Codex Alera

Received an email late last night from Amazon telling me that my copy of Princeps Fury is on the way, expected arrival date 12/1. Cool!

Now, back to fighting with the home PC. After about 15 minutes online some process related to dial-up networking crashes and I lose my Internet connection. The funny thing is that everything looks OK but nothing works. Playing with the Sysinternals Process Monitor trying to track it down now.

I thought that it might be a problem with Firefox. The last thing I did before the problem started was upgrade to Firefox 3. So, I uninstalled that and re-installed Firefox 2. That didn't help. It doesn't matter whether I use IE or Firefox, I lose communication. Although, I did notice that while examining the event logs that M$ Help and Support Center still had Internet access.

Watching Process monitor, I noticed that the last thing to happen before the crash was that Firefox was making calls to WMP. I looked thru the Firefox options, and Firefox was set to call QuickTime dll's for nearly all Media functions. I changed those to Irfanview and WinAmp, we'll see if there is any difference.

Just happened, "Faulting application svchost.exe, version 5.1.2600.2180, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x001f1cb0." But Firefox is still functional to some degree, or at least it says that it saved this post. Guess I'll find out in a moment.

The only way I have found so far to recover is to reboot the PC. The svchost crash takes out a whole list of services; I still haven't figured out how to manually restart them.

Yah, it is still functional. I feel fairly certain that when I click the "Close" button on the error message my connection will die, here goes

Later:
Had to go spend some time deer hunting. Now I'm back at the PC. Matt and I need to make a bunch of sausage. I bought a $30 sausage stuffer at L&M that was a piece of garbage. It was so poorly made that all the sausage would blow back out the back instead of going into the tube. THEN I started to do a little research, looks like to get a decent sausage stuffer (i.e., one that works) you need to spend a couple hundred bucks. Ouch. Maybe we will continue making sausage patties. I did find one sausage stuffer that looks neat for under $200, it includes parts for making Jerky as well. It's water powered, hook your garden hose to it and go. Although, in searching for reviews it sounds as though many people have modified theirs to work with air pressure instead, not as messy. I haven't seen any complaints about it yet. www.dakotahsausagestuffer.com.

Well, I'm still waiting for the connection to die. This time I have been on for 35 minutes and my connection is still alive, I'm rather surprised. Too good to be true? Maybe.

I really should get busy helping Matt. Temps are now (11:30 AM) pushing 30ºF, and we have been storing the venison in the back of Stripez for the last couple of days. Don't want it to thaw before we can finish cutting it up and get it into the freezer.

Matt's screaming at me know, better go. 40 minutes and haven't lost connection yet.

It crashed at almost exactly 45 minutes, suspiciously close. After reboot I will log on with a different account and see if it does the same thing.

I'm trying to upload a jpg of the error messages. The first came at about 45 minutes, the second one appeared at 60 minutes. I have not totally dropped the connection, but just now at 75 minutes the first error has come up again. DUN appears to still be functional and I have not yet totally lost the connection.

Connection is still going. I have not closed any of the three error messages, I just moved them off the side of the screen. So far I'm at 90 minutes.

Well, I'm going to "ok" the error messages now. bye-bye!

Crazy Week

Winter is fast approaching and I'm nowhere near ready, mostly running in circles around here.  Nothing is winterized yet.  Had a tire blow-out on Vger.  Matt got the Head from Stripez off to the machine shop.  Starter died on the WC.  Muffler fell off RumJohn.  One of my credit cards lowered my limit, raised my interest, and penalized me for going over the limit.  My bedroom window is still open.  Propane tank is still empty.  Matt plowed the garden under.  People at work have been making changes without consulting with the affected personnel causing havoc and confusion.  People have been making "plans" and starting projects without planning.

I'm looking forward to a long rest.  Wish I could hibernate over the winter like a bear.  I'm afraid that I will keep looking forward to that rest for too long.

Gas was as low as 2.749, then went back up to 2.799, this morning at 2.769 (I filled up last night at 2.799, of course).  Economy is still in chaos, with 'most every government in the world printing money as fast as the presses can spin.

Wabe - Again!

And I don't know when I will get a chance to catch up.

Gas has dropped, a penny at a time, over the last week to 3.639.

