Sitting at a Freightliner - mega whatever place - it's huge.  They delivered us a truck that was not DOT fit for the road and I demanded that they install the items that would make it so.  Whoever heard of getting a brand new semi-truck delivered to your yard and the thing not being DOT compliant?  Ridiculous.  They tried to give me trouble on it at first, but I was having none of it and told them if they didn't fix it, for free, I would be contacting ADOT (Arizona Department of Transportation) and filing a complaint against them for having a tech that would certify a truck as road ready - that isn't road ready.

That changed their tune in a quick hurry, as it should.  Actually, I shouldn't have even had to say that, an outrageous "oversight" that should have been just, yes,sir, we will take care of it.  I even had to demand that it done be free of charge, they were going to charge us for work that should have already been completed!

Here's the point: If I get pulled over for a road-side inspection with a truck that has issues, such as the fire extinguisher not being mounted to the floor (one of the issues here), the DOT inspector can issue any of 3 things: a ticket, a warning or a fix-it ticket.  This is why I get excited about things like this.   Anyway, they are doing it right now as I type this, so hopefully good to go soon enough.

My son turns 20 tomorrow! UNBELIEVABLE!  Just amazing.  Time flies, but this is a bit much.  Your offspring hits the 20 ticker and you might as well classify your self as in grandpa stage, lol.  But it's very cool, actually, and he's a very, very good kid.  I'm very proud that he survived his High School years without getting into all the sex and drugs that are so prevalent now.  But, they were even more prevalent when I was in High School - and I can hardly say I came out of that era unscathed.

On the cusp of a 3-day weekend.  A few more hours of work today and then a full day tomorrow and then - 3 days off.  Because it's my son's birthday I am not going to go out of town.  He stated he wants to go see Star Trek on Saturday and by golly, I'm gonna be here to do that with him.  I can go out of town the beginning of next month.

Mark was in an accident on his motorized bicycle that basically destroyed the thing.  A woman driving a car cut him off and from his description of it, it was clearly her fault but it was also a hit-and-run type of thing.  What are you going to do. I fronted him the money to buy a new bike and he's busy taking the motor off the old one and attempting to install it on the new one.  He has cuts, bruises and scratches all over the place, not a pleasant experience.

But I already hate driving in the Phoenix area with all the distracted drivers who are paying literally no attention to the road, at all, for spurts of time while they peruse their stupid Smart Phones.  He's lucky he wasn't killed.  Car against bicycle? We all know how that turns out.

After everything that I am doing, I am only going to have around $2,500 left from the loan.  But, these were all things that needed to be done, excepting the car.  I spent $100 yesterday in a pay-in-advance thing to have it detailed at a car wash.  It's pretty dirty inside with all the dogs in and out of it over time.  I'm hoping they can get it nice and clean and smelling good in there again. They are also going to wash and buff out the paint on the exterior.  I thought it a fitting way to walk into an era - however long it lasts - without having to make a car payment every month.  Since the car is 9 years old, I am seriously considering reducing to minimum liability coverage.  It's worth about 4 and a half grand now if I were to sell it privately, I don't remember what the blue book said about trading it in.  I usually do not trade in vehicles as they usually find ways to rip you off.  Whatever they "give" you, they take back somewhere else.   To me, it's like you're just giving your car to them for nothing.

Anyway, I intend on keeping that money set aside for any emergencies.  The worst thing (hopefully the worst anyway) that could happen right now is the AC going out with that going-bad fan motor that I have not had time to deal with yet.  If it came down to it, yes, I would spend the $800 to have it fixed as we are heading into one of the hottest months of the year. I'm just hopeful it won't go out until I can get a new motor and get it over there and then probably find someone to install it for me.  If my neighbor behind me weren't warring with me, I would ask him to do it since that's his line of business, but I'll have to revert to Craigslist  to find someone doing that kind of job on the side.

Anyway, battery running low on my laptop, gotta get this input and get offa here.
ben

So, I started to back up my files yesterday after I got home from work - NOT.  Instead the AC repairman was waiting there for me when I pulled up into my driveway.  I had called them a week or so ago to schedule an appointment to come and do maintenance on the central AC unit in my house.  I want to know in advance of any problems that might be arising, not find out the hard way.

So, he goes and starts inspecting everything and tells me the coil is full of dirt.  Yes, I know that, that's why I called your company to send you out here to clean it.  I can clean the outside coil - just spray water into it and dislodge the dirt, I don't know how they do the inside one.

