Category Pets

So while I was shopping at Costco after work on Friday I got a text from Cindy.  She said the woman she talked to from Dunkin Donuts that was interested in adopting Jaina wanted to come over to pick her up.  I told her it was fine.  I got home shortly after the woman arrived with her mom and two kids.   After I unloaded the groceries I went out back to join them.  Cindy was in the middle of giving them the chicken coop tour.

It then came time to collect Jaina.  I grabbed my large cat carrier to let Anna borrow for chicken transport.  At 10 pounds, Jaina is bigger than many cats.  Cindy and I were able to corral the bird and get her into the carrier. (even though Jaina is probably a rooster he is still a she to me)

It didn’t take me very long to feel sad.  We had Jaina on the ground in the carrier while we were talking a bit.  She/he started making the noises she always does when she is looking for the other four chicks she grew up with.  Almost instantly the four other “babies” came over to the carrier and actually started pecking at the carrier in almost a “hey let our friend out of there” way.  It sort of broke my heart to split them up.

I carried the carrier out front to their car and placed Jaina in the front seat.  Anna said she will take good care of the chicken.  Although at first she is going to be keeping Jaina in a modified doghouse, they have plans to build a real coop and get more chickens.  I couldn’t help but think about Jaina repeatedly over the weekend, imagining how upset she must be without her familiar flock close by.

So on Friday during the day Cindy had busted major ass around the house, getting done pretty much all of the outside chores that clutter the first part of my weekend.  Instead of using this freed up block of time for rest or relaxation I instead decided to just plug another project in there, cleaning the large shed. The shed has gotten rather messy and cluttered.  I probably have not given it a total cleaning/reorganization since I was actively married.  It was time.

The formula for the project was pretty simple.  Pull almost everything out and separate it into stuff you want to throw out, give away, and keep.  Cindy joked that I was a hoarder.  I would say a non-waster is more accurate.  A lot of stuff that was in there were left over materials from the endless home projects over the years.  Scraps of wood, pieces of gutter, leftover pots, and pvc pipe made up a large portion of what I pulled out.  The giveaway items got thrown in the back of the Tacoma and deposited roadside where almost all of it was picked up by neighborhood pack rats during the rest of the weekend.

Speaking of rats, we discovered an active field mouse nest in the shed.  It was carefully created behind the plywood storm shutters and came complete with a mouse.  When I leaned the board back he was down there looking up at me.  I lifted the one board to try to encourage him to take off.   When I heard a crying noise at my feet I realized I inadvertently pinned him under one of the boards.  I lifted it up and he scampered towards the back of the shed.  I then saw him running along the framing up near the roof of the shed.  I was able to scare him out of the shed and over to the pond area.  I have little doubt he will take up residence inside the shed again at some point.

So after most everything was pulled out Cindy worked on sweeping out all of the sand and dirt while I worked further on separating and sorting.  As expected the process had a number of “wow I didnt realize I had this” moments as well as little memory triggers the various items presented when tied to the projects they were from.  One cool item was a small can that I got from either my grandfather or great uncle.  It turns out it was an 85 year old film canister from the 30’s.  It was holding left over fasteners.

Putting the “keep” items back in the shed took much less time than the pull out phase since we were returning significantly less stuff to the 12 x 20 shed.  The AFTER picture of the shed shows the dramatic reduction of items in there.  It’s odd how simply cleaning or organizing a space can dramatically change the feel when you walk in there.  All of a sudden I felt good walking into the shed instead of annoyed.

Shed cleaning is a project that I would normally reserve for the cooler and more pleasant winter months.  After sweating through it Saturday I plan to return it to as a winter solstice only activity.

On Saturday night Cindy and headed out to go see Ant Man, a movie I was excited to see, a feeling Cindy did not really share.  Despite it being opening weekend we got to enjoy a sparsely populated theater with no more than 30 people sharing the large space with us.

I knew of the Ant Man hero but I can’t say I ever read any of the comics.  However at this point, Marvel has my blind trust when it comes to movie making.  I knew nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy and came out of it thinking it was one of the best movies all saw all year.    I can’t tell you the last Marvel film I saw that I did not enjoy.  I’m happy to say the Ant Man has continued that streak, taking a small (pun intended) facet of the Marvel universe and turning it into a thoroughly enjoyable film.  I also liked how they tied it into the current Marvel films with tie ins to the Avengers and Shield.  Of course as is the case with most Marvel films be sure to sit through the end credits.  It was a solid A film and I am happy to say Cindy wound up enjoying the movie as well.  She was pleasantly surprised.

