Archives 2014

So I have had a huge problem with a software vendor at work that has drug out for over a year.  They basically promised certain things and have been miserably inept on making good on these promises.  I have not been shy in lambasting them for their poor performance, so much so that at this point they basically will not communicate with me. Well since they are unwilling to fulfill their scope of work I have been having to try to find ways to reverse engineer certain things.  One example of my challenges was being handed a pack of 11,000 single pdf files and then needing somehow to be able to sort and group them into multipage pdf’s based on the file naming scheme along with the pattern the last alphanumeric character in the file name follows.

Just for the hell of it I described the scenario to my buddy Charlie who is programmer.  I thought what I needed would be pretty hard to deliver programmatically but low and behold within an hour Charlie had a program in my email for testing.  After giving him some feedback on the results he sent me additional revisions that delivered on what I needed, saving me mountains of hassle and time.

I have spoke high praise of Charlie many times before here on the blog.  He is one of the kindest guys I know and would literally give you the shirt off his back.  This is just the latest example of why he is awesome.

Yesterday I made arrangements to transform this 3 day weekend into a 5 day mini-vacation.  No I don’t have any special plans made.  Sometimes it’s just nice to have a blank slate that you can fill  or erase as you please.

I finally got around to ripping two videos off my GoPro – my latest head shave and the aerial video from the Memorial Day picnic.

Cindy was off yesterday from work and was quite busy as normal.  One of the things she did was put together the picnic table we bought at Target over the weekend.  It fit the dog deck quite well and the color of the top surface was almost an exact match for the color of the composite decking.   With the 9 foot umbrella added to the mix we now have a shaded and scenic spot to hang outside to eat, read or just hang out with the chickens.

Last night we made a point to get to bed early, I was passed out before 10.  For a few weeks it seems that we have been in a perpetual sleep deficit, getting less than 7 hours most nights.  I told Cindy I needed to turn that trend around, I don’t like feeling like a zombie on the drive home from work.  After getting 7.5 hours of sleep last night I feel better but like I still have a big sleep hole to backfill.

The chickens have been very entertaining.  Cindy and I are now established in their minds as the food/treat providers so the second they hear the squeak of the slider opening they get very excited and pace back and forth in their chicken run.  Cindy has been giving them different foods to see what they like and dislike. On the like list is strawberries, tomatoes, kale, spinach and Ezekiel bread. The dislike list includes eggplant, cucumbers, and raw broccoli.  On the OMG we LOVE this is blueberries, pasta, and cracked corn.

Last night the chickens had to endure yet another bad storm with ample lightning and thunder.  The storm also appears to have knocked out the UPS attached to my computer.  It was making a “I’m screwed” noise when I walked in the door.  It was due to get refreshed anyway.  Luckily I have not identified any other electronics that were damaged.

A lot of this week will be directed toward the 4th of July race which goes down on Friday morning.  This race is always a zoo but I am hoping that since we are using race bibs with integrated timing devices this year that things will go smoother than in the past.

I had a busy, busy Saturday.  Outside my first waking hour spent playing some Hearthstone the rest of my day was spent with the foot on the gas pedal.  After weeding the property and filling the bird feeders I hopped in the truck.  I needed to pick up some stuff at Home Depot and Rural King.  One of the things I was hoping to get was some new chicken wire to redo the top of the run where the plastic coated chicken wire is starting to break.  I was surprised that all Rural King had was plain old galvanized chicken wire.  I wound up ordering some pvc chicken wire with Amazon on my phone as I walked out of the store.

When I got back I hopped on the mower to complete the now necessary weekly grass trimming.  I was very thankful for my mower canopy as it was around 1PM and broiling hot outside with stifling humidity.  There was not a cloud in the sky to provide even momentary relief otherwise.  I was then doing work on the west side of the house, the sunny side,re-securing the sprinkler control box that was pulling loose from the wall.  The sweat was rolling off me non-stop as the sun baked me twice, once on my back and then again on the face is it bounced off the wall.  It was miserable, I felt like a piece of a meat in the broiler.  I had to go in several times to gulp down water as it felt dangerous to not do so.

I then grabbed the container of Thompsons water seal I bought at Home Depot and got busy with my annual protection of the bar park and other wood objects in the landscape.  This time I didn’t get the plain water seal, I got stain/sealer, the color was listed as redwood.  The stain made everything look a different shade. I think it looked the best on the bar park support posts and the worst on the border around the dog deck.  I was out there till almost 6PM brushing the stuff on.  My lower back was pretty much locked up by the time I was done after painting the ramps for the two sheds.

Cindy and I had plans to go see the new Transformers movie Saturday night.  My non-stop work day made me doubtful of my ability to stay awake for a nearly 3 hour long movie, especially with us not being able to get there until the 8PM showing.  I took a shower and we headed out anyway.

I had expressed my thoughts on prior Transformer movies in the blog last week.  Those feelings were not lessened by several HORRIBLE reviews forwarded to me by my buddy Sean, who was unable to see the movie with us.  I told Cindy about the horrible reviews but she said she doesn’t like to pre-judge a movie by others opinions.  Granted, there have been movies I have enjoyed that some critics said were shitty so surely I am a supporter of forming your own opinion.  However since I had already formed an opinion on the previous Transformer films, seeing more bad press didn’t give me much hope.  I did hope that adding Mark Wahlberg to the cast and eliminating Shia LeBouf would make a significant difference, it didn’t.