The tractor show was a blast, got to take the W6 in even though Matt thought he had permanently destroyed the tranny (he didn't). Got a few great pics.

My niece got married Saturday afternoon, got some great pics there.

Got to spend a few moments with my bro (wish it was longer, Mark!), I'm really hoping that we can drive down to Rice Lake and visit more real soon.

Jon, Patty, and Phillip were also here, got a couple nice pics of Phillip.

Fair entries start going in today. Filled the Gladiator up with gas for the first time since June, $70, OUCH!!!

Evvy leaves for school in Bemidji in a couple of weeks, got to get her a PC built soon.

Matt and I (again, mostly Matt!) got started working on the red '89 Horizon brakes again, hope to have that done before Matt starts back to school in a couple of weeks. I thinking I'm going to yank the drive train out of the '77 Catalina and pop it in the '70 Ventura to get that cleaned up temporarily.

Rained some overnight last night, just enough to settle the dust when I was last outside.

As soon as I get a chance I will elaborate on all the above. Maybe next week?

Later!!!!

Unfinished business

Sitting here waiting for the restore, can't do much until that's completed. Just looking back thru the last few posts and saw I had some unfinished business.

Vger gauges: Discovered that the fuse for the gauges fell out. At least, it was missing. Found another 5 amp fuse, gauges work fine now. Still haven't got the dash fully re-assembled yet. Still need lights in the new gauges, still need to make a cover for them also. Driving in the dark this morning was not fun, can't see gauges with no lights.

Hay: With the rain Matt had to wait for a couple of days before he could try baling again. When he went out he got a couple of bales, then a chain fell off. Got that replaced, and then something else broke, plunger hit the knife or something similarly serious. They are waiting for parts.

Another busy weekend. Started on Friday night (7/11), about 6:15 PM a storm broke. This storm brought tornadoes to other parts of the state. To us it brought LOTS of lightning and, by 7:30 PM, an inch of rain.

On Saturday Matt rebuilt the hay wagon. Then, on Sunday afternoon, he baled hay. This baler belongs to a neighbor, it's his backup baler that he hasn't been able to use because he can only get a couple of bales at a time before it misses a knot. Matt has been working with the neighbor (in between other things) on sorting out the problems with it. Looks like they succeeded, Matt got 75 bales without missing a knot.

Last week I noticed that the voltmeter on Vger said it was discharging. When I got home I checked with a voltmeter and the alternator output was fine and the battery was fine. Hmmm. Then, the next day, the fuel gauge suddenly went from full to 1/4 tank. Hmmx2. Then I noticed that the gate indicator light wasn't working. Hmmmx3. Well, after a lot of fiddling and wire tracing and unplugging it looks like the dash on Vger has died. I tried one of my other dash's that I have but that didn't work either, so it must be a connection to the dash that is the problem, but I can't find the connection. The turn signal, high beam indicator, and dash lights work so I don't think the problem is a ground since they all share a common ground, but the fuel gauge, volt gauge, low fuel light, gate light, washer light, belt light, all those have quit working.

Several months ago I bought a cheap oil pressure/temp/voltmeter gauge set by SunPro from Amazon.com, but I've never gotten around to putting them in. I wanted to put the gauges in the dash replacing the factory gauges, but there is just not quite enough room, and they don't mount very well. I discovered (with an old gauge) that the gauge mechanism fits just fine (but can't mount), but that the gauge housing is the problem.

Well, I needed gauges. So, I spent Sunday installing the set. I put them on top of the dash. Works OK there, but I would have preferred them in the dash.

The roses are done, but we have other flowers near the front door.

Gas Buddy currently says that gas is 3.999 but that's incorrect, it's really 4.029.

Some gas stations are at 3.939 while others are still at 3.969.

Here's a better photo of the Horse mower tongue. This is a Minnesota No. 3 Mower, probably dates from 1890's or 1900's, don't know for sure. Hard to find parts and info on the Minnesota Mowers. Sorry about the busy background. The jackstand is set so that the tongue is at tractor hitch height, this is pretty much how it sits when in the field. Matt is currently working on putting new knives on, I'm hoping to get a chance to get some photos of that process, and maybe a photo showing more details of the tongue. If I'd been thinking I'd have got photos while building, but I didn't.

