Archives June 2016

So yesterday in the mail I received a letter from Comcast.  As I scanned through the letter I got angry very quickly.  In a nutshell the letter said something to the effect that Comcast has been giving me the “HD Technology upgrade” for free and will no longer be doing that as of July 28th.  If I wanted to continue to receive HD programming I would need to contact their office and agree to pay an additional $9.95 per month.  What in the fck are they talking about?? My bill for last month was $192, are they seriously going to try to slap another 10 dollars on top of that?  Why is HD an add on option in the first place in 2016?  That is utterly ridiculous.

So I looked at my bill online and confirmed that my “Double Play” package already included the HD fee. I was pissed.  I called and after giving up on their maze like phone menu I just kept repeating “speak to a representative” until a human being picked up.  Of course this human being was located halfway around the world in India, immediately adding to my frustration level.

When I tried to explain to “Nelson” the letter and how it made no sense, he was clueless.  He had no idea why I would have received it.  He verified that my account package already includes the HD stuff. Yea, no shit.  Throughout the conversation he addressed me as “Mr Shawn” repeatedly, adding to the lunacy of the situation.

So the guy had no idea what the letter was about or if I would actually lose my HD access on July 28th if I didn’t hand over another 10 bucks monthly.  His advice to me was if I lose HD access on the 28th I should call them back and they will restore it.  I asked Nelson if he understood why that was a terrible answer to a customer?  The letter tells me to call in to address the issue.  I called in.  You don’t know anything about the letter and your answer is for me to spend more of my time calling in later if something happens?  “Yes, Mr. Shawn”

I knew I was not going to get anywhere with the guy.  In an attempt to demonstrate how serious he was about my “satisfaction” , he gave me his clerk id like that was going to get me anywhere.  I am sure if I call back in a month and say “Hey Nelson in India said I shouldn’t have had to pay 10 bucks for HD” I will get immediate results.  All I know is if I do actually get HD yanked next month I will be on the warpath.  Charging an HD surcharge present day is nothing short of thievery in my opinion. It’s like charging extra for an automobile to be able to run on higher octane gas.

Yesterday I got back my home DVR from Night Owl.  I found it funny that their repair facility is actually local, less than 5 miles from where I work.  You may recall my difficulty in getting the RMA initiated however once I did the process went smoothly.  I was sent a postage paid shipping label and they sent out a replacement unit the day they received the old one.  I was pleasantly surprised when I realized I unknowingly got an upgrade in the process.  I sent in a 4 channel 1080P system and got an 8 channel 1080P system back.  I wish more things worked that way.  If you count our two Ring doorbells we have a total of 14 cameras around the property keeping an eye on things.  I don’t think anyone will be sneaking up on us anytime soon.

Friday night Cindy finished off her 22 kill push up challenge where you do 22 push ups per day for 22 days to bring awareness to the PTSD epidemic with US veterans and the corresponding high suicide rates.  On the final day she actually did not do any push ups and instead concentrated on the real reason the movement started, showing the pictures and names of 22 veterans that are no longer around as a result of PTSD.

She originally shot the video in her phone using the Facebook Live app. I thought it was really touching stuff so I extracted that video and turned it into a YouTube video.  Even though I am actually a pretty emotional person, I don’t express it outwardly very often.  Cindy on the other hand has the gift of not only being an emotional, caring person, but also being able to reflect that out to the world around her.  I think the video is a perfect example of it.

Saturday morning I was out early getting the weeding done before I once again had to drive into the office to work on a server issue.  I managed to get home right around lunch time after getting the issue handled.

Saturday afternoon Cindy and I headed out to the coop to install the upgraded surveillance system. We replaced the Samsung 4 channel 720P box with a Night Owl 8 channel 1080p system. The Night Owl is backwards compatible so I could leave the existing Samsung 720P cameras in place and just add the four new 1080P cameras to the system.

In total it might have taken us around 90 minutes in the hot sun to get the new system online.  Now we have full camera coverage of the back yard as well as a view of the bar park and the west part of our property towards the road.  Of course the cameras are not going to prevent a coyote attack but will make sure we know exactly how/when/where it happened.

Saturday night we got out to see the new Independence Day.  I was mostly a fan of the original even though it had a some dumb moments.  Well somehow 20 years have passed and the movie follows that timeline in real time.  The 20 years gave the Earth time to prepare for a new attack using the alien tech left over from the first film.  Unfortunately the 20 years evidently was not used to hire some good writers.  The movie was really, really dumb.  Early on I thought the film was going to be decent with it reusing most of the cast from the original except for Will Smith.  The special effects are as cool as you would expect but nowadays that is expected.