After watching a ridiculous 24 minutes of previews, the movie starts up.  The first 30 minutes or so was fine but then things went right down the established Transformers path, horrible writing, ridiculous, awkward insertion of one liners, and explosions exploding on top of explosions.  In my conservative estimation, at least a 100,000 people would have died in the collateral damage from these robots gone wild.  Marky Mark takes on almost Superman-like aura as the film progresses.  By the end of it he is somehow able to go toe to toe with an evil robot that is 100 times his size.  At times I had to hide my face in embarrassment for the actors on screen, it was soooo stupid.

Cindy thought I was overly harsh in my criticism of the film.  SHe wrote off much of the stupidity with “It’s Transformers!”, meaning that the series is supposed to have a lot of stupidity in it. After the movie I commented that I felt like I lost IQ points watching it but to be honest, I think I felt the same leaving the theater after all Transformer movies.  Transformer movies make tons of money despite their plentiful idiotic aspects.  People like robots that turn into cool looking cars and explosions.  If it isn’t broke don’t fix it I guess.  Personally I give the film a C.  If you saw the other films, you saw this one.

Originally Cindy and I discussed getting up and going running Sunday morning however the late movie, “sleeping in” until 7:30, already warm/humid weather and both of us feeling sore and stiff discarded that plan.  Plus we had a lot of things we wanted to get done.  We did our coffee run followed by a trip to Target where we saw some good deals on clearance patio furniture.  We talked about coming back later to pick up a cool heavy metal picnic table and 9 foot umbrella to restore some functionality to the dog deck.

While we were out I got a call from a woman I spoke to earlier in the week regarding buying the original chicken coop I bought.  She actually is up in New Jersey right now but is moving down to Cape Coral in about a month.  She had chickens before and is looking to pick up 3 hens when she moves back down.  She really liked my coop, especially for the money.  She had made arrangements for her ex-husband to come pick up the coop for her by proxy and he was available to do so that moment.

I told the woman that was fine but I had wanted to use the animal safe wood sealant I bought on the coop.  Since her ex was coming from Cape Coral as well which is a pretty long haul, I figured I would have time to get it done before he arrived.  As soon as Cindy and I got home I cracked open the can of sealant and got busy.  I was in the full sun the entire time and despite it still being relatively early, I was drenched in sweat in no time at all.  Just as the guy backed his truck into the driveway I was finishing up.  The coop looked very nice when I was done, despite it’s lack of structural integrity.

The guy worked in farming all of his life and definitely looked the role.  In addition to the wood coop he was transporting I showed him my chicken tractor out back. He thought it was really cool and took down the web site address to show his ex-wife, perhaps she will be upgrading to a tractor down the road. We loaded the wood coop on the back of the truck and I collected my two $100 bills.  I felt a big sense of relief as the truck pulled out, meaning my initial purchase had at least not been a total loss and that the large section of garage floor space it was consuming was now available once again.

Speaking of the garage floor, Cindy made a rather disgusting discovery Sunday morning, maggots crawling around on that same floor.  I found the corpse of a dead frog nearby, I assume that is where they came from.  There were a ton of them up and down the side of the garage that leads to the house.  I used the shop vac to eliminate them, it was really gross. In general, the flies have been very oppressive the last couple weeks.  I was happy to eliminate at least a few dozen potential flies from reaching adulthood.

One of the things we wanted to get done on Sunday was cleaning out the smaller shed to utilize it more for chicken accessories.  I had not gone through that shed thoroughly in years.  As a result I wound up pulling out a ton of stuff that I no longer wanted/needed.  Most of it went out to the road to hopefully be adopted by a local pack rat, the rest went in the trash.

The chickens got their first taste of true freedom yesterday as wel let them loose while we were doing work on their housing.  As we expected they were scared at first but it didn’t take long for them to take advantage of their freedom.  They started scratching the ground repeatedly, something they can’t really do in their coop/run because of the safety wire that is on the bottom.  Before long all three of them had dug little holes in the ground and were comfortably sitting in them.  Cindy and I were concerned the chickens might be all over the yard and require close supervision. It seemed our concerns were overinflated.  The chickens pretty much stayed within a 30 feet square area behind the pool cage.  They enjoyed both the shade that area has and the mulch which they loved digging through.

While the chickens were having fun Cindy and I were making additions to the chicken run.  I added one of Tuki’s old bird toys with a bell, a pvc chicken swing and an old perch which I haphazardly screwed into the half bike frame.  Cindy made her own chicken swing using a different design.  Thus far I haven’t seen any of the chickens use either swing as they are intended to be used. I also set up a hanging feeder instead of the ground based feeder we had before.  The chickens seemed to be big fans of eating at a higher elevation and the feeder is protected from the elements this way.

Cindy’s daughter stopped out for a couple hours on Sunday to see the chickens.  She thought it was cool how inquisitive they were.  We bought two new treats for the chickens over the weekend, cracked corn and dried mealworms.  Surprisingly the mealworms didn’t seem to go over that big with the birds but they went nuts for the corn.  We limited how much of the corn we gave them, according to the instructions the corn consumption needs to regulated.

Getting the chickens back into their housing wasn’t as troublesome as we anticipated either.  We had visions of having to chase chickens all over the back yard.  Instead Cindy was able to calmly grab each chicken and pet them as she placed them back into the coop.  You could tell that the girls were not thrilled returning to captivity after getting a taste of freedom. Shortly after the chickens were put back in some VERY severe thunder storms rolled in, unleashing torrential rain and brutal lightning and thunder.  Cindy felt bad the chickens had to be out there in such conditions.