Blue Flag

I found out what the flower is that I found in the hay field. It is the "Blue Flag" a wild iris properly known as Iris versicolor. The best info I have found on it is at

http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/nature/aquatics/irisver.html.

I used the Wildflower Finder from

http://www.realtimerendering.com/flowers/flowers.html to identify it.

Busy Weekend

Saturday and Saturday night we got less than 1/8" of rain, but it was wet and drizzly all day. While Matt and his friend Nate hauled in a couple hundred bales of last years hay (from a neighbor) and stacked them in the hayloft I worked mostly on building a new tongue for the Horse Mower. This time I took my time and used my head and my tools, we'll see how it works out.

The biggest problem with using a Horse Mower behind a tractor is the angle that the machine is working at. The end of the tongue is designed to be harnessed to a team, and that is a bit higher than the hitch of a tractor. I'm a lousy artist, but this is more or less what I'm talking about:

With the shaft as low as it is behind the tractor, it collects hay and jams the mechanism. I suspect it may put extra load on the tongue.

Every couple of years we break the tongue. The first year was because the tongue was rotten, I suppose it had been sitting out in the weather many years before we got it. After that it has been because we just use whatever chunk of wood I can get my hands on at the moment. Since the outside dimensions need to be pretty close to 4x4 (not 3 1/2 x 3 1/2) I can't just run up to the lumber yard and buy a piece of wood. And I believe the originals would have been made from Oak or Ash. Gee, I wonder what a nice chunk of wood like that would cost nowadays?

This time I bought 3 2x6x97 pieces of lumber. I got fairly good quality fir, no large knots and pretty straight.I decided to try to fix the angle problem at the same time I made this tongue if I could figure a way around it.

I laid a large piece of OSB across two sawhorses. Since the current tongue was cracked, not totally broken, I propped the tongue up on a jackstand so that the angles looked like what I thought they should look like, then measured from the ground to the top of the tongue. I also took measurements from the ground to the tractor hitch as well. Then, I drew the tongue on the sheet of OSB and also marked where the tractor hitch is located, as well as getting measurements for the holes that needed to be drilled.

While getting measurements I realized that the far back end of the tongue could only be 3 inches high, since a strut passed under the tongue. With the cutter bar down there was lots of room, but with the cutter bar up I only had 3 inches of clearance. This provided my first opportunity to adjust the angle. Here is what we've always done in the past to allow clearance:

This time, I went at the relief from a totally different direction:

Now, with the angled part up in the mower, the front end of the tongue is lower, raising the front of the mower just a bit.

I was planning on gluing the three 2x6's together side by side, hoping for some additional strength. But then I realized that every time the mower tongue has broken, it has done so at the back end of the tongue, under the mower. It would appear to me that most of the strain must be at that point, so what would happen if I moved the weakest part of the tongue to somewhere else? The worst part of making a new tongue is boring all the 1/2 holes for the bolts (and getting them in the correct locations), how can I change that?

How about if the tongue is made into two parts, a strong back end and a weaker front end? And, if I made some more angle change with that weaker front end? And make the front end really simple, so that when it does break it is easy to replace? Here's what I did:

I cut the 2x6 that I was working on at 48", and took another piece of 2x6 and duplicated the first. I then took my third piece and instead of cutting it off square at 48" like the first two I marked the angle that I still needed to get the tongue at the tractor's hitch height:

I drilled the holes in each individual 2x6 separately on my little bench drill press. A problem in the past has been getting the holes square, by using the drill press I solved that problem.

I lined up the three pieces and glued them together, also used a few carriage bolts to pull them together as well as a handful of deck screws. I let the glue set overnight.

Sunday I took another piece of 2x6x48 and left the ends square (for now)

(angles rather exaggerated).

I then realized (Oops! missed that measurement the first time) that 5 1/2 inches is rather far apart for the hitch, 3 inches would work much better. So, let's gain a little more here while we are at it:

Here is a photo of the finished product:

Matt and his friend Nate took it out for a short test run:

Later, Matt and I took it out and finished the field that we had started the other day. The mower ran the best that is has, the mechanism didn't get plugged up, and the cutter bar adjuster worked the way we expected for the first time. I may have gotten the front of the mower a little too high, not sure, but it does work great this way.

