Another foot of snow today

[Bird]

John, I have no idea what the numbers are now, but I remember over 20 years ago Alaska had about 2,200 (that's not a typo) small planes that had disappeared and were never found (that doesn't count all the ones that crashed and they did find). And anyone who has any interest in small planes would be fascinated to visit the Anchorage airports (any of the 3 I know of). I've never seen so many small planes and so much variety in age and brands. And since flying is the only way to get to much of the state, they do have the population with the highest percentage of pilots. Neither of my brothers fly anymore, but they were both licensed when they lived up there. The older of the two had an old tail dragger, a Piper Colt if I remember right and the other had a Piper Comanche, but also sold airplanes for awhile, both for a dealer, and buying and selling on his own. I once went with him to fly a new Cessna 152 from the factory to Anchorage and just had more fun than humans are entitled to. And while I was there on that trip, we flew in a 6 place Piper to Seldovia and went out hailbut fishing one day, then flew in a Cessna 206 on floats to an interior lake to fish one day. It's great if you survive.

 

[Dyer retired]

Bird,

You just described why I have to go clear my roof after every snowstorm. If I let an inch or two of snow build on the roof edge, it will without fail dam up behind it and come soaking through the ceiling. I suspect there is a very expensive fix for the problem, but just keeping it shoveled works good and is cheap. We have roof rakes that can get a good 10 feet back from the edge and you can do that from the ground, so it's just a little manual labor.

We had a real bad ice storm in 1998 where most of Maine was without power for 14 or more days. I lived on the main drag between Augusta...the State Capital, and Togus Veteran's Hospital, so I felt assured that my power would be back on pretty soon and it was, within 3 days. We had a propane stove (looks like a woodstove with fake logs) and that actually heated the house fine, so we were just without hot water, electric stove, etc. My friends got kind of mad when I'd tell them that the power was out for so long at my house that the hot tub nearly dropped down to 98 degrees and that I nearly had to lift the garage door manually one day. The people trying to survive and keep generators running for 14 days weren't so amused. On a side note, we finally....during that time, had the Attorney General Consumer Fraud unit prosecute a local Honda generator dealer because, for some reason, his generators went up in price by a multiple of 4 during that crisis. He's still in business, so apparently he didn't get fined too bad? Dyer, retired

 

[Dyer retired]

Bird,

Sorry I missed this post prior to sending my last. My dad was one of those guys that got licensed in the Army Air Corps just as WW II ended and was discharged before flying militarily. We used to rent a Cessna 150 each weekend and fly around doing touch and goes and I developed a real love for flying. I can't stand on the edge of my roof and look over it without feeling vertigo, but flying is great! The State has two Cessna 182's and use them primarily for traffic enforcement and, in my prior job, carting us from one end of the State to the other for inspections, etc. The Pilot asked me to take the controls one day while he looked at a flight plan and as soon as I saw him looking down at his paperwork, I drove the yoke forward and put the plane into a quick, but short dive. I thought it was pretty funny and so did he once he got his heart back down out of his throat. We would every now and again fly back from the Bar Harbor region and do the 600 to 1000 foot flyby of the Islands and Martha Stewart, John Travolta, Casper Weinburger properties...etc. That was clearly as close to ever seeing those properties as we would probably get. We were never daring enough to fly too low over Kennebunkport, ha! Are your brothers both retired now also and do they ever feel the urge to go rent a plane. Like my dad, I think it just became a matter of being too darned expensive a proposition. I guess I'll fly the Kubota until that gets too hard to keep fuel in. John

 

[Bird]

John, one brother is retired on military and social security disability. The other started drawing his social security last year, but takes a hit on it because he's still in the RV repair business. However, he's never been married and has some investments from selling his tire dealership and garage in Anchorage several years ago. So they're at least semi-retired.

 

[Dyer retired]

Bird,

Good on the semi-retirement for your brothers. I suspect that your brother with the Military Pension does o.k. and gets COLA increases each year? Good thing your other brother doesn't depend entirely on S.S.A. benefits. Of course, as gas prices skyrocket, so do the tires and everything else petroleum based, so your brother may have sold at the right time. I have to believe that people will run out of money to pay for all this stuff sometime. I know Cruiser tires, motor oil, and gas at the pump was killing our budget prior to my retirement when it was based on $1.35 at the pump....we got it a little cheaper minus the taxes, but SP is getting beaten to death now on those budget figures. You know it's bad when the Governor is considering a penny sales tax increase...man am I glad to be out of there!