We were trying to watch my latest Netflix rental, Pompeii, in the middle of the storm.  I say trying because the power went out four times during the movie.  Each momentary blackout required me to go through an annoying process to get back to where we left off.  It was REALLY annoying when literally 15 seconds after getting the film rolling again the power again flicked off. I thought the movie was good, sort of a hybrid between Gladiator and Armageddon (in an ancient Roman way).  Getting obliterated by a volcano is not for wimps. I’d give the movie a B+ and would take it over any Transformers movie to date. It was odd seeing Jack Bauer play the head bad guy in the film.

We did go back to Target later in the day to grab the picnic table and umbrella.  Cindy is supposed to assemble it today sometime during her day off.

So I got it in my head that I wanted to get the carpets cleaned in the house last night, a rather ambitious plan for a Thursday evening.  Cleaning the carpet is a task that just never gets done as much as it should be, especially with the dogs in the house.  I bet it has been 3-4 months since it was last done if not longer.

So after setting the Scooba loose in the kitchen, I pulled out my 4-5 year old Bissel, filled it with fluid and wheel it back to the bedroom to get started.  I immediately notice that I see no cleaning solution getting sucked into the machine.  A little more investigation revealed this was because there was no fluid getting shot out of the nozzles.  I also saw that the guts of the brush area was very dirty, stuffed with dog hair and other organic matter. Great, the last thing I felt like doing was fixing the steam cleaner.

So I start pulling it apart and clean it the best I could.  I cracked the case body apart and pulled the two spray nozzles.  When I pulled the solution trigger with no nozzles I was only getting fluid out of the right side.  Well that was all I really needed to flip the “fck it I will just get a new one” switch in my head.

I have never really liked my rug cleaner.  When I bought it I opted for the less expensive model.  It had a small cleaning head and a small solution tank that I wound up having to refill 5 times to clean the house.  The water heating feature it supposedly had required you to let the unit sit for a couple minutes before using it and even then, didn’t appear to heat the water at all.  Hence, the idea of putting it on the curb for a problem that I may have been able to fix myself was a no brainer. When Cindy got home I told her she didn’t have to worry about dinner prep, we could eat at Panera and then shoot over to Target to get a new rug cleaner.

This time I went for the bigger, better Bissel model.  We got it home and within 15 minutes I had it together and had started the rug cleansing.  The first thing I noticed was the new cleaner is like a heavy tank compared to what I used to have.  The big solution reservoir, especially when filled to the top with cleaning solution makes the rug cleaner very HEAVY.  I told Cindy that carpet cleaning from this point on should exclusively be man work because of the force required to push and pull a machine of this weight several hundred times.  Within the first 5 minutes my right shoulder started to burn.

Other than the weight, everything else about the new cleaner was all good.  The heating system is obviously much improved over previous models, the solution felt warm right from the get go and never varied.  The 10 rows of brushes in the wider cleaning head did a great job of refreshing the carpet.  I also was able to be more efficient cleaning since the wider head and much bigger tank let me clean more footage per swipe and go much longer in between tank fills.  It took me just over two tanks to clean the master bedroom, main living space, the dining room and office.  This model also comes with a head attachment to clean hard surfaces as well so if my Scooba bites the dust I am not relegated to scummy mop and bucket cleaning duty.

Of course trying to half heartedly fix the old cleaner and then running out to buy a new one pushed my cleaning late into the night.  I didn’t finish up until after 9:30.  The amount of dog hair that was pulled out of what appeared to be pretty well swept carpets was pretty crazy and made the effort seem worthwhile.

This weekend I have a number of things that could capture my attention.  I would like to replace the wire on the top of the auxiliary chicken run as it is getting brittle and has already broken at several places.  Cindy and I also have a Sunday Rural King run planned to further augment our chicken care supplies.  We also plan to let the chickens out to roam the yard some on Sunday, under our close supervision.

Saturday night Cindy and I will be going out to see Transformers with our buddy Sean.  I have had a love hate relationship with the movie series over the years.  Some aspects of the films are really cool but they are almost always balanced out with an equal amount of stupidity.  Having Marky Mark in this latest film should definitely be an upgrade over Shia LeBouf IMO.

Last night was the first time the chickens were out in a thunderstorm, a pretty severe one at that.  When it started I walked out in the rain to make sure they were ok.  They were all hanging out under the main coop and seemed to be fine, despite the lightning and thunder crashing down.  The one thing that was not fine was their food dispenser which is close to the edge of the run area.  It was filled with water, turning the feed into mush.  Once the rain let up I pulled the feeder out and replaced it with a smaller feeder we have which I could keep more under the coop where it was less likely to get rained on. It also seemed like the chickens actually liked the rain, all three of them looked wet, like they must have went out to the end of the run to get rained on intentionally.  I know Tuki likes to give himself a bath in his water bowl at times so perhaps chickens actually like taking “showers” now and then?

So in addition to Craigslist, I listed my original chicken coop the other day on a Collier County online yard sale group on Facebook.  I figured the more free spots I can advertise it, the better.   So I placed the ad and in it included a link to the coop online where somebody could verify how much the thing costs new.

