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I remember the old bowflex ads. Some guy always sang "Gonna make you want it!" but it sounded like "Gonna make you hornaaay!"
Took my new whiteboard and my sandbags to the new place yesterday. Truck almost lived up to its getting stuck on wet grass reputation. I had only one dehumidifier running in the berm house, that side was 70%. The other side was 90%. I had shut the kitchen one off as there was no good place to set it near the kitchen sink other than in the sink (the upper cabinets overhung the lowers too much). I was about consigned to power up the cheap dehumidifiers from previous owner, and I did, but I found a nice shelf set that I dragged into the kitchen and sat the big one on it and powered up. Now I have two decent ones draining into sinks.
Need to go buy another one for my 72 since I stole that one for the new place. HOA has a meeting tonight, dummies always schedule it during snow and it gets moved. Need a haircut. My barber is retiring in July, I'll miss her. Yes, lady barber. She cut hair with her first husband for 40 years, then kept going after his passing.
Took my new whiteboard and my sandbags to the new place yesterday. Truck almost lived up to its getting stuck on wet grass reputation. I had only one dehumidifier running in the berm house, that side was 70%. The other side was 90%.
John - Boy, those are some high humidity numbers in the house! I hope the new set-up with the extra dehumidifier helps. Sounds like you're been doing alot of running, at least this warmer weather is more conducive to being out and about. Since I've been shaving my head down to almost bald now for a long time, I bought some nice barber clippers and just have my wife do it, it's very convenient. I decided about a month ago that I wanted a radical change with my hair. If you've seen the movie, think of Brad Pitt in the WWII movie Fury, with his hair long and combed back on top, and shaved down very close on the sides and back. I'm not gonna post a picture of him, cause I ain't no Brad Pitt, and I'm not gonna post a picture of me, yet, because mine's still growing out on top. My wife's still doing the honors, and I think it's gonna turn out like I want it. Sometimes I just get the urge to shake things up!
Last edited by Dream67Olds442; Feb 26, 2025 at 12:42 PM.
Norm - I've had my head shaved to the length of your's in the pic above for many, many years. I really like it that way in the summer when it's so damn hot. No body really sees it anyway because I'm almost always wearing a ball cap year round.
Separate note. I've gotten thru 5 episodes of Zero Day now, it's great, I'm totally absorbed! I have no idea how many total episodes there are, but I'm going to watch more tonight!
Last edited by Dream67Olds442; Feb 26, 2025 at 04:15 PM.
FWIW, native blue catfish were routinely caught in the 1700s &1800s weighing in at ~200 lbs. Everything you read on the Internet will tell you modern day records of 140+ lbs, but documents demonstrate routing 200+ blue cats were caught in the past 200 years. Supposedly a couple documentations of 290 lb. blue cats.
I likely told this story. With a summer youth worker/intern (Beth) hired to assist me (1982) we're sampling for aquatic invertebrates on the Buffalo National River (BNR) when KABOOM! up a tributary feeding into the BNR. Beth is all WTF was that all about to which I responded some local boys fishing. Say what(?) she says. Grab a bucket & getcha sum....as ~30 - 40 rock bass, SMB, LMB, sunfish, etc. come floating belly up into the BNR from that tributary. Welcome to the Ozarks - Beth.
You around I told the story the day I counted ~50 - 60 Timber Rattle Snakes migrated downhill across an old logging trail from the late 1700s/1800s in Richland Canyon, Arkansas ~ 7:30AM? I was in a NPS suburban & waited ~20 - 30 minutes before they stopped crossing.
You around I told the story the day I counted ~50 - 60 Timber Rattle Snakes migrated downhill across an old logging trail from the late 1700s/1800s in Richland Canyon, Arkansas ~ 7:30AM? I was in a NPS suburban & waited ~20 - 30 minutes before they stopped crossing.