Sunday morning Cindy and I got on our bikes for a Dunkin Donuts ride.  We didn’t get on the road until close to 9:30 meaning we were going to be well into the heat of the day.   I let Cindy lead the entire 10 miles west.  I told her to go whatever speed was comfortable.  I didn’t have my GPS with but my internal effort meter indicated that she was pushing the pace.  She told me her Cats Eye showed we were 20 mph + for a good 5-6 miles straight.

On the way back I pulled the entire way into the mild headwind.  I stayed on my aero bars and kept my pedal cadence speed up.  I managed to average in the 17’s for the return trip which wasn’t bad.   As soon as we got home I jumped in the pool for a rapid cool down of my highly elevated body temperature.

Before too long I was in the backyard filming another exercise session.  I had decided I wanted to do some backyard deadlifting, something I had not done since 2014.  Since joining Planet Fitness I have not been doing any deadlifting, they just dont have the equipment or space to really accommodate it.  For whatever reason yesterday I wanted to see what I was still able to pull.

I kept my amount of reps at higher weights low as my goal was to see just what I could still pull off the ground with no deadlift training at all.  I was surprised I was able to use a normal pronated grip up to 345 pounds although part of the reason was I was only single repping at that point.  I only went mixed grip for my final pull at 370 pounds which I barely managed.  Getting twice my current bodyweight off the ground was good enough for me with my lack of training.  I filmed the session, something I haven’t been doing much of lately.

I followed up with my second video of the day, this time utilizing my GoPro and Amazon Echo in another head shaving video.  It’s an odd thing how after automotive repair videos, head shaving occupies the second most viewed segment of my YouTube channel.  There is a weird cult head shaving enthusiast underground out there.  Shaving my head in the kitchen without a mirror in front of me full time was annoying.

So over the weekend Donald Trump’s big mouth got him in trouble again as he said that John McCain wasn’t a real war hero and how he prefers war heroes that do not get captured.  It was a pretty outrageous and ridiculous comment for a presidential candidate to make.  However if you have paid any attention to Trump over the years you know he has a long history of saying pretty stupid things.  Despite his enormous wealth, he reacts like a teenager when somebody disagrees with something he does/said.  In this case Trump was angry that McCain didn’t like Donald’s, Mexicans are rapists, verbal brilliance a few weeks back.

Few fellow republican candidates said much about Donald’s anti-mexican rant as they did not want to draw the immature insults that would surely be reflected back at them as a result.  However the ant-McCain comments has drawn bipartisan criticism.  In true Trump behavior, he refused to apologize for the remarks and instead tried to steer the heat back at McCain.  I wonder how many of those Trump bandwagon jumpers that grabbed on to his anti-immigrant talk have jumped back off that wagon and are now walking down the sidewalk with their hands in their pockets and whistling, trying to act like their support of his candidacy never actually happened.  I never thought for a second that Trump had a snowballs’s chance in hell of being nominated but I didn’t think his mouth would derail him quite so quickly.

In an attempt to address what feels like a perpetual sleep shortage I have moved my weekday alarm clock from 5:30AM to 6:00.  The 5:30 alarm time is something that dates back 10 years or more and was established when I was letting out the dogs, making my breakfast, packing my lunch and cleaning up every morning.  Since Cindy started living with me three of those four things usually are taken care of by her yet I continued with the 5:30 alarm.  The extra time was basically just used surfing my Facebook feed.

I think applying that extra 30 minutes to sleep will be a far more beneficial utilization of my time in the long run.

So when I get home today there could be three less animals at the house.  Ali is supposed to be picking up Nicki and Sadie during the afternoon.  There is also a possibility that a woman that Cindy is friendly with at the local Dunkin Donuts might be interested in adopting Jaina and could pick her up as early as today.  If the Jaina rehoming works out it would greatly simplify chicken care.  Tonight a woman Cindy knows and her son are stopping by to talk about the possibility of the son being our chicken sitter during our September road trip.