Before very long I had some interest but the offer submitted via a Facebook private message was super low ball, $150.  I responded back to the guy, pointing out that he was asking for a 66% discount on a brand new item that I already assembled.  I told him I would be willing to let him have it for 200.

The guy responds back that he can buy the coop brand new for $266 from Amazon with free shipping.  I knew this was not the case but I asked him to send a link showing this to me.  The link he sends is of a totally different and much smaller coop, wtf, is he blind?  I then send him the link to the correct coop on Amazon, along with the $455 price tag.  That was the end of our PM exchange, I assumed he was just trying to throw the bullshit number out as a negotiation tool.I had an even more ridiculous number of $100 thrown at me which I ignored.

So later last night I see this same guy posted on the public thread for my ad AGAIN that my coop only cost $266 brand new, despite my clearly illustrating to him earlier that it was not.  Obviously this guy was now just being a troll.  I again corrected him, publicly this time.  I found the episode quite annoying.  I have a couple potential leads on the coop but as of now it still is taking up a parking space in the garage next to the SSR.

DISCLAIMER: Video game paragraph for those of you that have an allergic reaction to gaming talk. Last night I finished the single player portion of the Diablo expansion, Reaper of Souls, taking down Malfael after 5 or 6 attempts.  I used a very unrefined and random strategy to survive the fight which takes close to 10 minutes to complete.  Basically I ran around the room away from him (playing my monk) whenever he was doing stuff that looked painful (most of the time).  I would only engage him for a few seconds at a time and I tried to only do so when I was close to some health pots to keep me alive.  When he went down it was cool and opened up additional game modes that I can use to raise the level of my monk and all of my other characters quickly.

Cindy joined me for a short cooperative Diablo session later.  She likes playing but all of the mouse clicking the game requires is tough on her hands which are beat up from too many years working for the post office.  She is part of my two person Diablo clan, named Team Z.  Ok game talk over.

My buddy Lou sent me a video of him demolishing logs with a new 17 pound mega maul that I sent up to him.  Lou busted up his sledgehammer a couple weeks ago splitting firewood.  I told him he should get a maul, which is a combo of a sledgehammer and an axe.  He agreed but before he could buy one himself I had already ordered the biggest, heaviest and meanest one I could find on Amazon for him. The thing is all steel and looks like it could split almost anything.  I regularly tap Lou’s videos for inspiration, a mega maul was only a small token of my appreciation.  If you want to see him exploding some logs with it, click below.

So I had a lot to do when I got home last night, pretty much all of it had to do with taking care of the animals.  I headed out to the chickens first.  I pulled out their water and food dispensers so I could work on removing the lower level perch bar that was in the way.  The work environment was not very pleasant.  The area had a considerable amount of chicken shit on the ground which in turn attracted an even more considerable amount of flies.

The chickens were curious what I was doing.  One of them came over to me a couple times assuming I had something for her to eat since that is what they associate me with.  I held up my screwdriver, allowing the chicken to peck it to verify it wasn’t edible, before going back to work.  Pulling out the perch allowed me to move the food container freely, relieving the congestion that existed previously.  My eventual plan is to mount the perch at the end of the auxiliary run where it will be easily accessible without being in the way.  I will coordinate that with replacing the chicken wire on the top of the run which is getting brittle and rusty in spots.

I then cleaned and refilled the chicken’s water and food.  The water coming out of the hose was warm because the water equipment bakes in the afternoon sun.  I went inside and grabbed a bunch of ice cubes to knock the temp down before putting it back inside the coop.  The food had some poop in it as well, reenforcing the need to use a smaller, hanging, covered food dispenser in the future.

I then tackled the not fun job of giving the dogs a bath solo.  Cindy offered to help but she was stuck at work late and I didn’t feel like waiting.  Nicki just sat calmly in the tub as I suds-ed her up, Sadie is much more of a pain in the ass to try to do solo.  She insists on creeping forward and pushing her head over the edge of the tub during bathing which results in both her and myself getting thoroughly soaked in the process.  After I was done washing them both my shirt and shorts were very wet and hairy.

Last night we fed the chickens more treats including leftover salad greens and spinach pasta.  They seemed to really like the pasta, perhaps as much as strawberries.  It’s funny seeing them take turns stealing food from each other.  They also had spurts of chasing each other around, we aren’t sure if it was outright aggression or just chicken play.  Hopefully this weekend we can let the chickens free range around the yard a bit although it won’t be without us in the same general vicinity standing guard.

So as new chicken owners, Cindy and I obviously have been doing a lot of observation during this first 48 hours.  We were happy to see that chickens are very happy eating kitchen scraps.  We gave them some cut up strawberries and apple yesterday.  Both foods were welcomed by our new feathered pets. We looked up the list of other things a chicken can safely eat, the list is quite long.

I also identified an issue with the way we have the food and water laid out, more or less side by side on the one end of the run.   Having both items so close mean the chickens are going to spend a lot of time in that spot which in turn means a ton of chicken shit will accumulate as well.  There was enough mess there that I actually picked up the coop and moved it already last night to get the birds on fresher grass.

The solution to this issue would be to stick the food on the opposite corner from the water.  The problem is we got a feeder that is suitable for a flock of 30 birds, not 3.  It’s too large to get past the roost bar that is located on the first level so there is really nowhere to go with the feeder.