Norm - I remember you telling this story before, that had to be an incredible sight! +200lb Blue Cats is an incredible fish! We had some monster Walleye on the Current River very near where our cabin was just south of Doniphan. The State record (I believe a little over 20lbs) was out of a pool between Doniphan and the AK line at one time, but has since been broken. Every year you see reports of catches of +18lbs out of that stretch, or the Black River just north of Poplar Bluff. I caught a couple of 9lb'ers out of the Current and those were huge to me for a boy from Michigan.
Beautiful day out and and fairly warm. I'm in shirtsleeves anyway. I slept in to a late 730. Tiger wanted to go out and I stayed up and went to my airport to hang out. Had a nice chat with a couple guys now I'm waiting on the laundry. Awful house for lunch.
I've got a Soloflex that I've had for decades. I used to use it quite a bit. Say what you want about Soloflex, but any machine is better than not using it. I forgot why I stopped using it, apathy maybe, I think I got sick and didn't do it for a while then just got out of the habit.
Tried working on the Suburban this morning. I need a deep 15mm socket. I don't even know if there is such a thing. I also need some vacuum line or similar to add on to the end of the drain tube on the SRX's sunroof. They had a cheezy fitting on the end of the tube that clipped into the firewall. The fitting pops out and the water drains onto the floor. If I put a length of hose on the end of the drain tube and attach it with a hose clamp, then I can run that through the firewall.
Waiting on laundry then lunch. Hope everyone has a great day.
Mike - Good luck getting what you need to continue working on the Suburban and SRX. 🤞
It's a little cooler, low 60's today, and very breezy. Suppossed to have a high of 70° tomorrow and then a big drop to a high of only 45° on Saturday, with an overnight low in the mid-20's Sunday morning. We're on the Midwestern springtime roller-coaster!
I've been trying to chase down why my mortgage payment that's due on 1 March has not cleared my bank yet. Called my lender, Wells Fargo, and they haven't received my check I sent back on 17 February. You can't count on anything getting where you want it to via USPS anymore, it's no wonder they're Billions of $'s underwater! They suck!
Gabe's younger brother Keegan (6-yrs) is also playing hockey this year. He's playing for the same hockey club Gabe is. The little guy has his heart set on being a goalie, and he's pretty damn good at it too. He's fearless, and has only given up one goal in his last 3 games. I've been to several of his games too, but just haven't got many pics. He plays in his season ending tournament this weekend (3 games) but unless you're paying close attention you won't know who won because they don't keep the score on the scoreboard. I enjoy watching him play, but for me a little goes a long way because at that age there's alot of falling down. But hey, they have to learn somehow right? If he sticks with it, he'll have a big leg up on Gabe who didn't start playing until he was 9.
Not in a million months of Sundays will I ever strip paint from a 95 year old solid core five panel door. I “might” do it for $10K…maybe.
Norm - From all of Dawn's horror stories of paint stripping on the 100's of pieces she's worked on now, I knew you were probably headed down a tough road with your door project. I'm sure they're a real PIA, but knowing your work ethic and determination I'm sure they'll be beautiful when finished! Whether they're worth it or not is a whole other discussion???
I have a woodworking friend who only does new work. He will not refinish because of the labor.
Warm here. Yesterday I worked, got a haircut, and ran errands. Apparently Advanced Auto is shrinking their footprint; the one in that town I was in is closed. Got some oil at Autozone, and a Purolator filter at Menards. Bought another dehumidifier, a hose, a hose gasket kit, water jug, some high octane 50:1 lawn equipment 2 cycle rocket fuel, and 4 cans of spectracide hornet spray. I hate some paper wasps. Last year I was 13-0 Me vs Wasps.
Going to be warm tomorrow like Chris said. I may change oil, replace some parts on my grill, and get on the roof and clean gutters. I need to spray Bifentrin before spring starts. My place has many bugs, but the two I do not like are the wasps, and the ants. Mud daubers, japanese beetles, flies, the little basement centipedes, non-clothes moths, I can deal with them. Ants invade, and wasps sting. I may get some diatomaceous earth and play with it sometime for ant prevention. The spectracide is just for killing wasps, not for preventative use beforehand.
