting a disconnect on his line & will get power a lot later than everyone else. It shouldn't bother him much save for the expense, but the rest of the road shouldn't suffer any more, either.
Maybe he'll learn that you don't mess with folks doing their best in a bad situation, especially in a small town situation like ours. He moved out from the city & is frustrated by a lot of things we take for granted. He doesn't seem to understand that everyone knows everyone else, though. It's really nice that delivery folks like the mailman leave the kids' packages on our porch in bad weather, but it certainly can work against people just as easily.
My neighbor Rick got the maple tree that he lost in the storm cut up today. I came home to find 4 huge sections of trunk on the apron of my shop. Went to cut them up & my big chainsaw (Stihl 056AV with a 3' bar) decided not to run properly. I quickly figured out it was the fuel line collapsing. That damn new gas ate the hose. It's as limp as a piece of spaghetti. I have an old motor for parts & its fuel line is OK. Now I just have to figure out how to swap them. The fuel line is practically welded on to a nipple at the far back of the tank. Even my super long needle nose pliers can't work that far back. Might have to take it apart.
It was a gorgeous day out, only about 80 with little wind & low humidity. I should have done some spraying & other chores, but got involved in turning some of my neighbor's maple tree into bowls. I started out with a 'small' one, only 14" in diameter & then did an 18" one this afternoon. The last one turned into a whole afternoon's project as I found a 16d galvanized nail in it. I had to turn around it & finally take it off the lathe to use a 3' crowbar to pry the nail out. It's pretty amazing that the 4" slab I cut out of the tree didn't touch this 3-1/2" nail at all.
A family gathering for a baptism - we had lunch today in Blue Ridge Georgia. 12 people plus Lily, the three month old star of the show. We hailed from 6 different towns: Dawsonville, Ball Ground, and Woodstock, GA, Aiken, SC, Fort Myers, FL, and Morris, Manitoba.
We are going through a double-barrelled ecological disaster. There is a toxic algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico, known as red tide. The beaches are paved with dead sea life, the red tide aerosols make people cough, but the stench of dead fish is so atrocious it's hard to be on the beach.Polluted discharges from Lake Okeechobee into the Caloosahatchee River are causing blooms of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) locally known as green slime. It's killing aquatic life including ducks and manatees. The smell is so bad, people who live in canal-front or riverfront homes are staying inside or fleeing. It's making people sick and there are no-swimming signs all over.
It's hurting businesses and real estate values and it's ruined recreation - boating, fishing, just walking on the beach.
This is a perennial problem, but never before has it been this bad, and never so much from both directions. The politicians and bureaucrats are pointing fingers at one another. It's horrible.
Buck, that does sound horrible. We are having hot dry weather in Ontario and it has been a bad year for forest fires.
That's awful, Buck. I was reading an article about it last week. Really brings it home to read your post, though.Everything is good here in KY. We've had a decent amount of rain so the weeds are kicking my butt, but that's better than a drought. Hot & humid, but it's summer.
Mod
I actually had a reservation for Yosemite, the high, remote area, not the valley, which is totally closed off now. Driving towards there, the smoke got bad enough I decided not to go. Went instead to Nevada. Some smoke there, too.
Obviously, me seeing smoky skies is nothing compared to people who've lost their home. But it is amazing how far the smoke travels.
I'm so sorry for all of you who are suffering through the fires. I hope you and your family and friends are at least safe. I'm also thinking of the countless animals whose lives are lost and the environmental damage.
Today I finally went to Clearwater beach in FL. I just moved to Tampa in March, and Clearwater is the main beach in the area, about 20 miles away, actually. Tampa doesn't have the best beaches actually, although there's some good ones. Most people go to St Pete or Clearwater.
Mod
I also listened to Lincoln in the Bardo while on a road trip, a couple of weeks ago. I do normally do audiobooks and I read it because it won the 2018 Audie award for Best Audiobook. It's quite well done, but it does catch you off guard the first couple of chapters until you figure our what's going on. I didn't realize until the credits at the end that it had so many voices in the cast. Several of the names I recognized as Saturday Night Live performers.
Mod
I almost gave up on it because I got sick of hearing "Op. cit." over and over. Luckily only a few of the chapters are like that.
It is also the first novel to be adapted to a virtual-reality film. https://variety.com/2017/digital/news...
