While the wife is away... Part 10

No central heating on for weeks!  Yeah! - British style!

That is correct - as cold as it has been I have not used central heating for about two weeks.
I have used a electric oil-filled radiator to keep my knees warm while in study.
If I get really cold - then I exercise to keep warm. No problem.

I will also use this hot water bottle tonight for a bit of warmth...

While the wife is away... Part 9

I prepared the 16ft beam. Holes drilled. Groves cut. Eye bolts added. 

Grading the earth flat. I had planks of wood and a spirit level. It was a nightmare.

This took almost a whole day of hard work:

Thankfully David T came around and helped get it up. 

 Much work still to be done - but at least it looks good right now. Need to anchor the posts. Finish the wood edging. Get loads of mulch to fill in the 'pit'.

While the wife is away... Part 8

Inventing stuff:

The iBlock:

This is such a cool invention. It holds my iPhone while I watch Netflix eating breakfast, washing up, ironing and so on. With the right materials I may be able to get it to stick to the dashboard and use it as a GPS Sat Navigation holder (on the iPhone). 

The black rubber thing is lose and can be used to prop up the iPhone at different angles. 

It can accommodate landscape or portrait viewing. 

The shower foot washing holding plate:

For a while we have had this foot washing contraption - but the thing is pretty useless as it has suckers and most showers and baths have an anti-slip texture on the floor - which will not allow the suckers to work. 

Idea: get a smooth piece of plexiglass - get the foot cleaner to suck to it and put that in the shower floor. I can then use one foot to hold the plexiglass and one can be washed. 

While the wife is away... Part 7

Thanksgiving today. I cooked a chicken and some sweet potatoes with mixed veg. 

I have no idea why Americans mash the sweet potatoes and add sugar and make a desert out of sweet potato and try and serve it with the main meal. It really should be served as a desert. Instead of pumkin pie - it should be sweet potato pie. Anyway...

Instead I added salt and rosemary (bitter) to off-set the sweetness of the sweet potato. I simply roasted them in the skins (for fibre) and they were nice!

I took the chicken out of the pan and added water and stock. I left the roasted onions in the pan. I then boiled the pan on the stove for a while. I added a little corn starch. The gravy was awesome!

There was almost no effort put into this meal - and it turned out great. I am very thankful!

While the wife is away... Part 6

Hauling wood!

This is a 16ft long 4x6 bit of wood. It's funny how they say 4" by 6" when in reality it is 3.5" by 5.5"

You would have thought a 2 by 4 would be 2 inches by 4 inches - but you are wrong. So wrong. 

It's 3.5 by 1.5 inches. 

So basically you cannot believe the hype or any measurements they give you. 

I managed to fit several 10Ft long 4x4 pieces of wood in the back of the Civic. So I was thinking that a 16ft would protrude by a little - maybe 6ft.  It was more like 7ft and a bit. 

No problem though - I went up a few slopes and I did not manage to scrape the ground. 

I passed a cop. Not a problem. 

Another cop passed me - but he went for someone else. 

WIth that flag on the back it was totally legal - no probs.  

While the wife is away... Part 5

I started watching Pilgrims Progress - Journey to Heaven (2008 - DRC Films)

I ended up tying noose knots and watching a video about a swedish fire torch

One of the comments on the video was:
"Start point - videos of Mazda RX-8 ===>> End: Video how to create Swedish Fire Torch. I have again lost myslef on YouTube."

Sport Cars to survival skills... mmm easily done I suppose...

The amount of educational videos on You Tube is fantastic. Not sure what I would do without it.

Anyway - in pilgrims progress they showed a swing set (like the one I am building) and a noose. It then got me thinking about how I was going to tie a tire to a beam. 

Knots I learned about today:

Bowline

Bowline-on-a-bight

Running bowline

Slip knot 

Hangman's noose

Reef knot

Sheet bend

Clove hitch

Backhand hitch

Useful video on 6 knots you should know: (skip the bio - just get to the knots)

I need something like this for my Squirrels:

While the wife is away... Part 4

Made large 10x10x8.5 ft A frame. 

I started work on this in the afternoon. I had a few breaks and things. I had a few hiccups here and there. It was beyond midnight when I had finished. 

I am so slow at wood work. I just don't know where the time goes. 

Just one more A-frame to go...

While the wife is away... Part 3

Chili con carne. I used tomatoes from the garden and some nice meet. 

Served with organic brown rice with Turmeric. 

Should keep me going for a few days...

While the wife is away... Part 2

I burnt stuff!  Loads of stuff!

It was a clear day - no wind - perfect for having a fire outside. 

