Chris, you should own a decent multimeter. I bought a Fluke 115 for myself a few years back and liked it so much I bought one for work on their dime. DC Voltage across the terminals for these checks.
1. At rest, nothing charging, 12.7 VDC
2. On the maintainer, something higher, like 13 or 14 VDC
3. When the car is running, high 13s, low 14s.
4. When the car is just shut off, you can put the probes on the battery and watch the voltage fall down to 12.7

I would let the car sit a week with nothing on it, put a multimeter on it to get voltage then, then see how it starts.

Norm, that tractor is really an overpowered lawnmower and not a true earth-pulling agricultural implement. The PTO is belt driven and is in front. I have a fully kitted 3 point hitch with hydraulics and attachment units in the back (which allows everything but PTO back there). Every PTO attachment is thusly belt driven from the front. I have never had a belt slip on a mower, the tiller does some. This also keeps destruction of the unit down.

The engine faces backwards, so, where an Oldsmobile would have a crank pulley, it has a PTO pulley. The hydraulic pump is the other power tap on the engine. I mowed one notch lower than usual on the big deck last night. The moist grass and the adjustment made it work a little harder. I did take a corner and ducked under a tree branch, but the roll bar hit it and cracked the branch. I have a myriad of crappy trees on the property.

He does like violence.

 

Oh, and my mother is bemused by her beagle going white in the face slowly as she approaches 7.

 

John - Thanks for the excellent follow-up & uplifting Chris' knowledge on DMMs. Like yourself, many years ago I began purchasing all my meters from Fluke (great equipment). I've done my own R&R (change outs) of AC home service panels, wiring and the like and the clamp feature(s) make electrical diagnostics so much easier.

Yeah, Quentin likes violence. Like those falling to sleep nights after watching Reservoir Dogs or most any event which rattles your brain, I recall the time I stepped on this huge thick Copperhead snake's head one time in the Ozarks - rattled the **** out of my brain for several nights. Thing is, the F'er never even budged even while I stepped on his head. I had a hard time falling to sleep for a couple of nights.

 

Norm/John - I would not trust what was going on with the Battery Maintainer as any determination of the battery's health. As it turns out, I did some more investigating and I figured out what was going on. It was actually just a stupid bone head move on my part. The Battery Maintainer is normally plugged into it's own dedicated wall outlet in the garage. Yesterday when I was putting the car away and hooking up the Maintainer, not thinking what I was doing, I plugged it into a nearby power strip that is used to power my radio in the garage, which was on at the time. So about an hour later when still messing around in my garage I did see that the Maintainer had turned to green. Then shortly after that, when I decided to go inside I shut off the power to that power strip. Doh!!! When I turned on that power strip again this morning to turn on my radio, I also activated the Battery Maintainer again and it started up as yellow as it should when in the evaluation mode. The Maintainer is now back on it's own dedicated outlet, working properly, and showing the battery as fully charged as it should have been from the get-go if I had half a brain.

On a separate note, I do have a cheap DMM that I've used before (pic). With my battery getting older it sure wouldn't hurt to do a quick diagnosis of it's health via the steps John outlined.

Thanks guys!!!! 👍

 

Chris - Hey. That cheap DMM is all ya need & likely isn't all that "cheap" because I note it will (also) read AC. Any DMM capable of reading AC is much more expensive (generally) than a DMM which only reads DC. The only caveat to the less expensive meters is they're only capable of reading up to 10A (maximum), and even just a little bit better cheap DMM will be fused so you don't over-AMP that maximum capability - which would mean you've likely fried the DMM rather than being able to replace the fuse. Speaking of measuring $hit, I recall when I first had to acquaint myself w/ a (Fluke) AC/DC DMM at an early age, but hey buddy saved my A$$ on several occasions diagnosing a motorcycle since you gotta finger out what's going on with the VR, the stator, IGN coil & battery diagnostics. I think it was the 1st time I realized how a Frick'n stator worked and what it does.

 

I currently have Pulp Fiction and both Kill Bill movies on dvd along with the Hateful Eight. I haven't seen Reservoir Dogs in quite awhile. Norm, I have always called my peach colored Lily's Tiger Lily's, and just Lily's for the yellow ones. Is that correct?

 

Dan - One morphological feature of nearly all lilies (esp. a Tiger Lily) is development of a whorl of leaves running up the flowering stem (spate) from bottom to top. This is not ALWAYS the case, many true Lily hybrids out there, as well.