The story, dialogue and acting in the movie is pretty much atrocious.  I described in Facebook as seeming like the target audience for the film were People of Walmart subjects.  Repeatedly during the movie I was laughing out loud, not because of humor but because of stupidity of what I was seeing/hearing.  Let’s just say I was very disappointed in the film and would not recommend anyone laying out additional cash to see it.  Catch it on Netflix in a few months while you are drunk. It gets a C-.  Before the movie we at least had a nice dinner at Stir Crazy so it wasn’t a total washout.

On Sunday I started off with a run on the treadmill.  I didn’t feel like slogging through the humidity.  Cindy was heading out early for an all day cycling seminar for a possible job opportunity down the road.  After taking a shower Sadie and I jumped in the truck for a trip to Rural King.  I had the GoPro along so Sadie got to star in her first vlog entry during the drive.  I was going to Rural King to take a look at their electric fence supplies which turned out to be pretty extensive.  If I decide to electrify the fence I will probably get the majority of the stuff online but it’s good to know I can run out and get stuff to fill any gaps at RK if needed.

When we got home I rolled into a number of chores including weed whacking the yard.  I did 5/6 of the yard with my new battery powered DeWalt unit.  For the majority of the yard it works well however trimming along castle stones is not one of them.  For whatever reason the trimmer head on the DeWalt spins counter clockwise, the opposite direction my gas powered trimmer spins.  With the way I hold the trimmer and the direction I normally go it just doesn’t do a great job against the uneven stone surface.  When the battery died I switched to the gas trimmer and was apply to knock down the castle stone barrier with ease.  Even though the cordless trimmer has good power it doesn’t approach the brute force the gas trimmer can apply to targeted areas.  I’m ok with having both in my yard arsenal.

I was a sweaty mess after working in the hot sun so I went in the pool to cool off which of course Sadie was excited about.  When I go in the pool when she is around we play the “splashy, splash” game where I go side to side in the pool and splash water on her as she runs around the deck.  After splashing her for awhile the deck was quite wet.  I was moving to the opposite side when I heard a splash from the deep end.  I turned and saw Sadie had slipped in and had just gone completely underwater.  I was concerned for a split second and quickly moved in her direction however she popped up and immediately started swimming towards the steps on the other end.  I praised her repeatedly as I dried her off for getting out on the pool herself.

Even though I spent a good portion of the day doing chores both inside and outside the house solo I didn’t mind much.  Sometimes I am most productive when I am in that situation.

We got through the weekend without any further chicken incidents, continuing our revised free ranging schedule that keeps them in the coop longer in the morning and back in the coop earlier in the evening.  Our hope is shortening that window will keep the chickens out of harms way during dusk/dawn timeframe when the attack on Cocoa occurred.

I have a short week coming up, being off Thursday and Friday as well as having Monday off for the 4th of July.  I hope to get my shelter constructed over the sprinkler controller and water cleaning equipment during that time.  We also will be going to the Miami Supercon on Saturday, staying overnight and returning Sunday so that will be a different type of experience for sure.

I talk in depth about our chicken that was killed by a coyote and what we are doing to prevent it from happening again. I once again give money to a stranger.

Yesterday my Airsoft AK-47 arrived.  I had Cindy throw the battery on the charger while I was at work so we could try it out when I got home.  I have to tell you, I was very surprised by the gun.

First of all it looked very realistic.  If you did not notice the orange Airsoft band around the muzzle of the gun you would think it was the real thing.  Not only does it look real, it feels real in terms of weight.  I could not believe it weighed between 7 and 8 pounds.  A good portion of the gun appears to be metal. It comes with two ammo clips, each capable of holding over 300 plastic bb’s so if you fully load each one you have a long time between fill ups.

Installing the stick battery that powers the gun is a bit clumsy but I eventually got it all in place.  I went out front and leaned a pretty thick cardboard box I had in the garage against one of our oak trees.   I stepped about 40-50 feet away and took a couple shots in semi-auto mode where you get one shot per trigger squeeze.  I was immediately impressed by the power of the gun which is advertised as 495 FPS, far exceeding the single shot, spring loaded Airsoft gun I bought awhile back.

