Finished with silage!

The reason I have time to announce this that my diet of snickers bars and coffee as apparently given me certain constitutional problems... I only announce this as a warning to others. While you may think Snickers are the perfect food with peanuts for protein and chocolate for quick energy. They do lack roughage. I would get that from sunflower seeds but there is no where to spit and I don't have the concentration to chew sunflower seeds, drive, run the spout, and talk on the cell phone all at the same time. Who would have thought? You can't say life is not a learning process...

I fix the PTO, but need to take a break due to digestive problems and I ramble and will probably offend family members...

My nephew seems to be a budding computer genius. I gave him one of my old tablet computers I use for GPS and he got it up and running in no time. I figured it was dead and gone to computer perdition.
For a while he had a blog. I think Gorges became a follower right away. I linked to his blog from here.
The blog was interesting to me as it chronicled his day to day life and his computer misadventures. This is different from my young cousin who smokes "Chronic."
But I digress...
One day my nephew's blog disappeared. I inquired and he informed me that the plug had been pulled due to privacy issues and the possibility of people sending him links to things he didn't want to see. If only I had saved the email. I seem to have all his other emails....
So, instead he will be doing a daily RTF "blog-like" emailing to a few people.
Now I support his parent's desire to keep him safe from porn and pre-verts online so while I found some amusement with this, I didn't say a lot. I mean it is really not any of my business. It does not even compare with the days when his father wanted to race motocross on Sunday and Mom was afraid he would come under evil influences and miss Church.
Now I assume they no longer read this blog as I think my frustration that the Asainporndvd website sent more referrals to the Eye Of Polyphemus than I and my expression of that discovery may have influenced the blog cancelation, but I really don't know...
But here is the deal,
I have 30 issues of the "blog-like" emailing in my mailbox. I can't throw anything away, it is a personal problem. I have not read them all as I have not had a lot of time to do so. In order to read them I have to double click them it is not a big deal but it breaks my flow of internet rambling while taking my morning constitutional and I forget to read them.
If they were in a blog instead of being "blog-like" then I would open them in a tab in Firefox and read his blog as part of my routine. Last night I was looking for some specific information in one issue which I couldn't remember. I clicked through 27 issues before forgetting what I wanted to know to begin with.
I would like to politely suggest to his parents some simple internet security ideas. Perhaps some of you could contribute. I would like to be polite.
I think the obvious would be fine. Don't give out your real name. Don't use anyones first and last name together, Use initials instead of names. Set up a different email account under a different name.
Blogger has several levels of security. You can have a private blog-a blog restricted to certain addresses, password security, invitation only. You can moderate comments, restrict comments, have comments sent to your parent's email to be moderated, what ever you want.
The thing is,  You are never secure on the internet your IP address tracks you where ever you go. So, anytime my nephew goes online to check his school work or look up computer stuff his IP address follows him. If you send an email your IP address is hidden in the header, so unless you use a proxy server the government or pre-vert or what ever frightens you online, can follow you.
I went as far as to email the nice girl who does Aspirations Blog. She looks cute and young and I figured there was a much higher chance of Pre-verts sending her links she didn't want to click on than there was of such ilk sending such invitations to Gorges Grouse or Ralph Goff! I asked her what she did for security and if weirdos other than I ever bothered her.
She wrote me back a nice email and said she never had a problem but didn't give out any personal identifying information or her personal email address.
I don't mind the 30 issues in my in-box I just think it is a shame that someone who is a good writer doesn't have access to the positive feedback he would receive if he had more readership.
Oh well, what do I know, I'm just a grumpy farmer...

More things go wrong, 9 acres to go...

We chopped 10 loads yesterday... That is pretty good considering that was 3 loads by 10 a.m. and 7 loads after 8 p.m.
The rest of the day we, 1. did not get the hay fluffed, 2. Worked on the mower driveline, 3. Got the wrong parts, 4. Went back after the right parts, 5. Put it together wrong, 6. Took it apart again, 7. Stood around and scratched our heads wondering why the driveline vibrated so much, 8. Mowed more grass, 9 Chopped 7 loads of silage, 10. Took the 1000 rpm stub shaft out of the 2-135 and wondered if we ordered a new bearing to replace the one we used to rebuild it last year...
In non-silage related news, we also spent a hour trying to removed the thermostat housing on the pickup as it does not work so well to use the heater as a radiator, my brother went to plant corn and I went to put air in the tire on the 670. Just another happy day!