Ed wrote: "I went to Lake Tahoe area Sunday to Tuesday. I gambled that that was far enough away from the Cal fires to have clear skies. Nope. The air was quite smoky, even that far away. Pretty ominous lookin..."I heard "Lake Tahoe" and "gamble"...
I'm taking a couple of days off to have another long weekend. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous. It's dropped down to the mid 70s, low humidity. Low 60s tonight so the A/C is off. Maybe I can catch up on all the gardens, cleaning the Purple Martin houses, & spraying fence lines.On the down side, my pony Chip is still lame, actually worse than he was a week ago. I think it's getting to be time to put him down which really, really sucks.
We're putting Chip down tomorrow. Very sad, but he's in pain even standing around in his $130 shoes, so it's time.On the good news front, I just realized that I've sold slightly more than 100 copies of Inkle Loom Design Construction in about 9 months. I'm amazed. I thought I might sell a dozen copies.
That is too bad about your pony, Jim.
Mod
I saw the stars align tour in Tampa. It had Jeff Beck, Paul Rodgers (Bad Company), and Ann Wilson (Heart). Jeff Beck was amazing. He mostly did his fusion stuff, but also did songs with a vocalist, mostly covers such as Little Wing and Superstition, but also Morning Dew, which was a hit from the Jeff Beck Group in the 60's.
Thanks, all. Chip just turned 13, too. That's too young. I expected him to last well into his 20s, maybe outlast me. It's one of those things that fiction authors rarely (never?) put into their books. Navicular sucks as bad as cancer.:(
Ed, I don't like weaving. It was making the looms themselves that I found interesting. I made such a mess of the first one for my daughter that I couldn't stand it. I play with old woodworking using proportions & geometry rather than tape measures. (By Hand & Eye is one of my favorite books.) It was really interesting investigating that aspect of them since I originally thought they were old enough to have been built that way. They aren't & weren't which explains why there are so many bad plans for them floating around.
Mod
I noticed that this years Hugo award conference had a panel discussion about writing realistically for horses. So, some people care. As for me, I wouldn't notice mistakes in that area, unless the horse was running at warp 6 or something obvious like that. (Most horses can't reach warp 2.)
I called Mom this morning & found out she's having surgery today to get a plate in her leg for a broken femur. Did she bother to tell me a field mower tossed a chunk of wood into her thigh & broke her femur Monday afternoon? Of course not. I'm her only child, so why would I need to know. Grrr!
I hope it goes well for her. She really should have let you know sooner.
So, my son managed to break his leg on the way home from college Wednesday. He's never had to deal with a big challenge like that, so he's being a wee bit needy and so I'm busy helping him. Interestingly, I had a very similar accident myself about fifteen years ago:We both were coming down a hill on two wheels around a corner and hit sand and were thrown off. He was on a kick scooter, I was on the back of a motorcycle. I win... I was in ICU/ hospital/ rehab for a month but he's home already. But at least I know about most of the same strategies and procedures for care and recovery so I can help him!
Boy, though, ya gotta land just right (wrong) to break tib/fib, + a small one on the ankle, from a scooter, no?!
Sorry to read that, Cheryl. Hope he recovers quickly. I hate casts. The last time I broke my leg on a motorcycle, an old lady pulling out in front of me in 30mph traffic. I went over the hood of her car & broke my knee cap. Full leg cast in the summer! It was the first non-plaster cast I'd ever have & I took the idea of 'you can get it wet' a little too far. I went swimming in the ocean & got rocks in it. Had to cut it off to clean it out. The doctor wasn't amused.Mom has always been super active, so sitting around with her broken leg is driving her nuts. She can't put any weight on it & has been reading until her eyes are going to fall out. At least she has a lot of friends dropping by. One of them bought her a new set of all terrain wheels for walker so she can get out of the house on to her patio & another couple took her out to dinner. Lots of people bring by meals & share them with her.
A couple of others figured out & tested a way for her to get upstairs. She can go up on her butt, but at the top of the stairs there wasn't any way for her to stand up into the walker, so they brought in a mounting block (used to get on horses) & now she just keeps going up couple more. That gets up high enough to turn & stand up into her walker. She's tickled pink since her bedroom, office, & only bathtub is up there.
