The Useful Duck!

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Sunday, July 30, 2017

I buy a new phone, go to a high school reunion, run out of money, and urchins steal my gator...

It is a Sunday morning and it is hot.
My family went camping.
I expect them back today.
I fixed myself eggs for breakfast. The eggs were fresh out of the chicken. I found some peppers in the garden and some mushrooms in the refrigerator. The mushrooms were in a brown paper bag. They were not growing in the refrigerator. My wife has not been gone that long.

I should have put fewer peppers in the eggs. I grew Hungarian Wax Peppers and Jalapeno's. The Hungarian wax pepper can be quite spicy. It is good for cooking and you can control the heat by the amount of seeds you keep. The flesh is mild and mine were a little sweet, more like a Bell Pepper than your usual fry your mouth ball-o-fire pepper.

I've been having a lot of phone problems. I've gone through five iPhone 6plus 16 gig. The iPhone six plus with 16 gigs is a junk phone. If someone gives it to you sell it. It will lock up and will randomly not receive texts, not send texts, send phone calls but not receive and received and not send. Plus, there seems to be a problems with certain Apple iCloud servers and you can't restore your piece of crap Asurion refurbished replacement phone.

I just got my replacement iPhone after the last failure and I could not restore the phone properly. I missed many important phone calls and texts. So I went to my local Verizon store where I got the car salesman treatment from a nice young man.
I was going to buy either an iPhone six 32 gig, an HTC, or a LG s6. The iPhone was too expensive for someone who continually breaks phones. They didn't have the HTC. So I got the LG.
My salesman said I could get $250 for my old phone from Verizon's buyback program. But, I had to do that at home. He also found me a $200 credit for switching to the LG. He did try to sell me a Motorola but the Motorola doesn't have a headphone jack. I don't want to deal with missing or dead bluetooth speakers in the middle of a Librovox recording fifteen miles from home and eight hours of boredom ahead of me.
But, I digress...
I bought the LG and paid double what I should have for a hard case and now I'm back to the other phone system. It is ok. I'm not thrilled but my phone doesn't really define my life. It is requiring some adjustment. I really just wanted my iPhone to work. I had finally got the iCloud BS to actually work. I liked the voice recognition for blogging. I was using BlogTouch Pro (which I really liked) for my phone.
I think the bottom line is that Apple is no longer longer an innovative company. The PC side seems to have learned a lot from the old days of Apple superiority and I can now tolerate them.

But you are all waiting to hear how I made the local scanner monitor page on Facebook.

The fellow who got my old JD Gator when I was "promoted" went on vacation. I fried the belt on my Mule climbing hills behind the college and it was in the shop. So I commandeered the Gator. Apparently his workstudy student was leaving the keys in the glove box and these two juvenile delinquents attempted to steal the gator. He also left so much crap in the gator it is hard to shift the darn thing and while the kids got it started and into reverse they were not able to get the shifter into the forward position because the mirror had fallen off the roof and was stashed on top of the shifter and prevented shifting into forward gear. So they reversed it into a big pile of grass and clippings couldn't get it into forward and then ran.
Security chased them in the little security SUV but nearly got stuck in the wildlife area. The kids escaped and I have been getting a lot of comments.
There is now a new edict that we have to chain up our steering wheels. I produced my keys to security so I was not in trouble. They like me as I laugh when they harass me and so I didn't get reported over the keys in the glovebox incident.

Last night I attended my 35th high school reunion. There were something like eight of us. Class size was around 47. I was not going to attend as I hated every moment of school. I was also a weird kid with odd religious beliefs, didn't do the pledge of allegiance, didn't go to dances, didn't go out drinking with everyone else, and people made fun of me a lot until eight grade when I became brutally sarcastic and somewhat of a cynic. Apparently I was well-liked in high school but the bitterness lingers on.
The fellow who was hosting the reunion at his winery told me if I didn't show up he or his wife would come and drag me out of the stacker. I was picking up bales just down the road.
I figure that was as good and invitation as any so I went.
Strangely enough, all the people there were people I liked and none of the people I disliked (in High School) were there. It was nice.
It is amazing how your early school experiences stick with you though life.
I had a nice talk with a couple people I hadn't seen since graduation and when the hosts heard I was on my own they loaded me with food to take home.

Next week it is supposed to hit 105 degrees. This is going to not be so fun.

Note: Blogger app on the phone is not letting me add photos. I foresee problems with the iPhone switch...

Friday, July 21, 2017

I am recovered and doing my usual mucking about...

I have recovered.
I am still having phone issues so I have no photos to share.
Today I went to sleep mowing and hit the fence. This was a bit hard on the reel mower. It is ironic that yesterday I got in trouble for letting my student run the reel mower. He was making perfectly straight lines and driving perfectly.
It was I who hit the fence...
Oh well, that is why God gave us welders...
My phone is a frustrating experience. I have an iPhone 6plus which has failed at least four times in the year I've had it.
I have Asurian insurance through Verizon. It is kind of an amazing scam, or at lest as I understand it.
Apple gives you a one year limited warranty but does not cover screens. However, they will sell you a new screen for around $150.
If you pay through the nose for Asurian they will give you a "reconditioned" phone for $150. Apple will not honor the one year replacement warranty on the Asurian replacement phone. Asurain gives you a phone that someone traded in because it was broken. So you get a crap phone for $150 which will probably fail and if you get stuck with a crappy model then you can't trade your way out of it.
I'm not sure there is any point in Asurain insurance on your phone. I think if I get a new phone I will try a SquareTrade warranty. I had it on a computer once I was very happy.
Today I intended to go pick up bales for my neighbors. They loaned us a baler when our engine failed.
However, my brother and I went to look at a combine instead and then I made some pig feed.
Making pig and chicken feed is not as much fun as it used to be when I didn't have a job.
I now have a good and rather large New Holland mixer-grinder. It pulls easy and holds 4,000lbs. It will also grind hay.
I liked making feed because I could trade it for beef and pork and it was a nice break from working on tractors in the cold. Grinding dusty grain when it is 80 degrees and almost dark is not as much fun as I had imagined. Plus, I think feed prices are down and I'm not getting the serious buyers I used to get.
Tomorrow I'm going to pick up bales. But, I am using my old iPhone 5 which does have enough memory to store books on tape. So it will be a long day.
Perhaps i can think of funny stories to blog about.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

A day off

I've been a bit busy.
Before I took on this job at the College I may have worked long hours but I usually had some sort of break to write the blog.
I have also been having frustrations with my iPhone and MacBook.
The iPhone 6s has died for the fourth time in a year and I'm back to the old iPhone 5. The small screen doesn't work for blogging.
I took the day off today.
Actually, I'm sick...
It is really frustrating as I have Muddy Valley's hay baled and it looks good. But it is now sitting there bleaching in the sun.
I went home at 8 p.m. last night. Decided after the second time I had to stop the stacker in the field and take a puke break that perhaps I should just go home. I was a little worried it would come out the other end next.
It seems like I spent most of the night puking my guts out and now every muscle in my body hurts like heck. Especially my back.
I'd try the hot tub but I still can't trust my farts.
I should have some adventures to post about but frankly I feel like crap and I'm going back to bed...
Perhaps I should just call in sick for tomorrow.
Soccer players should mow their own soccer field, with push mowers, it would build charactor...

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