Well, he cleans out both of them - and now I know it's just a matter of getting a pump spray bottle and spraying water into them and using  special brush to clean off the fins plus a mixture of some special acid to clean deep inside them - all of which, of course, should be readily available at my company's heating and cooling division - and then proceeded to have him install the new thermostat I had bought.

He informed me that his company said it would cost $105 for the labor to install it.  Well, I was a bit reluctant on that one but I had him do it anyway, it's programmable and I fully intend on learning how to program it and have the AC set in this house automatically to 78 degrees during the daytime whether anyone likes it or not.  If they want it cooler, they can shell out the money to pay for the incremental amount of electricity it costs to keep it exceedingly cool in a large house in the middle of the summer.  That company wanted a whopping $250 to install a new one using one of their units!

The dude found all kinds of problems of which he corrected excepting the biggest problem: the fan motor on the condensor outside is going out.  He knew this because his meter showed it was drawing 10.8 amps instead of the 10.4 it is supposed to be drawing.  He then informed me it would cost $800 to replace it.  8 HUNDRED DOLLARS TO REPLACE A FREAKING FAN MOTOR?  I didn't say that but it certainly went coursing through my mind.  I informed him that he would not be doing that service on my on that nicely warm day and he replied okay, but I have no crystal ball, it could go out in a week, a month, a year, who knows.

Well hopefully I have enough time to get the info off the side of the thing and go buy my own fan motor and install it - myself.  I just got done replacing a fan motor on the roof air on my RV last year.  That was a complicated mess that I was proud of myself for having been able to accomplish.  This unit has four bolts holding it to the fan shroud and undoubtedly a plug in wiring harness.  There is no way I am paying $800 to replace that thing unless it goes out and I have no choice because it will need to be done right away.  This will be consuming my thoughts and my activities for the next few days as I attempt to buy the right one and then figure out how to install the thing.

He also recommended installing a hard-start diode or whatever it's called.  It super charges the system to start it up almost instantaneously versus the slow start up it takes when the system is starting and, subsequently, uses more energy and also puts more strain on the system.  I considered it until he told me over $300 to install it.  Screw that.  I'll figure something else out, such as finding a person that does side work.

Whatever the case, yesterday's endeavors put me back $400.  That's right, a "tune-up" for $400.  That included replacing the thermostat, though, and cleaning the inside coil pack, which was not included in the ad price that I had read (which I did not know at the time, I thought it WAS the coil they were cleaning).  I opted to have it cleaned because it was so filled with dirt, it's a wonder the air was cooling at all.  I now know how to do it, very simple actually, but I needed to see a "pro" doing it first to make sure I wasn't going to be inadvertently killing the system.

And that was that.  He was here almost 3 hours, so at least I feel like I got some "quality time" out of the deal, lol.

I didn't even get started on the computer file backup much less getting formatting the computer and installing Windows, which I can't find anyway. I hid the discs somewhere.  I hid them so well, I have no idea what I did with them!  LOL!!!

Oh well.  I'll find them eventually.  Just have to think about what I would do with them and then start looking in those places.

Off to work.

ben

Well, now that my debit card number has been stolen I figured the end of that kind of trouble.  Instead, I go into my email this morning and find a TOS notice on not 1, but 2 different email accounts.  Someone is going out of their way to mess with me.  I am running anti-virus to find any problems and I changed my passwords, but I think it's really time to think about dumping Windows and reinstalling.  The process includes clearing EVERYTHING off of your computer, both good and bad.  You start with a fresh version of Windows with nothing on it.

It's a pain, but I have this feeling that something is on my computer that doesn't belong there and the reason I feel that is because everything has slowed down considerably.  It is not because my cache and history and all that hasn't been cleaned, either.  Yes, I have defragged, I know all the stuff to do. Windows task manager doesn't really help, especially under services with so much stuff on there, who knows what belongs and what might not.  I have but one recourse that I know will eliminate any problem and that's a fresh install.

Whatta pain.  Gotta back up files and any pics you want to save you have to back up or send to yourself in an email.  Fortunately, I don't have a lot of files that I need to keep, but still.

Yet, I have to wonder who got what from me?  What did any of it say?  Did everyone on my lists get whatever was sent out?  Of course, I have received such junk from others in the past and the only thing that was in the email was a link - who knows where it takes you, I don't click on them.  Probably malware or something.  The whole thing is very disconcerting is all I can say about it.