Matt did mention that it is very weird seeing the tongue flex. That short section of 2x6 flexes a LOT as you are mowing. I'm not sure how long it will hold up to the flexing. In any case, it is relatively trivial to replace the front part. It's not glued in, just 2 bolts and some deck screws holding it on.

A picture of the rose bush this morning.

One Summer's Day

This will be mostly photos. I have cut the quality and size of the photos tremendously, but there's still a lot of data there. and it's not really one day, it's the afternoon of Wednesday and the morning of today, Thursday.

Matt and I started mowing a hayfield yesterday. Actually, Matt and his friend Nate started mowing it a couple of days before, but with the beautiful weather I wanted to get it done. I asked Evvy to come out and take a few photos of Matt on the Mower and me on the tractor.

I took a photo myself from the drivers seat.

Notice all the flowers? While mowing, I would occasionally see one that I thought was really pretty, but I never stopped. Then, shortly after this picture was taken, the tongue on the mower broke, and we couldn't mow any longer. So, I went searching for the pretty flowers. I have no idea what this is, but there was a cluster of them in a very wet part of the field.

You can see there are a couple of these flowers in the pic as well as some daisies, I didn't manage to get any buttercups in this picture, can hardly believe that because there are more buttercups then anything else except hay.

This morning when I walked out the door to head for work I had to stop to take some pictures of the rose bush next to the front door. I don't know what kind of rose this is, we got this from a neighbor whose yard is full of these bushes. It's the only rose I know that is hardy enough to survive the winter up here without special care and attention.

On a different note, I have noticed that there has been some kind of project going on at the watertower on my way to work, with cables and pipes and a giant air compressor and other equipment, but I couldn't figure out what they were doing with all the cables strung around and down from the top of the tower. Now I think I may have an idea.

I think they are getting ready to sandblast and repaint the tower, I can't think of any other reason to erect a huge tent around it.

Have a good day and enjoy the wonderful weather!!! I need to figure out how to make a good new tongue for the hay mower.

Weather: Incredibly nice weekend. A couple of brief showers both days, enough to settle the dust but not enough to register in my rain gauge, maybe 5 minutes each time.

Gas: Ran to Bemidji Saturday. When I left GR gas was 3.899. Gas in Bemidji was at 3.789. When I returned to GR one station was at 3.879. This morning everyone in GR appears to be at 3.849.

When we primered the W6 grill it looked good, but when we tried to put the color coat on it didn't turn out so well. Not sure if the problem lies with the painter, the gun, the paint, or the thinner. Touched it up a bit with the same paint in a rattle can, looked better. I'm not too worried about it, I'm planning on re-doing it again anyways. At this point I'm mostly trying to protect the metal.

Sure looks a lot prettier than the pink primer with rusty patches that was on there before.

As of Saturday afternoon Matt and I were going on the tractor run with the club. We installed a shelf on the back to make it easier to stand on the back of the tractor and we installed a shelf on the right side of the frame by the engine to carry the cooler (picnic lunch) and can of gas. Everything was washed up, everything was lubed, we had a full tank of gas. I decided that Matt and I would take the tractor on a drive around the block to see how it ran down the pavement and to see how much fuel we would use. I told Matt that it shouldn't use very much, it's less than 5 miles around the block. I figured it should use maybe about 1/8" on the dipstick and if it used more than 1/4" we probably wouldn't go because we wouldn't have enough fuel.

Just for comparison, here is photo from when we brought it home:

Tractor ran great on the pavement, almost threw Matt off the back when I hit a bump while turning a corner. Just hummed along. But, when we got home and checked the dipstick we discovered that we were down 1.5" of fuel. WOW!! That's way too much. I don't think we can handle that, at that rate we'll need to fill up by the time we get to Blackberry. No way.

Then Matt noticed that the fuel line was dripping gas right where the line comes out of the fuel bowl, so he grabbed a wrench to tighten it. It was a bit loose, but the drip continued. So, we shut off the fuel and pulled the line off. Looked like someone wrapped teflon tape inside the compression fitting around the ferrule to try to stop it leaking once upon a time. I cut the end off and then we discovered that the pipe was actually cracked just behind the ferrule. This was about 7PM, and all the hardware stores in town except Home Depot are closed by now. I ran up to Home Depot, they don't carry soft copper tubing and fittings. Damn.

