Much More Work Than Anticipated

The new pond, firing it up and getting it going, that is.

That's because I am going to have to move around all of my filters to make this feasible.  I have enough filters, yes, but - emptying them, cleaning them, moving them with the hose and pump - it'll be tomorrow by the time I have that finished as there is a lot of other things I want to get done around here as well.

Not sweating it, I'll get it done, just that my dad is coming over here on Tuesday and I want the place spic and span, including a fresh carpet cleaning. 

So, I finally did it.  I posted the notice. 
I was going to do it a month or more ago, I just thought I might be pushing it by doing so.
What notice?
Concerning the use of my washing machine and dryer.  I came home yesterday to find the water temp setting on hot wash AND hot RINSE.  TOTALLY unecessary, a HUGE waste of electricity in heating up more water, NOT going to continue to happen. 

The notice was basically this:  2 free loads per week, $1.50 for each and every load after that.  ANY load, whether the freebie or not, that is washed using HOT rinse will incur an extra added fee of $.050.  I cannot ever remember any laundromat having machines that have hot rinse - and I have been to several.  I don't even know why they would build a machine with hot rinse, I wish this one didn't have it. 

Of course, I could eliminate hot water altogether on that machine and simply tie the hot water line into the cold water line.  Trickery? Perhaps, but cold water wash and cold water rinse will do the job perfectly fine in most cases.  If clothes are extremely dirty, I can see using hot water wash, but still, no hot water rinse.  Basically, I have one tenant that does up to 8 loads of laundry a week.  That's right, eight loads for ONE person.  She does very small loads of wash, wasting entire wash cycles when she could and should be doing full loads.  Perhaps in the case of whites and wanting to keep them separate do I see the need for extreme separation, but this is ridiculous. 

I haven't written up the second notice:  leaving computers on 24 hours a day.  I have spoken individually with everyone here about not leaving them on all the time - they consume enough electricity that when you add it all up:  4 computers could be costing as little as $60 to run 24 hours a day and up to $360.  Well, I'm pretty sure it's not $360, I am headed for an electric bill this month of around $300.  AC is still on every day is the primary culprit, yes, but excessive laundry use is the other. 

I did make a concession, though.  If a person wants to do the 3rd or 4th or however many loads after the initial 2 free loads by using cold water wash and rinse only and using the clothes line to dry them, be my guest, it's on the house.  Yes, the machines consume electricity without even using hot water, but - the real culprits are hot water and an electric  dryer that is usually run 70 minutes to dry clothes. 

I think I'll wait on handing out computer notices until I see the effect of quashing 10, 15 "extra" loads per week - that one tenant is not the only culprit here, though she is definitely the biggest culprit. 

Of course, electric use will go way down - hopefully by next month, after the AC system is shut down for the winter.  Open the windows, air the place out, let the fresh, polluted Phoenix air come wafting in.  We have pollution problems here, not as bad as LA, but enough that during the winter especially, high pollution advisories are doled out frequently.  On those days, they do not allow the use of wood burning fire places and actually have fire place police running around, pulling up in front of people's homes and writing up tickets.  Yes, you read that right, they actually have people going around writing out finable tickets.  I don't have a fireplace so it doesn't effect me, but, the city budgets around here are out of control and not enough money (wouldn't it be nice if they just figured out ways to cut BACK on spending instead of continuing to run all kinds of programs that we cannot afford) to run them, perhaps they will do away with this stuff - I somehow doubt that the fines being paid compensate for the amount of money to actually run such a program.

10 hour interval here as I got busy with the ponding stuff and it went on all day long.
Shutting down even a small pond is not small business.  I had NO idea that I had put THAT many plants in that little thing!  I mean, it was totally cool looking, but, I just didn't think there was that much in there.  Take all of that out and put it in the large pond. 

Next, catch the large goldfish while at the same time pumping the pond water into a 5 gallon buck to be dumped into the newly started large pond - have at least some cycled water in there.  The large goldfish took about 45 minute to catch with everything else going on. 

Next was the REALLY hard part: attempting to catch all of this very LITTLE fish in there.  The size of minnows and smaller, there were at least a hundred of them in there.  Me? I'm not going to lose a single fish, even an itty-bitty thing if I can help it.  I would  take the net and feed it through there, get some in there and dump them into a 5-gallon bucket.  This went on for quite a while. 