Hrrrmpf. So, Roundup stopped selling glyphosate based herbicide to consumers, but you can still get the pro market stuff on Amazon, so away I went to get a gallon of the good ****. I was grilling tonight and there was a big MFing insect on my door some crappy spindly night fly. I was spinning on ice on Saturday. This is bull ****. I am just glad we will get below freezing again before spring and these bugs will die again.
Hackman's passing is odd. Man was a pimp, though, with a 30 year younger wife. Maybe I should get me an 18 year old here in 3 years.
Just finished enjoying Song of the South Duane Allman and the rise of the Allman Brothers documentary on Prime, very well done.
Watched Stevie Ray Vaughan 2 part Rise of a Texas Bluesman and Lonestar last week, also very interesting and well done.
Just finished enjoying Song of the South Duane Allman and the rise of the Allman Brothers documentary on Prime, very well done.. Watched Stevie Ray Vaughan 2 part Rise of a Texas Bluesman and Lonestar last week, also very interesting and well done.
Keith - Those both sound good! I'm a big Allman Brother's fan, I'm gonna check em out, thanks!
I was reading a post on another forum to which I belong and we were discussing the writing of engineers and how the member posting had a difficult time editing the works of engineers for public consumption. This prompted me to recall a time where I had done some writing and I went to check on it. To my surprise, I found that Vanderbilt University has fully digitized the undergraduate semi-weekly student newspaper, The Hustler, a rag of variable quality to which I contributed a weekly column for my last years at the institution. While I have original word files and some printouts of the microfiche archives from a few years later, these scans are well done and allow a nice reading experience. I am meaner than I remember and not as funny. They save well into image files, so it will be good to get a copy of them this way.
To my surprise, I found that Vanderbilt University has fully digitized the undergraduate semi-weekly student newspaper, The Hustler, a rag of variable quality to which I contributed a weekly column for my last years at the institution.
John - I am just curious, did your weekly column have a specific focus, or was it more wide open to whatever might pop into your mind any given week?
Got a lot done today. Got the belts on the Suburban and the fan shroud, so next up is putting the fan on and the fuel filter, and then a pair of batteries and that should be it. Oil change maybe. Insure and reregister him. Went to Lowes and got my deep 15mm socket.
Also got the SRX all back together. Couldn't find any kind of hose that I thought would work, so I went out to a Valiant parts car and got a couple inches of the radiator overflow hose. Scrubbed it up and it looked like new. Got it on the end of the sunroof drain tube and fished it into the hole in the firewall, pillar cover back on, and that's that.
So I've been following the oceanliner SS United States on her farewell journey. I thought there was someone on the site that was posting about her a couple years ago. She was taken out of service I think in the 60s, after being not a lot of years old, and has been at the same pier in Philly for 30 years. Lots of drama later her destiny is to be sunk as an artificial reef off the Florida panhandle. Quite the storied liner, built to some mil spec to be the fastest oceanliner, top secret designs, started out with an aircraft carrier hull, but now the interior is completely stripped. I read that it cost thousands a month to keep her afloat because she was in such bad shape. No one wanted to front the money for a restoration. But several tugboats are towing her down the coast, around Florida, and into the gulf so she can't be in that bad of shape. Even today in old and shitty shape, that's one majestic gal. Too bad no one wanted to come up with a floating city somewhere.
Tomorrow will be shredding branches and the like. I might get crazy and put up the new mailbox that I've had for about a year. I wanted to wait until that tree was down out front, and the tree is down so the mailbox needs to go up.
Well we've passed into Friday. Hope everyone has a great weekend.
