My dad called me at work - wanted me to stop by and pick him up on the way home from work. Millie - his wife - was not feeling too well and didn't want to go anywhere. They ARE older folks - I don't get too hyped up about the older generation doing whatever makes them happy, regardless of what the might mean to plans that have been made.
So, I stopped at Walmart - I have one good pair of jeans and one pair of dress slacks and that's IT for pants. I have several pairs of blue jeans with holes or rips in them. Oh, dog food, roach killer, new windshiel wipers for both cars.........ummmm, oh and more pond clear. I usually only need to use "Pond Clear" at the start up of a pond. After it clears the pond out, it's not necessary again as the filtration unit keeps it clear from that point forth.
Stopped at their hotel - a nice place and visited with both of them for about an hour and then took dad to my house. He wanted to see all of these plants and trees I have been talking about forever. He was pleasantly surprised to see the fish ponds. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mark had done even more cleaning in the kitchen. First impressions - sort of anyway, my dad was here a couple of years ago I guess it was with Millie - are always important. I mean, between Mark and I cleaning in this place for 3 solid days, it's freaking awesome in here. I did not ask Mark to do anything in here - he saw what I was doing this weekend in spending hours and hours of relentless cleaning and picked up where I left off.
We left and went to dinner without Millie, who wasn't feeling up to coming. Spent a good hour and a half, maybe it was 2 hours there, visiting. Dad is very interested in what is going on with Caleb, who is beginning to show more and more confidence in himself and speaking up - not in an obnoxious way either - about what's going on in his life and what he's up to. It was a great time and I hope to make it down there either Thanksgiving or Christmas. I don't know that Caleb will be able to go either time - that's up to him. He has work and that is very important to him as it should be. I don't know that it takes more precedence than family, but I consider the economy and the fact that people my age that are unemployed are willing to take the same job he got. Keeping a good impression with an employer is even more important now than ever. Again, I'll leave that up to him and hold no ill will with whatever decision he makes.
For me, my dad is getting old - but - he looked good today. A bit slower, yes, but still very talkative, looked healthy, I was glad to see him still getting around.
We left - Caleb went to his mom's house, I took dad back to the hotel, but I went back inside with him as I wanted to bid Millie a goodbye. She's a good lady and I'm glad she and dad found each other. They get along well - at least what I see when the doors aren't closed - but it is a good match I think and they have been together awhile now. Quite a while, actually. We talked a while longer but I could see they were both wearing out so I bid them well, a safe trip home and hopefully see each other at Christmas or Thanksgiving.
That was it. I'm pooped. I drove all day long today, it was nonstop and grueling. Not complaining, just saying that getting up early, working, stopping at stores, going out? I'm not 20. But it felt good anyway. It felt even better today at a jobsite. Most jobsites we have don't have forklifts,they have fork attachments that are put on backhoes. One of the forks was bent so that getting both forks into a pallet was almost impossible. On the last pallet, they operater basically destroyed the pallet and all the very heavy parts were laying all over the bed of the semi.
The backhoe operator and his helper - both in THEIR 20's - grimaced and started complaining, what are we going to do now? I smiled - easy, put the bucket of the backhoe up next to the trailer and we will throw the parts in there. These are people that don't know me. I have seen the look before - WHO is actually going to end up doing the work? These aren't 2 pound parts, they're 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 50 pounds and up, a varying allotment of different sized things.....and as if I'm just going to stand there, an "old" guy and direct them. Not at all. But I always read that. I got up on the trailer and started pickup up those things by 2's, chucking them into the bucket and going at a rapid pace until it was done. The helper was also up there - going about an 1/8th of the pace I was. I thought nothing of it, this goes on everywhere. When I was through, this guy exclaims: "HOW did you do that so FAST?".
Took me by surprise. Didn't know what to say to that, so I just remarked that we have to throw this stuff around all day long. I thought about it later, he was paying me a compliment and for that I am appreciative. For good health I am far MORE appreciative.
It's the end of the day. I hope tomorrow is busy, but there was only one thing in our truck routing system and I believe that is being put off as the vendor has not finished manufacturing the part needed for our contractor yet and may not have it done until Friday.
I would get into politics - the Obama administration inviting the "president" of Iran to talks about Afghanistant is unconcsiounable, but why ruin the rest of a good day? Go to bed in peace.
G'nite.
ben
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Tuesday
Came home yesterday to find that Mark - the trailer tenant - had finished in the kitchen that of which I did not have time to finish. This guy is good at cleaning, this is a fact.
He took down the blinds, took them outside, cleaned them off with a hose, cleaned the windows, went over the floor again - after I had just done it the day before - very nice.
If I could get a hold of a good trailer for those people - I mean a nice one - I would. They are welcomed to stay as long as they want to. I'm charging them very low rent and they do a lot of work around the house - nice setup. Their plans to get into their own apartment have been totally dashed and the only way I can for them to get into their own place is that one of them finds a job.
Anyhoo, today is the visit with my dad and his wife. They are coming over sometime this afternoon.
So, on a day when you hope there is less work to do so you can get off early? Not happening. 5 deliveries and a pickup downtown equal all day long. Well, not ALL day, just meaning I'll be lucky to get off at my regular time.
My new pond it's semi-permanent occupants are doing well. The water is a bit cloudy - added some unwanted stuff to the water when I shut the other pond down, there was debris floating around in there that got transferred to the new setup. The much larger pump and filtering system is slowly dealing with it, plus I put some stuff in there made specifically to clear up the water. It clumps stuff together which basically ends up at the bottom of the pond. I have an 800 gallon per hour pump down there that basically forces everything on the bottom to it - and it does get clogged up for all the leaves and just it sucks into it. Still lots of work to do on it, but at least it's up and running.
I was wondering what all the hoopla about Obama calling voters "scared" was - well I read the statements for myself. "said Republican candidates are "playing on fear" and suggested voters are falling for it."
In other words, voters are too dumb to figure this stuff out by ourselves, which is why we need even bigger government, the Feds can take ALL of our money and we will just sit there like animals in cages waiting to be fed. I can see why people are outraged, personally? I consider the source. Obama hasn't got a clue what he's doing and if anyone is fearful, it's HIM losing complete control of the House and Senate. Of course, he has had a free ride, it's probably going to change, so now HE is using the same tactics - well everyone else is, really.
The elections are only a couple of weeks away, I can't wait. I hope the polling places are jam-packed with people, the more the merrier. It would be nice, for a change, if a majority of voters showed up so that it isn't a small percentage of American society telling the rest of us how it's going to be run. That's the jist of it. Too many people are too lazy, unmotivated to take a few minutes to cast a vote. Then these same people complain about everything that has to do with politics. Gonnnnnnnnnng!! (The Gong Show) - you lost your right to complain when voting day came and went and you didn't bother.
As for today, work day approaches and I'm going to jump right into and try to get all of this done as fast as possible. The earlier off work today, the better.
G'day.
ben
He took down the blinds, took them outside, cleaned them off with a hose, cleaned the windows, went over the floor again - after I had just done it the day before - very nice.
If I could get a hold of a good trailer for those people - I mean a nice one - I would. They are welcomed to stay as long as they want to. I'm charging them very low rent and they do a lot of work around the house - nice setup. Their plans to get into their own apartment have been totally dashed and the only way I can for them to get into their own place is that one of them finds a job.
Anyhoo, today is the visit with my dad and his wife. They are coming over sometime this afternoon.
So, on a day when you hope there is less work to do so you can get off early? Not happening. 5 deliveries and a pickup downtown equal all day long. Well, not ALL day, just meaning I'll be lucky to get off at my regular time.
My new pond it's semi-permanent occupants are doing well. The water is a bit cloudy - added some unwanted stuff to the water when I shut the other pond down, there was debris floating around in there that got transferred to the new setup. The much larger pump and filtering system is slowly dealing with it, plus I put some stuff in there made specifically to clear up the water. It clumps stuff together which basically ends up at the bottom of the pond. I have an 800 gallon per hour pump down there that basically forces everything on the bottom to it - and it does get clogged up for all the leaves and just it sucks into it. Still lots of work to do on it, but at least it's up and running.
I was wondering what all the hoopla about Obama calling voters "scared" was - well I read the statements for myself. "said Republican candidates are "playing on fear" and suggested voters are falling for it."
In other words, voters are too dumb to figure this stuff out by ourselves, which is why we need even bigger government, the Feds can take ALL of our money and we will just sit there like animals in cages waiting to be fed. I can see why people are outraged, personally? I consider the source. Obama hasn't got a clue what he's doing and if anyone is fearful, it's HIM losing complete control of the House and Senate. Of course, he has had a free ride, it's probably going to change, so now HE is using the same tactics - well everyone else is, really.
The elections are only a couple of weeks away, I can't wait. I hope the polling places are jam-packed with people, the more the merrier. It would be nice, for a change, if a majority of voters showed up so that it isn't a small percentage of American society telling the rest of us how it's going to be run. That's the jist of it. Too many people are too lazy, unmotivated to take a few minutes to cast a vote. Then these same people complain about everything that has to do with politics. Gonnnnnnnnnng!! (The Gong Show) - you lost your right to complain when voting day came and went and you didn't bother.
As for today, work day approaches and I'm going to jump right into and try to get all of this done as fast as possible. The earlier off work today, the better.
G'day.
ben
Monday, October 18, 2010
Monday 10/18/2010
If weekends are supposed to be laid back, relaxing and a time of rejuvenation, then nix this last one. I spent all day Saturday getting the new pond up and dealing with other ponds and I spent all day Sunday cleaning and also moving pond filters around, plus cleaning them.
I am glad to have all that stuff done, yes, but wow, that was a lot of work. As for my dad's visit tomorrow, just a few more things I need to get done around the house and I will be finished with that. As for the ponds, I removed all fish from the turtle pond and put them in both the big pond and medium-sized one and am considering shutting the turtle pond down.
I just don't like these turtles. They are not friendly, they don't come up to you at all, like I have seen in other ponds, they are always hiding at the bottom, they are useless creatures as far as I'm concerned. I have seen a couple of ads on Craigslist from people wanting red earred slider turtles, I am teetering on giving them a call and seeing if they want to come get them.
That would knock it down to 2 ponds up and running and for now, that's all I want. The small feeder pond I was using up until I did the big switch I am considering just getting rid of it. It is in bad condition - I bought it from a family who had had small kids playing in it like it was a playground (fortunately I got it cheap and I DID get some use out of it) - they did some damage in terms of structural integrity and portions of it collapse when filled with water. It still holds water, yes, but I really don't think I want to continue using it. That would leave me with 4 ponds, 2 of them up and running. At max, now that I have a bit better grasp of what I am doing here, I want 3 ponds going. So, probably get rid of another one and be down to 3 of them.
I am in no hurry to figure that out right now, definitely NOT in a hurry to start trying to dig out another pond hole. Great exercise, sure, but I am not exactly motivated. I do want to put one out front - a small one but again, not high on my list of priorities. Have to figure out what to do with the dirt that is pulled out of the ground and THAT definitely poses a problem. I'll sit out there for a while and just look at the situation and try to figure out what my next move is.
Meanwhile, I need to get a power station going out there so, that is probably my next small project. The big pond isn't exactly "done" yet, but it is up and running, the intended result for this weekend's exertions.
They were saying on the news on the way into work this morning that there is rain coming. Perhaps, but from looking at the radar, it isn't that much rain. Still, I haven't been watering hardly at all lately - my plants that is - as long as they look okay, I am not watering them right now to get a bit of a reprieve from high water bills.
LOTS of work to do today in our truck routing system. In fact, it should take the entire day to finish all of that. Which is fine with me. If there is one thing I hate, it's starting a work week on a Monday with NOTHING to do.
With that, I'm outta here. Got a few minutes to take a look at the political bantering - apparently the Dems have conceded that they are going to lose at least a dozen seats and Obama is whining about how nobody listens to him......lol.
G'day.
ben
I am glad to have all that stuff done, yes, but wow, that was a lot of work. As for my dad's visit tomorrow, just a few more things I need to get done around the house and I will be finished with that. As for the ponds, I removed all fish from the turtle pond and put them in both the big pond and medium-sized one and am considering shutting the turtle pond down.
I just don't like these turtles. They are not friendly, they don't come up to you at all, like I have seen in other ponds, they are always hiding at the bottom, they are useless creatures as far as I'm concerned. I have seen a couple of ads on Craigslist from people wanting red earred slider turtles, I am teetering on giving them a call and seeing if they want to come get them.
That would knock it down to 2 ponds up and running and for now, that's all I want. The small feeder pond I was using up until I did the big switch I am considering just getting rid of it. It is in bad condition - I bought it from a family who had had small kids playing in it like it was a playground (fortunately I got it cheap and I DID get some use out of it) - they did some damage in terms of structural integrity and portions of it collapse when filled with water. It still holds water, yes, but I really don't think I want to continue using it. That would leave me with 4 ponds, 2 of them up and running. At max, now that I have a bit better grasp of what I am doing here, I want 3 ponds going. So, probably get rid of another one and be down to 3 of them.
I am in no hurry to figure that out right now, definitely NOT in a hurry to start trying to dig out another pond hole. Great exercise, sure, but I am not exactly motivated. I do want to put one out front - a small one but again, not high on my list of priorities. Have to figure out what to do with the dirt that is pulled out of the ground and THAT definitely poses a problem. I'll sit out there for a while and just look at the situation and try to figure out what my next move is.
Meanwhile, I need to get a power station going out there so, that is probably my next small project. The big pond isn't exactly "done" yet, but it is up and running, the intended result for this weekend's exertions.
