Unwanted visitors, not wired, high and dry, Holy Chip!

Man last night was busy…

So Cindy and I have known mice have been getting into the chicken run area at night.  We have seen some mouse poop in the feeders and have discovered tunnels where the little bastards managed to find a small hole to dig under the buried chicken wire.  Well last night Cindy saw something on the ramp into the coop after we had closed the hens up for the night.  It actually tripped the motion detector light we have in there.

Cindy pulled up the security camera feed and saw a large field mouse under the coop as well as three smaller mice, presumably a momma and her babies.   Cindy’s initial reaction was to want to put rat traps in the area which I immediately shot down.  They were field mice, not rats and although their presence is annoying, it doesn’t present a danger to the chickens.  We need to start raising the feeders off the ground at night and work at fortifying the spot the mice keep digging into.  There is no way I want to kill them, I just hope by making the food unavailable and access more difficult they will realize it’s time to go find new living arrangements.  Also if the chickens corner one of the small mice they will take it out, we have seen it before.

I spent time with Cindy outside crawling around in the sand with a rake trying to scare the mice out from under the coop.  The mother ran out, scaring the shit out of Cindy but the babies were not quite as smart.  I put some additional temporary barriers in the spot the mice were getting in  until I can properly secure/bury more chicken wire.

I messed around with the kitchen light switches last night, trying to discern how ez/difficult it would be to install my WeMo smart switches.  The kitchen is a 3 way circuit where two switches are wired to the large overhead fluorescent light, a configuration the WeMo officially does not support but can be made to work based on other research I have done.

Although I have done some basic electrical work in the past I do have anxiety about it and prefer to just leave it be if at all possible.  I have taken some unintended shocks from normal house current and it was not a good time.  Over my extended 3 day weekend I plan to take a shot at getting the switches installed but I will be making sure each step is done in a cautious manner.

After crawling around by the coop I definitely needed my normal pre-bedtime shower.  As I was rinsing my hair I noticed the water pressure was dropping off.  I remembered the dishwasher was also running so I figured the pressure would kick back in shortly when the well pump fires back up.  Well that never happened.  Instead the pressure continued to drop until the flow of water completely stopped, just as I was rinsing soap off my face. Well that is just great.  I stepped out of the shower and dried off my third washed body, announcing to Cindy the water is dead.  I threw on shorts and a t-shirt and begun my diagnostics.

The first stop was the breaker box in the garage.  I verified that both the 220 and 110 volt well circuit breakers were not tripped which they weren’t.  I then headed outside to the water equipment.  I heard no activity and verified I had no pressure there either.  I felt the inlet pipe to see if I felt any vibration that the well pump normally generates, nothing.  I unplugged and re-plugged the well pressure switch and still got no response.  I walked out to the well head and verified there was absolutely nothing going on, nope.  Damn it.

So we faced the ugly reality of no water pressure.  Luckily I have 13,000 gallons of it in the pool but that isn’t useful for much more than flushing toilets.  We used some of our drinking water to do stuff like brush our teeth but normal bathing, dishwashing, and laundry were all on hiatus until the problem was fixed.  I called and left a message for the water company that did the well pump.  It was just replaced in May so I assume if it was somehow dead it would be replaced under warranty.  I unplugged the pump overnight.

This morning the first thing I did when I got up was to go plug in the well pump on the off chance the thermal switch in the unit tripped and reset itself.  Imagine my surprise when the pump actually kicked on, son of a bitch.  We had normal water pressure while I prepared for work but my mind was far from at ease.  Obviously there was something wrong, the pump should not cut out in the first place.

One of my suspicions was the water pressure tank was failing.  The tank I have in place is very old as it was reused from my old water equipment when I got my new stuff 4-5 years ago.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it is at least 10 years old.  When the pressure tank goes bad it can cause a well pump to “short cycle”, meaning it cycles on and off rapidly which can make it overheat.

When I talked to the water guys on the phone this morning I told them the pump was working again.  They said sometimes if ants get into the contacts of the pressure switch it can make the switch stop functioning as all four contacts need to be made.  I told him I saw no ants around the switch but I mentioned when the well pump was replaced the installer said my pressure tank was not in good shape.  The water guy said that could definitely be another cause of the problem so later today they will be sending someone out to take a look.  Although the last thing I need now is another bill, having the threat of water pressure vanishing at any moment is something that has negative impact on your quality of life so it has to be addressed.

So I, like presumably all Eagles fans were SHOCKED to see Jeff Lurie blew out Chip Kelly with one game left in the season.  The firing was shocking enough but to do it with one game left instead of just waiting until the miserable season was over really put an exclamation point on it, Lurie had enough.

Now as a fan, of course I wished Lurie would blow out Chip Kelly.  To me he has proven he is arrogant and inflexible, unable to adjust when what he planned doesn’t work.  He seems to put little value on relationships or making players want to win for him.  But despite these feelings, the logical side of me said we were stuck with Chip for at least another year and likely two, until his guaranteed contract ran out.  For Lurie to eat something like 13 millions dollars to get this guy the fck out of town speaks volumes to me.  It makes me think Kelly used the same dismissive arrogance in his discussions about his future with the team owner as he did with most others.

The move gave me a new found respect for Jeff Lurie and his desire to bring a championship to the Eagles.  The easy thing would have been to let Chip continue steering the ship.  However Lurie was not afraid to admit he fcked up maybe not for hiring Kelly, which nearly everyone thought was a good move initially, including myself, but surely for handing him the reins of personnel decisions.  That was obviously a very poor decision as the team roster is filled with some islands of talent mixed in with some of Chip’s bungled choices like Kiko Alonso and Byron Maxwell both of whom were awful this year.

I have no idea who will be in next in line to coach the team but I can only hope it is an established winner.  Thanks to Chip’s bloody surgery on the roster this year there will be a lot of work to be done until this team once again has an established, cohesive, core of players that possess the skills and chemistry to be a playoff level team in the NFL.

Adios Chip, we won’t miss you, have fun back in college.