Archives March 2015

Last night after work I got busy with another small Tacoma project.  The tailgate latch on the truck broke over the weekend.  Luckily a generic replacement latch was only $12 shipped to my door with Amazon Prime shipping. Of course any time I do auto maintenance anymore I have the camera in hand as automotive repair videos are some of my most popular on my YouTube channel.  The replacement of the latch was very straightforward, I had the entire job done in 15 minutes.  The $12 part obviously was not a high quality OEM piece but it should get the job down.

Last night Cindy and I were talking about chicken expansion options.  We have been rolling around the idea of building a large stand alone coop to give the four chickens we have more space as well as opening up the potential for us to get a few more if we want to.   I had been thinking about ways to do this.  When I was looking out in the backyard and looking at the smaller of the two sheds my gears started to turn.  Converting the shed to a huge coop with a large attached chicken run would be pretty awesome.  In addition it would be very secure and less labor intensive than building from scratch.

Of course this plan has complications as there is a lot of stuff in the small shed, too much to fit into the large shed so I would wind up probably having to get ANOTHER outdoor storage building.  So if that is the case I could possibly find a used small 8×10 shed on Craigslist that I could use for the same purpose.  The realm of possibilities is pretty wide open at this point.

Of course the availability of money for chicken coop expansion is going to be dependent on what we decide to do with the flooring in the house.  The current options there are doing the main living area with the wood simulating tile and carpeting the bedrooms, office and dining room with new but less expensive carpet, carpeting everything with new stuff just as it is now, or do nothing and let the old carpet ride for another year or so.  After work tonight I have an appointment with the flooring guy at Home Depot to attach some hard numbers to each option so I can make a decision between the three choices.

On Friday night it felt like another cool front had blown in, the temps when I left work were down into the lower 60’s.  It felt cold enough that I threw the blankets over the coop after buttoning up the chickens for the night.  Well that trend apparently reversed overnight, it actually got warmer, it was 66 degrees when I got up. By mid-morning it felt downright hot in the sun.

I did a quick round of outside chores before I headed out.  There was a youth track meet being put on by the running club youth team.  The reason I wanted to go was to check out the FinishLynx camera system which is used to time many track events.  It’s a totally different approach to timing as it uses a high speed camera to capture runners as they cross the finish line.

There is a lot more manual involvement with timing the runners in a track event.  Once the runners cross you place the cursor on their chest which correlates with their time.  The good thing is most sprint events have no more than 8 participants in a heat so it isn’t too bad.

My primary interest in the Lynx system was it’s ability to be used as a supplement to a chip timing system.  With the right set up, even if your chip timing system went totally belly up you could still do a reasonable job of timing the event with the camera.  Evidently there is also a lot of demand for someone to time local track events, learning the Lynx system would open the door to doing that type of event if I chose to.  The software back end of things is different obviously than what I am used to but the flow of things is similar, I don’t think it would be difficult for me to pick up.

After the meet I stopped at Home Depot to grab 40 bags of rubber mulch for the pool border.  With conventional mulch 30 bags is the max amount I can safely jam in the bag of the Tacoma.  Since the rubber mulch bags only have .8 cubic yards in them, getting 40 bags into the Tacoma was easy, I could have thrown more in if I wanted to.

I picked up the dogs on the way home as well.  Transporting the dogs in the Tacoma isn’t ideal anymore.  Nicki normally likes to lay in the back of the cab behind the front seats.  With her painful rear legs, getting back there and spinning into her preferred position is difficult.  To make it easier for her I moved the passenger seat all the way forward and placed her in the back.  She still struggled to get in a spot she wanted.  It’s depressing to see her have such a hard time doing things she used to do so easily.

Later in the afternoon Cindy and I worked on spreading the recycled tire mulch.   The 40 bags went further than I expected, I only had a small uncovered section left  less than six feet long.  The 10 bags I picked up on Sunday finished things off nicely.  The finished border looks sharp.  Although each bag of rubber mulch cost three times as much as regular mulch (for half the volume), the stuff should last pretty much forever, eliminating the annual mulching of that border.  The fact that the area will no longer attract termites and will remain “clean” even if the chickens push stuff around adds to the value for me.

Saturday night we decided to stay home and chill.  We rented Whiplash from Xfinity On Demand.  It was a movie that I had heard many good things about depite it being based on a subject I would normally not consider interesting, drumming.

It didn’t take long for the intensity of the film to get ratcheted up thanks to the maniacal yet brilliant conductor that had incredibly high standards and zero tolerance for mistakes.  The movie kept you engaged from start to end and opens up the curtain to just how competitive and pressurized high level music can be.  It really was a great movie and deserves the acclaim given. It gets a solid A from me.