I saw two solutions.  One of them is to get a smaller feeder that will fit over the roost bar.  The second is to relocate the roost bar.  I am more of a fan of option number two.  The lower level roost bar is not in a very practical spot, right next to the food and water dispensers.  The chickens have to awkwardly duck under it to get to their food and drink.  I am thinking about removing the bar completely and relocating it towards the end of the auxiliary run which would give us more options on the lower level of the main coop.

This morning Cindy came out to see the chickens dumped all over the ramp while sleeping at night.  They have two options when perching at night, one puts their ass over the wood shavings, the other is bombs away onto the ramp.  At least so far they seem to prefer the latter position.  I hooked up the long hose near the coop to clean water instead of the raw well water it usually spouts so it can be used for both watering and coop cleaning duties.

I’m sure there will be a lot of learning and slight adjustments that will occur in the next few weeks.  As far as Cindy and I can tell the chickens appear to be content.  We sat outside last night and ate black bean brownies near the coop just to hang out with them and the dogs.  It was peaceful.

I have not had any interest whatsoever on the brand new “old” Chinese fir coop, not a single email, text message or phone call.  We did however discover last night that Cindy and one of the dogs can fit inside the coop if need be.  The coop also has at least served a role as a garage air freshener for a few days with it’s pleasant cedar-like aroma.

So you may recall that I reported the sale of Cindy’s Miata a couple weeks ago to a couple 18 year old kids.  What I didn’t report was up until Friday, the vehicle was technically still owned by Cindy.  When the kids picked up the car I had Cindy sign off the title with the understanding the kid was going to be going to the DMV with his dad the next day to do the title work and registration.  Well evidently we had a misunderstanding.

The kid did not get the title transferred which I was checking on periodically through the Florida online title check website.  I alerted Cindy to this and the potential issue with someone else being in possession of a vehicle with an open title.  She contacted the kid several times, asking when it was going to be done.  There were several excuses and fuzzy promises of resolution.  Finally late last week she used stronger wording which evidently resulted in the kid finally getting his ass to the DMV with one or both of his parents.  Both Cindy and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the updated title change status online.  I was beginning to have nightmares of worst case scenarios where the car is involved in an accident where someone is injured or even the kid’s parents coming back at us saying they want the money back.

Our Friday night began conventionally with pizza, Mexican Coke and watching a show recorded on the X1 DVR.  However after the show was over there was still at least a solid hour of daylight left.  Since my weekend was looking so busy I had the bright idea to head outside and get a head start on to do’s.  Cindy was off on Friday and got a lot of stuff done but had more tractor mowing to do.  While she was on the tractor finishing up I did other yard maintenance including weeding, abbreviated weed whacking session, sidewalk blowing and even bush trimming in fast forward mode.  I got a ton done in a very short period of time, resulting in a totally soaked shirt, despite working in dusk conditions.  The sweat was worth getting a jump on the list.

Saturday morning we had to pick up the dogs from Ali’s place since she is out of town for a few days.  We went from there straight to Rural King, a store that we will be frequenting much more regularly in the future.  We needed to get supplied for the chickens we planned to pick up this weekend.  We grabbed a big 40lb bag of chicken feed, kiln dried wood shavings for the nest box/coop area, water/food dispenser and a few other items.  Despite doing a decent amount of reading about chicken care already we were still a bit nervous about making sure we had everything we needed.

When I got home the next to do was multiple oil changes.  The Tacoma, party van, and Craftsman tractor were all due for a petroleum transfusion.  The process went smoothly all the way around, the only annoyance was just how hot and humid it was, despite being relatively early in the day still.

So last week I documented the assembly of the chicken coop I had bought several weeks prior online.  I commented how the coop despite being good looking did not seem like it was going to be very durable at all.  The Chinese fir it is constructed out of is very thin and light.  I just did not see any way it was going to hold up outdoors for more than a few months.

So despite dropping what I would consider a rather large wad of cash on this coop, I was investigating alternatives.   A Craigslist search on “chicken coop” landed me on an odd looking coop (Jeremy actually showed me this type of coop a long time before).  On the side of it was stenciled “urbanchickentractors.com”  so I jumped to the web site to see what the deal was.

These mobile, self contained and decidedly unique coops are built by some guy in nearby Sarasota in his back yard.  He advertises that each coop is built with at least 30% recyclable materials.  I flipped through the site watching his video and checking out the different style/size chicken tractors he makes as well as the additional options.  It’s almost like buying a car as he custom builds each tractor to order.  The ability of the coop to be very easily moved courtesy of the wheel and handles on each model would be ideal.

I was so interested I actually called the guy, whose name is Ira and talked to him about the coops.  He seemed like a very friendly a good guy on the phone.  He said with his current workload. (he has a normal job as well), that it if I ordered a coop it would take about 5 weeks to be completed.  I thanked him for the information and told him I would get back to him if I wanted to go that route.

So now my head was churning through scenarios.  Since we planned to get the chickens this weekend I considered letting the birds hang out in the coop in a box structure until a new chicken tractor could be built for them.  There were some down sides to this idea.  The wood coop would obviously be in degraded condition after having chickens living in it for a month outdoors, making any hope of selling it to someone else nearly impossible.  Also, buying a brand new chicken tractor is not a cheap proposition, once I started adding in the various options the total price was getting perilously close to 4 digits.

