One year ago today: December 16, 2018, dollar store drug test.
Five years ago today: December 16, 2014, I no longer give chocolate.
Nine years ago today: December 16, 2010, on high-price coffee shops.
Random years ago today: December 16, 2008, birdhouses, way back.
You’ve been waiting expectantly for chicken news, I just know it. You don’t have time for the whole story, here’s the highlights. The custom coop over at Agt. R’s was rotted out. Even treated wood has a terrible half-life in this climate. So we found a giant dog cage and need to get it up off the ground. As fortune would have it, there is an unused swing set in my back yard, with all the chains if I can remember where I put them. The chickens are popular in the area and we’ve already been donated a large feeder and a special water jug. Agt. R and I will try to put the chickens inside the new area. We took care to explain that area is prime raccoon habitat and I won’t be here every night to close the hatch. He’s got a half Doberman to keep the critters away, I don’t. It’s clever how he trained the dog to think the chickens are her puppies.
Here’s the swing being set up. The cage will hang down in the middle where I had planned to build a swinging planter. This color scheme has to go, the drone would spot that in a wink. What a pity in America one has to invest in camouflage to build a chicken coop. It’s hard to see, but the wire dog kennel is way in the back, waiting to be suspended from the crossbar.
The Reb was influential. I hope she realizes this now makes us a seven-pet family. She doesn’t eat eggs either. Do you like quiché? I shall see you later, I have to get out there and flatten the jungle. We found those poisonous berries back there, the ones that look like chokecherries, but on a red stem. I’ll be busy. It’s another coincidence, but up at Tractor Supply last week, this $30 a pint of chicken coop paint was on sale for $7. Tell you what, I’ll go get a picture of it for you right now. Stand by. Okay, there it is Chicken Safe, in bright red.
Agt. R says the trick is to catch the chickens just before dark and put them in the new coop. In the morning when they wake up, according to his theory, they will regard the new premises as home. To ensure this, scatter plenty of feed around. Most manuals say to build a ladder ramp to the house, Agt. R says no, that just lets the cats in. I saw the rooster fly enough to get over the fence, so now I know they can stay where they want.
2020 Landrover.
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I suppose I could give you some pics of turned up dirt. That’s what I’ve been doing since noon so it is top story, but I’ll spare you. I had to clear some land. You have to get the undergrowth out by the roots or you lose. Only the rooster came over and it took him an hour to get past their natural barrier at the shed fence. Eventually he clued in each hoe chunk turned up one of those black bugs they eat like popcorn. The camphor seedlings take two passes, first all that can be pulled by hand, then over again with shears to get the rest down to ground level. They will sprout again unless I find time to get in there with the spade. The basic area is clear and there is not enough natural shade. That comes later, I’m putting up the swing and building a base for the cages. The swing will be visible from the air, so remind me to download the latest schematics for a drone jammer.
Here is a before and after view of the effect of drone paint. It is difficult to see unless you have the same beady eyes as the building inspector. This is the view from the road, or if up 65 feet, the drone would look down on this scene. Start on the left picture. You are trying to spot the two yellow triangles between the old tree stump and the end of the garage door slide beam. See them? So would the City Hall drones (of both types, mechanical and human, both largely made of plastic). Now the right panel. Everything is still there, but nearly invisible.
I wanted to put the utility bill on equalized payments so I could manage the account when out of town. I’ve learned to never show up in person, but to call in anonymously first. Sure enough, they are using any change of utility status to update global files. They want ID, proof of residency, proof of ownership or a rental contract, and two pieces of mail in the account name to that address. We knew this was coming, and if you try to put the bill in a company name or trust, you must pay commercial rates for the services. There will be a lot of discontent over this level of control.
In most states, you can no longer register a vehicle there unless you show a valid driver’s license for that state. All my life, I’ve never registered a vehicle in the same state I lived and got left alone a lot by the system. How they must hate people like me. The point is, such laws and conditions are Unconstitutional. Strange as it seems, the state governments are supposed to be preventing such laws instead of passing them. What a pity America is becoming more like the old England (or contemporary Canada) where everything is either compulsory or forbidden. People only think they have a choice anymore.
ADDENDUM
A quick meeting and we decided to go ahead with the raccoon traps. I fully expect to catch a lot of neighborhood cats. We set a giant hav-a-hart on the wood pile along the north fence. Agt. R inspected the hanging cage and pronounced it chicken-ready. I have no source of straw so maybe I’ll pick up some hamster bedding when I get back from my travels this week. I found a lot of government documents won’t download on Android and anything newer than Win 10, so I was at the library a couple hours. That’s where I sped-read a few books on keeping chickens. For now, they’ll have to roost on the top bar of the swing.
I began reading a booklet on how to make money on-line. It has changed for the better in 20 years. The same old scam-like operations, the on-line stores are alike, and because the products are shipped individually, that shipping rates are the highest. In many cases, the product costs more on-line. I get the impression that quality has become a neutral selling point, that is, dislodged from its once key position. You get what they dish out and like it because returning has become a hassle and they flag you. Also, I don’t like what they’ve done to the marketplace, with the play per click nonsense and third party monitoring of your sales is never a wise idea.
Another peeve for me is that the formatting of most on-line businesses, no matter how impressive the screen, is either unimproved since the concept first arrived, or confusingly inadequate in some way. This is where I remind you that I read a book on HTML back in 1998 or so, saying to myself this simplistic piece of sh*t will never amount to anything. It was amateurish and confined all screens to a certain look. Well, that look is still prevalent today. Box-like and minimalist, with menus that don’t quite offer the right options. I understand it is the constraints of HTML that cause this, but the millennials have had twenty years to come up with a solution.
As for inadequate, that quality has become the norm. Sites rarely have the right format for what you want. Ask for a specific component, and you get a warehouse screen that expects you to know the part number. We’ve all wasted time with sites that want your ID before they’ll tell you if they have what you want. And time after time, pages designed to be pretty rather than functional. The worst part of web commerce is that you cannot do the one thing that it promised at first: pay with cash. For those who don’t know, PayPal got big because it implied it would be an anonymous system. They lied.
As far as I know, there is still no law that requires businesses to record the identity of their customers. I know the tax law says only that they must record the transaction. But once eFAG found an entire generation stupid enough not to know that or the difference, well, now you have the Internet.
As for inadequate, that quality has become the norm. [Author’s note: what’s eFAG? Oh, it’s another new term I’ve coined. It means eBay-Facebook-Amazon-Google.]