I then flipped the selector to full auto mode and squeezed the trigger.  I was amazed at the fire speed for this “toy” gun.  It ripped into the cardboard box, quickly filling it with dozens of holes in a few seconds.  Damn this thing was no joke.  Not only is it powerful, it’s pretty accurate as well.  Later Cindy was in the backyard picking off small targets from 90-100 feet pretty easily.

I have no doubt that if we have an opportunity to use the Airsoft gun against a chicken predator it will quickly be running/flying the other direction.  I saw some videos of dumb kids shooting each other with similar guns with less FPS and they had real nasty, painful welts as a reward.  Check out the video if you want to see what it looks/sounds like when you squeeze the trigger.

At the end of the video I reiterated my viewpoint on real assault weapons which may seem hypocritical since I bought a toy version of one.  I would never suggest that the Americans should be denied the right to own guns.  My problem is with the availability of weapons that are clearly for offensive versus defensive intentions.

Yesterday I discovered Virtual Box, a free virtual machine product from Oracle.  The reason I discovered it was after I wasted a couple days trying to get a virtual Windows 10 machine running on my Windows 7 workstation utilizing Microsoft’s VirtualPC.  When I would try to run the Windows 10 install it would bomb out saying I had insufficient memory and CPU power even though I allocated virtual resources far above the minimum requirements.

After a lot of frustration I found other people did what I was looking to do easily with Virtual Box that evidently doesn’t have the same limitations.  I downloaded and installed the product in a few minutes and a few minutes later I had the Windows 10 installation successfully running.  If you are looking for a flexible and powerful VM solution definitely give Virtual Box a look.

I woke up this morning to see that Britain voted to officially leave the EU which is sort of a big deal.  It was a divisive issue very reminiscent to American politics of the last 16 years.  Both sides thought the other were idiots more or less.  My thoughts as an outsider are mixed.  In theory the EU seems like a good thing, free trade between nations with minimal restrictions should be good for an economy.  The standardized currency, the euro, that the majority of EU countries use was again an attempt to promote trade free of exchange rate differences.

Well the downside for Britain has been a loss of direct control in other areas. Being a member of the EU meant some important decisions that affected citizens of the country were being made by non-elected EU officials based out of Brussels.  Some of the most polarizing of these is the requirement for Britain to accept immigrants based on EU requirements which has created a very American-like resentment of these immigrants being granted benefits in the generous British system.

The vote to leave certainly was not a landslide, winning 52% of the vote.  Shortly after the vote, Prime Minister David Cameron who was on the pro-EU side announced he would be stepping down in the fall in a very gracious speech.  The process to leave the EU will be a slow one but it will be interesting to see if it proves to be a smart move down the road.  Britain’s exit could give legs to movements in other countries to leave the EU such as France.

This weekend I will be busy.  I purchased the 8 channel security DVR to upgrade the surveillance of the coop/backyard so I want to get it up and running.  I also would like to take a harder look at electric fence options although that will be a longer term project.  I still have the raw materials in my big shed to build the cover over my wi-fi water sprinkler controller and water equipment but I think I need to wait to get that done until the stitches are out of my shoulder.

On the fun front hopefully Cindy and I can get out to see the new Independence Day.  I was a big fan of the original.

So Cindy’s daughter picked up Tank last night.  Tank was in the backyard playing with Sadie for awhile before they left.  It was the first time I saw Sadie running around at full speed with another dog since the last time she was with my dad’s dogs.  Ever since Nicki lost her mobility Sadie really didn’t have a playmate to run with.  It brought a smile to my face to see them both running around the yard.

The departure of Tank brought tears to Cindy’s face as I knew it would.  She really loves Tank and liked having him around for company the last 10 or 11 days.  Sadie will have to step up and fill the void.

The chickens made it through another day intact but both Cindy and I have a terrible sense of paranoia about another potential attack.  We both spend a lot of time looking out the rear windows at the fence line, scanning for any movement.  Our Airsoft AK-47 arrives today which will allow us to spray any potential predators with high speed plastic projectiles at a rapid rate.  I am also considering upgrading the 4 camera security dvr in the coop to an 8 camera model which will allow me to put pretty much the entire back yard under surveillance.  I also still plan to look more at electrifying the rear fence line to provide more predator deterrence. No matter what we do, anything short of encasing the back yard in a bubble will fall short of giving us 100% peace of mind.