I chop 30 loads of silage and listen to talk radio and spend $360 on a waterpump

Today was better. I readjusted the reversing transmission on the silage chopper and it work. I got to the field by 7 a.m. to load the semi truck that was hauling to the coast. The truck did not show up but my daughter brought the pickup down to me and Bill and so we decided to hook up the double rake and make bigger windrows so that there would be less turning around with the 30ft trailer.
I was hooked to the dump box and just starting my first window at 8:30 a.m. when my phone rang. The dairy fellow did not want the triticale as it was too dry and his pit was full. He said he tried to call me last night but I didn't answer and when he could call again it was after 10 p.m. I did note that I was still working at 10 p.m. but it was fine if he did not want the silage.
So...it was back over to the closer dairy to chop grass into silage. We did 30 loads onto tandem axle trucks. The loads should have been 10 to 12 tons but if I figure the acres it comes out to 26 ton per acre so I think both my total acres and the truck weight is off. I dropped down to the lowest gear which puts me at 1.5 mph and everything worked. I think the silage is going something like 16 tons per acre. Perhaps 18 but it doesn't seem possible.
Then then phone rang. I loaned the stacker to the young fella who sometimes works for me. He called to say the water pump had failed. It took him all day to find one and when he did it was $360. While I was talking to him a fellow called and wanted me to cut his hay. This fellow bought a place we farmed and as soon as he figured out the people he had bought the place from had NOT signed the extension on the lease he kicked us out and rented to his buddy from his prosperity doctrine church. I did not return the call and the temptation to tell him to violate himself would have been perhaps too strong to resist.
The phone rang all day. It is hard to run the electric spout controls, steer, and talk on the phone at the same time.
I figured if Ralph listens to talk shows I should as well.
So, Al Gore was in town and got a massage. It would appear that he gave himself a happy finish and left evidence on the pants of the massage lady. Good grief! He found the one massage from the back of Willamette week that did not offer a happy finish? That has got to be a one in a million chance. Not to mention it was from the one person in Portland who does not worship Algore? I'd say it was a set up but the news is of course timed to take attention off of the oil spill and Our Dear Leader looking like a fool by firing a the general who is way tougher than he is. And what is up with the general's interview in Rolling Stone? I thought it was really funny and I thought it was great they said what they thought. Of course McCain and the others are idiots, we all knew that. I don't see how the General criticized Our Dear Leader. Of course the truth is that Our Dear Leader is in over his head. If he wasn't a wuss he could have deflected it with a few words about peoples opinions and our need to work together and about drinking with the news media and Our Dear Leader would have looked like a bigger man.
The whole country is falling apart. St. Algore of the Church of Global Warming is a bumbling idiot, (how could you screw up an chance to get a rub and a tug from a PORTLAND massage lady? If she declines you a happy finish that does not mean you can finish it up yourself!!!) The government screwed up one of the few things government is supposed to be capable of, regulating stuff like oil drilling, and coordinating disaster efforts, the President is a wimp and fires the General, the economy is going to crash. Idiots are at the controls my friends.
Note: What if the General was talking about the Bush administration, would he not be a hero with his comments?

I still hate farming...