Sunday morning I ran down to L&M to be at the door at 9AM when they opened, must have been twenty other guys there at 9 AM, but the door didn't open until 9:05 AM. Finally found the 5/16 ferrule ($2!!), got it home and installed it. I could have caught up with the group by running direct to Warba, but decided that maybe we shouldn't do that.

So, we stayed home. Plowed and disked the garden once more, then I started transplanting my tomatoes and peppers. Matt also plowed and disked the front yard where we tore it up this spring moving cars and fencing. Then Matt went on to plow most of the 10 acre field. At the end of the day the fuel level hadn't dropped more than 1.5" from where we started in the morning. So, after fixing the leak, we would have had plenty of fuel to make the run. Oh well, we needed to get the garden in.

So, the garden is finally started, the tractor is in better shape than ever. Looks kinda funny with just the grill painted, hood will have to come off next and get the treatment. I won't rush that job quite as much as we did the grill, might even buy some better paint than the Rust-Oleum equipment paint.

Moved the cars around so Matt could plow the lawn. Pulled the battery from 92 Voyager and put it in the 69 Catalina, pulled the battery from the 65 Ford PU and put it in the 77 Catalina, pulled the battery from the WC and put it in the Ford. Both Cats fired and drove (no brakes). Brought the 88 Horizon home from Steve's with no brakes but I have all the parts to fix that. I need to remember to call the insurance and take the 92 Voyager off insurance. It does run but I need to pull the head and check out the coolant leak. After the 88 Horizon stops.

It's raining.

Driveway was almost dry. We did disk the garden last night, a couple of soft spots still.

Pulled the hood and grill from the W6 last night, stripped the grill to bare metal on the outside and got all the loose stuff off the inside. Had a couple of dings, the worst had a bunch of body filler on it. Matt banged some of it out, but there are actual gouges in the metal, they are not just dents. I might try leading it before I prime it tonight. I will probably save the hood for later and put it back on the way it is. The grill had the body filler and primer put on a couple of years ago with no finish coat, made the tractor look funny with a rusty gray grill. I'm hoping that by Saturday it will be a straight red hood. Got a quart each of Rust-Oleum primer and IH Red enamel, will try out the new HVLP sprayer I got last year and see what I can do with it.

Tractor Run

Wow!   Beautiful weather last couple of days.  If it holds for another day or two I might be able to get the garden disked again and finally get it planted.

Tractor run is this weekend.  I'd like to go.  According to the old sales literature, the W6 was supposed to be able to work for a day on a tank of gas.  The run is for one day.  Of course, I don't think the tractor will be working like it would be when plowing a field; I would probably be idling along in road gear.  But still, a tank of gas, that's 21 gallons, at todays price of 3.899 that would be $82 for gas.  I don't think I've had more than 7 or 8 gallons in it at a time; I usually just dump in a 5 gallon can when I think it's running low.

OK, let's do this right.

CONS:

Need to change valve cover gasket on Vger

Need to pull head on Stripez.

Need to finish brakes on Red Horizon

$82 gas money

Need to finish plowing 10 acre field

Tractor might break down

Need to plant garden

Need to make Bemidji run

PROS:

Rare opportunity

Spend time with other club members (heck, I don't even know who most of them are!  I've never made it to a meeting.)

Take a day off and play

Dunno.  It's easy for me to think of cons, against my nature to think of pros.  Or something.  Stay tuned, we'll see what happens.

Not too bad of a weekend. Ground VERY soggy after the rain last week, but sunny and breezy. Got the engine/tranny ripped out of Da Vench and returned to its owner today.

Gas is back up to 3.899. Talked to my mom in SoCal Saturday; she paid 4.45 for gas that morning.

Took most of Saturday to get everything together; had to find a relatively level place that wasn't under water and where the cars wouldn't sink into the ground; then had to mow that place and put the car there, then transport the jack and engine hoist to that spot.

While I was prepping Da Vench Matt replaced the fan belt and radiator hoses on the WC, also replaced the radiator and rebuilt the carb. The WC nows runs the best it has since we've had it here. Still need to complete the carb adjustments. Need to adjust the carb under load, kinda hard to do that when you don't have anything to run off the PTO so the only way to load it is to pull something, and it's kinda hard to adjust a moving object.