I am feeling generally irritated right now and not very interested in typing out the various reasons.  It’s been going on for awhile.  I do have a path to escaping the source of some of the irritant.  I just need to start walking down it.

Most of the complications we are currently dealing with in chicken world revolve around Jaina.  Jaina eating constantly, Jaina making more manure than a horse, Jaina getting disgustingly dirty since she can’t perch, Jaina wandering the coop at night. Jaina, Jaina Jaina….   Well now we have a new Jaina issue, she may be a rooster.

This morning Cindy caught Jaina crowing on tape in a very rooster-esque fashion.  If you look at “her” she already has a big comb and large waddle, other indicators of roosterhood.  If she is a rooster it is rather annoying since Rural King had her bin listed as pullets (females) only.

The crowing comes the day after Cindy was surfing the internet reading horror story after horror story of people trying to raise cornish X birds into adulthood.  Some of them can literally get to be the size of turkeys, crossing the 20 pound mark.  At that size Jaina would not even fit through the chicken door to the coop.  Obviously something needs to be done.

With our hopeful upcoming road trip we need to have our chicken situation settled before we leave.  I think the only way we will be able to do that is to subtract Jaina (Cindy now calls her Bruce) from the equation.  The likelihood we can rehome her to a place that won’t use her for meat is next to zero.  Cornish X were engineered as meat birds much like corn that is engineered to resist weed killer.  She is sort of a freak of nature.

I told Cindy she can start looking at options for Jaina.  I really don’t think we have much choice if we are looking down the road at what he/she will grow into.

Tonight should be the last sleep over night for the dogs.  The week has gone by pretty quick.  They slide right into life at the house very easily.  Seeing both of them out in the yard content brings smiles to the faces of Cindy and I every time.

I need to carve out more sleep time during the week.  Recently I have been not closing my eyes until around 11.  With a 5:30 AM normal alarm time I wake up most days feeling tired.  I think one additional hour would hit the sweet spot of my sleep needs.

I have to admit I find it very entertaining watching what is going on the republican presidential race.  Donald Trump who has entertained me on tv has suddenly become very popular with white, middle aged and older Americans because he basically said Mexican illegal immigrants suck.  It almost seems like he is the 2016 version of Sarah Palin.

Then there is the endless stream of republican candidates that have declared themselves as potential presidential material.  I could not come close to naming everyone that has declared but I know it’s well into the double digits.  It seems counter productive to me.  It seems like on the democratic side it is already pretty much a one person race which can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on your viewpoint of Hilary Clinton.

Personally I am at the point that no matter which candidate wins in the end from either party I really don’t care all that much.  I am convinced that no matter who is sitting in the White House, the true masters of this country are outside the boundaries of national elections.  They are the ultra-rich corporations and their minion lobbyists that dictate the direction the country is going, regardless of the current political climate.

This was another weekend of labor. Hot, sweaty, annoying gnats buzzing your face labor. It started unconventionally on Friday night when our friend Tricia came out to the house with her sister Judy.  Originally they were talking about shooting an exercise video with Cindy for FitFarmChick channel.  They wound up showing up later than they expected so instead they just got a quick tour of the grounds and stayed to eat some Friday night pizza with us.

Judy is a real deal power lifter.  Even though we didn’t put her to the test you could easily tell she had a powerful build that would be able to move a lot of weight.  She also just recently became a certified personal trainer which is what Cindy has been working towards.  Judy is a good source of advice in regards to how to prepare for the test.

On Saturday I did not feel like getting up but Sadie had other plans.  I had a long list in my head of things I wanted to get done so I drug myself out of bed to get the day started.  After weeding the property I jumped straight into running the weed whacker.  By the time I got done with both tasks the heat of the day had started in earnest and I was soaked with sweat.  I turned my attention to the chicken coop/shed which was getting yet another of a seemingly endless amount of tweaks.

Since summer started the interior of the shed has been getting pretty brutally hot during the day.  Even with all of the windows and front doors open the thermometer would get up to around 105 degrees.    Although the chickens are out of the coop most of the day either in the run, under the shed platform or free ranging, it still is too damn hot in there.  Lucy goes in during the day to lay an egg plus I have several hundred dollars of electronic equipment in the coop that doesn’t enjoy temperatures in the triple digits.