So then I returned to the ad for the used chicken tractor on Craigslist.  It seemed to be priced high for a used item but after I identified it as the aluminum/vinyl siding model which is the most expensive tractor UCT sells, I softened a bit on the price although it still was way more than I would pay.  I emailed the seller looking for more info.  Late Saturday morning I got an email back describing a few aspects of the coop as well as offering a big discount off the listed ad price, a full third less.  Now you have my attention.

Early Saturday afternoon I called the woman and talked some more.  She described the coop as being 2-3 years old and in great condition.  She lived off the same exit as Siesta Key beach is, a good 90 minutes away.  I told her that if she would agree to an even lower price I would shoot up there and get it immediately.  She held firm to her 33% discount, I told her I would come anyway and take a look.  Cindy was game for an unplanned 200+ mile round trip.  I emptied out the back of the truck, only bringing along ratcheting straps and assorted bungee cords if needed.

Thanks to the GPS and a 75 mph average speed we found the house with no issue, making the trip in around 90 minutes.  We pulled into the driveway and were immediately impressed.  The big house was situated on a large, beautifully landscaped estate.  We walked up to the house as we looked around at the awesome estate and rang the doorbell.  After 30 seconds with no response I rang it again, this time with more pressure, thinking perhaps I didn’t activate the chime.  I definitely heard it the second time.  Still, nobody answered the door.  This began  a close to 15 minute ordeal, trying to get someone’s attention.  We knocked, rang and walked around the side of the house looking for any signs of life.  It made no sense, there were cars in the driveway, we could hear tv playing inside and even dogs barking but still the front door remained unopened.

Finally we heard a voice inside and the woman I spoke to on the phone answered.  She apologized although I am not sure quite how long she heard the ringing/knocking.  Her elderly husband evidently was sleeping but there were also two perfectly able grandchildren in the house that apparently don’t open doors. The only theory I could come up with was the woman was in the middle of a long and arduous BM when we arrived.

She instructed us to walk to the back where she would meet us.  The back of the property was as beautiful as the front.  We walked by an impressive and large vertical hydroponic garden.  Everywhere you looked I saw tons of dollars and sweat equity invested.  The chicken tractor obviously had sat unused for awhile.  It looked older in person than it did in pictures, the front of it had black mildew, some parts had some rust and the grass it was perched upon was pretty overgrown. My first impression was the woman had exagerrated her 2-3 years old claim on the phone.

When the woman opened the large side panel we were introduced to the current coop residents, wasps.  There were two active wasp nests attached to the interior roofline.  The inside of the coop was clean enough, the vinyl siding that was used inside and out holds up very well.  The detachable long run was great and one of the things I liked about the tractors.  I wanted our chickens to have lots of room to move about.  This  coop also had full wire on the underside of both the main tractor and the extended run, protecting the chickens from certain predators that would go so far as trying to dig underneath.  Both Cindy and I really liked that.

The woman gave us quite the sales pitch on the coop, claiming it will last for years and years which it very well may.  I just questioned why she wouldn’t have cleaned it up more to sell it.  The woman’s husband did some modifications to the coop, including the large side door.  He evidently used a brass hinge originally which is not suitable for outdoor conditions.  As a result both sides of the coop had pretty gross looking rust stains blemishing them.

Now I knew that more than likely after some pressure washing and elbow grease I could get the coop looking much better.  I could tell Cindy was more off put by the current visual.  I probably could have/should have repeated my lower offer for the coop based on the way it looked but I didn’t.  Despite the warts the coop was worth the number she threw at me based on my knowledge of what a new one costs.  I told her we would take it.

Phase two, getting the coop and the run into the back of the Tacoma was going to be a challenge made more miserable by the broiling heat and humidity at nearly 3 PM in the afternoon. Thanks to the aluminum frame and vinyl siding, neither piece was that heavy, they were however quite big.  Getting them in the back of Tacoma required them both being placed at an angle which resulted in the  coop hanging far over the right side and the chicken run hanging several feet off the back.

Once they were jammed in the back I utilized my two ratcheting straps, bungee cords and a piece of rope to make sure the chicken housing stayed put on the drive home.  We thanked the woman and began the journey southward.  Cindy and I were nervous about the drive initially.  The top of the coop was exposed to full wind, creating a massively unaerodynamic wall.  We were concerned the wind pressure could either cause damage to the coop or somehow dislodge it from it’s various tethers.   Luckily neither thing happened. The 90 mile drive down I-75 was very long.  I put my 4 way flashers on and set the cruise at 60 mph, not wanting to risk excessive wind pressure. As a result the drive back took 2 hours plus (and a lot of gas), scuttling our plans to catch a movie Saturday night.

I instead got busy with my pressure washer wanting to at least get the black mildew off.  As expected the washer made short work of the mildew, restoring the siding to like new condition, unfortunately it is powerless to remove rust stains which would take another approach.  I also knocked down no less than another half dozen old wasp nests. After I was done I showed Cindy the end result, she felt better about the purchase afterwards.

On Sunday morning Cindy dove right into more coop cleaning early.  She utilized SOS pads on the rust stains and had fantastic results.  She was able to totally remove the rust stains on the siding and did a good job of cleaning up the rust covered child bike wheel rims which were very messy as well.  My main contribution in the morning was filling the holes where the one rusty bracket was located with plastic headed pool cage screws dipped in caulk.  I also tightened a number of the bolts and nuts that had worked their way loose over time.