 

Here's a good website demonstrating true Lilies which I don't believe have been hybridized...I haven't read the website. Anyways, these images demonstrate the nature of the morphological feature of whorled leaves running up/down the stem. This is true for nearly all Lilies including many hybrid Lilies - but, yeah, always a but....this is not always the case. True Lily hybrids can also lose their whorled leaves up/down the stem from simple (out crossing) and/or inbreeding hybridization.

https://www.nomadseed.com/2016/11/th...ilium-species/

 

Big Shrimps

 

Thanks for making me hungry. Norm have you ever used the microwave in the husk corn cob cook method. It works pretty good

 

Norm, I'm gonna say no then, as mine at this time of year, are a bundle of long thin leaves eminating from the ground rather than a single stem with the whorls of leaves spaced up the stem. These will not flower until later in the summer. When that happens, I'll have another gander at them.

 

Meanwhile, while I'm reading an article on Lily's, and posting my response, ol' Norm is posting a pic of a fine dinner!

 

Keith - I have, indeed. You'd have thought we'd starve to death if we didn't can &/or freeze all the vegetables from our massive garden each year. How many Mason Jars of tomatoes, beans, etc. does a family really need. WTF

We'd do both formats. Mind you I learned all this $hit from my Mom (primarily) and Dad (who was along for the ride) and I think he was handsomely rewarded (by Mom) for his efforts.

Two or three rotating Mirro pressure cookers on the stove and a humongous steel enamel canning pot - the type which will hold ~6 quart Mason jars. Those are the minimum.. there were other pots, as well.

We rotated between blanching corn for freezing (long term) and wrapping & fast freezing corn short term. This began at a very young age for myself and my other brother. This $hit happened yearly, of course. For some reason I don't know Dad never caught on us kids could see him squeezing Mom's A$$ cheeks and breasts occasionally & he thought it was all fun & games until Mom had to simmer him down. Oh, our kitchen was a bloody mess of laughter, fun and hard work.

Short answer. Yes, when microwaves 1st appeared, we took unblanched frozen ears of corn w/ husk on, and nuke 'em. Pretty tasty. Yet, husk on cobs over a grille are my favorite.

 

These BIG SHRIMPS were "OK". Said they were Northern water wild, but they're tiny for Northern waters. They're more the size of what I used to catch in Florida, but they taste no where as tasty as delicious Florida (Islands) spiny soft-shelled lobsters.

 

Funny story and insite " Can't you smell that smell" Roasted corn..mmmmmm

 

"The smell of death surrounds you"

 

I had a cousin of Johnny Van Zant in the college biology course I taught in Florida. First class session I'm validating the registered students, get towards the bottom "Van Zant"; oh yeah, I asked him, said Johnny was his cousin.

 

I knew you would get the inference, small world Johns cousin thats awesome

 

He was a good/nice student, also.

 

Keith - This guy's a little creepy. Somewhere between a gay Cornholio & Julia Child.

 

Bass-O-Matic was my favorite SNL cooking skit .... "mmmm That's Terrific Bass"

 

Hybrids & hybridization 101. There exist natural hybrids in nearly every life form on the planet, they're sometimes referenced w/ different names such as the viral (virus) clades. Clade is a simple term meaning the unit (virus, bacteria, fungus, plant, animal) ALL descended from a common ancestor. Throughout millenniums these units each formed wild hybrids beginning primarily w/ the bacteria & the primordial soup of the sea. The first primary forms of hybridization resulted from simple genetic mutations in bacteria. Example: When we say a virus is a recombinant RNA or DNA virus it simply means the genes became re-arranged (recombined) & the resultant form is then a variant of the ancestral stock (clade). Been happening since the Earth cooled a couple days ago. This $hit happens on a continuum through time. Darwin recognized this (as did others) and developed the theory of the Origin Of The Species. Nothing new here but a cataclysmic shift (paradigm) in science. All validated with the advances of Watson & Crick when they along w/ Madam Currie discovered X-Rays and they postulated the notion of double-stranded DNA (sometime last Thursday, I think).

Evolution of plants and animals are tough for many to grasp. It becomes extraordinarily confusing when you remove naturally occurring hybridization and purposefully select desired or undesired "traits" by crossing variants of a two different species of a wild population e.g. selective breeding is hybridization. The type of breeding we witness in cultural & ornamental horticulture is one form of hybridization. Yet, it's far more involved but flourishes daily in the wild and in the lab. Lilies and such are so far removed from their ancestral clade it's literally impossible to tell whose who in many respects simply based on morphology. Now, if you want to get down to brass tacks, we start examining the genes where the chromosomes reside, then we map those chromosomes and we look for variants over time to arrive at a true understanding who are the likely ancestors - that's called conservation. It's simple, those critters who retain the greatest number of non-anomalies (no variation in their gene pools) are direct descendants of the clade.