Because you can't roll the engine hoist on the grass, we rolled the car out from under the engine, then I backed VGer up to the engine while Matt swung the engine inside. Good thing VGer has the overload springs; it was squatting pretty good. I was VERY glad to have the load out of VGer when we unloaded.

Photos in "Da Vench" Gallery.

BBQ'd Beef Ribs for dinner last night; hamburgers tonight. Got a little bit of the yard and the shooting range mowed tonight, now it's raining pretty good.

With all the rain last week the grass and hay are growing fast, and the bloodsucking mosquitos are multiplying faster than I can spray them away.

I have to run to Duluth Monday morning; going to see an Avaya Unified Communications demo and visit my friends at Sisu (www.sisunet.org). Then I have the rest of the week off while Betty has surgery.

And yes, these are photos from my new camera. Couldn't find one that met ALL of my criteria, but this one meets the most important ones and I got a bargain on it. More on that subject later, when I get more time.

Ta ta!

Beautiful Weekend! Summer has at last arrived in Northern MN. Temps in the mid to upper 70's, sunny skies, occasional t-storms, and now MOSQUITOES are here.

We got the new pasture fence completed Saturday, a huge relief. Finished off the last bale of hay Friday night. We cut some hay Saturday morning, gave it to the animals, and then set out to finish the fence before the hay ran out. Had to run to town twice for supplies, but we did it.

Fan belt broke on the WC last week. To replace it you must remove the lower radiator hose. So, we ordered both upper and lower hoses from Steiner Tractor, as well as the fan belt and a carb rebuild kit. We are hoping they will arrive before the weekend so that will be the main project next weekend

Spent part of Sunday crushing the old fence into the old topper shell. We put the shell upside down on the big trailer and Matt is filling it with scrap metal. Even though we gave away a LOT of scrap metal last year, I figure we might still be able to make 3 or 4 trailer loads, all of which will go towards his Europe trip.

Worked on the garden a little bit, it is now well plowed, well disked, and fairly level. It would be nicer if we could till it. $33 to rent a walk behind tiller overnight. Might consider it.

Still don't have my shop organized yet.

Gas was still at 3.899 this morning.

Mostly sunny and 61 outside, so says the NWS. I haven't been outside in 6 hours.

Great party last night at the Northern Lights Community School graduation ceremony. When you have 14 participating high school Seniors you can do things a bit differently. Traditionally, the Juniors give the grad dinner, Matt's a Junior. We brought the big BBQ over and with two other big BBQ's we helped cook up burgers and dogs for about 100 people. Then the Jazz band (with Matt on the Bass Clarinet) played "Eye of the Tiger" as the Seniors came in. Most of the Seniors were very casual under the black robes with blue jeans and sneakers in plain sight. Every Senior got to take the podium; some sang, some spoke, some cried. One very refreshing song was performed by the Praise Team from "The Rock" with the member Senior playing guitar. Another student pulled what I call a "Dumbledore"; he came to the podium and spoke a few words: "toaster. box. aluminum." and then sat down. As the grads left the stage the full band played Pomp and Circumstance. This graduation ceremony is very special for these students, since most of these students would have been high school drop-outs without the intervention of people who cared and NLCS. One of the grads is 21 years old. They are all smart, sharp people, but they were poor students or had too many complications in their lives or had a specific disability such as dyslexia to do well in a traditional school.

Had some showers move thru the area last night, including while were cooking. Very drizzly this morning with a chance of T-Storms today and tomorrow.

Matt plowed the garden Wednesday evening using the W6, and then while discing the garden the WC broke its fan belt. Had to order one from NAPA, should be in today. He probably should have ordered the lower radiator hose also, since the hose needs to come off to replace the belt. If I'm lucky they might have the hose when I pick up the belt, but I doubt it.

Gas is still at 3.899, although I see that oil prices have dropped sharply ($127/bbl). I don't think that prices at the pump will drop, but I'm still hoping they will since I need to pick up some good gas for the tractors and the older cars this weekend. Need to fire up the 455 and hear it again!