I think I posted on here about my battle w/ebay/seller. I bought a front driveshaft for my F250- used all the charts and features to ID, but it didn't fit. So ebay wanted me to send back to seller- provided a return shipping label- BUT- full refund of $120.83 would be reduced by $49.00 as I had to pay return shipping. I decided that I would fight that, as I am retired and have time. So I did and was told at first that my dispute was declined- so I called Discover and actually talked to a gal and it was resubmitted. Today I got a Email saying the dispute was resolved in my favor. Good... Now I have a new driveshaft that I don't need- maybe they will want it back which I will do at their cost, but I doubt it. Small victory but good....
Mike - At first I had to think why is Mike posting so late at night and then remembered you had some extra time off you had to use. That's great you got the belts on the Suburban and are on your way to getting it operational again, and that you found a piece of drain hose that would work on the SRX. Excellent!
Greg - Chalk one up in the Win column for the little guy, gotta love it! I'm happy for ya buddy!
it's gonna be beautiful here today, sunny and 70° for a high. Then we'll have a plunge back down into the 40's tomorrow and Sunday.
Got some runnin to do sometime today. I need Water Softner Salt from Walmart (and a few other things), wife needs to process an item return at the UPS store, and we both have new glasses that have come in from our annual eye appointment we had about a month ago. The good news is that all these places are within about a quarter-mile of each other in Festus which is only 8-miles from us.
I'd really love to get the 4-4-2 out for a spin this afternoon but the streets are caked with salt after the last snow/ice episode since it hasn't rained at all since that happened. A more productive choice would be to drag the hose reel out of the basement and wash the daily driver since right now it looks like a powdered sugar covered donut. Keegan's hockey game in the morning at 0830 about a 50-minute drive away, I'd better not stay up too late.
Hope ya'll have a great day and weekend!
Last edited by Dream67Olds442; Feb 28, 2025 at 07:43 AM.
Well, it's Friday. Paid Hagerty on the two Olds yesterday. Will try to get my buddy to go for a burger and a beer tomorrow afternoon. Mid 40's at the moment, snow tomorrow. I may try to get out on Sunday for some pics. Went out last weekend to a couple of spots, and came up empty, deader than a door nail. I least I got some exercise trudging through the snow.
Been shredding branches at Mom's today. I had cut down some privet over at the shop, at least I was told it was privet, and that stuff is nasty. Three inch long spikes all over it. Hard to cut, hard to stuff in the shredder, holy cow I felt like a pin cushion. Well that's it for that, next time I cut a bunch down I'm burning it.
Thanks Chris. How lucky is the SRX to have a piece of Valiant on it. Tomorrow I plan on finishing up the Suburban, and then I'll move the SRX out of the garage. Don't know what will go in its place. I'd love to get the convertible over here and put it in the garage.
Greg any win with ebay/paypal/credit card is a big win. If they don't want the drive shaft back maybe you can sell it on ebay
Gotta get up and get going tomorrow morning. I'm going to get a pair of batteries for the Suburban and the place is only open till noon. At work we'd call a pair of batteries a shipset. Then Monday I'll get him registered and insured. I have to take Tiger to get his shots in the morning and then surprise surprise Mom has to go to the doctor in the afternoon.
Okay time for dinner. Have a good evening everyone.
Dan - Good luck getting some good shots tomorrow if you go. My wife's consumed with the 7 planets in alignment right now. I wonder if Kenneth has been tracking them with his scope? That brings up the point, haven't heard from Kenneth in awhile to the best of my memory?
Mike - Good luck finishing up the Suburban. Sounds like you've got plenty to keep you busy the next few days!
Wow, the weatherman really blew the forecast for today, they were calling for a high in the low 60's. When I left for Festus around 2:30, it was 77°. Since it was so incredibly nice, my wife decided she wanted to get a jump start on working in her flower garden and playing with the dogs so she didn't go with me. That eliminated my going to get our glasses and returning her package, I just went to Walmart to get the Water Softner Salt and a few other things. After I got home I did get out and wash our daily driver, looks 100% better! I'm pooped after doing my routine Friday morning lifting workout, running to Walmart, and washing the car. Shouldn't have any trouble getting to sleep tonight.