After touching the roof from the inside of the coop a couple weeks ago and burning my hand almost instantly I determined the dark brown color of the roof was the primary culprit in super heating the space.  Dark colors absorb heat.  The simple solution, paint it white.  Now a white roof sort of messes with the the color coordination of the coop but I was willing to sacrifice esthetics for function.  After doing some research Cindy and I found some paint that is designed to be used on plastic.  While I was at the timer conference Cindy painted the back half of the roof.  I tackled the front.

It took some trial and error to find a spray pattern that laid down the gloss white in a more or less even manner. Cindy had masked off the edges of the roof along with the two front skylights for me.   I had on my sunglasses and a dust mask to protect my airway from the paint fumes.  Unfortunately because of the heat, breathing became quite challenging with the mask on.  My long arms were quite useful in reaching the upper areas of the roof.

When I was done the roof looked a bit odd but not terrible since the chicken run has white roof panels as well.   The mismatched color scheme was forgotten when mid-afternoon I was able to put my hand on the roof and keep it there.  It was only warm, not hot.  It seems like the simple color change on the roof has lowered the temperature in the coop during the heat of the day by around 10 degrees.

On Saturday my Philps Hue starter pack showed up.  The Hue is an intelligent lighting system that allows you to do all sorts of lighting magic thanks to a smart, web connected hub in addition to smart bulbs that talk to it.  It also integrates with the Amazon Echo, allowing you voice control of your lights which is cool to me of course.

I was able to get the Hue set up in less than 5 minutes, it is very, very easy to do.  I put one bulb in the kitchen and another in the bedroom and named them by location.  After pairing the Hue with the Echo I was able to turn on, turn off, or dim the lights in either location via a voice command.  It was very Star Trek-esque.

I was confused why I was unable to get the bulbs to change color.  After doing some digging I discovered that was because my starter kit has the Hue Lux bulbs which are white only.  If you want bulbs that can change to any color in the rainbow you need to spend triple what the white only bulbs cost.  Even without the Echo integration the Hue system is pretty damn cool.  Using your smart phone there are nearly countless ways you can customize and tweak their actions.

Speaking of the Echo, Cindy and I are still discovering what it can and can not do.  The one frustrating part is the somewhat limited access the Echo gives you to info compared to Siri.  Some of this has to do with the difference in providing information via voice as opposed to a screen but it seems like there is still a lot more power they could add to the device.  Many free form questions like “What movies are coming out this weekend” will generate a generic, I’m sorry I do not have an answer, response.  They are constantly adding features to the Echo so I am sure her sphere of knowledge will continue to expand.  In addition the platform is open architecture, allowing for 3rd parties to utilize the hardware which will only mean more and more power available to the little black cylinder.

On Saturday night we stayed home and finished off our 2nd generation Star Wars trilogy Netflix marathon, watching Episode 3.  After completing the second set of Star Wars films I can’t say my opinion of them changed significantly for the better or the worse.  They still are vastly inferior to their predecessor but are entertaining to a B+ degree.

On Sunday morning I did a rare solo bike ride.  Cindy had a sore neck that would not have been helped by the hunched over riding position her triathlon bike utilizes. I decided to do a 20 mile ride but not to Dunkin Donuts.  Instead I road 10 miles out Oil Well Road towards Ave Maria and then turned around.  I got out on the road a little later than I would like on a July morning, not cranking my first pedal revolution until a little after 9AM.

I hit head wind immediately as I turned onto Immokalee Road.  Head wind was a near constant factor for most of the ride.  Even after turning left onto Oil Well Road I had an angled wind slowing me down that somehow managed to follow me to a degree even after I turned around.  The only time I had a true tail wind was the final two miles after I turned back onto Immokalee Road.  I struggled pretty much the entire time.  I barely averaged 17 mph overall for the ride despite working at what felt like a high level.  The heat radiating off the road sapped my energy reserves and desire.  When I pulled back into the driveway I was soaked and panting.

Part of motivation for going out on the ride solo was I just got done flipping through a bunch of pictures from my 30th class reunion that went down Saturday night.  I have never attended a single class reunion since graduating high school.  I also have seen an amazingly few amount of high school classmates in person since 1985, my only contact with most is if they hooked up on Facebook.  If you would ask me why that is I would not have a clear and definitive answer for you although I am sure it is somehow tied into my hang ups regarding aging, which I have many.  If I would have paid attention more to the date of the reunion I could have easily tied it into my attendance of the RSU conference earlier in the week.  However I did not do that.