I'm hoping to start tearing down the '70 Ventura II and the '77 Catalina this weekend if the weather will cooperate. There is definitely a line of showers in North Dakota heading this way, but if they don't amount to much the ground might be hard enough to work on the lawn.

Traffic last night on the way home from work was a bitch. My normal 20 minute drive home took 40 minutes, all of the extra twenty minutes in negotiating the traffic thru town. Summer construction has closed a four block section of Hwy 2 in the middle of town. Since the detour is very poorly laid out over roads that were already busy, the traffic in downtown is really bad, so a lot of folks (myself included) take the long way around town past the Hospital on Golf Course Road and across County Road 63. It now appears the County Road 17 is closed for construction and the detour for that is now running past the Hospital as well, so that there was a solid line of cars on Golf Course Road yesterday afternoon. Then, a block past where Golf Course Road crosses Pokegama Ave and becomes 10th St the road was closed for more construction. I don't know what was happening, if there was a train or an accident or what, but traffic to cross the Horn Bridge was backed up over a mile (traffic across the Hwy 169 bridge is backed up that far during the day because of the construction on Hwy 2). So, I finally managed to change lanes and sneak down a couple of back roads and go home via the Blackberry bridge. So, this morning I came to work via the back roads and I will go home that way today. If I can get out of the Hospital Parking lot onto Golf Course Road. Even at 7:00 this morning traffic on Golf Course Road was much heavier than normal, I usually see one or two cars but today it was a solid string.

Gas is still at 3.899.

Spent most of the day Friday on the M-D W6 plowing and discing the garden. Then got the A-C WC running again on Saturday (bad battery cable) and used that for discing the garden. What a difference. The W6 is a brute, just walks the 2 bottom plow thru the garden. The WC is so much smaller and has much better visibility, turns much sharper (narrow front); much better suited for discing a small area like the garden.

Moved the '69 Pontiac Catalina Wagon, '70 Pontiac Ventura II, '77 Pontiac Catalina, and '81 Plymouth Horizon out to the front yard on Monday afternoon, I need to start stripping them down and salvaging parts. Gonna let Matt and the NLCS haul some of them away as part of their fundraiser, but I haven't yet decided how much. Still need to move the '89 Dodge Caravan Turbo, '89 Dodge Caravan, and '91 Plymouth Acclaim out front also.

I'm just about ready to decide to quit the car hobby. I love tinkering with the cars, I love looking at the nice ones. But I'm just no longer up to all the physical labor involved any more. At the very least I'm going to knock it down to one car project instead of the four car projects I'm currently staring at.

That will still leave me with more hobbies than I have time for, but maybe I won't feel so pressured.

Saturday was the North Central Minnesota Farm and Antique Association's annual auction. Matt and I took an old ground drive rake down to get auctioned, haven't heard if it went or not. There was some VERY nice equipment down there, including a restored John Deere A, a restored Allis Chalmers WD, a running Ford 9N, a really rough Ford 8N, a "yard art" Farmall F-12 on steel, and an unstyled Allis-Chalmers WC in rough condition (as the guy said, "it ran the last time I used it"). I've never seen a treadless rear tractor tire before. The tread was worn smooth on that WC! I think a neighbor down the road bought that one. There were two or three or four more tractors also.  Probably one of the biggest auctions they have had with hundreds of items. There was nothing that I needed, so we went home to work on Matt's WC.

Gas: Price at one station in GR is at 3.859 at 7AM although the other3 I passed were still at 3.799. The word on the street is that the price is expected to go to or over $4 by this weekend (Memorial Day). Price per barrel went briefly over $135, current price (Bloomberg.com) is at 132.90, although the rumor is that it will go over $141 in next month.

I have a feed for the gas price map at GasBuddy.com that I want to post here, but I need to figure out how I want to present it.

Gorgeous weather. Matt started to plow the garden last night, I'm hoping to finish it this afternoon.

Auction at Blackberry this weekend, need to finish getting the rake down there. They have a lot of equipment in the auction, I think I heard almost a dozen tractors. Saw one, a fully restored Deere on steel. I probably have a pic of it here.

I need to resume searching for a camera.

Gallup's latest "Cultural Tolerance" survey shows that more people think wearing fur is morally bad (39%) than people that think that divorce is morally bad (22%). Link to Gallup Poll results. Sad sad sad sad.