They were saying on the news on the way into work this morning that there is rain coming. Perhaps, but from looking at the radar, it isn't that much rain. Still, I haven't been watering hardly at all lately - my plants that is - as long as they look okay, I am not watering them right now to get a bit of a reprieve from high water bills.
LOTS of work to do today in our truck routing system. In fact, it should take the entire day to finish all of that. Which is fine with me. If there is one thing I hate, it's starting a work week on a Monday with NOTHING to do.
With that, I'm outta here. Got a few minutes to take a look at the political bantering - apparently the Dems have conceded that they are going to lose at least a dozen seats and Obama is whining about how nobody listens to him......lol.
G'day.
ben
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Sunday 10/17/2010
Work started early this morning, and no, nothing on the ponds. The living room carpet needed cleaned and definitely cleaned it. That and the rest of the living room. There is a love seat in there that is in great condition - but I haven't been able to sell OR trade it for anything. I'm thinking of giving it away to get it out of here. It is out of place and I can't envision ever finding a way to incorporate it.
In reality, I need new carpet and at least one new recliner would be nice. A pipe dream, perhaps, but it gives me reason to continue saving.
I apparently forgot to pay the water bill last month (I could have sworn I did and I'm going to go looking through my checking account for such) and have been slammed with 2 months of a huge bill. Bye bye to the bonus of it's true. And, bye bye to any idea of getting a new computer. Or not, who knows. Tenants are pretty much paying regularly now so it is feasible that I can still get ahead enough to get some of the stuff done that I need done.
I could also pay off the 401k loan and get another. It has around $600 left on it. Pay it off - have to wait 30 days to get another one but a couple of grand right now would be extremely helpful. At 4.25% interest it's the best deal around. Excepting, of course, compromising my retirement account. Haven't given any real thought to it, would rather not, don't know. Again, wait and see what happens with tenants and if the check from the insurance company comes in - even if only $400 or $500 - it will still be a big boost.
Electric use IS on the way down, hopefully it will really take a plunge with getting some of these people and using Ben's Laundromat far more than necessary for one person to either stay within my new limits or - pay for the excessive use above and beyond rent. I threw this idea around with several people I know and I continued to get the same answer: with the rent you're charging and the fact that you don't ask extra for utilities, yes, by all means, do charge extra for laundry. In fact, the consensus was to not give ANY freebies away. I DID stop saying in my ads that laundry was also included in the cost of rent because I was getting tired of footing that bill.
As for the house, I still have quite a lot to do, but I also have to get some stuff on the ponds done as well. I have to switch the 3 filters around and that will take at least an hour. I want to clean the carpet in the hallway and my bedroom and give my bathroom a spic and span cleaning as well as my bedroom.
Yes, it will be a full, long day to say the least. Gotta run up to the store and get some more paper towels, laundry detergent and softener..................and with that, I'm outta here.
Happy Sunday.
ben
In reality, I need new carpet and at least one new recliner would be nice. A pipe dream, perhaps, but it gives me reason to continue saving.
I apparently forgot to pay the water bill last month (I could have sworn I did and I'm going to go looking through my checking account for such) and have been slammed with 2 months of a huge bill. Bye bye to the bonus of it's true. And, bye bye to any idea of getting a new computer. Or not, who knows. Tenants are pretty much paying regularly now so it is feasible that I can still get ahead enough to get some of the stuff done that I need done.
I could also pay off the 401k loan and get another. It has around $600 left on it. Pay it off - have to wait 30 days to get another one but a couple of grand right now would be extremely helpful. At 4.25% interest it's the best deal around. Excepting, of course, compromising my retirement account. Haven't given any real thought to it, would rather not, don't know. Again, wait and see what happens with tenants and if the check from the insurance company comes in - even if only $400 or $500 - it will still be a big boost.
Electric use IS on the way down, hopefully it will really take a plunge with getting some of these people and using Ben's Laundromat far more than necessary for one person to either stay within my new limits or - pay for the excessive use above and beyond rent. I threw this idea around with several people I know and I continued to get the same answer: with the rent you're charging and the fact that you don't ask extra for utilities, yes, by all means, do charge extra for laundry. In fact, the consensus was to not give ANY freebies away. I DID stop saying in my ads that laundry was also included in the cost of rent because I was getting tired of footing that bill.
As for the house, I still have quite a lot to do, but I also have to get some stuff on the ponds done as well. I have to switch the 3 filters around and that will take at least an hour. I want to clean the carpet in the hallway and my bedroom and give my bathroom a spic and span cleaning as well as my bedroom.
Yes, it will be a full, long day to say the least. Gotta run up to the store and get some more paper towels, laundry detergent and softener..................and with that, I'm outta here.
Happy Sunday.
ben
Saturday, October 16, 2010
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
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
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
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Thursday 10/14/2010
Thursday
Anthony's mother calls me last night.
Was NOT expecting that one. She starts telling me how Anthony did not steal anything from my house - on and on and on. I reply I have him on video surveillance, a tenant witnessed him in there but forgot to tell here that one of his best friends also fingered him in the deal.
Anthony was with her, cussing in the back ground, calling me names and this and that. THAT portion of it was NOT unexpected. I was surprised, however, it his mother's calmness. She usually goes into a tantrum and starts cussing and getting mad. After I listened to all of this, I asked what the point of the phone call was.
Apparently they didn't want me calling the police. Too late and meaningless, the police aren't doing anything about this, I am getting an insurance check, that's it. There's nothing else to say. This conversation went back and forth for a while, I bid her well and got off of the phone. Contrary to rumors spread around the neighborhood, they are NOT living in an apartment somewhere, they are still homeless.
I can't possibly fathom the depths of earthly hell it must be to have THAT many people living in a hotel room. It's hard to understand how they are allowed to have that many people in there. The family itself is 10 people, but there are ALWAYS relatives and friends living with them.
Anyway, I just washed my hands of it, he is NOT coming back to my house, not that they said he wanted to, she wanted me to speak to Anthony. NOT. I could plainly hear him cussing me out in the background and calling me an idiot and other little lovelies, why on earth would I want to subject myself to that? No thanks.
Onto other things. I was going to start filling the big pond up with water yesterday, but I put that to a halt. This weekend I will do it. First I will put a little bit of fresh tap water in there and see if it's going to be level (or close enough anyway). If so, fill it up some more, to about the halfway point. When I get it there, it will be at the shelf point. The shelves are there for water plants.
If it still looks good, then I am going to pump the water from the other pond into it. It really isn't good, or so the experts proclaim, to be dumping fish into fresh water that isn't "aged". I dunno. I think that's for larger ponds where dumping additives into the water doesn't work because you would need too much of it. I have Pond Start which relieves shock and removes toxins or something like that. It's a small bottle but it doesn't take much with only 300 gallons.
I do hope this Reid/Angle debate is shown nationwide today, because I REALLY want to see this. It should be QUITE entertaining, especially if Reid makes another blunder - which he does frequently and regularly, like clockwork, in saying something racist, outrageous or just plain stupid. I have no interest in either one of them, I just think it will be wildly entertaining viewing. The polls show a dead heat and the unemployment rate in Las Vegas - where it's being held - is 14.4%. Give it another 5% and it's at Depression Era rates.
Meanwhile, the mortgage debacle continues to grow. Referring to procedural rules that apparently were ignored by those rubber-stamping foreclosures, pushing them through and forcing people out of their homes. Now, it appears, these people that were forced out have legitimate grief to be hacked out in the court system. This will get very interesting because of the ousted homeowners start winning these cases, WHAT is going to happen NEXT in all of this?
Nice to see all those miners got out alive and in relatively good condition. Shell shock coming out of that hole after 2 months of being stuck in it? Can't imagine. No wonder they have had psychologists and other experts helping them through the whole process.
Well, work day approaches. Nothing in the routing system to do, unfortunately, but, perhaps it will change - one can hope : )
G'day.
ben
Anthony's mother calls me last night.
Was NOT expecting that one. She starts telling me how Anthony did not steal anything from my house - on and on and on. I reply I have him on video surveillance, a tenant witnessed him in there but forgot to tell here that one of his best friends also fingered him in the deal.
Anthony was with her, cussing in the back ground, calling me names and this and that. THAT portion of it was NOT unexpected. I was surprised, however, it his mother's calmness. She usually goes into a tantrum and starts cussing and getting mad. After I listened to all of this, I asked what the point of the phone call was.
Apparently they didn't want me calling the police. Too late and meaningless, the police aren't doing anything about this, I am getting an insurance check, that's it. There's nothing else to say. This conversation went back and forth for a while, I bid her well and got off of the phone. Contrary to rumors spread around the neighborhood, they are NOT living in an apartment somewhere, they are still homeless.
I can't possibly fathom the depths of earthly hell it must be to have THAT many people living in a hotel room. It's hard to understand how they are allowed to have that many people in there. The family itself is 10 people, but there are ALWAYS relatives and friends living with them.
Anyway, I just washed my hands of it, he is NOT coming back to my house, not that they said he wanted to, she wanted me to speak to Anthony. NOT. I could plainly hear him cussing me out in the background and calling me an idiot and other little lovelies, why on earth would I want to subject myself to that? No thanks.
Onto other things. I was going to start filling the big pond up with water yesterday, but I put that to a halt. This weekend I will do it. First I will put a little bit of fresh tap water in there and see if it's going to be level (or close enough anyway). If so, fill it up some more, to about the halfway point. When I get it there, it will be at the shelf point. The shelves are there for water plants.
If it still looks good, then I am going to pump the water from the other pond into it. It really isn't good, or so the experts proclaim, to be dumping fish into fresh water that isn't "aged". I dunno. I think that's for larger ponds where dumping additives into the water doesn't work because you would need too much of it. I have Pond Start which relieves shock and removes toxins or something like that. It's a small bottle but it doesn't take much with only 300 gallons.
I do hope this Reid/Angle debate is shown nationwide today, because I REALLY want to see this. It should be QUITE entertaining, especially if Reid makes another blunder - which he does frequently and regularly, like clockwork, in saying something racist, outrageous or just plain stupid. I have no interest in either one of them, I just think it will be wildly entertaining viewing. The polls show a dead heat and the unemployment rate in Las Vegas - where it's being held - is 14.4%. Give it another 5% and it's at Depression Era rates.
Meanwhile, the mortgage debacle continues to grow. Referring to procedural rules that apparently were ignored by those rubber-stamping foreclosures, pushing them through and forcing people out of their homes. Now, it appears, these people that were forced out have legitimate grief to be hacked out in the court system. This will get very interesting because of the ousted homeowners start winning these cases, WHAT is going to happen NEXT in all of this?
Nice to see all those miners got out alive and in relatively good condition. Shell shock coming out of that hole after 2 months of being stuck in it? Can't imagine. No wonder they have had psychologists and other experts helping them through the whole process.
Well, work day approaches. Nothing in the routing system to do, unfortunately, but, perhaps it will change - one can hope : )
G'day.
ben
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wednesday
Bonus day.
Insurance company called on the theft - I get some money, not a whole lot. Better than nothing is all I could say to the insurance agent as the amount I am getting is enough to buy a used PS3, screw the Wii as I am not getting another one of those, the door in my bedroom is about $75 to replace and the gun was just a collector's piece.
Someone basically has a gun they cannot use, or if they do, it may blow up in their face. What they're giving me almost covers everything - almost, sort of. I mean, if I bought it all used instead of new, then yes, it comes close.
Oh well. One of those kids is now wanted for breaking into someone's car in my neighborhood on top of stealing that stuff from my house. That would be Darnell, the black kid down the street who, basically, needs a real attitude adjustment. I know just the thing to accomplish that - but - I would end up in jail since he's a minor and beating up a minor is hardly legal. No, instead, I will just watch this situation play itself out.
He is obviously continuing his thieving ways and as is the case with most thieves, you eventually get caught. I do not, however, want to see him walking up and down my street, ever. Period. He has not done that, but if I catch him anywhere near my house, it's going to get ugly. I can't really DO anything, but I can unleash some "kind" verbage.
So, am I going to buy another PS3? Honestly? With the help of my son (he has a job), we have already replaced it with an older, used version that I found on Craigslist, cheap. When not in use, it is left in the trailer tenant's - trailer. One of them is always there, no chance of it getting stolen. I think if anything else gets stolen by those punk kids, a switch is going to flip inside of me and I am not going to care what the consequences are. We're already at 2 breakin's, the 3rd would be the charm.
Anyway, getting off of the subject because yes, it is not very pleasant or uplifting, I got that pond in the ground yesterday. I mean, I have it pretty much the way it needs to be. I am going to take it out one more time, level off the bottom a bit more, put the liner inside of it and start filling it with water. If it appears level, done deal. That will free me up to finish other things and also to start on that electrical outlet project. I'm going to get a separate breaker box, put at least 2 15 amp breakers in it, maybe 3 and have at least 9 outlets coming off of it. The line feeding it is coming off the AC unit - plenty big enough to handle whatever.
Oh, so what to do with that insurance money. Well, first there's the bonus money, but I think I'm going to put a couple hundred in savings and the rest can finish getting caught up on bills. The insurance money will not quite cover a new computer, at least not the one I'm looking at, but it will come close. My old dinosaur computer continues to drive me crazy, it shuts itself off in the middle of doing something, just bizarre behavior. It's telling me it's sinking and I better get something to replace it and soon.
Now, I don't HAVE to have a new one, but I do want one with at least 8 gigs of ram and minimum dual core
processor. Buying it used, obviously, would allow me to buy something much better as long as it's in good condition. Used as in no more than a couple of years old, not 12 years old like the thing I am currently using.
