1998 Page views and I debate getting on a big old jetliner

I am kind of worried that my blog will shut down when I hit 2000 page views. I am not sure my blog counter can count past 20,000. To think of all the productivity that has been wasted! If that 20,000 represented two minutes per page that would be 40,000 minutes wasted! That is 666.66 hours that could have been used to increase the Gross National Product or to play scrabble or learn to play the Banjo! Which leads us to the other obvious conclusion. We all know the significance of the number 666. Could it be that the feds have been tracking your iP addresses and giving them to the trilateral commission, the Freemasons, and the KGB and that is actually important for some reason. Perhaps we have all been put on a watchlist for potential banjo pickers. This all happens just at the time when this airline pilot who I sell chicken feed to has hinted at the possibility of free airline tickets for Sadie and I to go anywhere in the world if we agree to fly standby and are ready to leave with only a short notice and if we will dress up so we can fly first class if needed. I am not so sure about the dressing up but I would certainly take the daughter out of school for a week. 
I thought about saying I'd just take the first tickets I could get. Who cares where you go. I'm sure there is something interesting to see just about anywhere. I could take the horrible and stupidly designed Microsoft Streets and trips and have a map for just about anywhere. You can always sleep at the airport or in dumpsters or perhaps kind people would take us in. We could pretend to be homeless farmers. I'm sure people love homeless farmers.
The world is our oyster. I'm not sure what that means. It kind of sound disgusting. Curiouser and Curiouser, said the cat.

Fifty more page views and I will hit 20,000

I've been trying to think of clever slogan.
Lazy Farmers of the World Unite!
Banjo playing is not a crime!
Asia is for Asiatics- no that one was used in WWII
Support Bottom Feeders?
I don't know...
I sold some twine disks on ebay for $25
I didn't sell my structo truck...
Some fellow wants me to ship the first generation mid-tech gps with a broken antenna that I have listed on ebay to Australia. I've actually been working and didn't get it weighed.
I worked half the day on my 1970 International truck trying to get the gauges to work. I got smoke coming from under the dash. I can't find where the voltage regulator for the gauges is hidden. I have a whole bunch of old resisters up in the attic at the farmhouse but it seems strange to go ask if I can take one thing from the attic without removing all my junk.
I hooked up external gauges with temp and oil pressure but I have no fuel level. I kind of need the fuel level as that truck has a 478 cu in engine and it absolutely sucks the gas.
In other news the revamped shed has boosted productivity but we are so far behind it is unbelievable.
My Ford F250 that I spent $$$$ on this winter refuses to run and I can't afford to take it to a real shop to get a computer diagnostic scan. I need to drive 30 miles to get barley seed but I have nothing that will run that far and hold 3,000lbs.
I found 4 ton of wheat for sale but have no truck to haul it. Plus I really have the cash for the wheat up front and I'm worried to buy it on credit or on an "i'll pay you later deal.
I need to make some pig feed but I'm not getting cash, just a dead pig.
Perhaps we will have nice weather this week and I can plant!

I shot two starlings, broke my truck, and found a new hammer mill

Yes Ralph, they are small targets and I'm a terrible shot. I gave up on the .22 and got the double barrel 12 gauge. Got em! Well two of them. Freaked the new dog out and she ran away. She seems to have come back again. Perhaps the 12 gauge is a little too much for her.
I needed to change the temperature gauge on my 1971 International 1800 Loadstar. Turns out it is a rare and valuable sending unit. There is only one in existence and it is in Wisconsin and will cost $74 plus shipping.
We tried out a new gauge and sending unit but when we wired it in the oil pressure and fuel level gauges quit. Well, my sometimes a great employee wired it in. I took it apart and I think it uses lower voltage for the gauges. Somehow it depends on the temperature gauge to get the other ones to work. I don't understand it. Then I hooked it up wrong and smoke started coming out of somewhere under the dash. Now the temp gauge is completely dead and so are all the other gauges.
Tomorrow it may get Stewart Warner gauges. I did find a NOS gauge and sending unit on eBay. I see my parts truck is all SW.
Then this fellow called me with a hammer-mill for sale. It is not a Minneapolis-Moline so I don't know about it. He says it has a good flat belt. He seemed relieved to hear that I wanted a flat belt. Seems to be old technology. He said the one fellow who looked at it kept asking where the PTO attached. Tomorrow I'm going to look at it. He said he was growing oats to feed his cows and then lost his rented ground. My cunning plan is to buy the hammer mill for $100 cash and then as I'm leaving sell him ground feed made with his own hammer mill. Heh, heh, heh, I can think of more ways to loose money and make myself extra work than many other folks. It is a talent.