So anyway as I flipped through some of the pictures it did not take long until I grabbed my senior year book.  I was surprised how many faces that I had absolutely no idea who they were.  Weight gain, loss of hair, and just plain aging had transformed some of my former classmates enough that I no longer could match my 1985 version of them to the present day.   Of course I found this unsettling and made me feel even older.

From all accounts from the people in attendance, everyone had a FANTASTIC time.  I am relatively confident that once I got over the initial shock of seeing people that in most cases I had not seen in 30 years I would have been able to settle in and just enjoy the fact that we made it this far.  Of course alcohol would have been a key ingredient in making that happen.

I sometimes am curious of what my classmates think of my online presence which has a pretty large footprint at this point.  In school I certainly was not very loud or outspoken.  I would describe myself back then as mostly quiet and not the type to be outwardly seeking new personal connections or looking to draw much attention. (pretty much the same now)  That contrasts itself with my YouTube channel with nearly 600 videos as well as my personal blog that has been running for going on 13 years where I spill tons and tons of personal thoughts, opinions, and experiences for the world to digest. It’s an odd dichotomy.

I spent a decent amount of time editing some additional footage for Cindy’s YouTube channel over the weekend.  She now has over 25 videos posted, not bad for only being in existence a few weeks.  I have supplemented her channel with some excerpts from some of my Bar-barians challenge videos that she participated in.  We also posted some baking, exercise, and hot pepper eating videos.

On Sunday I had a few more tasks to complete.  I quickly threw together a small platform to house a nesting box for Jaina, the monster cornish cross hen.  She is too big to perch like all of the other chickens.  The stand was to house a dedicated nesting box that is supposed to serve as her bed at night.  Last night she was only mildly successful in using the box.

I also grabbed my tube of Scratch X to remove some marks on the back of the SSR that mysteriously happened while Cindy had the truck parked in a lot a couple weeks ago.  I have used Scratch X before to remove what seemed like pretty formidable paint blemishes.  Once again the product did it’s job.  After a few applications and a bit of elbow grease a casual passerby would never know there was a problem.

Later in the day my to do list was finally cleared and I could just veg out.  Cindy shot some cute video in the evening of the chickens hanging with the dogs.  It’s so cool that they all can hang together without conflict.

Last night on my way home from work I was on Goodlette Frank Road, a major artery with 3 lanes per side.  All of a sudden I see a bunch of cars in front of me nose diving as they are slamming on their brakes.  In front of these vehicles is a straight body delivery truck with it’s BACK UP LIGHTS ON.  The truck was about 50 feet past the entrance to a development that they evidently missed the turn for.  Instead of going to the next intersection and turning around, this moron thought coming to a dead stop in rush hour traffic and backing up made much more sense.  It was fcking unbelievable.

I was amazed that there wasn’t an accident.  As I swung around the guy he got a generous serving of horn along with a big thumbs up.  I wish I paid more attention to what company he was delivering for so I could have let them know they have an unadulterated moron behind the wheel of one of their vehicles.

Yesterday we sold off one of our excess chicken coops, selling the small one we bought at Rural King about a month ago.  We sold it for 125 bucks meaning it only costs us 70 bucks to use it for a month, a good deal.  I am still holding on to the chicken tractor.  It’s rugged design will allow it to sit unused in the yard behind the coop without significant degradation.  I think it would be good to have secondary housing available in case we have to separate chickens for some reason in the future.

Hey who wants to go on a Greek vacation?  It seems pretty amazing that a non-3rd world country has managed to find it’s way into such a dire financial situation.  It sounds like a coin flip as far as what is going to happen next.  If Greece gives a big middle finger to the banks and drops out of the EU not only will it be chaotic within it’s own borders, it could very well set a precedent for other runts in the EU that are having severe debt issues to follow suit.

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.

My 200 feet of bury rated ethernet cable showed up yesterday.  I wanted to see if I would be able to pull up the cable from the unused jack in our bedroom.  I was up in the hot and itchy attic while Cindy was in the bedroom.  I had her tapping on the ceiling so I could home in on which cable I was looking for.