Interesting: Spybot told me  it found problems but couldn't fix them.  Reallllllly.  What good is the blooming thing then?  Maybe that's part of some malware program - disable the anti-virus somehow.  I wouldn't know, I don't spend my life in an attempt to invade other people's computers and steal persona information.

Whatever.  Had to go straight to my checking account to make sure that wasn't compromised again, either.

Well, anyway, can't wait til' this work week is over.  3 day weekend.  Caleb turns 20 on Friday. TWENTY?!!!  Wow!

Well, fun-time over.

Work.

ben

And so I did. Went to Denny's that is.  It was the only meal of the day, I am sure.  I won't be hungry again until this evening, but I am going with George and his girlfriend to see the new Star Trek movie at the Imax theater at 5 something.  I doubt I will eat any theater food, not a big fan of it.  I was going to go with my son, but he wants to see it next weekend, so .......  I'll go twice, lol.

Denny's was packed with people and the kitchen was having a lot of trouble. I know this because I always sit at the counter.  You get much faster service and they keep your coffee refilled as often as you wish.  I got out my computer and started reading the news, got completely lost in a world of all kinds of stuff going on, including a jetliner that had to do a belly landing.  I've actually seen that happen up close and in person.  A twin-engine Piper Comanche.  The training instructor raised the landing gear just before touch down, intending to force the student to abort the landing, but.......it didn't quite work out that way.

I was treated to a very loud, exaggerated screeching noise and looked up in time to see the thing sliding on the ground.  Extensive damage, of course, including trashed engines by virtue of props that were still spinning on touchdown (and, of course, immediately stopped spinning as soon as the blades hit tarmac and did a lot of damage to that plane!).

Anyway, left there and went and looking at some more plants.  The stuff that died out last year in my front yard has left that entire side of the yard looking quite - barren.  I planted a yellow bell a couple of months ago, but I wanted more.  I finally found out what the tree is called that is growing on my property that wasn't planted, there are now 3 of them.  They're a version of an Acacia tree, desert version.  I asked the lady that was showing me around at the nursery who found the only one that they have.  She at first stated that they don't do well in Arizona.  I didn't buy that story but said nothing to her.  These trees are growing wild on my property, I didn't plant them and the tallest one is around 25 feet tall now.  The one that they had was in a 25 gallon box, but it was a scraggly looking thing and it wasn't even 7 feet tall.  $199 for it.  

Just saying, my wild growing trees are worth something, lol  I found a yellow bell plant - they are nice looking plants with yellow flowers - and I am going to plant it on the east side of my property.  I have enough of those kinds of plants growing over there now that eventually, the view of my neighbor's trashed property will disappear in a see of green and yellow. I wouldn't mind having a tree growing at the northeast end of the property, but I have the brakes on on that until I figure out what I want there.  I would, really, like one of those Acacia's, but I am not paying 200 for a scraggly looking thing. They have other versions of Acacia there, but they don't look as good and I simply don't like them.  So there.

Meanwhile, the feeling of having that car paid off and no more monthly payments is extremely good. It runs quite well, still looks good, has low mileage for a car that's 9 years old - 79,000 - and I don't see the need to have to buy another car for quite a while.  Hopefully.  I have upped my savings quotient - I have automatic transfers from checking to savings once a week - and am also doing a once monthly transfer.  No need to think about it, just done automatically.  This is to take most of that money towards the car payment and save it instead of finding new ways to stupidly spend money.  

Well, time to take a nap.  I don't want to be falling asleep in the theater, though I suspect this movie will have enough action in it to keep me from doing so anyway.  

ben

Woke up at 5 am this morning.  Fell right back asleep.  Woke back up at 6.  Fell back asleep and then didn't wake up until 8am!!  That's like sleeping half the day away for me!  lol  I was so tired by the time I got off work yesterday that there wasn't much energy to do much of anything.  But, uhhh, my appetite is mostly back and I think I am going to go out to have a bite - well make that a lot of bites - to eat something that tastes really good, probably chock full of fat and calories and have fun doing it : )








Wrote the partial entry below yesterday, thought I had posted it!
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Got up this morning - finally started being able to eat again yesterday late afternoon, btw, which helps energy levels immensely - thought about the reason I had taken out the loan, sat down at the computer and proceeded to pay the car off.  I had been mulling the idea as to whether to do it or not - but I decided that much less in payments per month?  Good thing.