HOW that machine has lasted THAT long with as much use as it gets, who knows.
That's that. I have lots of things in the financial pot that I either want to do or need to take care of and it sometimes consumes my thinking to the point I am not even cognizant of where I am or what I am doing. But, I have been that way all of my life- getting so consumed with thought that you become totally unaware of what's going on around you.
I have, on numerous occasions, come out of those trances only to find myself staring, totally unintentionally, at someone and they - looking back at me with a rather odd expression. Yes, well I probably would react the same way, lol.
As for today's work, there is a slew of stuff to do in there. Yesterday was good for working, too - I was busy ALL day long running around all over the place in both the pickup truck and the semi. Today is all semi stuff. Plus I need to re-run the ads on Craigslist for the stuff my company wants me to sell off for them. One guy is considering buying ALL of it and if he does, I get a $250 "spiff" they are calling it.
Anyway, I have a few minutes left before work and I want to read about the miners getting freed, the race in California where an aid called the opposing candidate a whore and apparently the GOP is going to spend more money on ads than - ever. I mean, how MUCH money do these people HAVE for this stuff? And what kind of mud-slinging will we be subjected to? I find that stuff to be a turnoff, frankly, get elected on the basis of your own merits, history and accomplishments. Alright, there is a place where I can see if someone has done something so bad or - as imo Obama in writing off the majority of the American public in forcing through health care even though most of us said no to it - totally dissing the electorate, then yes, that should be brought up. However, if you follow this stuff at all, you don't NEED it brought up, it is quite fresh in your memory and probably isn't going onto a memory shelf anytime soon, or, at least, until the next Presidential campaign comes,goes and hopefully a totally new president in there.
G'day.
ben
Insurance company called on the theft - I get some money, not a whole lot. Better than nothing is all I could say to the insurance agent as the amount I am getting is enough to buy a used PS3, screw the Wii as I am not getting another one of those, the door in my bedroom is about $75 to replace and the gun was just a collector's piece.
Someone basically has a gun they cannot use, or if they do, it may blow up in their face. What they're giving me almost covers everything - almost, sort of. I mean, if I bought it all used instead of new, then yes, it comes close.
Oh well. One of those kids is now wanted for breaking into someone's car in my neighborhood on top of stealing that stuff from my house. That would be Darnell, the black kid down the street who, basically, needs a real attitude adjustment. I know just the thing to accomplish that - but - I would end up in jail since he's a minor and beating up a minor is hardly legal. No, instead, I will just watch this situation play itself out.
He is obviously continuing his thieving ways and as is the case with most thieves, you eventually get caught. I do not, however, want to see him walking up and down my street, ever. Period. He has not done that, but if I catch him anywhere near my house, it's going to get ugly. I can't really DO anything, but I can unleash some "kind" verbage.
So, am I going to buy another PS3? Honestly? With the help of my son (he has a job), we have already replaced it with an older, used version that I found on Craigslist, cheap. When not in use, it is left in the trailer tenant's - trailer. One of them is always there, no chance of it getting stolen. I think if anything else gets stolen by those punk kids, a switch is going to flip inside of me and I am not going to care what the consequences are. We're already at 2 breakin's, the 3rd would be the charm.
Anyway, getting off of the subject because yes, it is not very pleasant or uplifting, I got that pond in the ground yesterday. I mean, I have it pretty much the way it needs to be. I am going to take it out one more time, level off the bottom a bit more, put the liner inside of it and start filling it with water. If it appears level, done deal. That will free me up to finish other things and also to start on that electrical outlet project. I'm going to get a separate breaker box, put at least 2 15 amp breakers in it, maybe 3 and have at least 9 outlets coming off of it. The line feeding it is coming off the AC unit - plenty big enough to handle whatever.
Oh, so what to do with that insurance money. Well, first there's the bonus money, but I think I'm going to put a couple hundred in savings and the rest can finish getting caught up on bills. The insurance money will not quite cover a new computer, at least not the one I'm looking at, but it will come close. My old dinosaur computer continues to drive me crazy, it shuts itself off in the middle of doing something, just bizarre behavior. It's telling me it's sinking and I better get something to replace it and soon.
Now, I don't HAVE to have a new one, but I do want one with at least 8 gigs of ram and minimum dual core
processor. Buying it used, obviously, would allow me to buy something much better as long as it's in good condition. Used as in no more than a couple of years old, not 12 years old like the thing I am currently using.
HOW that machine has lasted THAT long with as much use as it gets, who knows.
That's that. I have lots of things in the financial pot that I either want to do or need to take care of and it sometimes consumes my thinking to the point I am not even cognizant of where I am or what I am doing. But, I have been that way all of my life- getting so consumed with thought that you become totally unaware of what's going on around you.
I have, on numerous occasions, come out of those trances only to find myself staring, totally unintentionally, at someone and they - looking back at me with a rather odd expression. Yes, well I probably would react the same way, lol.
As for today's work, there is a slew of stuff to do in there. Yesterday was good for working, too - I was busy ALL day long running around all over the place in both the pickup truck and the semi. Today is all semi stuff. Plus I need to re-run the ads on Craigslist for the stuff my company wants me to sell off for them. One guy is considering buying ALL of it and if he does, I get a $250 "spiff" they are calling it.
Anyway, I have a few minutes left before work and I want to read about the miners getting freed, the race in California where an aid called the opposing candidate a whore and apparently the GOP is going to spend more money on ads than - ever. I mean, how MUCH money do these people HAVE for this stuff? And what kind of mud-slinging will we be subjected to? I find that stuff to be a turnoff, frankly, get elected on the basis of your own merits, history and accomplishments. Alright, there is a place where I can see if someone has done something so bad or - as imo Obama in writing off the majority of the American public in forcing through health care even though most of us said no to it - totally dissing the electorate, then yes, that should be brought up. However, if you follow this stuff at all, you don't NEED it brought up, it is quite fresh in your memory and probably isn't going onto a memory shelf anytime soon, or, at least, until the next Presidential campaign comes,goes and hopefully a totally new president in there.
G'day.
ben
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Tuesday 10/12/2010
Tuesday
Still a tad schmickens warm out there. In fact, it felt hot going home yesterday from work.
That did not, however, stop me from attempting to finish the pond project. That bugger is really being quite the pain in attempting to get it to sit in there just right. I had hoped to have it in it's final resting spot yesterday - no go.
Reading a lot of news this morning. Chilean miners about to be extracted; Clinton stating that our nation's debt poses a national security threat; the Bush tax cuts about to expire; Palin stating that Iran and nukes could lead to an Armageddon - on and on and on.
I wonder if all the Bush haters also hate his tax cuts? There is a calculator online that shows how much your taxes will increase if these cuts aren't extended. For me, a pretty significant chunk of change.
The news is interesting, but it can also be depressing - which is why I don't expose myself to a lot of it. It isn't worth the aggravation. I read it in the morning and that's almost all of it, I hear some on the news while driving, I do not watch any of it on TV.
Anyway, the work day is almost here and - amazingly - there is actually something in the truck routing system to do. Tomorrow? I get my bonus check. Very nice.
G'day.
ben
Still a tad schmickens warm out there. In fact, it felt hot going home yesterday from work.
That did not, however, stop me from attempting to finish the pond project. That bugger is really being quite the pain in attempting to get it to sit in there just right. I had hoped to have it in it's final resting spot yesterday - no go.
Reading a lot of news this morning. Chilean miners about to be extracted; Clinton stating that our nation's debt poses a national security threat; the Bush tax cuts about to expire; Palin stating that Iran and nukes could lead to an Armageddon - on and on and on.
I wonder if all the Bush haters also hate his tax cuts? There is a calculator online that shows how much your taxes will increase if these cuts aren't extended. For me, a pretty significant chunk of change.
The news is interesting, but it can also be depressing - which is why I don't expose myself to a lot of it. It isn't worth the aggravation. I read it in the morning and that's almost all of it, I hear some on the news while driving, I do not watch any of it on TV.
Anyway, the work day is almost here and - amazingly - there is actually something in the truck routing system to do. Tomorrow? I get my bonus check. Very nice.
G'day.
ben
Monday
Monday
President's Day. Our company does not observe such as a holiday that is worth shutting down over, so yes, I'm at work right now - before work starts of course.
The public school system, however, uses any excuse to get out of school and for my son, it's not just today off, it's the entire week!
Well, anyway, moving on. I called mother yesterday and yes, we got into it. I brought up the exchange I had recently with my middle brother and the fact that I absolutely refuse to spend another, single holiday with him after the barrage of vile remarks that came from him towards me. I would have thought he would have already called her about this situation.
He had not. We ran the gamut of a life full of things, not worth going into here, but a few key elements were brought out. First, that SHE had written us boys off some 25 years ago - disappeared for 2 years and then came back, crying, wanting back into our lives.
She didn't even remember doing that. She started apologizing profusely - I didn't need apologies, we went through that decades ago. The point is, my brothers forgave HER of THAT yet refuse to forgive my father of his alleged wrong-doings.
The second fact I brought up is that we are not a family at all. I see my oldest brother at Christmas, once a year, that's all I ever hear from him. My egotistical middle brother I hear from a little more frequently, such as the last episode where he began bashing me for my political views, which is when I dished it right back at him.
Enough of that. I don't really want to go into it. My family is just too disjointed, there is no cohesion, it is just a bunch of people that are related by blood.
Once in a while, totally changing the subject, I take Prince to PetSmart with me. They allow you to take dogs in there as long as they are leashed and have all shots and license. Prince has all of that. He's the black Great Dane. Also a bit smaller at only 133 pounds. But, he still gets guffaws from people coming around a corner in the store - to be met by a dog that large.
October 11, 2010 5:55 AM
Anonymous said...
He is one of the most passive dogs on earth. A lady and her daughter came up behind us and the lady was telling her daughter to stay away. My simple comment is that that particular dog doesn't have a mean bone in his body. She let her daughter pet him. Seriously, I wouldn't even take a dog into a place like that if I didn't have full confidence of the dogs demeanor and behavior around other people.
Anyway, I was there to get Goldfish flakes. I have koi pellets, but those are too big for the little fishies. I take some of the flakes, grind them up in my hand and spread them over the top of the ponds for the little, itty bitty fishes to be able to have something to eat, too. I saw that they had some 4 inch long koi for sale at $4.99. Very colorful and marked fish, yes, I got a couple.
Might as well start some young and see if they will survive into old age. I really don't need any more fish, but a couple of small ones aren't going to hurt anything. The lady working the area was surprised to hear I have Mollies in those ponds as well. She didn't think they could survive in such. Well, that's where I got them, out of a pond being shut down.
As for the big pond, I got down into the hole and start to rake it with a steel rake to level it. No go. Old rake - the handle broke where the steel rake goes into it. Fortunately, those things are pretty cheap. Harbor Freight prolly has one for less than $10. It's getting down to the nitty gritty here. Get the bottom as level as possible, put the flexible liner I bought for the pre-formed pond IN the pond and fill it partially up.
Just enough water to see if it's going to be level or not. If not, drain it, more levelling and eventually, a completed pond. Once I get that done I will have the motivation to finish the waterfalls I started building before summer started.
I also have yet another project I am going to get to pretty soon. I need to put a breaker box out there and get more outlets going. These ponds and their apparatus don't use much electricity, but you have to have a pump for each pond and I want an aerator for each pond as well.
Fortunately, there is more than ample supply line for electricity out there - the line running to the AC unit. Tap into that, this will be an easy project. Well, easy enough anyway for me.
Well, work day approaches. Another day with nothing in the truck routing system. I have some stuff to do around the shop, which is good because I hate being bored.
G'day.
ben
President's Day. Our company does not observe such as a holiday that is worth shutting down over, so yes, I'm at work right now - before work starts of course.
The public school system, however, uses any excuse to get out of school and for my son, it's not just today off, it's the entire week!
Well, anyway, moving on. I called mother yesterday and yes, we got into it. I brought up the exchange I had recently with my middle brother and the fact that I absolutely refuse to spend another, single holiday with him after the barrage of vile remarks that came from him towards me. I would have thought he would have already called her about this situation.
He had not. We ran the gamut of a life full of things, not worth going into here, but a few key elements were brought out. First, that SHE had written us boys off some 25 years ago - disappeared for 2 years and then came back, crying, wanting back into our lives.
She didn't even remember doing that. She started apologizing profusely - I didn't need apologies, we went through that decades ago. The point is, my brothers forgave HER of THAT yet refuse to forgive my father of his alleged wrong-doings.
The second fact I brought up is that we are not a family at all. I see my oldest brother at Christmas, once a year, that's all I ever hear from him. My egotistical middle brother I hear from a little more frequently, such as the last episode where he began bashing me for my political views, which is when I dished it right back at him.
Enough of that. I don't really want to go into it. My family is just too disjointed, there is no cohesion, it is just a bunch of people that are related by blood.
Once in a while, totally changing the subject, I take Prince to PetSmart with me. They allow you to take dogs in there as long as they are leashed and have all shots and license. Prince has all of that. He's the black Great Dane. Also a bit smaller at only 133 pounds. But, he still gets guffaws from people coming around a corner in the store - to be met by a dog that large.
October 11, 2010 5:55 AM
Anonymous said...
He is one of the most passive dogs on earth. A lady and her daughter came up behind us and the lady was telling her daughter to stay away. My simple comment is that that particular dog doesn't have a mean bone in his body. She let her daughter pet him. Seriously, I wouldn't even take a dog into a place like that if I didn't have full confidence of the dogs demeanor and behavior around other people.