Dogs are not hybrids. But every single one of them were selectively bred to remove a trait or propagate a trait. The majority of which don't come close to wolf, in fact some look more like rats.

 

I watched that episode the night it aired.

 

Norm, thanks for the Hybrid/hybridization info. Same here. Probably close to 50 years ago.

 

Norm - The Lobster tails looked good! Been probably at least 20-years since I've had one of those!

 

Chris - As I noted they were "OK". They certainly weren't anything to write home about. Honestly, it was an impulse purchase. I'd prefer either a large fresh Maine or a Florida spiny tail caught the same day I eat it. Of all the seafood available I can create an easy list of the bugs I prefer:

(1) Stone Crab Claw (Absolutely top of the list)
(2) King (Spider) Crab
(3) Lobster
(4) Shrimp
(5) Crawdad (Mud Bug)
(6) Blue Crab

 

Good morning guys,

Overcast, very humid, and pretty warm today with a high around 85°. About a 50% chance of scatterred showers between 11am and 3pm, and then some sunshine later in the day.

It's my daughter Blaire's b-day today and we're running over to her place around 4pm to give her her present and say hi for a few minutes. It's really nice having her just a 5-minute drive away.

Gabe had a great final Spring game last night scoring a hat-trick in a 7-5 loss. I'm posting a pic of his Hockey Club's (Meramec Sharks) annual organizational photo just so you can get a visual of how big his Club alone is! Both boys are in there somewhere, I don't have a clue where?

Hope everyone has a great day! 😃

 

And, yeah - I know they're not bugs, it's only colloquial term used by crazed people so I fit in well.

 

Chris - Holy Snot Rockets that's a gigantic picture - way cool.

Does your other daughter (the one who scorns you) attend her sister's B'Day event knowing you'll be present?

 

By far my favorite is Shrimp, Cold, Sautéed, or Deep Fried, I love them all.

 

I didn't mention prawns since most consider a prawn a shrimp; yet, scientifically they are not the same (un-related) by morphology alone. I do enjoy prawns over shrimps.

 

Yes, Gabe's Hockey Club is huge. I don't really know how big his is in comparison to many of the other popular Hockey Clubs within the greater St. Louis area, but I know his Club's very popular and has been around a long time. Jr. Hockey is extremely popular in our area.

Yes, my other daughter Taylor that I'm essentially estranged from right now will occasionally be present at family functions where I'm present. We just ignore one another and don't cause a scene. Taylor's oldest child (Ollie) is actually playing on Keegan's Roller Hockey team right now. Taylor won't be at Blaire's today when we go over there, it's not a formal party, we're just popping in for a few minutes to wish her happy b-day.

 

That's sad about Taylor, IMO. Blaire should drop-kick Taylor in the ovaries and tell her "Listen bitch, you have only one Dad". I digress.

 

Thanks. Classic story of the excessively privileged child, enabled by her mother, who has yet to grow up even though she's in her early 30's. When my kids were growing up I refused to reward bad behavior. I'm certainly not going to start now with a grown adult. I'm probably waiting for an apology that will never come, but it is what it is at this point. Maybe someday she'll "get-it"???

 

It's obvious you have an excellent foundation in family values. I have 57 "first" cousins on Mom's side alone. I've witnessed this type B.S., as well - it's annoying. Mentally my mind operates like this. Some children should not have parents and some parents should not have children. Yeah, I'll talk behind (about) someone's back because (1) that's how the world operates & (2) I judge everyone (esp. myself). I have zero tolerance for idiots/imbeciles who fire off the "...you shouldn't judge others..." diatribe. These people are whack jobs.

 

Moving right along w/ today. I'm not sure I have an agenda. I wake to some agenda daily. Fuel filters for the diesel tractor arrived yesterday - I'm not sure I want to change them out today. I'd prefer to eat and do very little. Eh, I may have established a new agenda. LOL

 

Thanks for the compliment on family values. I agree 100% with the rest of your comments/philosophy!

 

Someone said: "Don't worry, be happy!"

 

And, everyone thought Bob Marley wrote that song...

 

Monty is a dog with several quirks. His favorite position on the couch is with his head completely tucked behind/under one of the throw pillows. We're not sure if he does that because he likes the darkness, or it muffles the noise, or both?

Dawn is taking Maggie for another Laser treatment on her bad knee today at 2pm. Maggie's been doing pretty well but the Vet told Dawn that most dogs benefit more long term from multiple treatments every 3 to 4-weeks over a period of months.

Of course that's what the Vet would say! $$$