I then paid a credit card off that had been closed for a while now.  That company simply went out of business and closed everyone's accounts.  I had it down to $150 anyway, wanted that payment gone as well.  The rest of my credit cards will stay as they are, not paying them all as part of the point of the loan was to have extra cash around for emergency use.  I get a bit nervous if, during the summer, I don't have at least enough extra funds to fix an expensive central AC problem.  I actually did have enough extra funds to cover such an expense - but then there would be absolutely nothing if something like that happened.

Yesterday I paid the mortgage up to current.  I get so sick of Midland Mortgage and the way they treat their customers on the phone.  If you are delinquent on your payment, they go through a spiel that goes on for 20 minutes.  They stop short of asking your blood type, but you get the picture.  They ask you a relentless barge-full of questions that are the same questions, every single month.  Today I stopped the lady short: If I am paying my mortgage up to current, then it is no longer delinquent and I should have to be subjected to this ridiculous tirade of information that your company has informed me about 15 times over.  Blah blah blah.

I would like to speak to your manager, please.  Sure, hang on a minute.  She comes back a few minutes later saying a manager is not available as they are currently "tied up" but she can take my payment.  I refused, saying: No, I am not going to sit here and listen to this annoying speech, I shouldn't have to and when I speak to managers, they don't do all of that nonsense.  She took my payments and that was that, lol.

Just because I am feeling better doesn't mean I am at 100% and so, when I was still out at 3pm in the truck today, going from one place to the next to the next, I was starting to get very tired and I was also, concordantly (I don't CARE if spell checker says that isn't a word, go look it up!), getting extremely irritable.  10 hours?  No thanks.  I don't care about overtime when I am not feeling good, I don't care if I don't get ANY the entire week.  I got back to the shop and I got OUT of there.  Came home and sat down in my chair, just a very rotten week as far as I'm concerned and will be easily forgotten.  Well, excepting paying off the car, a credit card and getting the mortgage paid up, lol.

I'm still not feeling that good, actually, but I am a bit better.  I am going to show up at work tomorrow and hope that I can make it through the work day.  My manager and I have been gone the first two days this week, which doesn't bode well for the state of affairs at the branch with an inside salesman running it - who has no time for it - and a driver from downtown  - who is pretty good actually but hasn't been thrust into the world of having to deal with everything.  If one manager gets sick downtown, another steps into fill their place.  In this case, my manager leaves and I make the decisions of what goes where, when.

It's a managerial role without the official title.  Stomach pain is almost gone but I have very little energy and I have been doing much of nothing since Saturday.  Carrying a bag of dog food for 30 feet wore me out yesterday.  I know, pathetic but that's what this illness has been doing to me: depriving me of my energy besides the pain and other unpleasant things that I need not go into here.  It's weeks like these where I could care less if I get any overtime.  Get the week over with and get to the weekend.  That's 3 work days from now, might as well be an eternity.

Jury's out on the transplanted tree.  I have no idea whether it's going to survive, but I should be able to tell if it's going to die by tomorrow, I would think.  I am going to dump some more root stuff on it from Miracle Gro.
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Extended time lapse.
Ate.  My navy bean soup sat there for quite a while and the salt in the ham apparently leeched out into the liquid as the ham itself in the soup was tasty and without a lot of salt taste.  I read online today that you can leech out some of the salt of a ham before cooking it by dumping it into water; sugar water; coca cola; apple juice; anything that doesn't have added salt to it.  I'll just try water next time, lol.

I'm around 60-65% at this point.  Not really that good for work but I am going tomorrow morning anyway.  My manager will be back - who will undoubtedly give me some junk about taking free time off.  Like, I wasn't really sick.  This is what I hate about working for any company: they don't necessarily believe you are sick when you say you are.  I have sick leave carry over every year, this is a clue that I don't take a lot of time off for sick leave.

At around 3:30 yesterday, I just decided it was time to go home regardless of how I feel.  Not only did I want my own bed and a long hot shower - I can take a hot shower in the RV but only a short one - I also had work to face today.  But I figured I probably wouldn't make work.  Anyway, my mom was all over that, you can't drive can you?  I dunno, mom, but I gotta get home.  Got everything including the dogs in the car and took off. Literally.  I would waste no time stopping anywhere, even for fuel - though that was getting to the low side.