Anyway, I was there to get Goldfish flakes. I have koi pellets, but those are too big for the little fishies. I take some of the flakes, grind them up in my hand and spread them over the top of the ponds for the little, itty bitty fishes to be able to have something to eat, too. I saw that they had some 4 inch long koi for sale at $4.99. Very colorful and marked fish, yes, I got a couple.
Might as well start some young and see if they will survive into old age. I really don't need any more fish, but a couple of small ones aren't going to hurt anything. The lady working the area was surprised to hear I have Mollies in those ponds as well. She didn't think they could survive in such. Well, that's where I got them, out of a pond being shut down.
As for the big pond, I got down into the hole and start to rake it with a steel rake to level it. No go. Old rake - the handle broke where the steel rake goes into it. Fortunately, those things are pretty cheap. Harbor Freight prolly has one for less than $10. It's getting down to the nitty gritty here. Get the bottom as level as possible, put the flexible liner I bought for the pre-formed pond IN the pond and fill it partially up.
Just enough water to see if it's going to be level or not. If not, drain it, more levelling and eventually, a completed pond. Once I get that done I will have the motivation to finish the waterfalls I started building before summer started.
I also have yet another project I am going to get to pretty soon. I need to put a breaker box out there and get more outlets going. These ponds and their apparatus don't use much electricity, but you have to have a pump for each pond and I want an aerator for each pond as well.
Fortunately, there is more than ample supply line for electricity out there - the line running to the AC unit. Tap into that, this will be an easy project. Well, easy enough anyway for me.
Well, work day approaches. Another day with nothing in the truck routing system. I have some stuff to do around the shop, which is good because I hate being bored.
G'day.
ben
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Sunday
Kicked my butt.
That's what that pill did.
The doc gave me some pills and said they will probably make me drowsy.
Drowsy? These aren't sleeping pills but they might as well be!
I took one 12 hours ago and I am still sleepy.
This was a half-dose on top of that - she said she was going to give me the
lowest dosage available at 5mils - which is half the normal dose "since you seem
to have adverse reaction to medication".
Indeed. Allergic to pennicillin, flu shots and a host of other medications I have
tried for various reasons, one of the biggest for allergies. I can't take ANY of it
without feeling worse than the symptoms the allergies are creating - hence, deal
with the allergies, not with the pills that give relief to the allergy symptoms.
Umm, so, I can't take this stuff, either. I can't hardly think of going to work feeling like this.
Drowsiness, however, is the only ill side effect of this stuff, I'm wondering if I cut one of
the pills in half if that would do the trick.
Well, I'm hoping to "wake up"eventually cause' I got a LOT done on the pond-digging situation
yesterday and yes, that thing is sitting in the ground now. I have to remove it again, yes, I need to get the ground level on the bottom and dig away at one side where the pond is still hitting up against the dirt.
If I could get a couple more good, solid hours into that project, that sucker will be in the ground.
The way I'm feeling right now? Ready to go back to bed. Even after a pot of coffee, this stuff is still dealing it to me. I don't feel BAD, per se, just very sleepy.
So, Caleb has entered the world of "payments". Paying me, specifically, for the car insurance. He makes X amount per week - not a huge sum but for a kid without any real bills, it IS good money. He was going to hand over almost everything he had - $100 out of $130 in his pocket - but I decided to have a little mercy on him. I took $50 so he could have some spending money. This week coming up is "Fall Break", meaning no school for a week. I didn't want to leave him with nothing, so, I didn't take all of it. He can pay me next week anyway. I am just going to set that money aside for his portion of the car insurance every month.
I'm just glad that a sizable bonus is coming my way - get me caught up on everything and still have a bit extra left over. I'm not even sure after all my bills are paid out that there will BE much left over now that I'm looking at it. This summer with high electric bills kicked my financial butt's butt - it takes a while to get caught back up. That included slow pay tenants and one tenant moving out and having to find another. Not a single person living here is "permanent" by any stretch of the imagination. The Army reservist is going to get bills paid up and then get her own apartment - no date on that yet. The newest guy just started a new job with Bank of America and is also going to save up for his own place. The 3rd? No move-out date or even stated, but, again,no-one is permanent. The only thing I can hope for is that they aren't all moving out at once, as happened last year and left me scrambling.
Well, that's it for now, I'm going to go lay back down for an hour or so and see if I can get past this.
ben
That's what that pill did.
The doc gave me some pills and said they will probably make me drowsy.
Drowsy? These aren't sleeping pills but they might as well be!
I took one 12 hours ago and I am still sleepy.
This was a half-dose on top of that - she said she was going to give me the
lowest dosage available at 5mils - which is half the normal dose "since you seem
to have adverse reaction to medication".
Indeed. Allergic to pennicillin, flu shots and a host of other medications I have
tried for various reasons, one of the biggest for allergies. I can't take ANY of it
without feeling worse than the symptoms the allergies are creating - hence, deal
with the allergies, not with the pills that give relief to the allergy symptoms.
Umm, so, I can't take this stuff, either. I can't hardly think of going to work feeling like this.
Drowsiness, however, is the only ill side effect of this stuff, I'm wondering if I cut one of
the pills in half if that would do the trick.
Well, I'm hoping to "wake up"eventually cause' I got a LOT done on the pond-digging situation
yesterday and yes, that thing is sitting in the ground now. I have to remove it again, yes, I need to get the ground level on the bottom and dig away at one side where the pond is still hitting up against the dirt.
If I could get a couple more good, solid hours into that project, that sucker will be in the ground.
The way I'm feeling right now? Ready to go back to bed. Even after a pot of coffee, this stuff is still dealing it to me. I don't feel BAD, per se, just very sleepy.
So, Caleb has entered the world of "payments". Paying me, specifically, for the car insurance. He makes X amount per week - not a huge sum but for a kid without any real bills, it IS good money. He was going to hand over almost everything he had - $100 out of $130 in his pocket - but I decided to have a little mercy on him. I took $50 so he could have some spending money. This week coming up is "Fall Break", meaning no school for a week. I didn't want to leave him with nothing, so, I didn't take all of it. He can pay me next week anyway. I am just going to set that money aside for his portion of the car insurance every month.
I'm just glad that a sizable bonus is coming my way - get me caught up on everything and still have a bit extra left over. I'm not even sure after all my bills are paid out that there will BE much left over now that I'm looking at it. This summer with high electric bills kicked my financial butt's butt - it takes a while to get caught back up. That included slow pay tenants and one tenant moving out and having to find another. Not a single person living here is "permanent" by any stretch of the imagination. The Army reservist is going to get bills paid up and then get her own apartment - no date on that yet. The newest guy just started a new job with Bank of America and is also going to save up for his own place. The 3rd? No move-out date or even stated, but, again,no-one is permanent. The only thing I can hope for is that they aren't all moving out at once, as happened last year and left me scrambling.
Well, that's it for now, I'm going to go lay back down for an hour or so and see if I can get past this.
ben
Saturday, October 9, 2010
A Candid Discussion With My Son
I wanted to delve into all of this today with Caleb - my son.
How is school going? How are you doing in JROTC? What about work? How are you dealing with this pretty-intense schedule?
Oh, I did the same thing at his age I was working, going to school, getting into trouble and all kinds of stuff. I got up early and went to bed late. But, Caleb is his own person, I wanted to hear how it's all going, school is more important than a job - or is it? No, I think they are both very important pre-cursors for living life as it's going to come at him.
You and I know life isn't easy at times. When you're young, it can seem like hell. You learn over time how to deal with the things that come up against you, but - not everything of course. Still, work is pretty much a baseline for most everyone. Rich or poor, you have some kind of work you must do in order to receive your financial recompense.
He says he's doing fine - his mother says his grades are good, he doesn't appear fatigued or out of it and he's loving life right now. He's on top of his world in JROTC - he's a commander with a platoon of 35 cadets under his command. That's pretty awesome, really. He went into GREAT detail today - more than I have ever heard from him - of what's going on with the kids under him.
Number one, you must understand that Caleb is a BIG boy. 250 pounds - works out regularly, but large-framed and yes, he has some fat on his body. He is going to have to lose some of that to go into the military, but I know he's aware of that and I don't bring that subject up - he's going to have to deal with it. If he wants me help, gladly, but, he needs to bring it up, not me. He's very touchy about that subject. Still, there is a LOT of meat under that skin, he's very strong and the kids under him aren't even going to think about messing with him, ie: disrespect, trash-talk, all that junk.
What he expressed was that there were numerous kids that show no respect, whatsoever. Not surprising to me, I have seen plenty of this in the last decade or more of kids whose parents don't seem to give a damn about how their kids talk to authority figure or even each other. Punk, trash, diss talk that I find GREATLY annoying at best.
So, he had a great idea: separate the whole lot of them. Take the kids that are totally into it and put them into one company and take the kids that are totally OUT of it and put them together in another.
Well, it's a long story - not going to go into all of it, but he has a good mind and he is definitley showing leadership quality and I will watch with great interest where this goes. He apparently has great latitude to do whatever he feels necessary to bring them all into line and get them - out of this s*** mode. I just hate what's been happening into our society for some time now with kids that learn no respect for much of anything and grow up into "adults" with that same mind-set.
Yup, Caleb left for work - about 2 hours ago, a 6-hour shift. Undoubtedly, I will get a call from him after he gets off with the request that he can hang out with his friends. I know most of his friends and more importantly, I know most of his friend's parents from Little League days - I was coaching baseball, umpring baseball, a board member, this that and the other thing - for a decade I was involved with that.
Good kids, great parents, I have no issues with them hanging out together. Are they perfect, lily-white angels when they are together? Undoubtedly NOT. But, as long as they don't get into trouble, I can't monitor my son 24 hours a day and I don't WANT to. He has to learn life like we all did: the HARD way.
Today? I was working outside - yes, I finally got back to work on digging out the ground for the bigger pond. BEAUTIFUL weather, at least by my standards. It was warm, but NOT hot. I also called county Animal Control on my neighbor's dog. It gets out - almost daily - through my yard - destroys some of my plants in the process, the owners don't care. This has been going on for quite some time now, today I had enough when my newest tenant came out and declared that it was DIGGING in my front yard.
Animal Control showed up out there about an hour later. My dogs alerted me to such fact. I stood out there for half an hour while this officer got the attention of those in the household - he wasn't entering their locked, gated, fenced yard, got them out there and started "educating" them. I could hear a few things he was saying, most of it was unintelligible.
Meanwhile, the crew of Jehovah's Witnesses showed up. They went to every house on my street except mine and my neighbors I wasn't involved with what Animal Control is doing, no, I was "blacklisted" by these people some time ago when I started asking them pointed questions about their beliefs and how they - in the affirmative - correlate to the Bible/Word of God. I will never subscribe to anyone's belief that Jehovah's Witnesses are ANYTHING but a CULT. I had thought they were going to come to my house - not - they went all the way up to my neighbor's house on the other side and then, left I was going to be very polite with them if the did come - thanks, guys, not to be offensive, but I do not subscribe to the belief system of JW's and I will NEVER subscribe to such - but I didn't have to go there.
That's done and over with. I will call Animal Control every time I see that dog out there until the situation is dealt with.
Now? Yup, I'm going outside again. It's absolutely beautiful out there. I missed it too much, it's a thing I will spending a great deal of time doing while the weather is nice -which should be for another, ohhhh - 6 months or so.
G'day.
ben
How is school going? How are you doing in JROTC? What about work? How are you dealing with this pretty-intense schedule?
Oh, I did the same thing at his age I was working, going to school, getting into trouble and all kinds of stuff. I got up early and went to bed late. But, Caleb is his own person, I wanted to hear how it's all going, school is more important than a job - or is it? No, I think they are both very important pre-cursors for living life as it's going to come at him.
You and I know life isn't easy at times. When you're young, it can seem like hell. You learn over time how to deal with the things that come up against you, but - not everything of course. Still, work is pretty much a baseline for most everyone. Rich or poor, you have some kind of work you must do in order to receive your financial recompense.
He says he's doing fine - his mother says his grades are good, he doesn't appear fatigued or out of it and he's loving life right now. He's on top of his world in JROTC - he's a commander with a platoon of 35 cadets under his command. That's pretty awesome, really. He went into GREAT detail today - more than I have ever heard from him - of what's going on with the kids under him.
Number one, you must understand that Caleb is a BIG boy. 250 pounds - works out regularly, but large-framed and yes, he has some fat on his body. He is going to have to lose some of that to go into the military, but I know he's aware of that and I don't bring that subject up - he's going to have to deal with it. If he wants me help, gladly, but, he needs to bring it up, not me. He's very touchy about that subject. Still, there is a LOT of meat under that skin, he's very strong and the kids under him aren't even going to think about messing with him, ie: disrespect, trash-talk, all that junk.
What he expressed was that there were numerous kids that show no respect, whatsoever. Not surprising to me, I have seen plenty of this in the last decade or more of kids whose parents don't seem to give a damn about how their kids talk to authority figure or even each other. Punk, trash, diss talk that I find GREATLY annoying at best.
So, he had a great idea: separate the whole lot of them. Take the kids that are totally into it and put them into one company and take the kids that are totally OUT of it and put them together in another.
Well, it's a long story - not going to go into all of it, but he has a good mind and he is definitley showing leadership quality and I will watch with great interest where this goes. He apparently has great latitude to do whatever he feels necessary to bring them all into line and get them - out of this s*** mode. I just hate what's been happening into our society for some time now with kids that learn no respect for much of anything and grow up into "adults" with that same mind-set.