Hope everyone has a nice evening and great weekend!
So, one of the extra items I was going to pick-up today at Walmart was more frozen pizzas. I still had 2 Home Run Inn Meat Lovers in the freezer, but I wanted something different. I chose to get 4 Dogtown Pizzeria 4-Meat thin crust pizzas. Dogtown is a western suburb of St. Louis of Irish heritage. They have a huge St. Patrick's Day parade and celebration every year. Dogtown Pizzeria has been around over 60-years, making a traditional St. Louis style pizza with a very thin crust and featuring Provel Cheese. It tastes very similar to the Imo's pizza I've mentioned before. Just within the past couple years they've been selling their frozen pizzas to many local.grocery chains, including Walmart. It's very good!
Also, while at Walmart, I picked up some desserts. Our Walmart in Festus has what I think is an exceptional bakery. I love their donuts/pastries. I got these Apple Fritters and had 2 after my pizza. Warmed them slightly in the microwave for 15-seconds and they melted in my mouth. They come six to a box and you'll notice 2 are missing. Yum!!!
Chris the Pizza and Apple Fritter really look good. Not sure if this link to Stellarium will be of interest for viewing the planets location and times for your review here you go. Hopefully Kenneth is off grid roaming the desert in the jeep with some family and friends gazing as well...
Chris the Pizza and Apple Fritter really look good. Not sure if this link to Stellarium will be of interest for viewing the planets location and times for your review here you go. Hopefully Kenneth is off grid roaming the desert in the jeep with some family and friends gazing as well...
Keith - Thanks. Dawn has some kind of App on her phone that helps her track the position of the planets, but I'm not sure of the name of it. I am going to pass the Stellarium link to her in just a second, thanks for that too! 👍
The site is kind of amazing it will let you see in real time what is going on above. I once saw a satellite over head went in the house pointed the mouse at that part of the sky and it identified the name and owner of the ship. One morning there was a train of ships and this site is tracking them. Pretty cool
There are icons on the bottom of the page, if you click on deep sky objects the click on any moving objet it will give the description, including any star or non moving object
The site is kind of amazing it will let you see in real time what is going on above. I once saw a satellite over head went in the house pointed the mouse at that part of the sky and it identified the name and owner of the ship. One morning there was a train of ships and this site is tracking them. Pretty cool
There are icons on the bottom of the page, if you click on deep sky objects the click on any moving objet it will give the description, including any star or non moving object
Sounds pretty damn cool, I'm sure Dawn will appreciate it!
John - I am just curious, did your weekly column have a specific focus, or was it more wide open to whatever might pop into your mind any given week?
It was wide open. As I was an extra year senior, I had had it with the place, so I basically made fun of whatever I wanted. I was a columnist the first year I did it, and a weekly columnist the second year, so, every Friday, I could go get the paper, take it to lunch, and read it, including my column. I covered Greeks, exams, the cops, the cafeteria, lack of winter weather prep, the NOW, the wardrobe malfunction, parking, environmentalist nutcases, bad lecture hall remodeling, Florida, a column on writing columns, social acceptance, football, the upcoming residential college move, testing, one on my favorite sculpture, race politics, and I closed with a column on graduation. I've found 23 or so of the 25ish things I wrote and I think I have the others in another format.
Lost an aunt this morning. Funeral next week.
The SS United States is an interesting study in society. It makes no sense for any private company to use the ship, and not enough people care about it for taxpayer funding. Some people care, but no one cared enough to step up. Being a reef is better than being scrapped. Were I Richard Branson, a ship like that turned into corporate retreat for the company and a free ride to the UK would be a private company motive, but I'm not.