Once I found the wire, which was smack underneath some AC ducts, I gave it a tug to see if it would be possible to pull the wire up the wall.  There was no give at all in the wire.  I recalled when we wired the house we secured the CAT 5 to the metal studs so I wasn’t surprised I couldn’t pull it up.

Plan B was to cut the wire in the attic and put a new cat 5 connector on it, something I haven’t had to do for many many years.  I dusted off my old metal tool case that had all of my cabling tools and printed out a diagram as a reference for 568B wiring since the pin out order is something I forgot long ago.  After some tedious work I was able to get the wires into the connector and crimped in place.  I brought one of my timing boxes out to the garage, connected it to the wire and was able to ping it through the network meaning my surgery had been successful.  The next steps will be this weekend where I hopefully can snake the wire out the side of the house and all the way to the coop in the backyard.

So when I got home from work yesterday Cindy told me that Lola was not doing well.  She said she stayed in the coop all day and did not want to eat.  When Cindy told me she didn’t even eat a blueberry when it was offered to her I knew it was serious.  When I went out to see her it was obvious things were not good.  She had her eyes closed mostly and she periodically was moving her neck around and making noises that almost were like coughing.  The dramatic downturn was surprising, especially since on Wednesday Cindy said Lola was doing well (for her), eating and drinking quite a bit.  Hell Lola had a starring role in a video Cindy shot about cleaning chickens with dirty butts that same day.

Obviously Cindy was very upset and so was I although I told Cindy that I think we both knew this outcome was coming.  Lola first started acting sick at the end of April when she no longer was able to hop up to the nesting boxes or onto a perch.  When the symptoms persisted we took her to the vet when we were afraid she may have had Mareks disease.  We never found out definitively if she had it but we did find out she had parasites in her poop which we treated. After she was dewormed she had some mild improvement but never came close to returning to normal.  Despite her weighing less than a pound and a half she walked like she weighed much more.  Each step looked deliberate, labored, and slow.

So anyway I carried the nesting box Lola was sitting in outside, telling Cindy I think she would like that.  I gently petted her head as I carried her out.  I told Cindy we should keep her inside with us last night since it seemed like the end was near.  Cindy agreed we could bring her in after we ate dinner.  More storms were starting to roll in so we put Lola back in the coop before we went in to eat.

The storm was quite strong, dumping large amounts of rain in a short amount of time.  After it subsided I went outside to get the chickens settled into the coop for bed and to bring Lola inside.  When I opened the door to the coop I saw Lola had her head tucked down out of view.  I knelt down and touched her back while gently while saying her name.  She felt still and did not respond at all to my touch.  I moved her a little bit and still had no response.  When I picked her up the cold realization came over me that Lola had died in the brief time period we were inside.  Feelings of guilt and sorrow rushed in.

I held her in my arms, petting her while I walked out of the coop as Cindy was coming out to join me.  I gave her the sad news which of course devastated Cindy, who has spent countless hours and endless energy trying to nurse Lola back to health.  I cried not only over the loss of Lola but because of the pain I knew this was causing Cindy.  Lola was literally like her little feathered baby.

We decided to bury her right away.  We did so in the orchard at the base of the black raspberry bush, whose fruit Lola loved so much.  It was a somber evening as you can imagine and recalling these moments has made me grab the tissues once again.

So last night Cindy and I tried again at setting up 8 meters of timing mats as quickly as possible, hoping to improve on the 15 minutes it took us the first time around.  Well we did improve but not as much as I hoped, clicking in right around the 13 minute mark.  The cable routing is what becomes a quagmire.  As you get further into the process you are wrangling with a bigger and bigger rats nest of cables that you are trying to straighten out and lay in their assigned rubber channel in the mats.  Today Cindy is going to try another method for set up to see if it works out any better/faster.  Like anything, with practice it should improve.

Last night we once again had issues with Jaina wandering under the coop deck, squawking while all of the other chickens were inside ready for bed.  When she finally came out I noticed she had a blood spot on her back.  It came from one of two things, a particularly hard peck from Lucy or more likely from Jaina cutting herself on something under the deck.

