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. 

Harvest.

This may look like a bunch of turds, but these are my sweet potatoes. They grow in clumps. 

I picked 11 bell peppers and a few Tomatoes. Looks like we are coming to the end of the harvest - temperatures are getting much cooler at night now. 

As for the 'easy' fall out on the above ground growing thing - it was not that easy. I had to dig all the earth out. In fact I think that normal planting may have been easier...

Invention of Solomon

It seems that Tom and Jerry has been influencing our child. 

He thought a mouse was living in the skirting board. 

Below is Solomon's mouse trap. Notice the cheese on top of the tape measure. 

I guess the mouse could fall and hurt himself...

Car Crash

Was on the way to work and someone had decided to have an accident. They closed the whole road!

If you notice the grey car was on the grass bank. 

They could not have picked a better place - this was the hospital entrance!!

Electricity Monopoly

Stacy got notice from the electricity company. It blew her mind!

The scumbags were going to cut us off!

We went to the average monthly payments and all was going well, but then they increased it by $20 without telling us. Then they charged us late fees for not paying the full amount every month.
It was CRAZY!!!!

No competition in America - so we cannot switch Electricity companies. They have us. It's a monopoly. Need to go Solar or something...