So we got through the day yesterday with all 10 chickens intact.  Cindy kept them in the coop later in the morning and we put them to bed about an hour earlier than they would on their own.  I might be going to Tractor Supply this weekend to look at their electric fence equipment.  I could buy everything I need on Amazon but I’d like to see some of the stuff in person before pulling the trigger.  The dollar expense would be less than $200.  The installation time would be more costly.

So last night was more than likely the last we will have with Tank in the house.  Enough time has passed that he should be able to go back to his normal environment with his brother, Bowser.  Although the first few days were a bit of an adjustment period, overall it has been fun having Tank around.  His personality is very endearing and his appearance is cute in funny sort of way.  The biggest negative has been the sleep penalty both Cindy and I have paid but even that has gotten less severe the last few days.

I know Cindy really loves having him around and I know she is going to be sad to see him go home.  Luckily we have Sadie for the next 10 days so it should help to fill the void.  Of course I’ll miss him too and feel badly he won’t get quite the same level of attention he has been accustomed to the last couple weeks.  He’s a good boy.

I got my new coffee maker set up in my office today.  Even though I am using the same coffee as normal, it tastes significantly better.  I suppose the fact that I did no real maintenance on the old coffee maker in the dozen or so years I had it might make a difference.

The DVR I set up in the house a few weeks ago is offline.  For a week or two I started to notice it was getting increasingly noisy.  I at first was afraid it was the hard drive but it later became apparent it was a fan, more than likely the processor cooling fan.  Since the box is only 4 months old I wanted to get it covered under warranty.

I have been less than thrilled with the support from Night Owl, the company that made the DVR.  I called and sat on hold for at least 15 minutes,  I was then without choice redirected to voicemail where I was told to leave a message after which I was hung up on.  Someone did call me back about 6 hours later and took my info, indicating Night Owl should drop ship me a new box, however the RMA was handled by a different group.  I now had to wait for that group to contact me to actually process the claim, stupid.   As of now I still have not had that secondary contact.  I have a feeling I am going to have a very frustrating experience trying to chase down the warranty repair.

So as soon as I got home last night I went out in the backyard with Sadie to look at the aftermath of yesterdays coyote attack on our chickens.  Seeing the large collection of feathers near the rear of the coop made me sick to my stomach.  The trail of feathers lead towards the east side of our property where the coyote evidently jumped the fence.

I went outside the fence line with Sadie hoping to find more evidence of what direction he/she went.  I saw a few feathers  on the path I just had mowed leading towards the back of the property but that trail died out after maybe 25 yards. I was hoping if the coyote den was nearby Sadie and I would be able to hear/see something.  A few times I heard sounds that in my mind almost sounded like Cocoa although I knew that was just wishful thinking.

After striking out on foot I took my search to the air, bringing out my DJI Phantom.  I did big circles in the area around the back of our property, once again hoping to scare the coyotes out of their hiding place if it was nearby.  I carefully reviewed the 9 minute video looking for anything significant but once again saw nothing.

Last night we put the chickens back into their run earlier than normal as we read that if a coyote does hunt during daylight it is typically going to be closer to dawn or dusk.  We also plan to not let them out as early in the morning to again avoid additional opportunity for the coyote.

I spent some considerable time educating myself regarding electric fence options.  There are a lot of options and it seems most systems are designed to electrify fence lines MUCH longer than what we have.  There are also different fence energizer options.  Along with varying power (shock) levels, you can power them via AC power, a 12 volt battery, or even stand alone solar.

My initial assumption was the best place to put a hot wire would be across the top of the fence posts.  However in a situation where the animal is jumping a fence, if it hits the hot wire while not grounded it has no effect whatsoever.  I read about another configuration that may be more useful where you mount the hot wire about a foot off the ground on the outside of the fence.  The wire goes on insulators that hold the wire a few inches away from the fence.

Typically a predator like a wolf or coyote will pace back and forth by a fence line looking for it’s weakest point.  With this configuration the animal would get zapped before it even thinks about jumping which in many cases is enough to make it steer clear.  So I think for maximum protection a hot wire down low and across the top of the fence line would be best.

This morning I also made another addition to our non-lethal arsenal, buying a high powered, battery powered Airsoft gun.  It is a high end gun with semi and full automatic modes.  In full auto mode it can unload bb’s at a rate of nearly 10 per second traveling at 400-500 FPS.  It should be a very effective way to turn around any potential chicken predators if they show their face when either of us are around. Hopefully our efforts will be successful.  If we would lose more hens they might just have to be locked up for their own safety.