Yup, Caleb left for work - about 2 hours ago, a 6-hour shift. Undoubtedly, I will get a call from him after he gets off with the request that he can hang out with his friends. I know most of his friends and more importantly, I know most of his friend's parents from Little League days - I was coaching baseball, umpring baseball, a board member, this that and the other thing - for a decade I was involved with that.
Good kids, great parents, I have no issues with them hanging out together. Are they perfect, lily-white angels when they are together? Undoubtedly NOT. But, as long as they don't get into trouble, I can't monitor my son 24 hours a day and I don't WANT to. He has to learn life like we all did: the HARD way.
Today? I was working outside - yes, I finally got back to work on digging out the ground for the bigger pond. BEAUTIFUL weather, at least by my standards. It was warm, but NOT hot. I also called county Animal Control on my neighbor's dog. It gets out - almost daily - through my yard - destroys some of my plants in the process, the owners don't care. This has been going on for quite some time now, today I had enough when my newest tenant came out and declared that it was DIGGING in my front yard.
Animal Control showed up out there about an hour later. My dogs alerted me to such fact. I stood out there for half an hour while this officer got the attention of those in the household - he wasn't entering their locked, gated, fenced yard, got them out there and started "educating" them. I could hear a few things he was saying, most of it was unintelligible.
Meanwhile, the crew of Jehovah's Witnesses showed up. They went to every house on my street except mine and my neighbors I wasn't involved with what Animal Control is doing, no, I was "blacklisted" by these people some time ago when I started asking them pointed questions about their beliefs and how they - in the affirmative - correlate to the Bible/Word of God. I will never subscribe to anyone's belief that Jehovah's Witnesses are ANYTHING but a CULT. I had thought they were going to come to my house - not - they went all the way up to my neighbor's house on the other side and then, left I was going to be very polite with them if the did come - thanks, guys, not to be offensive, but I do not subscribe to the belief system of JW's and I will NEVER subscribe to such - but I didn't have to go there.
That's done and over with. I will call Animal Control every time I see that dog out there until the situation is dealt with.
Now? Yup, I'm going outside again. It's absolutely beautiful out there. I missed it too much, it's a thing I will spending a great deal of time doing while the weather is nice -which should be for another, ohhhh - 6 months or so.
G'day.
ben
Setting Up A PreFormed Pond
I've learned the hard way about some of this stuff concerning setting up pre-formed ponds.
I scoured the internet and could not find the information I needed.
It's ridiculous, really. I mean, there are some well-meaning people giving out - bad - advice, but the
majority of the advice to be found is for a flexible pond liner with much larger ponds, NOT for smaller, pre-formed ponds.
So, here it is. If you came here wondering about filtration and and pumps, which is what dominated my
searches on this topic for quite some time, then you have come to the right place.
I am, btw, no expert. I had to spend the money on small pumps and attempting to build my own filter and this, that and the other thing until I finally "arrived". I have it down, I definitely do. I have 5 ponds, 3 of them in use, the other two pending. Actually, one of the 2 that I am not using I am actively building a rather
elaborate setup for. It's about 300 gallons, which is small for pond's sake, it's quite enough for me, for now anyway. It's MUCH larger than my other, pre-formed ponds, ranging from 120 gallons to 165 gallons.
So let's get into this. You can probably figure out how to dig a hole for the thing. I mean - not that difficult excepting where I live - you try to stick the shovel into the ground and literally, you will hit rock every time. It's painstaking work to dig out endless rocks, I hope you aren't going through that as well. It IS a great workout, so, it's not a total loss. I do recommend putting sand on the bottom as everyone else does, it's just a further help to make sure that nothing with a sharp tip, ie: a rock, doesn't end up protruding through the hard plastic of your pond.
I am taking it a step further. I bought the large, pre-formed pond cheap - people are getting rid of this stuff in this horrid, foul, acrid economy of ours. In fact, off the subject, but relevant: look on Craigslist in your area and keep looking. I have been to numerous pond shut-downs with people who are buying short-saled homes with ponds that - they don't want. They either give the fish away or they sell them very cheap. Same scenario with a homeowner that is losing their home and want the fish to find good homes: sell them cheap or give them away. Back to this paragraph's subject, I went to ebay and found a flexible liner for this pond.
Why? Because, I have bought other preformed ponds and have had leaks. I found a good patch that will permanently seal that sucker, but why have to bother. You have to take out the fish, plants, drain it to put in a patch. Instead, I am going to put in a brand new flexible liner INSIDE the hard plastic preformed liner. The hard liner is still intact with no leaks, yes, I checked. But, I don't want to have to deal with a leaking setup, it really is a PAIN to have to remove everything. You can find flexible liners that will fit these small, preformed liners for cheap on ebay.
Back to filtration. I was fortunate enough that with the purchase of these pre-formed liners I bought, 3 of them came with a waterfall bio filter. Yes, indeed, it made the bargain that much sweeter, those things aren't cheap. I thought the things awfully large, frankly, for such a small pond, but, I put them up and used them anyway. Water is pumped into the bottom of the plastic shell. There is an open space down there with no filtration material. There is a divider and then you hit the bio ball setup. Bio balls or equivalent are a necessity for your pond. It's that or endlessly add chemicals or, have to do huge water changes frequently to keep toxins from building up in your pond/s from fish waste.
Here's the part I didn't have a clue, but have learned. Pump size. You would think a 300 gallon per hour (GPH) pump would be enough for a pond that has 120 or even 165 gallons. NOT. I actually started out with a 130 GPH pump - umm, a waste of money. 300 gph, waste of money, don't even go there if you are going to have fish in the pond. No, I have a 800 gph pump on my 165 gallon pond, pumping through the waterfall filter. I have a 750 gph pump on my 135 gallon pond, also pumping through a waterfall filter. I have a 550 gph pump on my Fish Mate Bio Filter - the small, green, rectanguler setup. That's right, a 550 gallon per hour pump going through that "small"filter.
It works perfectly. I had a 350 gph pump on that thing and it was NOT keeping the water clear, the fish were stirring up particles and it was cloudy and there was a lot of stuff floating around in there. I'm just giving my opinion - learned the hard way. That 550 gph pump in the first 24 hours had it's openings clogged with all kinds of debree but was STILL pumping water. I simply pulled the housing off (no tools necessary, at least on the one I bought) - cleaned it off and cleaned out the pre-filter. This was the first pump I bought that has a course filter in it on a pump that small. It is INVALUABLE. That thing was full of grunge after only 24 hours.
There IS no downside to having "too much water" flowing in your pond. Your fish will thank you for it.
Now, I bought the used pumps off of Craigslist, the new ones off of Ebay. I would advise that if you are going to buy a pump off of ebay, make SURE it has a warranty on it. This junk about having a 14 day return and nothing else or whatever policy is for the birds. This is yet another learn-the-hard-way deal. I found a guy selling pumps on there that is giving a 2 year warranty on all of his pumps - 1st year covered by manufacturer, second by him. No guarantees he is going to be around forever, but, he has a great feedback rating and 1 year of a pump running continuously, 24 hours a day is good enough for me, anyway.
He's under tinypondpumps. I am not him, I stopped selling on ebay a long time ago and I just got into this ponding business, what, 5 or 6 months ago? No, I just like to recommend good sellers.
Be prepared to have your pumps running 24 hours a day. You should never shut them off for the filtration system (except to clean out the fitler, of course). Also, buying aerators for your pre-formed ponds I highly recommend. You can get them at WalMart for $9.90. Yes, I have those receipts as well. They do not use a lot of electricity and is good assurance that your water is well aerated. It is also a great back-up - if your pond pump fails, you will still have aeration from the air pump. Aeration is MORE important than ANYTHING in a pond. But, a good filtration system is just below it - you get too much toxins in the water and your fish are going to start getting sick.
Here's an answer to another question I had: do you HAVE to set a preformed pond into the ground? NO!! is the wonderful answer for many people. You DO have to support the shelves that stick out from the main body of the pond, but that's easy. I used pavers for such purpose. Whatever you have. If you don't, when you fill up the pond, likely the shelf will fail under the weight and yes, the water will all dump out the side. Amazing that even apartment dwellers have ponds on their balconies. Yes, you can have the soothing sounds of water flowing out of a waterfall into the pond, plus fish, plus water plants - it's amazing therapy - right on your apartment balcony. You may, of course, want to discuss that option with the landlord first, but, it's a totally cool option as long as it isn't restricted.
There is much more, really, I'm just at the end of this blog entry. More later.
I scoured the internet and could not find the information I needed.
It's ridiculous, really. I mean, there are some well-meaning people giving out - bad - advice, but the
majority of the advice to be found is for a flexible pond liner with much larger ponds, NOT for smaller, pre-formed ponds.
So, here it is. If you came here wondering about filtration and and pumps, which is what dominated my
searches on this topic for quite some time, then you have come to the right place.
I am, btw, no expert. I had to spend the money on small pumps and attempting to build my own filter and this, that and the other thing until I finally "arrived". I have it down, I definitely do. I have 5 ponds, 3 of them in use, the other two pending. Actually, one of the 2 that I am not using I am actively building a rather
elaborate setup for. It's about 300 gallons, which is small for pond's sake, it's quite enough for me, for now anyway. It's MUCH larger than my other, pre-formed ponds, ranging from 120 gallons to 165 gallons.
So let's get into this. You can probably figure out how to dig a hole for the thing. I mean - not that difficult excepting where I live - you try to stick the shovel into the ground and literally, you will hit rock every time. It's painstaking work to dig out endless rocks, I hope you aren't going through that as well. It IS a great workout, so, it's not a total loss. I do recommend putting sand on the bottom as everyone else does, it's just a further help to make sure that nothing with a sharp tip, ie: a rock, doesn't end up protruding through the hard plastic of your pond.
I am taking it a step further. I bought the large, pre-formed pond cheap - people are getting rid of this stuff in this horrid, foul, acrid economy of ours. In fact, off the subject, but relevant: look on Craigslist in your area and keep looking. I have been to numerous pond shut-downs with people who are buying short-saled homes with ponds that - they don't want. They either give the fish away or they sell them very cheap. Same scenario with a homeowner that is losing their home and want the fish to find good homes: sell them cheap or give them away. Back to this paragraph's subject, I went to ebay and found a flexible liner for this pond.
Why? Because, I have bought other preformed ponds and have had leaks. I found a good patch that will permanently seal that sucker, but why have to bother. You have to take out the fish, plants, drain it to put in a patch. Instead, I am going to put in a brand new flexible liner INSIDE the hard plastic preformed liner. The hard liner is still intact with no leaks, yes, I checked. But, I don't want to have to deal with a leaking setup, it really is a PAIN to have to remove everything. You can find flexible liners that will fit these small, preformed liners for cheap on ebay.
Back to filtration. I was fortunate enough that with the purchase of these pre-formed liners I bought, 3 of them came with a waterfall bio filter. Yes, indeed, it made the bargain that much sweeter, those things aren't cheap. I thought the things awfully large, frankly, for such a small pond, but, I put them up and used them anyway. Water is pumped into the bottom of the plastic shell. There is an open space down there with no filtration material. There is a divider and then you hit the bio ball setup. Bio balls or equivalent are a necessity for your pond. It's that or endlessly add chemicals or, have to do huge water changes frequently to keep toxins from building up in your pond/s from fish waste.
Here's the part I didn't have a clue, but have learned. Pump size. You would think a 300 gallon per hour (GPH) pump would be enough for a pond that has 120 or even 165 gallons. NOT. I actually started out with a 130 GPH pump - umm, a waste of money. 300 gph, waste of money, don't even go there if you are going to have fish in the pond. No, I have a 800 gph pump on my 165 gallon pond, pumping through the waterfall filter. I have a 750 gph pump on my 135 gallon pond, also pumping through a waterfall filter. I have a 550 gph pump on my Fish Mate Bio Filter - the small, green, rectanguler setup. That's right, a 550 gallon per hour pump going through that "small"filter.
It works perfectly. I had a 350 gph pump on that thing and it was NOT keeping the water clear, the fish were stirring up particles and it was cloudy and there was a lot of stuff floating around in there. I'm just giving my opinion - learned the hard way. That 550 gph pump in the first 24 hours had it's openings clogged with all kinds of debree but was STILL pumping water. I simply pulled the housing off (no tools necessary, at least on the one I bought) - cleaned it off and cleaned out the pre-filter. This was the first pump I bought that has a course filter in it on a pump that small. It is INVALUABLE. That thing was full of grunge after only 24 hours.
There IS no downside to having "too much water" flowing in your pond. Your fish will thank you for it.
Now, I bought the used pumps off of Craigslist, the new ones off of Ebay. I would advise that if you are going to buy a pump off of ebay, make SURE it has a warranty on it. This junk about having a 14 day return and nothing else or whatever policy is for the birds. This is yet another learn-the-hard-way deal. I found a guy selling pumps on there that is giving a 2 year warranty on all of his pumps - 1st year covered by manufacturer, second by him. No guarantees he is going to be around forever, but, he has a great feedback rating and 1 year of a pump running continuously, 24 hours a day is good enough for me, anyway.
He's under tinypondpumps. I am not him, I stopped selling on ebay a long time ago and I just got into this ponding business, what, 5 or 6 months ago? No, I just like to recommend good sellers.