I got to the top of a long mountain pass and came up on a Forest Service/green pickup sitting right next to the road with it's lights flashing.  Wondered what that was all about.  Then I come up to a man in khaki's with a Hawaiian Luau shirt on, he was doing the slow down motion with his hands. We were at a turn, couldn't see what was going on around the turn.  Well, around the turn was a very gruesome sight.  A huge crash with 8 vehicles, 2 of them pulling boats, one of the boats VERY large.  Those vehicles were all on the roadway still, minor damage.  It was the SUV that had somehow lurched over the top of the guardrail - there was no damage to any guardrail there - and was totally destroyed that got my attention.  There were a couple of bodies laying on the ground and no-one working on them - the medics were there - whether those folks were alive or dead I couldn't tell.  I found it odd that Highway Patrol was nowhere in sight - they are the agency that works those kinds of accidents and I found it VERY odd that they had a civilian out there directing traffic.  Why wasn't that dude in the Forest Service truck out there?

Got past that and just zoomed home.  My speedometer doesn't work, but I can tell you that I was not going 65 mph.  I was hurting and feeling it and I wanted the trip over with.

Got home, got the stuff out of the car, called the ops manager at work - my manager is on vacation didn't want to bother him - told him I was out of commission and no way I could come to work tomorrow and yes, I went straight back to bed.  It's now 8 am the next morning and I am just starting to feel a little better.  I haven't eaten anything in 39 hours, my stomach is growling like crazy but I am still afraid to eat anything.  I am finally starting to feel a little better.  My strength is coming back to me even though I haven't eaten anything.  I will get the nerve up later on to get some soup and see what happens with that.

I did have an incident on the way up there that I forgot to mention.  On the Forest Service road - which is a dirt road that can fit 2 vehicles coming at each other but just barely - I came around a turn and see this vehicle coming straight at me.  On the wrong side of the road and actually heading for the ditch on my side of the road.  This is what happens when you aren't paying attention to the road and are, instead, paying attention to your electronic gadgets or whatever might have been going on inside of that vehicle.  I was almost stopped before this driver finally swerved back to their side of the road, narrowly missing an engagement with a deep ditch that would have damaged the vehicle and caused it to get stuck.  I hate to admit it, but I gave the person a certain finger gesture that was out-of-line with my Christian beliefs, but I did it and very much so in the windshield to ensure that they would see it.  I was pissed - this could have been a head-on collision and no-one wins in those kinds of crashes.  The car had realty plaques on the side of it.

I made the decision and went through with it: I am taking out another loan on 401k.  Most would advise against it, all well and fine but I am doing it anyway.  I do not have enough reserve cash around in case something happens - ie: central AC breaks down.  It's already happened once and I was fortunate that I had enough funds to cover the repairs.  I'm going to pay the car off - I am sick of car payments and the 401k payment is FAR less than that car payment and at a MUCH less amount of interest - which I pay back to myself anyway.  I will make a payment-and-a-half on the mortgage and that will bring me up to current.  My credit score has plummeted because of this house payment situation.  At some point it will come back up - probably be a while - and then I will consider about getting a pickup.  Conventional wisdom is to take the car payment that you were paying and deposit that into a savings account every month and pay for your next vehicle in cash.

Great wisdom, don't know if I can wait that long, will try doing it and see how much I can save up.  I don't want or need a brand new pickup, but I don't want a piece of trash, either.  BTW, my car loan is down to $1,840.41.  I know what's going to happen when I pay it off: all kinds of offers will start rolling in to trade in my old car to get a nice, new one.   New vehicles have huge drawbacks around these parts:  extremely high registration rates and extremely high insurance rates.  Once my car is paid off, I will no longer need comprehensive insurance on it.  It is 9 years old, dunno if I should continue it or not.  I definitely only have minimum liability on the 1994 Buick.  I told my son if he crashes the car and it's his fault and the car is destroyed, that's the end of it.  Stay out of crashes! And he has.  He has been run into in parking lots while he's not even around and no, those people that did the damage didn't bother to leave a note, they just left.  Good thing I didn't catch them doing that is all I can say.  My son didn't even notice the damage.

I am a truck driver, I have to do thorough inspections every day.  It crosses over to my vehicles and even vehicles of friends/ acquaintances.  I don't necessarily say anything to them when I see their brand new pickup with a fresh ding on it, I just notice it.