Jaina is not only huge, she is also clumsy and not able to easily get down low like the other chickens to scoot around under the deck.  This problem is only going to get worse the bigger she gets.  I went inside and got some cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide so Cindy could treat the wound.  I also grabbed stipic powder which is used to stop bleeding in animals.  Jaina didn’t seem to mind Cindy attending to her injury.  Typically her breed has already been slaughtered for meat at this point in their lives.  She is going to have a rough time getting by for however long her life turns out to be.

The final part of the blog is a WoW issue.  If you have no interest in the virtual world of nerds you can safely close this entry now.  This latest expansion to WoW has had a bit of controversy surrounding it for quite awhile regarding the lack of ability for characters to fly.  Flying is an ability that has typically been granted to all players once they hit the maximum level for that expansion.  Gaining that ability only required you to hand over a large chunk of gold.  Being able to fly has a lot of advantages, especially when you are trying to get things done quickly.

Well with Warlords of Draenor Blizzard has not allowed players to fly, at all.  They have been vague about possibly allowing it later on.  Their main argument was they felt that flying cheated players from experiencing content in the way it was intended to be experienced.  Instead of having to fight your way through various obstacles on the ground you can simply swoop in on your flying mount, accomplish your objective and zoom back out.  The players argument has been that after they hit the maximum level the have already experienced a good portion of the content on the ground.  Withholding the ability to fly once you are max level just felt like an unnecessary shackle to many.  Plus generally speaking, taking something away that used to be standard fare is never going to be welcomed.

Well a couple weeks ago somebody at Blizzard made the announcement that there would indeed be NO flying in the current expansion, period.  Well that was like throwing a blazing torch into a wheelbarrow of dynamite.  Massive nerd rage ensued.  People were PISSED.  They were pissed not only for the reasons in the previous paragraph they were pissed because Blizzard has continued to sell fancy flying mounts in their online store for real world cash, despite the inability to use them with thier most current content.  There was already the assumption it was just a matter of time until flying was turned on. When you consider the most recent quarterly report from Blizzard showed a massive 3 million drop in their amount of subscribers you would think the last thing they would want to do is give their player base a reason to /ragequit. It was just dumb.

Well it appears that somebody at Blizzard had the common sense to realize this was a poor move.  Somewhere around a week later Blizzard did a complete 180 degree shift, saying flying in WOD will indeed become available soon, although gaining the ability is going to be quite different than in the past where you just paid gold for it.  Instead you need to complete various tasks in the game to earn the right to fly.  These tasks will require you to pretty much experience the vast majority of the content and travel to all corners of the virtual world.  To be honest it seems overly tedious, to accomplish everything required will take well into the double digit hours to complete. On the plus side, you only have to complete this slog one time.  After that any and all characters you have will be able to fly instead of each one having to hand over a kings ransom in gold to do so.

I have started on the arduous task of unlocking flying in my spare time, which there isn’t much of nowadays.  I would expect this will be the blueprint for how flying will be handled in the future.  If we would have known it from the get go I could have done things in a way that would have made completion of the tasks much more of an inline process instead of a large, annoying tacked on blob of work.

So I pulled the access panel in the garage where I had run a long section of cat 5 cable to the office when the house was built.  In the back of my mind I sort of recalled that I redeployed that cable awhile ago.  When I saw the cut wire in there it refreshed my memory.  Quite a few years ago I needed to get a second hard line ethernet connection into the bedroom for whatever AV arrangement I had at the time.  In order to do it I cannibalized that line and rerouted it to the bedroom.

Well I no longer require two hard lines in the bedroom thanks to the advent of much faster wi-fi technology over the years.  My idea is to utilize the wire that runs next to our bed and connect it to a 200 foot bury rated ethernet cable.  It will go through the attic, into the garage, out the access hole used for phone, satellite and cable wires.  From there it will get routed around the perimeter of the house, through the yard, and into the coop through the hole I cut for power. If I am successful getting a live hard line into the coop it allows for many options with chicken surveillance in the future.

Of course this plan is all speculative.  It is going to require traversing the very hot and unfriendly attic space.  Cindy has already volunteered  her services for this part of the project but since I know the layout I expect I will be the one crawling around up there.  Getting the cable into the ground won’t be much fun either although I plan to just lay the cable under the weed block around the pool for a good portion of the run.  The rest will be pushed into a small slice I put in the ground with my hand edging tool.