Be prepared to have your pumps running 24 hours a day. You should never shut them off for the filtration system (except to clean out the fitler, of course). Also, buying aerators for your pre-formed ponds I highly recommend. You can get them at WalMart for $9.90. Yes, I have those receipts as well. They do not use a lot of electricity and is good assurance that your water is well aerated. It is also a great back-up - if your pond pump fails, you will still have aeration from the air pump. Aeration is MORE important than ANYTHING in a pond. But, a good filtration system is just below it - you get too much toxins in the water and your fish are going to start getting sick.
Here's an answer to another question I had: do you HAVE to set a preformed pond into the ground? NO!! is the wonderful answer for many people. You DO have to support the shelves that stick out from the main body of the pond, but that's easy. I used pavers for such purpose. Whatever you have. If you don't, when you fill up the pond, likely the shelf will fail under the weight and yes, the water will all dump out the side. Amazing that even apartment dwellers have ponds on their balconies. Yes, you can have the soothing sounds of water flowing out of a waterfall into the pond, plus fish, plus water plants - it's amazing therapy - right on your apartment balcony. You may, of course, want to discuss that option with the landlord first, but, it's a totally cool option as long as it isn't restricted.
There is much more, really, I'm just at the end of this blog entry. More later.
Friday, October 8, 2010
3rd Doctor Visit
1st doctor visit netted me a prescription for a drug to get rid of what was on my face.
2cd doctor visit netted me a second look from a different doctor who wasn't so sure, but I was there to get the prescription re-written because - I could not find what I did with the first one.
Get prescription. Have hallucinations and other extremely undesirable side effects.
3rd visit was today. Yet another doctor who disagreed with the first two, saying she didn't know what it was and that I would need to go see a dermatologist. Gave me yet another prescription - itchiness. Whatever this is, it itches like crazy - at times - and doesn't itch at all - at other times. I wonder what kind of side effects I am in with this one? Hopefully none besides the fact that they say it can make you drowsy, don't drive. Don't care, only intend on taking it at night before going to bed - if it even works at all.
Immediately after getting out of the doc's office I call the dermatologist to make an appointment. It's 2 minutes after 3:00 - or 3:02pm - they are already closed. Sheesh, doctor's hours. The recording says they are only open until 3:00 pm, Monday-Thursday, they aren't even open on Friday. Again, sheesh, doc's hours. Undoubtedly, I will have to take a day or partial day off of work to see these people. I don't care, I'm going to get the skin test and I'm going to find out what's going wrong here,.
Well, whatever. Work: find out that on the 13th - 5 days from now - I get my bonus check. Woohooo!!! Just short of $800 after taxes. I was given a printout of the pay I received the last 2 fiscal years - down almost 7 grand. The previous fiscal year was down itself. I'm down around 15k per year from what my pay was previous to the housing bubble, foreclosures, economic collapse. Perhaps that's why they upped my pay, I dunno. I would like to get at least my regular hours back, but there is no hinting from corporate - at all - that that is going to happen anytime soon. It fits - there are days when there is nothing to do and it really is a LONG day when there are no delivery orders to pull, palletize, shrink wrap, load on the truck, strap the truck down, get in the truck and drive.
Ummm, anyway. I just put in for the entire week of Thanksgiving off. I have 2 floating holidays I must use by year's end or lose them and I have a lot of vacation hours. I will only be using 2 days worth of vacation hours anyway. I'll be last in line for any Christmas or New Year's time off, no biggies. I hope to get at least a couple days off on one or the other. That time of the year - the time between Christmas and New Year's - is usually the slowest time of year. I decided I wanted to take some more time off sooner rather than later, pllus Christmas is a 3-day weekend and so is New Year's.
Also, I haven't been able to attend a Black Friday store blowout event in years. Not that I've really wanted to, but I'm gambling that this year will be some huge deals if what I've heard in the news has any thing close to reality or truth to it. What would be cool? A computer system on huge sale. Something decent that can be upgraded. That's what I will be looking for. My savings account should be up to close to $300 by then. Perhaps my insurance money will come through and I can get something nice. Who knows? Almost guaranteed I'm going to get that week off which is only a month and a half away.
Umm, that's it. This weekend? Pump the rain water out of the big pond that is in the way of finished digging out the hole and see if I can motivate myself to finishing that project or at least getting it enough done to get the pond in the ground, get some water in it, get a filter on it and away we go!!
ben
2cd doctor visit netted me a second look from a different doctor who wasn't so sure, but I was there to get the prescription re-written because - I could not find what I did with the first one.
Get prescription. Have hallucinations and other extremely undesirable side effects.
3rd visit was today. Yet another doctor who disagreed with the first two, saying she didn't know what it was and that I would need to go see a dermatologist. Gave me yet another prescription - itchiness. Whatever this is, it itches like crazy - at times - and doesn't itch at all - at other times. I wonder what kind of side effects I am in with this one? Hopefully none besides the fact that they say it can make you drowsy, don't drive. Don't care, only intend on taking it at night before going to bed - if it even works at all.
Immediately after getting out of the doc's office I call the dermatologist to make an appointment. It's 2 minutes after 3:00 - or 3:02pm - they are already closed. Sheesh, doctor's hours. The recording says they are only open until 3:00 pm, Monday-Thursday, they aren't even open on Friday. Again, sheesh, doc's hours. Undoubtedly, I will have to take a day or partial day off of work to see these people. I don't care, I'm going to get the skin test and I'm going to find out what's going wrong here,.
Well, whatever. Work: find out that on the 13th - 5 days from now - I get my bonus check. Woohooo!!! Just short of $800 after taxes. I was given a printout of the pay I received the last 2 fiscal years - down almost 7 grand. The previous fiscal year was down itself. I'm down around 15k per year from what my pay was previous to the housing bubble, foreclosures, economic collapse. Perhaps that's why they upped my pay, I dunno. I would like to get at least my regular hours back, but there is no hinting from corporate - at all - that that is going to happen anytime soon. It fits - there are days when there is nothing to do and it really is a LONG day when there are no delivery orders to pull, palletize, shrink wrap, load on the truck, strap the truck down, get in the truck and drive.
Ummm, anyway. I just put in for the entire week of Thanksgiving off. I have 2 floating holidays I must use by year's end or lose them and I have a lot of vacation hours. I will only be using 2 days worth of vacation hours anyway. I'll be last in line for any Christmas or New Year's time off, no biggies. I hope to get at least a couple days off on one or the other. That time of the year - the time between Christmas and New Year's - is usually the slowest time of year. I decided I wanted to take some more time off sooner rather than later, pllus Christmas is a 3-day weekend and so is New Year's.
Also, I haven't been able to attend a Black Friday store blowout event in years. Not that I've really wanted to, but I'm gambling that this year will be some huge deals if what I've heard in the news has any thing close to reality or truth to it. What would be cool? A computer system on huge sale. Something decent that can be upgraded. That's what I will be looking for. My savings account should be up to close to $300 by then. Perhaps my insurance money will come through and I can get something nice. Who knows? Almost guaranteed I'm going to get that week off which is only a month and a half away.
Umm, that's it. This weekend? Pump the rain water out of the big pond that is in the way of finished digging out the hole and see if I can motivate myself to finishing that project or at least getting it enough done to get the pond in the ground, get some water in it, get a filter on it and away we go!!
ben
Friday
Friday
Mark - one of the trailer tenants - got brave yesterday and started pulled the shards of glass out of the busted windows. I didn't do it because that stuff is stuck in there - it has to be to be able to contain the argon gas between the panes. Well, you can't tell that 3 of those windows are missing panes now, the inner panes had no damage.
This was from Anthony and his rock-throwing escapade quite a while back now.
A couple of companies quoted me $75 PER WINDOW - JUST to remove the glass. Almost $250 per window to replace the glass and pump in fresh argon gas. Will I ever replace the panes? Not anytime soon is all I can say about that. I have a small savings account going right now, it's not being saved for that purpose. No, not at all.
It is being saved for one of 2 things, either a new computer or a handgun. It's at $160 right now. $300 for a "cheap" 9mm - but a computer? Well, $300 isn't really going to cut it for a good machine unless I'm buying someone's used machine off of Craigslist or something.
The best machine is one that you build yourself, that is tailored to what you use it for.
Anyway, I look at Craigslist daily for pond stuff. I really don't need anything, always looking for a pond that is shutting down. I can't believe the prices people want for Koi. I mean, they get that kind of money, it's just crazy that everyone thinks they are worth so much money. I'm estimating that my 6 Koi are worth around $500. I paid a total of $60 for them. I hope there are male and female in the mix and that they are feeling frisky, cause' I would far rather just grow my own and be done with it. There ARE a LOT of very small fish - fry - in both ponds that are established - I don't know if they are goldfish or Koi, only time will tell, and that, only if they survive the winter.
I do have heaters for the ponds now, btw, those that I got from the one pond that was being shut down.
Well, for once, I have a very busy day at work ahead of me and I must be offa here. I loaded the semi yesterday for a 7:00am delivery this morning, then downtown, then back to Queen Creek. Should consume the better part of the work day. Which is nice : )
G'day.
ben
Mark - one of the trailer tenants - got brave yesterday and started pulled the shards of glass out of the busted windows. I didn't do it because that stuff is stuck in there - it has to be to be able to contain the argon gas between the panes. Well, you can't tell that 3 of those windows are missing panes now, the inner panes had no damage.
This was from Anthony and his rock-throwing escapade quite a while back now.
A couple of companies quoted me $75 PER WINDOW - JUST to remove the glass. Almost $250 per window to replace the glass and pump in fresh argon gas. Will I ever replace the panes? Not anytime soon is all I can say about that. I have a small savings account going right now, it's not being saved for that purpose. No, not at all.
It is being saved for one of 2 things, either a new computer or a handgun. It's at $160 right now. $300 for a "cheap" 9mm - but a computer? Well, $300 isn't really going to cut it for a good machine unless I'm buying someone's used machine off of Craigslist or something.
The best machine is one that you build yourself, that is tailored to what you use it for.
Anyway, I look at Craigslist daily for pond stuff. I really don't need anything, always looking for a pond that is shutting down. I can't believe the prices people want for Koi. I mean, they get that kind of money, it's just crazy that everyone thinks they are worth so much money. I'm estimating that my 6 Koi are worth around $500. I paid a total of $60 for them. I hope there are male and female in the mix and that they are feeling frisky, cause' I would far rather just grow my own and be done with it. There ARE a LOT of very small fish - fry - in both ponds that are established - I don't know if they are goldfish or Koi, only time will tell, and that, only if they survive the winter.
I do have heaters for the ponds now, btw, those that I got from the one pond that was being shut down.
Well, for once, I have a very busy day at work ahead of me and I must be offa here. I loaded the semi yesterday for a 7:00am delivery this morning, then downtown, then back to Queen Creek. Should consume the better part of the work day. Which is nice : )
G'day.
ben
Thursday
Thursday
Absolutely beautiful weather this morning. Just perfect.
Well, another pre-work mornin blasted by junk I was having to do on the internet. Oh well.
Have a great day!
ben
Absolutely beautiful weather this morning. Just perfect.
Well, another pre-work mornin blasted by junk I was having to do on the internet. Oh well.
Have a great day!
ben
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Wednesday
Another slow day at work. I have to be busy at work to stay engaged. If there is nothing to do, it drags me down quickly. One small delivery and a pickup downtown - maybe 2 hours worth of that and it was done.
Took the car back into the shop again this morning. I was trying to keep civil with the owner - he runs a shop that has raves valleywide about the quality or the service. "Do you think you might be able to get to it today". Yes, was his definitive answer. Okay. I left the car there, then drove by in the semi 3 hours later to see - the car still parked there.
Went about my business and 2 hours later, visited again. The mechanic that was supposed to deal with it had an emergency at home and would get to it when he got back.
Fast forward, work is over. I walk down there, still, nothing. But, the employee shows up shortly after I get there. I figure I'm in for a long haul and I wasn't wrong. But, an older gentleman - like 80 plus - engaged me in coversation. Interesting fellow, listened to a lot of "war" stories, I was definitely entertained. Then, I find out, this guy used to be the owner of a shop where the owner of the shop where I have my car worked under him in South Dakota. Okay, well, this got interesting.
Now, this guy leaves and more older gents start showing up. Pretty much, I figure, if the older crowd likes this place, it's probably good. I had several conversations while sitting in a cool breeze - yes, folks, summer, as far as I'm concerned, is officially gone from the Sonoran desert. It was pleasant outside, even in the mid-afternoon. I wasn't bugging Virgil - but I was sitting there. No complaints, just figured I would wait this out and get this over with.
Well, I could hear a couple of conversations that Virgil had with the mechanic: I need this and this and this. One of the parts showed up 20 minutes later - but not all of them. Virgil walks off in disgust, they have so much business that they have to park a LOT of vehicles out on the street. On any given day, there are at least 30 of them out there. It's not a residential area and they aren't blocking anything, so who cares about that, just the point that it is a busy shop.
I had several conversations with Virgil today - he is very enigmatic and very open. Pretty much like me, nothing to hide. We got into conversations about cemetaries, cancer, cars, roads, trucking, all kinds of stuff. People trickling in and out to get their now-repaired vehicles. 20 minutes later another car parts store delivery vehicle shows up. That is the final goods. I had been there for a couple of hours already. I resolved to simply kick back and enjoy the weather. Another man and his daughter showed up. The man was up there in years, but definitely still lucid. The daughter? In her 60's. She proclaimed to Virgil and I that he is turning 90 tomorrow. 90 years old and still driving. Amazing.