Back to snow....thought I'd better include a picture of the A-unit raking some roof snow. Sitting on the Kubota is much more fun! John

 

[Bird]

I don't really expect any serious weather problem; i.e., ice, but I guess it's possible tonight. That 100% chance of rain in the forecast actually arrived after midnight. So far, I've gotten a little more than 2.6" and we/re still getting a light rain, north wind, 41 degrees but forecast to be down to 35 by 4 p.m., then possible rain/snow mix tonight with a low of 28. If that actually happens, we'll probably have a few wrecks on icy overpasses in the area tonight and in the morning. But at least yours truly is retired and has an ample supply of groceries on hand, so I won't have to get out in it.

 

[Dyer retired]

Bird,

I think my computer has figured out a way to limit my lengthy responses. It waits until I finish two or three paragraphs and just shuts itself down. I think I need to purchase a back up power supply.

Wind, rain, and 28 degrees does make for interesting driving. We have problems here with people that have lived here all their lives...they think they can stop fast, because with all-time-all-wheel drive vehicles, they don't notice how really slippery it is underneath until it's time to stop at 50 mph. Lots of crashes everytime it gets cold on the overpasses and no amount of Public Service announcements help people understand why the overpasses freeze ahead of normal roadways.

I don't mean to turn this into a weather forum, but it got down to 4 degrees last night, warming up now. They are predicting a large mix of either snow and rain, or rain and freezing rain. In other words, they don't know. I have all the areas cleared out for when what hits us arrives and so it shouldn't cause problems for the Kubota. I think we turn the clocks here pretty soon and that will certainly give us hope in this area to see it still light out at 6:00 p.m.

Let's send this one before the computer dies, ha! John

 

[Bird]

John, if the computer is dying because of brief power outages, then you probably do need a battery backup. I've been using an APC Back-UPS ES since June 2003 and finally had to buy a new battery for it in October 2007, so it lasted a little over 4 years and it's a real simple battery to change and they included a label to send the old one back. I just have the one that would only be good for about 10 minutes and it came with their PowerChute software to (supposedly at least) properly shut down the computer after 5 minutes.

Now of course if your computer is shutting down for other reasons, as this new Windows Vista Home Premium is prone to doing periodically, I don't have a solution. I actually LIKE Vista better than XP when it's working properly, but it does periodically pop up a dialogue box that says something like "Internet Explorer (or whatever program you're working with) has quit responding and will shut down (or restart)" and then it does. I have high hopes for Service Pack 1 later this month or next month.

And yep, Sunday we go back on Daylight Savings Time.

 

[Dyer retired]

Bird,

I'm running XP here and am baffled by the whole thing. I will be working on something, the screen will say "no signal" as it goes black and the computer will begin it's firing up sequence as though I just hit the switch. There is not change in fan sounds, lights flickering, or indication that I've lost power, so it now has me paranoid. I used to head the Computer Crimes Unit and the Sergeant that runs it took the unit a few weeks back and could not make it fail, or find in it's history what was causing it to fail here at the house. He suspects, as I do, that I'm suffering from power dips or spikes and causing the problems. The computer is plugged into a dedicated outlet with all the peripherals plugged into two other separate outlets. It immediately powers back up without a second of hesitation, so I don't need much of a battery backup...as far as maintaining power for very long, so I think a cheap backup will be at least worth a try here.

I've got a minor technical question for you regarding TBN postings. I type up my message and if I hit the spell check "ABC" button in the upper right hand part of the Reply to Thread box, it tells me that I have to download "iespell," so I hit the button, but I'm not convinced it does anything????? What do you suggest I do to get the use out of the supplied spell check box? John

 

[Roger2561]

Dyer, Retired - That's the reason I bought and installed a Curtis Cab on JD 4500 - Got tired of the snow flying in my face when trying to clear the driveway. I live on a north facing mountain and nothing stops the wind from overcoming me. And, I purchased the 20,000btu heater for it. What a joy it is to clear my drive that is a little more than 250 feet long. No matter the temperature, I'm toasty warm and dry. Gotta remember to put my coat back on before climbing out of the nice warm cab. I have an Erskine frontmount snow blower on mine. I'll have to see what I can do for a rear blade. No matter how hard I try, I always leave a mound of snow near a door that the snow blower will not pick up that I have to remove by hand. Roger