Last night the chickens did a better job of putting themselves to bed, well all of them but one, Jaina, the HUGE cornish hen.  The other 10 babies were all content inside the coop perching while Jaina, who is literally double the size of the other chicks, was wondering around under the coop deck making a noise that sounded much more like a goose than a chicken.  Jaina gets very upset when she is alone.

After some patient waiting she eventually came out from under the deck which allowed Cindy to grab her and put her in the chicken door.  Once she was inside she was still carrying on.  The first night they were in the coop Kristen stayed down on the ground with Jaina.  Last night Kristen was up top perching with the others and Jaina was upset about that too.  She was walking circles looking up at the other chickens, acting like she either wanted to be up there or she wanted them to come down to her.

I suggested we try putting Jaina on the middle perch which is bigger.  Because of her size and weight Jaina doesn’t really like to perch.  We tried it anyway.  Jaina stayed there for a minute or two until she fell down.  Cindy put one of the nesting boxes down on the ground for Jaina to use as  a bed.  She eventually took the hint and settled down in there.  The 13 chicks seemed to do fine through the night.  Things were less crazy because Lucy decided she wasn’t going to use the perch last night.

So has been the case lately, last night was again very chicken-centric.  The majority of the chickens went into the coop themselves, about half them got right up on the perch like they should.  Well then Lucy went into the coop and the fireworks began.  On Sunday night Lucy was content to sit in one of the nesting boxes all night while the babies mostly occupied the perching area.  Well last night she decided she was going to be claiming a perch.

As soon as Lucy hopped on the perches the other chicks got very nervous as they now associate Lucy with pecks on the head and back.  Lucy immediately started poking at any chicks within reach.  Some of the babies jumped off the perch while others just moved away out of pecking range.  As some of the chickens were trying to get off the perch they were utilizing the side frame of the perch.  They were sliding/falling off, adding to the chaos.

Well one of the babies, Kristen, was scared off the perch by Lucy’s tactics.  She is a good flyer, as she jumped she flew up into the air.  As she did she collided with one of many fly strips Cindy had hanging in the coop.  Somehow Lucy also managed to get another strip stuck on her.  There was a flurry of chicken panic as those strips are almost like super glue.  Cindy corralled Kristen and I got a hold of Lucy, something neither of us had ever done before.  Slowly we peeled the strips off the birds.  Cindy used the hand sanitizer we had in the coop to help dissolve the adhesive.  Obviously sticky fly strips are not going to be a good thing in the coop although neither Cindy or I gave any thought to the possibility of the scenario that went down last night.

Lucy continued scaring a lot of the chicks.  At one point Cindy was sitting down and had three or four chickens on her lap or arm, viewing her as safety.  It was very cute.  Despite the sun rapidly setting I wanted to try to quickly address the problem with the chicks sliding off the frame of the perch.  I quickly cut some small pieces of wood and attached them to both sides of the frame in between the perch locations, allowing the birds to climb up or get down from the perches in a more controlled manner.

As it got darker and darker in the coop things settled down.  There were a total of 9 birds on the perches with Lola, Jaina, and Kristen on the ground.  When we watched via the infrared web cam it looked like the chicks all fell asleep.  Lucy appeared to be awake and alert, hopefully she got at least some sleep during the night.

As I mentioned we have been trying to monitor the coop via the two wireless web cams we have in the coop.  The wifi signal strength out in the shed is marginal at best.  Sometimes we can get a steady feed but other times it won’t connect at all.  I began thinking about how much better it would be if I had a 1 gigabit hard line in the coop.  Not only would the web cams work flawlessly, I could even install a 4 camera dvr system out there, allowing us to monitor the inside and outside of the coop.  Is this even remotely necessary? No, but it would be undeniably cool.

I already investigated bury rated ethernet cable., which I could get in long lengths, up to 200 feet. The only remaining challenge would be how I would get the hard line routed from inside the house to outside in some manner that doesn’t involve drilling a hole through a wall.  When the house was built I actually ran some cat5E cable from the office to the utility panel in the garage which in turn could possibly be fished out the conduit where phone/cable comes in.  I would need to do some digging around to see what exactly I can do.   If I can get the cable out of the structure then it is just a matter of some grunt work which costs nothing but time.