I figured I was going to get hit with a pretty good bill, but, I have no choice. I have no clue what to do with a car that fails vehicle emissions and trying to guess what might be wrong. It was almost 3 hours before it was done. I had no idea how much time had elapsed because I was either talking with people or keeping my mind engaged with the things that are going on in my life. The bill was just short of $200. Paid, thanked Virgil, left. 4 miles down the road, the "check engine soon" light comes back on. Kept driving, don't care. I'm going to take it to the emissions testing station and if it fails, I'll take it back.
Get there - a good wait, of course, always a good, long wait. This time, however, it wasn't 107 degrees outside. I get into the station. The front tires are sitting on the dynos. The man is very talkative. He starts pointing to vehicles with their windows up and loudly complaining about people that think they should leave all their windows up when they get into the station. My windows were ALL down, apparently struck a chord with this guy without even knowing it. In fact, this man was talking so fast I couldn't keep up with it, I didn't understand because he was changing the subject frequently without following through with the previous theme. No biggies, I'm not pitching a tent there, I won't be there that long.
Well, he gets into my car, turns it on, uses a remote to start the computer and accelerates the engine to keep up with the line on the computer. Old car - old emissions stuff. New cars have OBD, they don't connect tubes to the exhaust, they simply plug into your computer and you are in and out of there quickly - pass or fail. My speedometer at one point is showing over 60 mph on those dynos. After going through almost the entire test, the computer shows an error message.
Now what? A manager comes over with a mirror to inspect the bottom of my car - no clue. The guy doing my test is REALLY letting verbage loose. They shut down a computer, restart it and do something with another computer. Test starts over. I'm worried. I just shelled out $200 for these repairs and this isn't going to work? He goes through the whole test this time. I pull forward.
He comes up, hands me the paper with a big thumb's up, say it passed, I thanked him profusely and left.
I mean, I left for work at 5:00 am and got home at 6:00pm. Reminds of the "good ole days" when work was plenteous, hours were long and pay was good. The biggest headache of getting this car up and running is over. What's left? Well, I want to replace the driver's side door, get another door bondo-ed and put a cheap paint job on it. The engine soon light? dunno. It runs and it runs very well. Might take it back, might not. It isn't going to be free and right now, funds are very tight. I was fortunate that all tenants have paid and that I am not totally broke. I also expect my son to help out with this, this was our agreement. He's been helping his mom with bills - she is unemployed and I am glad he is doing that, but, I don't really want to foot all of this stuff myself. He handed over, initially, $450 - it's gone a bit over $200 over that to get it into running condition. Still another $40 in another repair that it needs - valve covers leaking and I want that stuff stopped and then registration.
For a car this old? Less than $30.
Sent in the serial numbers from the stolen video game consoles. $500 deductible, I still expect to get at least a $500 check. I wasn't going to follow through with this claim, but the adjuster said it's no big deal in a smaller claim. Dunno, not holding my breath, but the money would help me out greatly right now.
I'm very tired. I have not slept well in the past 3 nights. I wake up 4 or 5 hours after going to bed and I either can't get back to sleep or do so after 3 hours of laying there awake. Then the alarm goes off and I'm up for work. It's almost 8:00 pm and yes, I am going to bed in about 15 minutes. Figure to get whatever sleep I can.
G'nite.
ben
Took the car back into the shop again this morning. I was trying to keep civil with the owner - he runs a shop that has raves valleywide about the quality or the service. "Do you think you might be able to get to it today". Yes, was his definitive answer. Okay. I left the car there, then drove by in the semi 3 hours later to see - the car still parked there.
Went about my business and 2 hours later, visited again. The mechanic that was supposed to deal with it had an emergency at home and would get to it when he got back.
Fast forward, work is over. I walk down there, still, nothing. But, the employee shows up shortly after I get there. I figure I'm in for a long haul and I wasn't wrong. But, an older gentleman - like 80 plus - engaged me in coversation. Interesting fellow, listened to a lot of "war" stories, I was definitely entertained. Then, I find out, this guy used to be the owner of a shop where the owner of the shop where I have my car worked under him in South Dakota. Okay, well, this got interesting.
Now, this guy leaves and more older gents start showing up. Pretty much, I figure, if the older crowd likes this place, it's probably good. I had several conversations while sitting in a cool breeze - yes, folks, summer, as far as I'm concerned, is officially gone from the Sonoran desert. It was pleasant outside, even in the mid-afternoon. I wasn't bugging Virgil - but I was sitting there. No complaints, just figured I would wait this out and get this over with.
Well, I could hear a couple of conversations that Virgil had with the mechanic: I need this and this and this. One of the parts showed up 20 minutes later - but not all of them. Virgil walks off in disgust, they have so much business that they have to park a LOT of vehicles out on the street. On any given day, there are at least 30 of them out there. It's not a residential area and they aren't blocking anything, so who cares about that, just the point that it is a busy shop.
I had several conversations with Virgil today - he is very enigmatic and very open. Pretty much like me, nothing to hide. We got into conversations about cemetaries, cancer, cars, roads, trucking, all kinds of stuff. People trickling in and out to get their now-repaired vehicles. 20 minutes later another car parts store delivery vehicle shows up. That is the final goods. I had been there for a couple of hours already. I resolved to simply kick back and enjoy the weather. Another man and his daughter showed up. The man was up there in years, but definitely still lucid. The daughter? In her 60's. She proclaimed to Virgil and I that he is turning 90 tomorrow. 90 years old and still driving. Amazing.
I figured I was going to get hit with a pretty good bill, but, I have no choice. I have no clue what to do with a car that fails vehicle emissions and trying to guess what might be wrong. It was almost 3 hours before it was done. I had no idea how much time had elapsed because I was either talking with people or keeping my mind engaged with the things that are going on in my life. The bill was just short of $200. Paid, thanked Virgil, left. 4 miles down the road, the "check engine soon" light comes back on. Kept driving, don't care. I'm going to take it to the emissions testing station and if it fails, I'll take it back.
Get there - a good wait, of course, always a good, long wait. This time, however, it wasn't 107 degrees outside. I get into the station. The front tires are sitting on the dynos. The man is very talkative. He starts pointing to vehicles with their windows up and loudly complaining about people that think they should leave all their windows up when they get into the station. My windows were ALL down, apparently struck a chord with this guy without even knowing it. In fact, this man was talking so fast I couldn't keep up with it, I didn't understand because he was changing the subject frequently without following through with the previous theme. No biggies, I'm not pitching a tent there, I won't be there that long.
Well, he gets into my car, turns it on, uses a remote to start the computer and accelerates the engine to keep up with the line on the computer. Old car - old emissions stuff. New cars have OBD, they don't connect tubes to the exhaust, they simply plug into your computer and you are in and out of there quickly - pass or fail. My speedometer at one point is showing over 60 mph on those dynos. After going through almost the entire test, the computer shows an error message.
Now what? A manager comes over with a mirror to inspect the bottom of my car - no clue. The guy doing my test is REALLY letting verbage loose. They shut down a computer, restart it and do something with another computer. Test starts over. I'm worried. I just shelled out $200 for these repairs and this isn't going to work? He goes through the whole test this time. I pull forward.
He comes up, hands me the paper with a big thumb's up, say it passed, I thanked him profusely and left.
I mean, I left for work at 5:00 am and got home at 6:00pm. Reminds of the "good ole days" when work was plenteous, hours were long and pay was good. The biggest headache of getting this car up and running is over. What's left? Well, I want to replace the driver's side door, get another door bondo-ed and put a cheap paint job on it. The engine soon light? dunno. It runs and it runs very well. Might take it back, might not. It isn't going to be free and right now, funds are very tight. I was fortunate that all tenants have paid and that I am not totally broke. I also expect my son to help out with this, this was our agreement. He's been helping his mom with bills - she is unemployed and I am glad he is doing that, but, I don't really want to foot all of this stuff myself. He handed over, initially, $450 - it's gone a bit over $200 over that to get it into running condition. Still another $40 in another repair that it needs - valve covers leaking and I want that stuff stopped and then registration.
For a car this old? Less than $30.
Sent in the serial numbers from the stolen video game consoles. $500 deductible, I still expect to get at least a $500 check. I wasn't going to follow through with this claim, but the adjuster said it's no big deal in a smaller claim. Dunno, not holding my breath, but the money would help me out greatly right now.
I'm very tired. I have not slept well in the past 3 nights. I wake up 4 or 5 hours after going to bed and I either can't get back to sleep or do so after 3 hours of laying there awake. Then the alarm goes off and I'm up for work. It's almost 8:00 pm and yes, I am going to bed in about 15 minutes. Figure to get whatever sleep I can.
G'nite.
ben
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Tuesday
RAIN - but only at work. It rained so hard, the street and parking lot in front of our building was flooded, and I do mean FLOODED, in less than 5 minutes. It filled up water retention basins in record time. Then it started hailing. THEN - the power went out. So, it's time for me to go home anyway. Street lights out at one intersection wtih cops directing traffic.
Next intersection? Flashing red lights for both directions. Now, according to the law, how are flashing red lights supposed to be treated? If you said the same as a stop sign, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!! How do you think the drivers of vehicles going the opposite direction were treating it? As a full-blown green light. I came up to the intersection and they weren't even slowing down, they were blowing the light and there was a LOT of traffic doing it. Drivers going the direction I was going weren't doing ANYTHING - they would have had to wait a LONG time because the flow of traffic was endless.
What, do you suppose, I did? Well, honey, I ain't sitting there all day long, these people breaking the law weren't going to stop me. I started inching out into traffic which is when the cars finally - slammed - on their brakes. Yup, they were honking at me. Notwithstanding the fact that THEY were the ones breaking the law, I got the finger and several blaring horns. THIS is why there are such horrific car accidents every single day, all over the nation. People simply do not have a CLUE about how to drive.
I have known that for a long, long time and statistics agree with me. A study came out a while back that showed that a majorty of drivers don't know basic, simple traffic laws that you (I hope) and I learned as teenagers. The cars stopped and I drove right in front of them. They totally thought I was in the wrong. Absolute craziness. THIS is why I advocate MUCH harder written tests to get a driver's license. The questions are too easy and even then, they give far too much leniency to be able to pass the test - 70% or greater. It should be at least 90% or greater and all drivers should have to retake the test every time they have to renew their license.
My "bravery" got everyone else moving as well. I didn't look back to see if ANYONE was going to start treating that intersection as if it had a stop sign, I figured they would NOT.
I took the old Buick in today to have it diagnosed. I mean, I called the shop yesterday and they told me to bring it in this morning. Well, they hadn't even gotten to it by 1:45 pm. That shop is 3 buildings down from our building and when I got there, their power was out, too. So, I just took it and said I would bring it back tomorrow. I did not appreciate them telling me, however, that they would get it done in the morning - this morning - and then not even get started on it. I did not say anything, though, I just let it go. No big deal to bring it back tomorrow and try again.
Nothing much new going on here excepting the weather: AWESOME!! It was cool this morning and it stay fairly nice throughout the day. When the rain hit, the temps dropped 10 degrees anyway. Totally cool!
I'm outta here. I have several things I need to get done outside and some other stuff to do on the net.
C'ya.
ben
Next intersection? Flashing red lights for both directions. Now, according to the law, how are flashing red lights supposed to be treated? If you said the same as a stop sign, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!! How do you think the drivers of vehicles going the opposite direction were treating it? As a full-blown green light. I came up to the intersection and they weren't even slowing down, they were blowing the light and there was a LOT of traffic doing it. Drivers going the direction I was going weren't doing ANYTHING - they would have had to wait a LONG time because the flow of traffic was endless.
What, do you suppose, I did? Well, honey, I ain't sitting there all day long, these people breaking the law weren't going to stop me. I started inching out into traffic which is when the cars finally - slammed - on their brakes. Yup, they were honking at me. Notwithstanding the fact that THEY were the ones breaking the law, I got the finger and several blaring horns. THIS is why there are such horrific car accidents every single day, all over the nation. People simply do not have a CLUE about how to drive.
I have known that for a long, long time and statistics agree with me. A study came out a while back that showed that a majorty of drivers don't know basic, simple traffic laws that you (I hope) and I learned as teenagers. The cars stopped and I drove right in front of them. They totally thought I was in the wrong. Absolute craziness. THIS is why I advocate MUCH harder written tests to get a driver's license. The questions are too easy and even then, they give far too much leniency to be able to pass the test - 70% or greater. It should be at least 90% or greater and all drivers should have to retake the test every time they have to renew their license.
My "bravery" got everyone else moving as well. I didn't look back to see if ANYONE was going to start treating that intersection as if it had a stop sign, I figured they would NOT.
I took the old Buick in today to have it diagnosed. I mean, I called the shop yesterday and they told me to bring it in this morning. Well, they hadn't even gotten to it by 1:45 pm. That shop is 3 buildings down from our building and when I got there, their power was out, too. So, I just took it and said I would bring it back tomorrow. I did not appreciate them telling me, however, that they would get it done in the morning - this morning - and then not even get started on it. I did not say anything, though, I just let it go. No big deal to bring it back tomorrow and try again.
Nothing much new going on here excepting the weather: AWESOME!! It was cool this morning and it stay fairly nice throughout the day. When the rain hit, the temps dropped 10 degrees anyway. Totally cool!
I'm outta here. I have several things I need to get done outside and some other stuff to do on the net.
C'ya.
ben
Monday
Monday
I called the 2 numbers on the previous post again this morning. One rang endlessly, the other came back with a message: The cricket customer you are trying to reach.......
Cellphone. I was hoping to score a reverse looking up that might at least show the person's name without having to pay for it, haven't found one yet. I was willing to pay $2.00 for the cheapest I found, but it automatically signs you up for are recurring, $24.95 per month fee to join. No thanks.