On Sunday morning Cindy and I decided to do the track and back run once again.  The continued warm and humid weather made us shove out the door early.  I noticed a big difference in how I felt during the run thanks to the higher temps and humidity.  My desire to stop hit critical levels several times on the return leg of the run.  I just felt sort of miserable.

As I was running I was thinking about my running club buddies that were participating in the Hooters Half Marathon at that same moment.  Doing 13.1 miles in these conditions would have SUCKED.  I also felt a little lame, since I ran that race three years in a row but have not done it the last two years.  Running a half marathon right now is totally off the radar at my current level of endurance.  I just don’t have the drive or ambition to put in the time/work necessary to run a half at this point. Despite the heat Cindy and I covered the distance at an avergae pace 20 seconds a mile faster than our prior best.

When we got back we showered and climbed in the van for a two headed errand, stopping at Home Depot and Rural King.  At Home Depot, where we got our carpet estimate that was crazy high, we talked to some other guy that was the head of the flooring department.  Talking to him was a world of difference from the woman we talked to the week before that seemed to be little else than an order taker.  He took a much more consultative approach.

I told him how the high estimate we got pretty much knocked my socks off.  We started talking about other possibilities.  We came down to two options, both of which involved quoting carpet that was still good quality (15 year wear warranty) but significantly less expensive, as in less than half the cost of the stuff on the first quote.  The first option was just carpeting the entire house with this carpet but still using the high quality padding.  The second option was a bit more daring (and expensive).  It would involved putting down ceramic tile that actually looks like wood in the main living area and doing carpet in the bedrooms.

At first glance we thought this might be more price efficient since the tile was only $1.98 a square foot.  However our flooring guy said the gotcha is the installation cost for tile is sky high, reaching close to $3 a square foot.  Of course having done some ceramic tiling myself years ago I knew first hand how much of a pain in the ass it can be.

If Cindy and I commit to being the grunt labor for the project, pulling out the old carpet and moving all the furniture ourselves we can knock another good chunk off the estimate.  So I am waiting to hear back what the new numbers are and will go from there.  Doing the ceramic tile would dramatically change the look of the main area obviously as well as being more durable.  However just going with some less expensive carpet will still renew the interior of the house to a lesser degree while allowing me some left over capital to do other things.

During the errands I noticed the van is developing a new issue with the AC system.  It felt like the compressor wasn’t running normally.  The air coming out of the vents would be warmish and then randomly the compressor would kick in and deliver cold air.  Just as randomly it would shut off again.  My first thought was the refrigerant level was low so when I got home I tried adding some however since the compressor was not randomly running at that moment I was seeing 100 PSI on the low pressure inlet which is high.  I need to try to get a reading while the compressor is engaged. A quick search online indicated this could mean that the AC compressor is starting to fail.  If that is the case it could be the beginning of the end for the party van.  I’m not dumping lots of money into something that is already on the radar to be phased out or replaced down the road.

Early in the afternoon we headed over to Cindy’s brother’s new place which is in our general vicinity but even more remote.  With the tragic passing of his wife right in the middle of him trying to move into their new place he has a hell of a mess to deal with.  Cindy and I offered to come over and lend a hand however we could.  There were a bunch of people at the house already when we got there.  The house as you could expect was in disarray with items just stacked everywhere.  They actually closed on the house back in December.  JP has been diligently trying to do some upgrades prior to moving in.  They got a lot of stuff done like repainting and putting down new flooring everywhere however there was still stuff in progress like one of the bathrooms and the kitchen which has new cabinets and sink but no counter tops and the sink was not hooked up.

My first task involved cutting a temporary sink mounting surface out of a hunk of pressboard.  The thought was it could be used to at least add some functionality back into the kitchen.  Unfortunately the only new faucet set we could find in the place was not designed for this type of sink which utilized a single hole for hot and cold water.  I then just sort of helped out where I could, Cindy got at least a couple of the rooms somewhat organized which was good.

I felt badly for JP, not only could I identify with what he is going through because of what happened with my mom, I also could feel how overwhelmed he was having so much to do and handle with his wife no longer by his side to help him.  If there was any good to be had from this tragic situation it was that apparently there are a large amount of people willing to help out wherever they can.  Before we left I told him if there was something that came up that he needed more help with to let me know. He literally has weeks and weeks of labor in front of him.

When I dropped the dogs back off at Ali’s place this morning I was taken back when I saw a Kia Sportage in the garage.  Over the weekend Ali traded in her Volt that I thought she was so pleased with for the Sportage, a small SUV.  I had no idea she was even considering a change of vehicles, hence my surprise.  The Sportage is a nice vehicle but her days of zero gas work commutes are over obviously.  On the plus side the dogs should have more room to spread out.