By the time we were done the chicken tractor and run looked 100% better than it did sitting in the woman’s back yard. It’s amazing what a difference some elbow grease can make.  Getting the chicken tractor made us reevaluate some of the choices we made for food and water containers.  We made our second trip to Rural King in as many days to return a couple items and get a much larger 3 gallon watering station and an equally large food dispenser.  We arrived home only needing to get the chickens themselves.  I called the woman that I was planning to get the chickens from on both her home and cell phone but got no answer.  I left a message which was not returned until early afternoon.

She apologized for not getting back to me sooner, she said she had a very busy morning, selling a bunch of birds via her Craigslist ad.  The sales were good for her but she said she had some bad news for me.  She said the 3 month old chickens she had pegged for me were accidentally sold by her husband.  I was immediately dejected by this news but not for long.  She said she did have 3 more older buff orpington hens.  When she said older I was afraid she was going to say they were a year or two old.  When she said they were 5 months old it was good news, that was even better in my book, they were very close to the age where they can start laying eggs, perfect.  I made arrangements to meet the woman in a half hour at a nearby gas station.

Cindy and I shot out into the back yard to quickly prep the coop, setting it up in front of the bird houses.  Cindy scooped handfuls of the wood shavings into the nest boxes and mixed it in with fresh spearmint from the garden, something she saw was recommended for freshness. We figured we would wait to fill the food and water containers until after we had the birds inside.

I had warned Cindy that this woman’s husband, whom I had seen before looked like he was off the set of Deliverance.  He didn’t disappoint as he stepped out of the van bare foot with the woman.  We came around to the back of the minivan where the 3 hens were in a small cage.  I brought my two cat carriers with to transport them back to the house.  The chickens were a decent size and seemed nervous but nice enough.  When we started the transfer process the woman scolded her husband as he reached in the cage and yanked the first hen out roughly by the legs, letting it hang upside down.  The woman immediately grabbed the chicken and held it to calm it down while she petted it.  She then gently helped us get the hen in the carrier and kept her husband out of the transfer process for the other two.  I gave her the $10 per chicken asking price and thanked her as we headed back towards the van with me carrying the carrier with two birds and Cindy lugging the other.

I had to laugh when I saw the barefooted husband step back into the driver seat and start to pull out while the side door on the van was fully open.  Cindy asked if we should tell them.. I told her that he would figure it out which he eventually did.  Wow I can only imagine what goes on around their household.

On the short ride back the house the chickens were pretty quiet which surprised me.  Besides some low chicken mumbling I hardly heard a peep, even as we carried them into the back yard.  The woman had told us that the more shade the better for these chickens as they dont love the heat.  Despite the coop structure providing built in shade for the run under the second level, we thought moving the tractor to a more shady area would make even more sense.  We carted everything over towards the dog deck and set up under the group of palm trees nearby which provided a nice partially shaded area.

Getting the chickens out of the cat carriers and into the the coop area was harder than expected.  They just did not want to leave I assume what felt like safe confines of the carriers.   We had to use a combination of a high angle of the carrier and Cindy’s hands to get them out.  Once they were in there they were quite nervous as expected.  We got their food and water containers filled up and ready to go.  That seemed to help break the ice a bit as they all drank and ate some.

We then let the dogs out to see the new additions to the family.  Of course there was tons of curiosity on the dogs part and fear on the chickens part however as the day went on there seemed to be more calm interactions going on.  The chickens realized they were safe in their new home and the dogs realized the chickens were on the “do not touch list” although I can’t imagine a scenario where I would have both the chickens and the dogs free ranging in the yard at the same time.

Cindy and I hung out with the chickens for awhile before leaving them to relax for awhile.  It felt weird actually  having farm animals in my backyard but it’s good to push your comfort zone.  I did some messing around later, trying to construct some sort of temporary auxiliary cover for the extended run.  My first attempt was utilizing some left over composite lumber that I screwed together.  It was too heavy and too flimsy.  I later wound up knocking it apart and just using two spare long section of 2″x 8″ boards to provide extra shade and rain protection.

Last night after the movie we checked in on the hens.  We were worried that they wouldn’t go up the ramp to the roost bar and nest boxes to sleep on their own.  Cindy and I were happy to see that the chickens instincts kicked in and they headed upstairs.  Cindy named the hens Wilma, Betty, and Pebbles.  Wilma and Betty despite being tied together via Flintstones fame also happen to be the names of Cindy and my grandmother, both of whom passed away.  Pebbles has no family connection but just fit the theme.  Right now I have a hard time telling which one is which.

The first coop I bought/built is now currently on Craigslist in the remote hope someone will buy it to help offset my losses.  I don’t hold out much hope for anyone doing so and envision the coop eventually being set by the end of the driveway to be scooped up by some roadside treasure hunter.

All of the chicken/chicken coop related pics I have can be seen here.

So our Saturday night movie trip got rescheduled to last night although I almost felt like we should cancel again to make sure the chickens first night at the homestead went smoothly.  We decided they would be fine and we went out to Edge of Tomorrow, Tom Cruise’s latest film.  I heard the movie was underperforming at the box office but I also heard more than one person that saw it say it was very good, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Much like Brad Pitt, I find I enjoy pretty much any movie Tom Cruise is a star in.  Well he kept that streak alive.

I didn’t think the movie was good, I thought it was very good.  I thought the plot was interesting, different and kept you on your toes.  The aliens in this film are terrifyingly different than anything I ever saw before and of course the action and special effects were all top notch.  I really don’t understand why the film is not doing better number-wise, I give it a very solid A rating.