Cindy and I got to watch this week’s Game of Thrones last night.  Wow that was an INCREDIBLE episode featuring the death of a character that I was as happy to see bite the dust as when Geoffrey did.  It is just an epic show.  This weeks episode was as good as a full feature film.

So I got a message from Cindy to call her which is generally never a good thing.  As she was crying, she told me she couldn’t find Cocoa but did find a large collection of feathers behind the coop.  When she sent me a picture of the feathers I knew it was not going to be a good scenario.  There were a lot of them and a trail leading towards the back of the yard.  It seemed pretty obvious one of our chickens was killed by a predator, the question was what kind and how.

My first suspicion was a coyote although typically they are nocturnal predators.  A couple weeks ago our neighbor called me one morning saying he saw a coyote in the back of his property that he scared away. He said it was headed towards our yard.  Of course this news made Cindy and I nervous but we said the chickens have a lot of spaces to hide around the property, thinking that would hopefully be adequate to keep predators at bay combined with our fence.  Unfortunately research showed us that a 4 foot fence is nothing for a coyote to jump over.

So based on where the feathers were I told Cindy that we may be able to see something on one of the coop cameras.  Cindy started reviewing the footage and found a very tragic event right around 7:15AM where you can see Cocoa being carried off by a fcking coyote.  It was a tragic confirmation of one of Cindy and my worst fears when it came to the chickens.

Long time blog readers may recall how much we were affected when our original three chickens, Betty, Wilma, and Pebbles were killed one night by a raccoon that figured out how to open the side doors of our original chicken tractor.  It was their death that made me spend so much time, money and effort constructing the new chicken housing to be pretty much predator proof, which it is, the only problem is the hens are only in there at night.

During the day we have left the birds free range pretty much from sunrise to sunset.  Our success with doing so for the past year or so may have lulled us into a false sense of security.  The realist in me knew this was always a possibility.  Pretty much every source you can find will tell you that if you let your chickens free range it is not a matter of if but when you will lose some to predators. As you can imagine, I feel guilty and very sad that despite both my and Cindy’s efforts to give the hens a safe environment we failed, even if it is just the course of nature taking place.

So now the question is what do we do.  The safest option of course is to keep the chickens contained  in their safe haven 24/7 but I have never been a fan of that approach.  I always felt that the birds having a high quality of life trumped a life of captivity, even if they are kept in the relatively large confines of their coop and outdoor run. I could attempt to live trap the coyote but from what I read they are very tough to trap in a cage like I used to catch the raccoons.  I could try to run an electric wire around the top of the fence but I’m not sure how effective it would be.  I read situations where coyotes cleared a five foot fence (mine is four) without touching it. I could somehow expand onto the outdoor run area of the chicken coop but nothing will match the freedom they have now of course.

Usually in most situations it does not take me very long to evaluate a situation and come up with a viable solution.  This is one of those times that solution is not clear to me.  All I know is Cocoa is gone and the predator that did it is surely going to try again so something needs to change before that happens.

So on Saturday morning I felt I needed to get the mower deck on the tractor put back together.  The grass was already at a shaggy state and in need of mowing.  I was a bit worried about doing the work with the stitches in my shoulder but most of the tension and pulling I felt in the area had faded by that point.

I had bought the stuff to replace the spindle and pulley on the other side of the deck as well.  I decided mid-repair to not bother doing the second pulley since it was was working just fine.  I had a number of challenges putting stuff back together, mostly due from a week passing from when I took it apart.  The time passed was enough for the details of how it all went together to become fuzzy.  Multiple times I pulled the SD card out and reviewed the week old video to remind me of what went where.

It took awhile but I finally got everything back together and functional.  Processing the video I shot of the repair was actually more problematic than the repair itself.  I had to make no less than 15 attempts over two days until I finally got the video ripped.  For some reason Camtasia was bombing out during the process and falsely reporting certain files as being corrupt.  I finally had to do a tag team process to get it produced, doing part of it in Camtasia and the last part in Movie Maker.

We did a run to Rural King Saturday morning even though it wasn’t really necessary.  It was an excuse to let Tank walk around the aisles and have fun.

