One year ago today: January 23, 2019, a crew of 175.
Five years ago today: January 23, 2015, oops, wrong war!
Nine years ago today: January 23, 2011, Coleman ain’t talking.
Random years ago today: January 23, 2010, $250,000 in 30 seconds.
I met the deadline, the coop is ready to coop. This is a bale of wood shavings, the nesting boxes have a good deep layer. This is complete luxury for the hens, who up to now kind of live on the back of a bench on the neighbor’s porch, rain or shine. I was able to pick up the white hen, but she remains skittish. I’ll try to get the owner to put them inside, but if not I’ll lay a trailer of birdseed into the interior tomorrow and see how that fares. Once the sun got up, it was a balmy day so I finished the ramp and the lid on the nest box.
Sadly, the concert next week may not be a go. That’s the long awaited outing in Punta Gorda, but Alaine isn’t feeling up to it. There’s still a chance. Here’s me talking, the guy who rarely gives himself enough time to recover completely, now advising others not to rush. By my standards, I am taking things a lot easier. Like that chicken coop. Should have taken two days, not five. And I still want to do some fancy trimming work for the experience. It is a permanent, hurricane-resistant structure that requires two men to move it. That was fun leveling it by myself.
Look there, it’s the picture window. This was from an old china cabinet or similar, if you look through it, you can see the nesting boxes inside on the left because the lid is open. Note the fancy edging along the top. The roost is in place and all is ready for occupancy. Mike, from out west, upon learning the hens are both good layers, says that brings a whole new meaning to B&B. Which reminds me, the paperwork from back west. I sent him instructions to take care of and send me the bill. If the camper had been legit, I would have considered a leisurely trip this summer. But I found many of the pictures the seller e-mailed were stock photos from the company web page. There also appeared a few numbers near the bottom of the ad, which appear as random typos, but my spider sense tells me there ia a problem.
Mind you, English is still a far more expressive language than say, French or Spanish. Except for German, English cannot be beat for conveying exact technical terms. It’s the non-tech part where English becomes daunting, but most native speakers never give that a second thought.
A hot day in Australia.
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Here’s the coop with the ramp attached. It seems steep, but there are two ways to consider that. One is that it can easily be made shallower. The other is that it is a convenience. The chickens are easily able to fly in and out the window. As depicted, the coop is buttoned up to test for drafts. It is not completely watertight. Most Florida rain falls straight down, but it can turn 90 degrees in a good windstorm. Did I say, the roof is hurricane-strapped. From this angle, the coop looks a bit like the cabana I used to rent out on the Thai west coast. Back when it was Thailand.
When I see that slanted roof, I keep remembering I’ve got those unused solar panels from the camper that quit on me in
I’ll remind you how that works. A set of PVC pipes gets buried in the cool ground on the shady side, with an inlet above ground. Then an outlet pipe juts into the interior. A separate set of pipes, painted black, lies on the roof or south side. As the sun heats the pipe, the air inside rises, creating a vacuum inside, which in turn draws the cooled air from the underground pipes into the structure. I’m thinking of this less as a chicken coop and more as an experimental station as the days pass. But I still need to get my bathroom finished. That surprise visit back to Tennessee at Xmas kind of threw my year off balance already. And that rhythm player didn’t return by call. I wonder if it was that whacko Puerto Rican guy who never practiced.
What’s this, the Democrat party is blaming Facebook for Trump’s 2016 victory, saying it spread disinformation. Yep, those Democrat donkeys are still in stunned disbelief that anybody could have voted for an outsider. Now, they are vowing to break up the tech biggies. I’m all for it, but not for the same reasons. I want a more level playing field so startups with products that work stand a chance against the junk the eFAGs have been foisting on us for decades.
And how about that change in Google search results. Except for an almost invisible icon, advertisements will now masquerade as search results. Up yours Google. Same to Microsoft who just lost 250 million customer records, instead focusing their energies on getting their “updates” to switch Office 365 users to Bing, their dog of a search engine. I have successfully avoided all MS updates, but it’s been tricky. Also, I took one look at Office 365, where your files are kept by Microsoft. That’s called artificial stupidity.
While I’m bitchin’, I don’t like the federal broadband fund. This is the cash handed to the states so people living halfway to nowhere can get their on-line porno. While I agree a tiny fraction of Internet service does serve for job-hunting and fact-finding, I should not be paying taxes so some New York loser can get on-line 24/7. The only thing paying other people’s Internet bill equalizes is the already clone-like mind-set of liberals. My logic is the same as other rural services—these people already save enough money not paying city prices that they can pony up extra for (here’s a term I coined) luxxuries. When luxxury is spelled with two x’s, that’s my sign I consider it taxpayer rip-off for the comfort of an undeserving minority. You want Internet, you pay for it or drive to the library like I had to for years. And if you live too far from a library to do that, well, that says even more.
Numbers from the 2019 budget are down to a trickle as I look for where things went wrong, I believe this is called management by exception. As long as things go along, leave them, but focus on where they do not. Fact is, I averaged $440 over budget every month last year. This is not cause for alarm, because not every item is budgeted. What is means is I had to dip into funds that, while not allocated for anything in particular, should still have been available for things like investments, fun, or travel. That’s still a grey area, because most of the extra cost is attributable to the car, which I did use for a lot of travel, which resulted in more repairs, and so on.
The up side of Tennessee is that I now know I can leave my place vacant without worries. My schedule is finally my own. One thing I hated about paying rent is you had to keep paying it while on holidays. For that matter, I always hated it because it cut short my travels when I was younger. But not as much as having a mortgage, mind you. That must really suck. I spend a lot on coffee, around $84 per month, because of being on the road so much. The real killer was gasoline. My budget of $66 per month is history. The car requires three times that. I’ll have the scoot on the road within the week. Temperatures are returning to normal tomorrow, that car can sit except for road trips. Let’s see, when am I next due in Miami?