The city has crews trimming between our parking lot at work & a stream this week. I borrowed Marg's pickup & filled the bed with walnut, cottonwood, cedar, black locust, cherry, & red mulberry at work today. Some of the cottonwood logs were big enough that it took 2 guys to load them. I passed out a few bowls & got top notch service from Asplundh!:)
Hey gang. I couldn't find the nomination thread for december and didn't receive the group's monthly letter. Did I miss some changed? Thanks.
Odd you didn't get the broadcast message, but nothing has changed. The latest poll is always available on the right side of the browser window if you're using a computer. Not sure about the mobile app.
Marc-Andre, you did vote on the poll, which is the only thing that changed because I did mess up.
Mod
Somehow I read that as "I hate cats" and tried to read the rest of the post to see how it related to cats.
No cats in that post. We have a 'barn' cat named Raven. He is an uninvited guest due to some jerk dropping him off who has learned to use the dog door & firmly moved into the house. I was giving the dogs their bed time biscuits last night when I noticed Amber (Miss I'm Always Starving To Death) was missing. She was busy gulping down a mouse or vole that Raven brought into the house instead. I hope he doesn't make a habit of it the way Orion (one of the kids' cats) did. He'd bring her a couple of mice a day. We had to put her on a diet.
I do not use the app. I voted in the poll early. I do not wait for the letter to vote in the poll.
Sorry, I said December. I ment January. And I found it. It wasn't on the front page.
Jim, I didn't get a group message this month either.
Cheryl wrote: "Jim, I didn't get a group message this month either."Really? Was I supposed to send it?
Good for you, Dee. Those hens have miserable lives and you are giving them a real chance to live in a natural way.I live in Canada and we just had our first snow yesterday. It will probably melt soon, but for now, everything is really pretty, especially the trees and bushes.
That's great you rescue hens, Dee. They do have miserable lives. I'm surprised they can walk & enjoy life. Mom used to occasionally get roaster chicks & we'd have to eat them before they were a year old. Their legs couldn't support their outsized bodies after that. They'd break their legs just walking around. Really sad.We got our first snow here in Kentucky yesterday, too. Just a dusting on top of the ice storm the night before. I lost another big chunk out of a Cleveland Pear in the front yard yesterday & the kids lost power most of the morning from the ice. The ground is too soft to get the tractor out to clean up the tree, so I just cut the biggest branches off. My wife still had to do some backing & filling to get around it with the school bus. Hopefully it will dry up enough this weekend. It should. I'll get some more wood for bowls, anyway.
Dee ~ Chillin’ Out wrote: "We have been rescuing battery hens for about three years now,.."That is a good thing. We don't have room for saving poor animals. But we don't ever buy that kind of meat. It is a crime to treat animals like that.
Here in southern Missouri we've already had enough snow for the city plows and for our shovels. And days with a high in the low 30s F. It's our first year here and I'm peeved; I hope it's not typical.Welcome Dee and thank you for your rescue work!
Btw, my son is still limping and when outside uses a cane, but otherwise back to school full-time and asking for very little help.
Mod
I'm skipping any major exercising. But that, in itself, doesn't make me very sad!
Mod
Air today is "Unhealthy" which is a big improvement from "Very Unhealthy"! With ugly brown air and many people walking around in filter masks, it felt like I was in a dystopian novel. People kept referring to "Blade Runner", but it reminded me more of "The Sheep Look Up" since I read (part) of that recently.
I love the area around Paradise. I've considered it as a nice place to retire. But I may re-think that. Hope your place is safe.
We saw the new Fantastic Beasts movie last night & really liked it, although now we have to see the next. Too much left open. We had the movie theater to ourselves since they had no internet & could only accept cash or tickets from Fandango. They're splitting from Regal Cinemas & the new internet provider had an issue with their installation. I really hope going independent works out for them. The best thing was the lack of loud, long, & annoying commercials at the start of the movie. There were a few trailers for new movies & then the movie started. That was so much nicer!
The snack bar was every bit as ridiculously priced, though. $10.50 for a small slurpee & a pack of Junior Mints. Tickets for 3 adults & 1 senior were $36, so not too bad.
The turkey is in the oven. The table is set. The parade is on TV with all the TV parade commentators and pundits. (muted). The squirrels are emptying the bird feeder. The coffee is fresh and hot. The weather is a bit cool for me, but everyone else seems to enjoy it. Our biggest family argument has been what to have for dessert. All is good. Happy Thanksgiving.
The Evolution of Science Fiction
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