On our way into the theater I had a very odd sighting.  I was on my way into the mens room for my obligatory pre-movie bladder emptying.  An older man was in front of me, something that is not odd.  What was extremely odd was he was holding his sandals in his left hand, allowing him to walk into the crowded public bathroom barefooted, where he made a left turn into one of the toilet stalls.  I had no idea why somebody would chose to do this.  I almost felt compelled to ask him why.

Oh yea I forgot, we saw Monuments Men at home Saturday night.  I thought it was rather boring, gets a B.

Yesterday I did some streamlining of my IM chat client landscape, motivated by my Skype client consuming an annoying amount of system resources.  I have a bunch of different messaging accounts, up until yesterday I was using a total of three programs to address the 5 different chat systems I am on. (AOL, Skype, Google, Openfire, Facebook).  I now have shrunk that number of chat clients down to one, Pidgin. Pidgin is an open source,a free chat client that doesn’t have tons of bells and whistles but gets the job done.   It’s nice having all of my virtual conversations under one roof.  The only drawback is great care needs to be taken that a reply in a conversation I would be having with someone like Jeremy or Randall doesn’t accidentally get posted into a convo I would have with a more professional contact.

So last night I finished up the construction of the chicken coop.  There is no doubt it is a good looking structure but I really have concerns about how it’s going to hold up down here where pressure treated 4×4’s disintegrate in a couple years.   The wood the coop is made out of is some sort of Chinese fir which is supposed to be similar in durability to cedar. However the wood is just very thin and  does not look like it is ready to battle the elements.

Cindy and I plan to treat the outside of the coop with animal safe wood sealant but even so I can’t see the coop making it through 365 days intact as is.  I didn’t feel any better about things when a Google search for ways to enhance the coop landed me on a message board of other people that bought the same thing, ranting about it, and not in a good way.  Complaints of poor construction, parts breaking/falling off and leakage in rain all dampened my enthusiasm for the coop I put together the last two evenings. After all, a hot looking woman with an 85 IQ and body odor is a losing proposition overall.

So once we get chickens in there I will be obviously monitoring things closely.  I’ll either be repairing, reenforcing the structure as needed or use it as a template to build something from scratch myself in the future if need be.  The last thing Cindy and I would want is for the birds to be living in substandard housing.

I have a very full weekend ahead of me.  On top of the full yard maintenance that needs to be done I need to change the oil on the Tacoma (just crossed 170k miles), the party van and the tractor.  We need to get out to Rural King to get chicken supplies and possibly go pick up the chickens themselves.  We plan to go to the movies Saturday night, maybe do some endurance training Sunday morning and oh yea, we also have the girls all weekend as well as Monday and Tuesday.  Busy, busy, busy….

So even though I have had the chicken coop I ordered for several weeks sitting in the shed I hadn’t gotten around to putting it together.  There was no real rush because I knew we weren’t going to be getting any chickens until the PA trip was out of the way.  Well the trip is now officially out of the way so I needed to get to work.

It was off and on raining last evening so I decided the garage would be the best place to put the coop together.  I opened the two boxes and leaned the parts against the wall.  The first impressions I got were “cool, most of the hard work is already done” and “geez this wood looks rather thin and light duty, I wonder how long it will last”.

The coop parts were all predrilled with guide pins to help you mate the larger sections together.  The parts smelled and looked like cedar wood but I am pretty sure they are made out of some sort of fir wood that just smells like cedar. The instructions were rather spartan and included no words at all, only low resolution pictures that showed how stuff went together but not the order it should go together which caused a few problems.

Everything fit together well. My only concern was the potential long term durability of the structure in the harsh Florida climate.  The wood that is used is thin and light, light enough that I am planning to sink some sort of auxiliary anchors in the ground to make sure the coop doesn’t get uprooted in the gusting winds that accompany summer thunderstorms.  I plan to pick up some animal friendly wood protectant on my way home to apply to the coop to hopefully extend the longevity of the structure.

I got everything put together last night except the nesting box which I hope to get finished tonight.  After that we need to get chicken accessories like feeding/watering stations, wood chips, straw and finally the chickens themselves.  If things come together there is a chance we could have the chickens in the backyard this weekend.

I have had an issue with Facebook for a couple months when checking it on a pc, it’s slow as shit.  As I start scrolling down a newsfeed there are these lengthy, annoying pauses as more content is loaded.  It’s annoying enough that it will make me bail on the site.  I see the behavior on multiple machines using multiple browsers, IE, Firefox or Chrome.  Jeremy suggested I load up a couple Firefox plug ins like NoScript and AdBlocker to cut out the countless background scripts processes that launch when you load a complex site like Facebook.  Unfortunately I found these add ons also turn web browsing into an annoying experience as page after page won’t load until I interact with the plug in and tell it to let content load.  Even with using these tools, the Facebook newsfeed still runs like shit.

At this point I am not quite sure what is causing the lag infested Facebook browsing, perhaps it is the change they made awhile back where all of the videos embedded in your newsfeed preload and start playing as soon as they enter your browser view in a Vine-like manner.  Perhaps it is the mountains of unwanted ads that are now shoved into the typical newsfeed.  Maybe I just have too many FB friends whom I never actually met in real life, bloating the content in my feed.  Whatever the cause, I am really sick of it and frustrated that I am yet to find the root cause of the problem or definitive solution.