I didn't notice that some of them were jumping out of the net.  Movement on the ground caught my eye and I saw at least 10 of them little buggers flipping around down there.  I picked all of them up and dumped them into the bucket.

Realizing this method I was using wasn't going to work, I took a smaller pump and started pumping all the water  out of that pond.  Down to less than an inch of water, I turned the pump off and removed it.  I then picked the pond up and got the water pooled into one end.  20 swipes with the net to get those little things. I was dumping the water that was straining out through the net onto the ground.  I got the amount of water down to almost nothing and poured it into the bucket.

My issue was not putting that stuff into the new pond. 

Now, I start swiping the net through the 5-gallon bucket, getting a lot of fish on each swipe, dumping the water out of the net onto the ground each time, putting the little fishies into the pond on each attempt.  Time after time after time until it was down to almost no water in the bucket and yes, I dumped the rest of it into the pond.  Little fishies are as important as giant fishies in any water environment.

This is half the day doing this.  The goldfish had been in there quite a while after I  got done with the little fishies.  Now, I'm thinking about getting excess amount of fish from the 2 remaining ponds into this much larger one.  I figured the Koi would be okay.  So, the "big" pond that has them in it - well, it was time to get them out.  Just try to catch a 16 inch Koi in net that is designed to catch 4 inch at max fish. 

6 Koi to catch, pain the rear.  Koi make themselves very difficult to catch, much harder than goldfish.  Catching those 6 fish took quite some time.  I did get all of them - they all hang out together and I didn't want to separate them.  The rest of the fish I left in there.  Next, to the turtle pond.

I wanted to get 4 or 5 of the goldfish out there, pretty easy, really,didn't take too long. 

After that? NOTHING.  That took much longer than I expected - like all day long. I  didn't get the half of the rest of the stuff I wanted to get done around here today and that is not good.  I have a full load on my hands tomorrow.

Anyway, this entry is done.

G'day or more appropriately, G'nite.

ben

Friday

Did you watch the Angle/Reid debate last night? I had forgotten about it, was flipping through channels when the light when on: Oh, YEAH, that should be on now! Sure enough, it was on CSPAN. I missed the first 25 minutes of it, yes, but the part I saw? Hilarious!! Love this stuff. From where I'm sitting, Angle blew Reid right out of the water.

But, my perspective may be skewed. After watching Reid and Pelosi on their high horses, ignoring American sentiment against the health care bill and them pushing it through anyway, I don't care if they both just get voted right out of politics - forever.

So, the end of the week, temps are supposed to start cooling back down again (we'll see about that one!). I have "high" plans to get that pond going this weekend. I wanted to wait until I had a full day to start on it in case I run into problems. I mean, getting home from work and having several hours of daylight left might be enough, but I just got this feeling that I better wait until Saturday and have a full day, weekend if necessary, to ensure I have ample "problem-solving" time.

But, I am psyched about it and can't wait to get that big pond up and running.

Good grief. Another truck driver showing up early on Friday morning. I should have locked the door behind me coming in here.

Well, anyway, don't be this guy: Passes his driving test, drops the official off and then, thinking he has the gear selector in reverse but actually having it in drive, he crashes INTO the DMV office!! Oh am I ever-so-loving glad my son didn't do THAT at HIS driving test!

I'm getting all kinds of advice on what to get on a new computer, one "geek" told me this: Whatever you do, make sure you get the BEST video graphics card that you can afford. Without a good graphics card, you have nothing.

Okay, I did not know that. I do know that I have seen those cards going into the $200 plus range.

I'm thinking getting a new computer? Might be a while. There is no point in building something that isn't much better than what I already have. 8 gigs of ram, minimum 750 gig harddrive, that video card, a good processor. Like, WHAT is a good processor? So many opinions I don't have a clue. Dual core this, quad core that.

Oh well. I won't be doing anything about that until I get that insurance check - which allegedly is in the mail. If that and what's left over from the bonus doesn't amount to enough, probably dump it into my ING savings account and let it sit there until I do have enough.

Ummm, work day approaches and today>? Plenty to do.

G'day.

ben