Collateral damage

Originally I indicated that I was going to only get three loads of fill, I thought that would be more than enough to elevate the chicken yard.  However after the third load was dumped I reevaluated and asked if he had time to pick up a fourth load of fill.  He said he did so a little before noon load number four was dropped off.  It seemed odd to be writing a $700+ check for some piles of dirt in the yard but I reminded myself of those horrible summer days where the chicken area looked like a lake.  This was the first step in alleviating that situation.

Going into this I was worried about the potential property damage of having massively heavy dump trucks rolling across the yard.  I tried to take precautions by marking sprinkler positions in the path so the trucks could avoid them.  There were a couple pipes that were still in the danger zone.  I tried to protect these by putting sections of 2″ x 12″ lumber over the pipes to spread out any pressure applied to them.

After the last truck left I went out and fired up that sprinkler zone, hoping all of the sprinkler heads would pop up as usual.  Unfortunately that was not the case as the ground near one of the sprinklers started turning into a sinkhole as water rushed up from beneath.  I grabbed the shovel and started moving wet dirt to see the damages.  The pipe there had snapped clean, despite the board being on top.

I determined I would be able to fix the damage with a single 90 degree reducing fitting which I ran out to Home Depot to purchase what I needed.  By early afternoon I had the damage fixed and when I pressure tested it a few hours later all was well.  Next up I have to determine if I am going to get someone to spread the mountains of dirt for me or if I am going to rent equipment to do it myself.

Later in the day I finally got my Skydio 2 drone in the air.  There are some weird quirks about the drone like the requirement to charge the battery while it is installed on the drone (unless you buy a $125 stand alone charger) or the inability to fly at all if you don’t have a micro SD card of sufficient speed in the memory card slot.

I also bought the “beacon” which sort of looks like a TV remote.  It gives you simplified control of the drone and doesn’t require you to be interacting with your phone to do so.  The experience with this drone is quite different to what I have been accustomed to with the various DJI drones I have owned, which you actually pilot.

Although you can buy a $150 controller for more conventional flight, the Skydio is meant to be more or less autonomous.  You launch it, have it lock onto to the object you want it to track and follow and that’s it.  The drone has 360 degrees of obstacle avoidance cameras to allow it to intelligently maneuver it’s surroundings while keeping it’s subject in view.  You can change the perspective in many ways as well, which I only grazed the surface of so far.  My hope is utilize the drone in some of my ride videos although I need to be thoughtful about the environments I use it in.

I watched some of the democratic debate last night but not much.  The constant speaking on top of one another gets extremely annoying.  Personally, I think town hall format Q&A’s are much more beneficial if you want real information.  The debates they air on network TV are more or less a circus, which is exactly what they want. Fighting sells.