On a brighter note, if this weather continues the garden might be dry enough to plow and disc tonight or tomorrow night.

If society disintegrates a garden might be nice. Not that I think it is likely to do so any time soon, mind you. Some days I wish it would, other days I hope it doesn't. Not sure which it is yet today.

Beautiful morning today.  Yesterday we had a series of thunderstorms roll thru, each one worse than the last.  It would be really nice for about an hour, then a thunderstorm would rip thru with lots of wind, thunder, and lightning and a little rain; lasting about 20-30 minutes.  Then nice for about an hour until the next t-storm rolled thru.  Lots of reports of downed trees and power lines.

At one point about 3 PM I needed to run into GR for fencing supplies (working on the pasture fence during the lulls between storms).  On the way in I saw a tree leaning against a power line and smoking.  I pulled off the road, called 911 and reported it. By the time I got off the phone there were flames on the ground.  Another guy in a pick-up stopped, grabbed the bed liner from his truck and started beating out flames (very windy at this point) I ran across the road and helped him until we had the flames pretty much confined to the area right under where the sparks were falling.  Sometime during this the GRPD pulled up and sat there watching us.  When we had the flames confined to the one small area he yelled at us to get out of there, the GRFD was on the way and he didn't want to see us get caught by the power line if it came down.  Well, we didn't want to get caught by the power line either, we had been watching it and talking about as we beat down the flames.  So we beat feet as fast as we could and got out of there.

Drove by about 8 PM, looked like the line didn't break.  The tree was chopped into 10-15 foot sections, and the burned area on the ground was about twice as big as when we left, but they contained it.

Drove around a bit more.  The last of the storms had passed, none on the horizon anyways.  Saw several other places with downed power lines and lots of downed trees.

Found out what caused the major power outage the other day.  Two mating seagulls bridged a main transformer.

I put the rain gauge out on Thursday.  With all those thunderstorms we barely had enough rain to try to read, like maybe 1/8 inch.

Todays forecast is for clear and bright.

I noticed on my cruise last night that gas fell to 3.679.  Whooppee.

Been doing a bit of digging on SAN, NAS, iSCSI, and similar. I'm trying to move the servers at the network from a whole bunch of disparate boxes with DAS to blades with iSCSI connect to a SAN, and Management doesn't understand the need. I am trying to learn enough about the subject so that I can explain it to the non-technical types in such a way that they can understand what I'm trying to accomplish.

The weather yesterday afternoon and this morning is beautiful, might have made it to 60 yesterday and it's mid 40's this morning and clear. Forecast is for all hell to break loose tonight with 3-4 inches of rain expected tomorrow and then heavy snow on Friday into Saturday.

I was hoping to take the W-6 out and plow the 10 acre field Saturday; with this forecast doesn't look too likely. I want to get that field plowed and seeded for hay soon. We paid $8 a bale for SMALL square bales of clover hay, $7 for a large square bale of timothy hay before that. No more square bales within 50 miles that we know of right now. 1200 lb round bales are going for $150 now. The pasture is starting to green, but it will be at least a couple of weeks before we can put the animals out on it.

Guy I bought the W-6 from lost the gas cap a couple of years ago. He duct-taped a tuna can over the opening to keep dirt out. I went to the local Fleet & Farm store to get a new gas cap, I mean, how hard can it be to get one of these, it's the same on a Farmall and other IH tractors. Couldn't find one, not even a listing for one in the Stant book. So, I went searching the web for a gas cap to buy. Still couldn't find one. finally, I found http://ihgascap.com/index.aspx. If your equipment manufactured by International Harvester meets certain requirements they will send you a new gas cap for free. Seems the old ones could be hazardous to the health. My W-6 qualifies, I've got one on order, we'll see what happens.

Scrap metal is pushing $200 a ton, lots of folks out looking to pickup scrap cars and metal. And a year ago I had a terrible time getting my scrap pile hauled away (that I didn't want hauled away).

Gas still at 3.399 this morning, filled both vans.

Received coupons for A-D TV converter boxes, went to wally-world to buy a couple. Coupons are for $40 off, converters sell for $50. Our store is sold out and not likely to get more before they move to the new super store in 2 weeks.

To work!