Haven't given up - in fact, that Cricket customer is going to get a lot of phone calls from me.......
Uhh, well anyway, I drove the old Buick to work today. There is a repair facility 200 feet down the road that I have used before - reasonable rates and good service - I am going to have the car diagnosed as to what caused it to fail emissions. One can always hope it's not going to be something extremely expensive.
I was amused to read a news article about "Obama's health care not up to par". One statement was that premiums are too expensive. Lol. Did anyone think this was going to be free? I am always gladdened by the recurring them of repealing this health care bill.
Another news article of interest is the one about the State of Georgia wanting to put advertisements on their roadside help trucks. Like the state of Arizona, they're broke. I'll tell you right now, they could plaster advertisements all over government vehicles and it wouldn't bother me one bit. I would take that over higher taxes ANY day.
I was going to check on the new fish this morning, but it's too dark out there to see anything. I either must get rid of 10 or more of them or fire up another pond. I don't really want to start up another pond right now, getting rid of the fish is a better alternative. The turtle - is out again, lol.
Umm, work day approaches, though, there is absolutely nothing, again, in the truck routing system to do. Uhhh, this is starting to get old, very very old.
G'day.
ben
I called the 2 numbers on the previous post again this morning. One rang endlessly, the other came back with a message: The cricket customer you are trying to reach.......
Cellphone. I was hoping to score a reverse looking up that might at least show the person's name without having to pay for it, haven't found one yet. I was willing to pay $2.00 for the cheapest I found, but it automatically signs you up for are recurring, $24.95 per month fee to join. No thanks.
Haven't given up - in fact, that Cricket customer is going to get a lot of phone calls from me.......
Uhh, well anyway, I drove the old Buick to work today. There is a repair facility 200 feet down the road that I have used before - reasonable rates and good service - I am going to have the car diagnosed as to what caused it to fail emissions. One can always hope it's not going to be something extremely expensive.
I was amused to read a news article about "Obama's health care not up to par". One statement was that premiums are too expensive. Lol. Did anyone think this was going to be free? I am always gladdened by the recurring them of repealing this health care bill.
Another news article of interest is the one about the State of Georgia wanting to put advertisements on their roadside help trucks. Like the state of Arizona, they're broke. I'll tell you right now, they could plaster advertisements all over government vehicles and it wouldn't bother me one bit. I would take that over higher taxes ANY day.
I was going to check on the new fish this morning, but it's too dark out there to see anything. I either must get rid of 10 or more of them or fire up another pond. I don't really want to start up another pond right now, getting rid of the fish is a better alternative. The turtle - is out again, lol.
Umm, work day approaches, though, there is absolutely nothing, again, in the truck routing system to do. Uhhh, this is starting to get old, very very old.
G'day.
ben
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Sunday
I went to the Direct TV site to pay my bill - due in 11 days but I pay bills when I have the money available and if that's well before the date, even better.
The bill was for $115.38.
Insanity. I thought possibly ALL of my discounts must have expired at the same time and now I would have to spend whatever time it's going to take to get them to bring it back down again. I went to my account and found 2 pay-per-views on the same day for $14.99 plus phone fees. My first thought was the thieves, did they sit down and watch something while stealing my stuff? No, the date was wrong - after both break-ins. People are WATCHING this place now. PLUS, my Michigan neighbor is back and he definitely is a good neighbor on that particular front.
The only thing to do is call Direct TV - I'm going to get it removed if at all possible. I bypass the first person that answers, that person isn't going to be able to do anything for me in a situation like this and they will try to tell me that nothing CAN be done, you are stuck, pay the bill. SCREW that.
15 minute wait. Woman on the phone attempts to tell me that "if you would have" - I cut her off. Don't want to hear it. Don't care, have been dealing with this company for 11 years now, I know how it operates, I know what they are required to say with a computer screen in front of their faces dictating to them that junk, please DO NOT disrespect me.
Guy finally comes on. It was a short conversation. He put a password on my account - I thought I ALREADY had a password on the account. Not THAT kind of password, apparently, for ordering pay-per-views. He says that 2 phone calls came in from 2 different numbers at such and such a time on such and such date - both happened on the same day. They were "Adult" programming. I guffawed again. I don't ORDER such s***. He then gave the phone numbers, I immediately recognized the area code: El Paso, Texas. I lived there for 5 years in the mid 80's to early 90's as a missionary, that prefix will never leave my mind.
This guy puts me on hold to deal with removing the 2 adult channel PPV's plus the phone charges, I pick up the MagicJack phone and start dialing these numbers. Endless ringing, no answer. 915-472-8887 and 915-779-9463. Why post these here on the internet for any and everyone to see? Because they committed THEFT and I don't CARE who sees those phone numbers.
Here's the scary part: They would have had to know my name, my listed phone number - which is NOT the Magic Number and other information. I've had only one recent conversation with anyone in El Paso, and that was through our company's email system with a person that works in the El Paso store. My email - which I was using as intra-departmental - has my full name, the phone number that IS listed on the account and getting my address would be easy. You don't expect that anyone within your company is going to use your information for ill purposes and if they are found out, that person will probably be fired.
Do I know for a fact that this person did it? NO clue. I called both numbers several times with no answer. I looked up both numbers - they want money to identify who it is. Like $15 and I have no idea if that is a very inclusive amount of information. I have another idea which I am going to follow through with at work tomorrow.
I REALLY get pissed anymore when anyone steals from me. I mean, to the point I want to get a hold of that person and let them know - in vivid, physical terms, what I think of them taking my things. I have lost thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff to thieves, I am SICK of it.
Let's get off of that, I got the charges removed, the account is being "watched" by DirectTV and there is now a password on it that only I know in order to be able to order anything. Even so, I'm still QUITE unhappy that someone is doing this and apparently getting away with it.
Onto other things. I went to get the fish. I had to wait for the other buyers to show up because - dunno. The owner is a nice guy, we talked for quite a while throughout almost 2 hour operation. I helped these people carry 2, very large Koi out to their car in a large plastic container - it was heavy and they couldn't handle the weight. They had to take it back to their house, get them in their pond and come back for the rest. I - was asked to wait. When it was finally my turn - well, there were FAR more fish in that pond than I wanted to deal with, I asked the other buyers if they would take some of them - any of them - it's too much load for my small ponds. They took 5 of them. I still ended up with 18 fish. FAR too many, I have already placed an ad on Craigslist to get rid of at least 10 of them.
We got all of the fish out of the pond and that was it, I got out of there. Just too much time spent for what should have been a fairly short operation. I did get a discount, however, for my helping, so that was good if nothing else. Oh, and I drove the old Buick over there. I am going to drop that off at the auto shop down the street from my work tomorrow to have the problem/s diagnosed. I figure to only have it diagnosed there - unless it's something simple like days of old when a fuel mixture adjustment was simply a turning of a screw or adjustment of the jets in a carburetor - probably not. This car is old, but not THAT old, it does have fuel injection, lol.
My neighbor, freshly arrived from Michigan. He shows up with an old, rusted, 1928 Ford Model A attached at an angle on the TOP of his pickup truck. The guy is crazy, but he's likable enough. I got to inspecting the thing. Lots of rust, yes, but........the radiator was in perfect condition. The doors opened and closed flawlessly. The body? No dings. Even the wood for part of the frame was still intact. Anyway, I had noticed after he came back that another computer magically appeared on my Qwest modem info. Hmmm, who could THAT be? I had given him free internet last year in exchange to use his pickup.
Hey, uhh, Randy, are you using my internet? He was like, ohhhh, darn, well, yes, I came home, turned on the computer and there it was, internet service!! As if he didn't know it was the same setup as before. I haven't changed my password and that would mean automatic access. He started telling me he would pay for it when I politely interrupted him. No, no, I'll tell you what I want. Use of your painting equipment. Ohhh? Yes, I want to paint my old Buick - cheap paint, yes, but put a fresh coat on it. It does not look very good right now, the paint is faded to the point it's got different discolorations all over the car. He agreed to that.
So that's it. I forgot about my laundry I put in the wash this morning and now am paying for it. I put it in the dryer a while ago and cannot go to bed until it's done - it has my bed sheets in it and I don't have an extra set. I do NOT sleep on a "raw" mattress, period.
G'nite.
ben
The bill was for $115.38.
Insanity. I thought possibly ALL of my discounts must have expired at the same time and now I would have to spend whatever time it's going to take to get them to bring it back down again. I went to my account and found 2 pay-per-views on the same day for $14.99 plus phone fees. My first thought was the thieves, did they sit down and watch something while stealing my stuff? No, the date was wrong - after both break-ins. People are WATCHING this place now. PLUS, my Michigan neighbor is back and he definitely is a good neighbor on that particular front.
The only thing to do is call Direct TV - I'm going to get it removed if at all possible. I bypass the first person that answers, that person isn't going to be able to do anything for me in a situation like this and they will try to tell me that nothing CAN be done, you are stuck, pay the bill. SCREW that.
15 minute wait. Woman on the phone attempts to tell me that "if you would have" - I cut her off. Don't want to hear it. Don't care, have been dealing with this company for 11 years now, I know how it operates, I know what they are required to say with a computer screen in front of their faces dictating to them that junk, please DO NOT disrespect me.
Guy finally comes on. It was a short conversation. He put a password on my account - I thought I ALREADY had a password on the account. Not THAT kind of password, apparently, for ordering pay-per-views. He says that 2 phone calls came in from 2 different numbers at such and such a time on such and such date - both happened on the same day. They were "Adult" programming. I guffawed again. I don't ORDER such s***. He then gave the phone numbers, I immediately recognized the area code: El Paso, Texas. I lived there for 5 years in the mid 80's to early 90's as a missionary, that prefix will never leave my mind.
This guy puts me on hold to deal with removing the 2 adult channel PPV's plus the phone charges, I pick up the MagicJack phone and start dialing these numbers. Endless ringing, no answer. 915-472-8887 and 915-779-9463. Why post these here on the internet for any and everyone to see? Because they committed THEFT and I don't CARE who sees those phone numbers.
Here's the scary part: They would have had to know my name, my listed phone number - which is NOT the Magic Number and other information. I've had only one recent conversation with anyone in El Paso, and that was through our company's email system with a person that works in the El Paso store. My email - which I was using as intra-departmental - has my full name, the phone number that IS listed on the account and getting my address would be easy. You don't expect that anyone within your company is going to use your information for ill purposes and if they are found out, that person will probably be fired.
Do I know for a fact that this person did it? NO clue. I called both numbers several times with no answer. I looked up both numbers - they want money to identify who it is. Like $15 and I have no idea if that is a very inclusive amount of information. I have another idea which I am going to follow through with at work tomorrow.
I REALLY get pissed anymore when anyone steals from me. I mean, to the point I want to get a hold of that person and let them know - in vivid, physical terms, what I think of them taking my things. I have lost thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff to thieves, I am SICK of it.
Let's get off of that, I got the charges removed, the account is being "watched" by DirectTV and there is now a password on it that only I know in order to be able to order anything. Even so, I'm still QUITE unhappy that someone is doing this and apparently getting away with it.
Onto other things. I went to get the fish. I had to wait for the other buyers to show up because - dunno. The owner is a nice guy, we talked for quite a while throughout almost 2 hour operation. I helped these people carry 2, very large Koi out to their car in a large plastic container - it was heavy and they couldn't handle the weight. They had to take it back to their house, get them in their pond and come back for the rest. I - was asked to wait. When it was finally my turn - well, there were FAR more fish in that pond than I wanted to deal with, I asked the other buyers if they would take some of them - any of them - it's too much load for my small ponds. They took 5 of them. I still ended up with 18 fish. FAR too many, I have already placed an ad on Craigslist to get rid of at least 10 of them.
We got all of the fish out of the pond and that was it, I got out of there. Just too much time spent for what should have been a fairly short operation. I did get a discount, however, for my helping, so that was good if nothing else. Oh, and I drove the old Buick over there. I am going to drop that off at the auto shop down the street from my work tomorrow to have the problem/s diagnosed. I figure to only have it diagnosed there - unless it's something simple like days of old when a fuel mixture adjustment was simply a turning of a screw or adjustment of the jets in a carburetor - probably not. This car is old, but not THAT old, it does have fuel injection, lol.
My neighbor, freshly arrived from Michigan. He shows up with an old, rusted, 1928 Ford Model A attached at an angle on the TOP of his pickup truck. The guy is crazy, but he's likable enough. I got to inspecting the thing. Lots of rust, yes, but........the radiator was in perfect condition. The doors opened and closed flawlessly. The body? No dings. Even the wood for part of the frame was still intact. Anyway, I had noticed after he came back that another computer magically appeared on my Qwest modem info. Hmmm, who could THAT be? I had given him free internet last year in exchange to use his pickup.
Hey, uhh, Randy, are you using my internet? He was like, ohhhh, darn, well, yes, I came home, turned on the computer and there it was, internet service!! As if he didn't know it was the same setup as before. I haven't changed my password and that would mean automatic access. He started telling me he would pay for it when I politely interrupted him. No, no, I'll tell you what I want. Use of your painting equipment. Ohhh? Yes, I want to paint my old Buick - cheap paint, yes, but put a fresh coat on it. It does not look very good right now, the paint is faded to the point it's got different discolorations all over the car. He agreed to that.
So that's it. I forgot about my laundry I put in the wash this morning and now am paying for it. I put it in the dryer a while ago and cannot go to bed until it's done - it has my bed sheets in it and I don't have an extra set. I do NOT sleep on a "raw" mattress, period.
G'nite.
ben
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