Well this is enough.  My head is starting to doing it's thing again.  Almost like I have been drinking.  Funny the stuff that sickness does to your entire body.  I think it time to go lay back down again.

ben

My mobile broadband router is going on the blink.  It works and then quits and works and quits..........I'm up in the mountains for an over night stay. Getting up early - hopefully anyway - and getting back into to town in time to get to church by 8:45 am.

I am so incredibly tired today.  This work week just wore me out.  Manager gone and I'm dealing with a much larger load than I normally would have to, just a drain on the system.

________________________________

Well the incredible tiredness turned into severe sickness.  some sort of stomach flu.  I am stuck up here in the mountains - would have been home by now - with absolutely no energy, whatsoever, to be able to make the drive back.  It's  a bit afternoonish and if this situaiton doesn't change by say 5ish or so, I am calling work and telling them that tomorrow? I most definitely will not be there.

But I do wish I were home right now!

Well, the hour and a half freaking long wait to get my tires re-balanced was worth it.  I was a bit peeved because there wasn't that many other people in the waiting room and more importantly: only 2 other vehicles in a 6 car bay.

They did not attempt to sell me a new tire to replace the used one I had bought there.  I sat there for such a long time I drained the battery down to 15% - which is when it shuts itself off - on my lap top and then put on my sunglasses and started to take a nap.  I fully expected them to come up with some sort of sales pitch - not saying Discount Tire is fraudulent or otherwise deceptive, but they are in business to sell tires and make money, not give away free tire rotations only - but they did not.

Instead, they pulled the car up front, the dude came in and told me that all 4 tires had been out of balance, 2 of them extremely much so.  I say that was good to hear because that simply means nothing else needs to be done and I didn't pay a penny to them today, the used tire is still good - and looks good btw, still lots of tread on it - so off I went.  I was going to get on the freeway when passing by a gas station that had changed names.  Sitting at a red light at the corner, I saw the sign: oil change only $15.99.  I did some turns to go back and then went in.

My "Oil Level Low" light came on the other day and did so a few months ago as well.  There is a small, slow oil leak. It's going to cost $600 to have it fixed - just replacing a bunch of gaskets but the labor is the killer because half the engine has to be taken apart.  Okay, 1/3rd of it.  Right now, I have no plans to fix it.  Only if/when it becomes a leak that I can see on the ground, then I will have to deal with it.  If I really had the motivation, I could do it myself.  I have done enough total engine rebuilds in my life, I just haven't done anything that extensive in quite a long time and a bit nervous about attempting it in my driveway.  I will wait until Caleb is gone for the summer and his/my car is parked in the driveway before attempting it. If I screw it up somehow, at least I will have something to drive, lol.

I have quite a lot of comment I would like to speak about the Obama administration and the now-labeled "Benghazi-Gate" per Fox News anyway and also this situation with the IRS admitting they targeted Tea-Party groups.  But it makes me mad, really mad to think about what this administration is doing to our nation so I have to just back off, take a breath and put it out of my mind.  Obama can't be President forever, thank God, but I wonder about the damage done before he exits office.

My mom sent me a pic of a very long snake.  It was slithering into a hole next to her porch in the back of her house.  Black and white the thing was.  I don't like snakes, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want them around if they are eating unwanted guests such as rodents.  Well, I looked it up and this thing is a King Snake and upon further investigation, those snakes actually EAT other snakes! Including Rattlesnakes!!!  Well done, Mother Nature and God, lol, that's a good one to have around me-thinks.  My mom was of the same mind.  She hates snakes but she let this one go - otherwise she would be out there with her .22 pistol attempting to fill it full of snake shot.  Lol.  Cracks me up to think the only time I ever saw her trying to kill a rattler with that thing, it was doing nothing to that snake, or if it was, it certainly wasn't anything visible.

Oh-ohhhh. The Hummingbird that owns my property is out there whining about the feeder being empty.  It is getting drained REALLY fast.  There HAS to be more than just that one bird feeding off of it.  It sits there and chirps at me when I procrastinate on refilling it.  NO, I am dead serious, that little bird owns my property, pays all of my bills and has a robotic maid serving me meals.  It always tells me about it when that thing is emptied out.  Which I just filled it up, what a week and a half ago? That's really fast for a bird that small! Gotta figure out what else is feeding on it. If it's other Hummingbirds, oh well, if it's other kinds of birds, they can go find some other source of nutrition.  It's not leaking or, obviously, there would be a lot of red stains on the ground below.  Nothing.

My plan is to go up to the property sometime in the morning, but plans can be changed by circumstances, we all know that!

ben