The Useful Duck!

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Saturday, May 28, 2016

For those who find me remiss in my blogging schedule

I'm just kind of tired. I think I'm getting old.
My wife got me a FitBit. It says I walk about ten miles per day. Something like 20,000 steps.
I don't see how this is accurate.
I should be at work. I think we are chopping silage today.
No one was around the farm after work yesterday.
My wife's car seems to be failing.
It misses when you start it cold.
The antifreeze disappears but there is no discernible leak. After cranking there is pressure in the radiator.
But there is no white steam when I get it started. Instead it smells like raw gas.
So....
It could be a head gasket, but that would mean white smoke.
An injector could be stuck open which would flood the cylinder with gas.
The oil smells like oil. No milky flavor, no gasoline smell. So, nothing past the rings.
It would not start yesterday.
After work I pulled the plugs. Number one spark plug was black with unburned fuel.
The rest were clean and wet.
I cranked and check for spark. All have spark.
Columns of gasoline vapor blew into the air.
I put the plugs back in and it started instantly and now the check engine light is off.
I put Dike Radiator sealer in and drove the car for a half hour.
I'm going to check it this morning.

At work I broke the mower twice. This is a record. People are making fun of me. The supervisor says I need to walk my lawns before mowing. I showed him the chunk of metal and pile of crap I found that didn't go through the mower. He was impressed that I didn't run over that stuff but I think it reinforced his conviction that I need to walk my lawns. Whatever...

At home I broke the disk mower. This was to the tune of $2500 plus.

Perhaps I am just a serial mower destroyer...

In other news, I again succumbed to the temptation to argue with morons on my real Facebook page. Progressives are such utter hate-filled idiots who then accuse you of hate when you argue with them and say all these absolutely horrible things. It is kind of funny. They do not understand irony.
But I get tired of being held to an impossible high misinterpretation of my moral code and then be told that since they don't have a moral code that I can't criticize their imaginary values.
It is only my remaining christian beliefs that keeps me from restoring to violence. They have no self awareness whatsoever.

I now work a the mothership of all stupidity and it wears thin.

I so want to comment on Facebook but I can't. It causes disharmony...



I keep thinking of this joke about a guy in a restroom and the punchline is, "21 years old and you still believe in Leprechauns." but it is an an off color joke and it would not be polite to post in on my blog.

And now I have to go to work...

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

I kind of hate Walker mowers

I have been attempting to mow today. There has been a heavy dew. My Walker mower plugs continuously.

The problem is in the deck design. The blades throw the grass towards the opposite blade and the impeller has to suck the material up a foot long chute. 
There are baffles and guides in the deck which are designed to guide the material but they are not self cleaning.

Wet grass builds up all around the blades and soon it plugs. Going slow of course is essential but I don't see the point in owning a mower you have to clean out every dump if you have shade or dew.
It works fine in dry grass or if you are sucking up dead leaves along the side of the road. Works ok to suck junk out of flowerbeds also.

The second problem is that it is useless in mud or slick grass. The center of gravity is too far back and it puts all the weight on the single caster wheel in the back.
You can't climb hills or mow side hills unless you go in reverse.
And the seat is a brick.
I've found it to be faster to use our Kobota mower to mow everything I can do with a big mower, let it sit a day to dry, and then redo where I need to remove cut grass.
Now I'm going to go swear at it some more.

Monday, May 16, 2016

My week in review and no rant to cap it off but I explain alternating current

No rant as I'm going to church with all the other horrible Christians who are probably thinking of oppressing someone tight now...

Last weekend we decided to cut hay and so we pulled the baler out of the shed. I have no photos of the hay. It was mostly nice hay.
Note, the baler is worth more than the IH 656 Hydro. The hydro is worn out and has no power but it will pull the baler. It is the only tractor we have that will go slow enough for a double windrow of good hay.

I sniped and won an auction. It was unexpected. I bought another pair of Tandberg Fasett speakers. These are white. The auction description said they had an annoying buzz and were to be considered for parts. The Fasett's I got from Muddy Valley have been through a fire and the plastic housing is somewhat melted. I did apply heat and persuasion and got them back together but I thought I would combine the two pairs and have one good pair.

When the speakers arrived I quickly spotted the problem. There was a knot on one wire on each speaker. Everyone knows electricity gets confused when there is a knot in the cord. In this case one knot in one wire of a two wire cord would of course change direct current into alternating current as the electrons would become disorientated going through the knot and would wander around aimlessly. This is the definition of alternating current (in layman's terms).
After removing the knot I connected the speakers and there was no buzz. Another eBay success story! Here is a photo of my wall of not-very-good-sound.

Here is a photo of garbage from the flowerbeds. I hope there is no connection between the wreath of flowers and the morning after pill...

Here is a pile of wood chips that we shoveled by hand. They had to be moved 100ft. No one has ever heard of a tractor loader at work... It all pays the same. Whatever....

Here is a photo of the hayfield after the rain. Had five acres to go but the grass did not cure. It is wet now. We do have a semi-truck load of beautiful hay. Some of it is a little warm but it will cool down and be awesome hay.

Here is a really offensive meme that showed up in my Facebook feed. Perhaps it caught me at a bad time. I commented.

It was suggested by several family members that I no longer comment on Facebook as I seem to be overly negative. This stems from telling someone to stop smoking dope and get a job. I would like to congratulate him after he followed my advice and got two jobs and share the fact that my back also hurts like heck most of the time as well and has hurt like heck for the past decade but I suppose I better leave it alone.
And now I'm going to church and will probably be judge mental cause that's what us Christians do.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Mondays part 6

I am putting off going to work.
We are going to be lectured on the care of new lawnmowers. Someone put a chip in the deck of one. Someone broke a blade on another.
I have been given the old lawnmower. I have been admonished not to use it as a street sweeper. Having been caught using it as a street sweeper in a 20 foot experiment and then had it brought up in morning meeting, I spent most of my second mowing day actually using it as street sweeper. Ironically, my mower is the one with the best blade. There are no rocks on a street which is blown off thrice weekly.
In other news. We previewed a couple movies.
Blues Brothers is pretty worn out, has a couple F-bombs which I forgot about, and it appears my Hogan's Heroes purchase should have been better researched. I guess part of the charm is crappy sound, accidental nudity, and Hogan's Heroes episodes which are missing the last ten minutes.
If you wanted perfection you could get a DVD. Freezing your butt off to watch a worn out movie on the side of a barn is much better than sitting on a couch watching it on TV.

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