Saturday afternoon I gave my repair an extensive test.  I decided to mow pretty much EVERYTHING, taking advantage of the lack of standing water on the property.  In addition to mowing the area around the house, I mowed the large back yard area including the parts of the property outside the fence line.  In total I was out there closing in on 4 hours, sort of crazy.  I did notice that my repair seemed to make a dramatic difference in mowing performance.  I have no idea how long the pulley was stripped but the end result of it would be the blade spinning at less than it’s intended speed which meant less cutting power.  I was able to rip through the high grass, in most cases not needing to make a second pass like I have been become accustomed to.

I was worried that I may have torn my stitches when I was moving the 200 and 300 pound tire out of the way to mow.  Both tires were heavier than normal due to the standing water laying in both of them.  Ironically the incident happened when I was trying to lift the lighter of the two tires.  I initially tried to lift the tire just with my right arm to protect the stitches on my left shoulder.  Well as I lifted the tire started to fall towards the left and I instinctively grabbed it with my left hand.  The moment I did I felt a pain and stretch in the incision area.  I was seriously worried I tore some of the stitches loose.  I was relieved when I looked in the mirror later and saw they all seemed to be intact.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched Everest, my latest Netflex rental.  It is a true story about a bad tragedy on Mount Everest where a number of climbers died after being trapped by a massive storm.  The movie did an incredible job of depicting just how harsh and unforgiving the conditions are on the mountain.  Why anyone would want to subject themselves to that sort of torture is beyond my sphere of logic.  Since it was a true story that means that happy endings are not guaranteed as in man-made story lines.  I did find it very difficult to hear some of the dialogue with the repeated scenes involving horrible weather.  It’s a B+ flick even without hearing everything.

On Sunday morning I wanted to get out and run, not wanting to lose the momentum I had from the prior week where I ran three times.  Cindy was feeling lousy after Tank kept her up pretty much all night with his placement in the bed.  I told her I would just go to the track and get a quick run in solo.  I was literally solo as nobody else was at the track the entire time I was there. I didn’t wear a watch but I felt like I ran at a similar pace as I have been in the mid to low 9’s.  By the time I was done with the 13 laps I was soaked from the humidity.  It felt good to get the mileage in although I didn’t feel particularly good doing it.

When I got back we headed out after I took a quick shower.  We stopped at Ali’s place to pick up Sadie who is staying with us for a couple weeks while Ali is away on a trip.  We brought Tank with.  He had a blast going through the four dog toy baskets pulling out as many toys as possible.

Since it was Father’s Day I was hoping to mostly take it easy during the day.  Of course I am not a father in the traditional sense but I am the closest thing the chickens, Tuki and Sadie have to a dad.  I was pretty successful, only doing a few chores during the day.  I bought myself a Father’s Day present at Home Depot later in the afternoon, a 20V DeWalt impact driver which should help me when high torque is necessary.

Last night we watched 13 Hours, the movie about Benghazi.  Perhaps I was just really poorly informed but I knew nothing about the attack on the secret CIA operation that was a mile from the embassy.  I also had no idea that soldiers from that operation were at the embassy beating back the initial attack.  The movie was an eye opener on several levels.

It is obvious that the embassy was woefully understaffed from a security standpoint.  I also didn’t understand why the “safe room” wasn’t all that safe.  That thing should have been air tight and bomb shelter tough.  The movie also depicted why it has to be maddening for soldiers to operate in the region.  There is no easy way to tell the bad guys from the good guys.  You never know if the guy smiling at you has a gun under his robe, ready to turn your lights out.

The movie was long, dramatic, and a sad reminder of the tragedy of war.  The lessons it teaches just never seem to be learned for long.  I give the movie a very somber A rating.

I tell the story about how a call from the NPS on Christmas Eve regarding a 90 second YouTube video lead to almost a $1000 citation. Although I had no prior knowledge of the national park drone ban when I flew my drone I do understand why it was enacted after reading up on some of the dangerous/stupid actions a small handful of other drone pilots performed in Yellowstone Park. What I struggle to understand is why the national park service decided after the fact prosecution via YouTube was a good utilization of taxpayer funds and NPS resources. I also wonder why no subjective/situational judgement seems to be utilized in a incident like this. Finally, I really don’t understand why it was necessary to make the initial contact with me on Christmas Eve, something most would realize was unnecessary and inappropriate. Listen to my story and feel free to add your feedback below. I strongly advocate drone pilots adhere to any regulations/restrictions to flights where applicable.