I've been chopping silage. It is not going so well. We sold our triticale to a fellow who lives an hour and a half away at the coast. He sends his wife out with a 40ft walking floor trailer to pick up the silage. It is not so easy to fill a 40 foot trailer when the is so far ahead in the truck she can't see you. Also, you have to plan ahead with the cutting. They were supposed to make three loads per day and we were supposed to cut the whole 10 acres Sunday to be dry by Tuesday. We cut half with a disk mower on Monday evening but they didn't show up till 10 a.m. and only go two loads per day. Today I could bale it... Plus, I am behind with chopping grass on the neighbor's dairy. I am driving the chopper back and forth. Three hours per trip, except they are always an hour late...
And the chopper is failing. The chopper has a reversing transmission so that if the header plugs up you can electrically reverse the feed rolls and clean it out. This probably worked well in 1979 but not so well in 2010. It tends to start slipping and eventually fail. It is slipping. Of course it started slipping after dark on the last two loads.
This gives me anger management problems. I have run crap equipment all my life. While it is pretty cool that we bought this New Holland 890 chopper at an auction for $150 it is just not up to the task of chopping 12 ton per acre grass cut with a 12ft mower. I would like to cut it into 18" chunks and haul it to the steel mill. Which reminds me that the truck I would haul the scrap with is dead.
Supposedly the 40ft trailer will be here at 7 a.m. for another load. I suppose that means I should go to bed.

Smoke but no flames. I needed a reminder that things can always get worse, and usually do!

I chopped 19 loads of grass silage for the dairy next door today. Probably 10 ton loads as it was over ripe and very dry. Four loads on a 26ft bed truck and the rest on a 20ft bed truck.
Over the course of the day my International truck died in a spectacular manner and the blower liner on the silage chopper wore through. I nearly set the field on fire cutting twisted chunks of liner out of the blower. The grass is so over-ripe it burns even thought the ground is wet enough to get stuck.

The International truck is the one I put a different engine in this winter. It ran perfect, no knocks, no pinging, decent oil pressure, not too hot, and then it just kind of exploded. I motioned the driver to move up a few feet. When he stepped on the gas he said it felt like it pulled down a bit and made a clunking noise and clouds of smoke poured from under the hood.

See the oil stain on the grass from the exhaust?

I was out of the cab with a fire extinguisher before I realize the smoke was coming out the exhaust. We had to tow the truck to the dairy with the 2-135 and hook up a hydraulic line to dump it.
Later, after I found more trucks and was going again, I picked up metal rake tooth. This tore the lining on the blower and after a while the fan blades started hitting pretty bad.
Not sure what to do for a truck. Don't have the money or the time to fix it.
Note: If someone wants to contribute a few thousand dollars so I can buy another used truck you can just hit on that PayPal button at the top of the screen.
If You want to depress me further just click on "offensive" at the bottom of the page.

Totally random stuff I have been thinking about

Ralph Goff said he likes talks shows in a comment on a previous post. This got me thinking about Rush Limbaugh and his wedding. I guess I could do a google search to make sure, but I'm tired and want to go to bed.
So if Rush had Elton John play at his wedding...who is really the whore? Rush or Elton John... I'm not much of a Rush fan anymore. He is way too country club. The GOP clever rich folks let him in to a few parties and he was making a lot of money and now he thinks he is one of the clever ones.
So, that led to songs you would have sung at a wedding. We only had songs we found meaningful at our wedding. We sang "Blessed Assurance," and Dad said a long prayer and then we went and had lots of pie.
If I were to have another wedding I've thought about singing, "They ought to Name a Drink after you," and that other old John Prine song about the fellow who came home from work and found a note in the frying pan, it read fix your own supper I've run off with the fuller brush man. The refrain was something about, "I miss the way she used to yell at me/the way she used to cuss and moan/something/something/ whatever, it is not as funny in print as it was in my head. I wonder if the Flying Pig Fiddle and Banjo folks know those songs.
And what about that song where they guy works at a filling station and this fellow comes around every day in a beat up old model A and says, "give me .50 cents worth of regular, check my oil too if you don't mind, something, something, put some air in my tires, something... And then the guy dies and goes to heaven and just about when he is settled in, up through the clouds comes that guy in his model A.
So, why did the Model A guy bug the songwriter so much? Where did the song come from? Phil Oachs? Is that how you spell his name?  Perhaps Townes Van Zant? Who was the guy that sang "Turn Your Radio on and Listen to the Music in the air/get in touch with God/turn your radio on?" I think first heard John Hartford do it but I think Roy Acoff did is as well.
It has been a long day. I finished our clover silage and I finished the stacking I started last night. Some of the bales were warm when I broke them today. If there are flames I know why!