I needed to burn up an old stump and some various garden cuttings. 

It was a little cold - so I thought it would be nice to have an outdoor fire while working in the yard. 

Guess what? The humidity was too dry - so it was illegal to have an outdoor fire in the county of Gwinnett!

As least in the UK you can have a bonfire when you want...

Anyway - I could still burn stuff indoors!

I burnt all my junk mail that I have been saving over the year. 

Anything that needed shredding was burned - all in the safety of my own home. 

While the wife is away... Part 1

Well the wife is away with Solomon in North Carolina visiting her folks until after thanksgiving.

While away I can do what I want! Horah!

So today I made some Cream of Tomato & Tarragon soup served with rustic whole grain bread and a slice of cheddar. 

The tomatoes are were out of the garden (the ones the squirrels left me). 

It was pretty tasty!

Fly Away Kit

Here is the Statue of Liberty from the road. Apparently it is mega huge close up - so maybe one day I will get the boat out there and see it...

This is the FEMA Homeland Security staging area. National Guard were helping out. 

A FEMA truck. 

 This is the fly away kit. 5 Boxes. Can be shipped by plane if needed (for emergency situations).

In under an hour Sprint would be pulling 10M of internet out of the sky. 

 This kit was made by General Dynamics and very nice it was too. The dish panels can be nicely tucked away.  

This is Brian. He was a marine. Probably still is. The base is orientated and made level.

The first panel. No nuts to worry about - all screws have handles. 

The panels are numbered clearly. There goes the middle. 

 Now for the last panel:

 Dish is ready. The modems and stuff will end up in that trailer. 

 That Italian looking guy was the guy Sprint were putting the dish up for. 

He was a Paradise Modem user! 

 He showed me his truck. He has the old P300 and the Evo. 

The link is up and it all worked first time. Amazing!

The New York State Emergency Management Command truck had Paradise modems inside and out!

Work Trip to New York City

I had the opportunity to go out with the Sprint Emergency Response Team in New York. 

Below is a satellite fly-away kit and is what they were using our product with. 

Sprint did other stuff while I was with them, but this is mainly what I was involved with. 

Sprint had to provide 10M internet from the sky to a customer. 

Its a nice kit. It only costs $40,000...

The cables from the kit were routed through a broken sky light damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

In a small stair area the amp and the modems were housed. There is also a cisco switch there. 

Nice View...

 Someone else had three large dishes...

Aiming for the sky. 

This is a SatColt (Satellite Cell-services On Light Truck)

Fully Deployed. It had a range of 1 to 2 miles. Just G2 with special hand sets (for emergency services). 

Not sure if I would want to be living right next to that cell tower...

Weeds Plus

I have been clearing some space in my yard for a sort of bamboo area with a section for raspberry and blackberry bushes. 

But there are weeds there that are very hard to get rid off. Just cutting them down does not help - they just grow back with a vengeance. You have to dig out the roots. If you can find them!!

Each weed requires some sort of careful excavation. The root core is a large bulb. The one shown below is a large bulb - but I have seem them much bigger than that. Usually they are the size of a mans fist.  What makes plants like this so hardcore is that the spiky vines are spiky right down to the root - and the vines can be very long. This creates a lot of hard work digging them out - being careful not to break the vine as you can break the lead to the root. I have literally had to dig out a large part of a bank to trace where some of these vines are going. You have to trace the vines as sometimes they have a mini bulb along the way! (you may see a mini bulb below just above the larger bulb). 

I have two types of this weed. Not sure of the names, but I know what I call them. This weed is perhaps the most difficult one I have found to really get rid of. It takes hours of time and I still don't know for sure that I have found all of the bulbs or the mini bulbs. It's crazy. 

Another thing these types of weed like to do is run along side large tree roots. Maybe they get some of the moisture it needs from the tree root? They can run for a long way with a tree root and again this requires a great deal of work.   Maybe one day I will be free of the weeds. But if I plant something and one of these comes up around it - then I would literally have to dig out the good plant to get to the weed. Total nightmare weed. 

 This is Solomon pretending to be a dog. He makes quite a convincing dog. Not sure where he got it all from as we don't have dogs and I don't know what he has been watching to gather his information. Solomon will chase sticks like a dog also. Pretty cool - a child and dog all in one!

Autumn is here. The trees have gone a nice golden colour. Even the ivy has gone a nice red colour. I believe this is a Swamp Hickory tree. The nuts are unedible by humans - but he squirrels love them.  They like to hide them in my grass and in my garden. Another pest in the garden! They are eating my tomatoes right now - whatever is left of them.