6 inches at a time, Jar Jar still sucks, sweating

On my way home from work I picked up the dogs for another long weekend visit while Ali is out of town.  They had to share space on the back of the Prius with groceries from Costco, including two large bags of softener salt.  During the night Cindy and I both had off and on sadness about Lola passing away.  I have a hard time processing when something is here one moment and gone the next.

On Saturday morning I wanted to get started with the ethernet to coop project.  I wanted to get the attic work out of the way before it became a sauna.  Earlier in the week I had cut and put an end on the network cable I was going to extend outside.  My plan was to come out of the attic with the 200 foot ethernet cable via a hole that is already punched in the cinder block where cable, satellite and phone lines are located.

Well as I surveyed the hole from the outside I realized that I had precious little space to get another cable through there.  To make matters worse the hole is not straight through the wall, instead they are offset by 8-10 inches from the inside to the outside, making it even more messy.  After doing a lot of pulling and tugging I realized that it just was not going to work that way.  So it was time to look for alternative exits.

After some thought and further examination I decided to punch through the soffit next to the conduit used to route the pipe to the AC compressor.  It allowed me to hide the cable for the most part as it goes down the wall.  I jammed the cable through the hole from the outside and had Cindy hold it while I struggled to crawl into the corner of the attic where I could barely snag it with my fingers.

Now the fun was beginning, getting the cable routed all the way out to the chicken coop.  I used two tools to get the cable into the ground, a hand edger to cut a slice into the turf and my window spline tool to push the ethernet cable into the ground.  It’s a slow process as I only move the edger about 6 inches at a time between each cut.

For part of the cable run I went into the border around the pool, pulling back the weedblock and shoving the cable underneath.  It was not fun either but easier than cutting through the lawn.  After close to an hour I finally had traveled the roughly 150 feet to the shed.  I drilled a hole in the front corner of the shed floor and had Cindy fish the cable up to me.  I connected the cable in the attic and to one of web cams while I held my breath.  I exhaled with relief when I saw the connection and activity lights snap on as they should.  The coop was now hard wired.

I added in a spare wifi router I had laying around to create a backyard hotspot.  I hard wired both web cams into the router to maximize bandwidth to them.  When I checked the video feeds with the new set up it was clear and fast, just as I hoped.

My shirt was soaked with sweat which I addressed with a quick jump in the pool.  I didn’t want to stink while Cindy and I ran some errands, including a stop at Rural King for chicken supplies, a nearly weekly occurrence.  This time the dogs had to share the back of the Prius with a 50 pound bag of chicken feed and three 50 pound bags of sand.

When I got home Cindy and I were back outside, her on the tractor, me on the weed whacker.  Of course it was hotter than hell in the middle of the afternoon but we wanted to get it done.  When I finished up weed whacking I had a few other things to attend to.  One of them was coming up with a way to block the skylights in the coop.

The heat in the coop during the day is pretty oppressive.  When I checked it at one point on Saturday the thermometer hanging from the truss read almost 110 degrees. Having two skylights pumping more radiant energy into the coop just was not necessary.  The coop has plenty of other windows to allow light inside.

I grabbed some pieces of white corrugated plastic that is typically used for signs.   The pieces weren’t quite large enough to block the area completely but it was close.  Before long the temps dropped into the upper 90’s inside, still hot but not horrendous.  Cindy is going to buy some bigger panels which will completely block the area.  We are also talking about painting the roof of the shed a lighter color that will reflect some of the sun.  The current dark brown native color is a heat magnet.

Saturday night we were exhausted from busting ass all day.  We stayed in watched Episode 1 of Star Wars, yes the Jar Jar Binks episode.  I put all three of the second generation Star Wars films in my Netflix queue.  I just felt like watching them again, maybe as a build up for the new Star Wars that comes out around Xmas.

Watching the movie reenforced the good and bad from second trilogy.  Jar Jar Binks seemed just as stupid as ever and the films over reliance on CGI and little focus on story was still apparent.  If I was to give it a current day rating it would have to be B+ at best.

On Sunday we bagged a bike ride.  Cindy woke up with her hands feeling pretty bad, something a 20 mile bike ride would only make worse.  Instead we got busy with various things.  One of those things is me working on getting Cindy’s YouTube channel up and running with Google AdSense so she can starting making some ad dollars.  Her application was rejected twice due to lack of content on her website.  After adding some additional content it made it through stage one of the application process, now we have to cross our fingers it makes it all the way through.

I also did another dry run of race timing on Sunday, a less intensive test where I just had one mat set up in the dining room that I walked bibs across.  It served it’s purpose and exposed a couple other operational gotchas I need to look out for.

Of course there was a lot of chicken related activities over the weekend.  The current main drama is sleeping arrangements.  Lucy has still been bitchy and pecking the other chicks if they get too close to her.  Cindy built a secondary perch at a right angle to the main perch, hoping Lucy could claim it for herself.

Well since the secondary perch still connected to the main perch structure Lucy still was able to slide down and peck away at the babies.  Last night Cindy tried to address the problem further by stringing some netting that created a slight barrier between her and the rest of the flock.  It seemed to work ok but we can’t really be at ease until all 12 birds put themselves to bed and wind up in their respective spots without us putting them there.

Last night Cindy finished up applying the chip timing device to 1200 bibs we have ready for Saturday’s 4th of July race.  Only 1800 more to go. 🙂  It’s not a fast process but I am confident as time goes on we will fine tune things to consume less resources.