Good morning!!!!

[PJSprog]

We decided to go ahead and put things away for winter, no real reason to wait until it is freezing hard every night or snowing..

The year is definitely slipping away. October already! I still need to get in one more mowing in the pasture. With forecasts in the 80s for the next week, and even 90s tomorrow, we're in no danger of freezing here just yet.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Good Morning!!!! 66F @ 9:00AM. Showers early, then partly cloudy for the afternoon. High 78F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.

I heard showers on the porch cover a couple times last night, but there was no measurable accumulation. There are chances of showers through Thursday, and more next week. No signs of temperatures returning into the paint zone, though, so that little job may have to wait until next spring.:muttering:

What was the reaction among the caretakers at your former home when you told them who you were, Drew? Did they have lots of questions for you about "life in the old days"?

I'd been holding off on applying a security patch to the troublesome 17" MacBook Pro, but did it anyway yesterday. Sure enough it "black screened" again when it rebooted. This time I googled up some instructions for running fsck, a disc maintenance software, then deleting a couple of files, and voila, it's working again. Apparently it's a common problem with older machines running newer Apple OSs.:banghead:

Then I pulled the propeller shaft out of the Vanagon and took it to a drive line shop for balancing. Came back after lunch only to learn that they didn't have the proper fixturing to do the job. But the owner offered to eyeball the propeller shaft installation if I wanted to bring the van back the next day. When I went to install the shaft, I noticed it wasn't fitting onto the output flange of the transaxle. The transaxle flange has a lip that extends into a boss on the propeller shaft flange, the the boss ID was 0.010" smaller than the lip OD on the output flange. The output flange lip also had several dings around the periphery, so I used a fine cut file to smooth them off, and also cut a chamfer on the OD of the lip. I figured that much interference over a two inch diameter still might go together, so I slowly and very evenly tightened the four bolts that held the two flanges together and got all the daylight to disappear between the two. A test drive showed that the vibration was significantly reduced, but not gone. Some reading during this morning's wee hours told me that many folks have had vibration problems, and more than a few were cured with the new bushings the mechanic has on order. But I think the biggest part of my problem was the loose bolts on that back flange. If they had of been tight, I'd have had much more difficulty than I did breaking that rear flange loose. Of course the mechanic blamed it on one of his fired helpers...

The driving lights for the old BMW showed up yesterday, so that's how I'll spend the day.

 

[sodamo]

70°F and no rain

Started bushhogging area at other end other the property. The potato farmer had planted some sort of bushy plant along the driveway. Don’t recall the name, perhaps morninga. Anyway it has taken over and choking out my coconut palms I planted. Situation aggravated in that he left this low level 3 wire electric fence which has to be removed also.

Glad you had a safe return trip Drew.

Prayers for all
Be safe
Have a great day

 

[daugen]

What was the reaction among the caretakers at your former home when you told them who you were, Drew? Did they have lots of questions for you about "life in the old days"? Well, they aren't exactly caretakers...they tore down the 1720 stone home I grew up in, used the foundation to build a garage/apt to skirt the building codes, and then built a 12,000 sf monstrosity in the middle of what was our front lawn overlooking the field.
A real Tara, huge twin staircases curving to the center, horrible, ostentatious, doesn't fit into neighborhood, etc etc
I met them once, they used to own a big horse farm in MainLine Philadelphia and then came here to build this gigantic house
And of course a few years later they tried to sell for 12M, the house and 70 acres, and no bites. Then it dropped to 9M. You can't see their new house from the driveway, blocked by trees, fine by me. Folks with way more money than good taste. My grandfather would be appalled.

The old gravel driveway was paved and greatly extended back into the deep woods, where 10 houses on 5 acre lots were built.
Big expensive houses but at least they were architecturally compatible and all built by same high end builder.
I like to slowly drive back to the cul de sac and look at the beech and birch trees, wondering if my initials are still on them, probably many feet up in the air now.

I got done up to the parking lot, will finish tomorrow. Could have kept going but figured I'd mess it up, so came in and showered.
Not sure if I'm going to mow this afternoon. Will see how motivated I get. Weather forecast looks pretty good. 83 degrees.

 

[ronjhall]

Back in for the day. Got oil changed in 3 engines. Greased all fitting on mower and tractor. That's enough for today.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

Well, they aren't exactly caretakers...they tore down the 1720 stone home I grew up in, used the foundation to build a garage/apt to skirt the building codes, and then built a 12,000 sf monstrosity in the middle of what was our front lawn overlooking the field.

That's a sad story, Drew. I know how you feel. The house I lived in from age seven until I moved to California had a large woods behind it, a golf course adjacent to that, an abandoned grave yard dating back into the 1800s, and a marvelous junk yard with literally tons of what now would be classic cars and trucks. Not long after I left, the woods were developed into condos, the junk yard and golf course disappeared under a shopping center, and I'm not sure what happened to the graveyard. So many childhood adventures and fond memories, and not even a trace remains of where they took place. "Paved paradise, put up a parking lot".:yell:

 

[Buppies]

My crystal ball is very fuzzy but until something breaks the Bermuda Heat Ridge we will all be warmer than we should be until possibly Christmas

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Traffic the last 2 days have been atrocious.

Started mowing field tonight, only got 6 rounds in. Got to go slow, grass is too thick and high. Last couple rounds needed lights to see to go. Decided that was enough for tonight.

 

[sodamo]

So I got 4+ hours in bushhogging. Got about 1/3 to 1/2 of the fencing removed, real PITA. Remaining in too embedded in the moringa, so i suspect there will be a lot of up and down, mow, remove fence, mow...

Here you can see the moringa crowding out along left side and some i got knocked down in foreground.


Part of the challenge, the farmer decided to randomly thrown loose rocks in the moringa, some fairly sizable. One shear bolt replaced today. Perhaps more challenging is the topography, not level and too steep to go up or down as i recall. Gonna take longer than i would like.

 

[mostly_gas]

Good evening all. 71F for the start, overcast, calm wind. Sky cleared to partly cloudy, Wind was mostly light, and high temp was 87F. Day started with cleaning lady prep, bike ride, then off to do battle with ATT. Turned out the Gainesville office did not have 2 phones we wanted, had to go over to Sherman, when I called ATT for account # they left a digit out:mur: And when a change over does not go flawlessly Verizon reschedules it for midnight The young lady called then up and sweet talked them into a real time retry, so after 3 hours and 75 miles of driving it is done :cool2: Now to finish configuring the phones, (wifi, truck sync, app removal, etc).
Prayers for all.