Another happy day on the farm

I've been working on the corn planter. Well, sort of. My sometimes a great employee hurt his ankle on an Easter Egg hunt Sunday and so has taken a couple days off. He did get a draw to pay his rent and electric and insurance on Friday. I am sure there is no connection between the pattern of draws for end of the world crisis sorts of things and the illness that follows these draws. Just random I'm sure.
So, I've been working on one thing for a while and then getting distracted and working on something else and then I shot at some starlings and then I loaded some hay and then I worked on my drill and then someone came and talked to me. My standard day...
The White planter had a flat tire. I was moving it into the shop when a little red car came careening around the corner and smashed into the mailbox 500 or so feet away. I was so distracted I forgot to stop and put air in the tire when I pulled the planter ahead. I kept driving ahead to get a better look and when I looked back the tire was off the rim.
I can't figure out how to remove the wheel. When I turn the bolt on one side of the axle the other bolt moves. I put a wrench on it and then the bolt on that side unscrewed, leaving the axle still bolted to one side of the lift arms. I tried calling the guy in SD we bought the planter from but he had never changed a tire either. I emailed Ed Winkle and he told me not to give up and was quite encouraging, but, he had never changed a tire on his White 5100 either. Apparently White corn planter tires last the life of the machine.
I was working on this last night when a fellow came for chicken feed and distracted me. I had given up on removing the tire and hit upon another solution. I found half a gallon of that goopy tire sealer sold by CarQuest. The container was in pretty bad shape and the pump was broken. So I got a long funnel and dumped the half gallon of tire sealer into the unseated tire. I smeared it around the rim, then I wrapped a ratcheting tie down around it and was trying to get it to seat on the bead. I thought about starting fluid but I couldn't find any matches. It was not working.
So I went to get chicken feed. The fellow handed me a big roll of bills and said this was a payment on what he owed. When I counted it up later it was $100 in ones, fives, and tens. I think this economic recovery is BS. Nobody has any money. People are trading stuff and buying things $2 at a time.
But, I digress.
This morning I went out and put air in the tire. The goop had done its job and the is holding air. I have no idea how to replace it. I think we will have to sell the planter.
In other news I laced up a belt for the hammermill, fixed an oil leak on my grain drill, and nearly shot the radio antenna off the roof of the shop. I missed the starling. I am a terrible shot.
Tomorrow I think I will try the 12 gauge.

My favorite seller on Ebay whose films I never can afford...

Oh man I want this one, One Froggy Evening- It is a classic animated cartoon!
This fellow has got some good ones. There is a Mr. Magoo, Pluto, and a whole pile of other films. And I am #$%^&* broke.
Plus it will never stop raining so we can't watch them anyway.
I'm going to pop some vitamin D and go back to work.
There has got to be a better way to  make a living...

Chronic boy outdoes himself!

I was looking in the shop for some grommets for a neighbor and I was checking upstairs in the shop. As I was going back down the stairs I happened to look in the sort of secret hiding place where Chronic boy used to store the home made machine guns that made in the shop.
I kind of started the homemade toy submachine gun business when i made one a couple years ago. (Note-It was a TOY home made submachine gun. Sort of an artistic abstract sort of thing. Not something you would scare the neighbors with)
Chronic boy was very impressed and started building his own.
What caught my eye on this one was the walnut stock that looked very much like a Ruger 10/22.
My brother had a stainless 10/22 that he kept in our section of the shop under the work bench. He didn't shoot it much and it was not in an obvious open location so it was not checked on a regular basis.
Last winter I found a stainless 10/22 with no stock sitting on the back of the old gun cabinet in the shop. My brother started looking for his gun and couldn't find it.
Of course no one knew where the gun had come from. Chronic boy of course had no knowledge of this gun... Even though I had caught him in the past with my ammunition and as a result moved all my gun stuff out of the shop.
The stock that I found was of course the stock to the missing 10/22. He had welded up a receiver and barrel out of scrap metal. He made a scope out of pipe fittings. It sort of looks like a cross between an H&K and an AK-47. He held it all together with a couple rolls of duct tape and black electrical tape.
There are a couple things which really piss me off about this.

Of course there is the theft of the 10/22 and the bizarre disconnect with reality. (Well, he didn't really steal it, no he borrowed it... and wrapped it with a lot of duct tape, and kind of messed up a very nice gun.)
Then there is the fact that it was not made out of "scrap" metal. The pipe fittings were new black pipe out of the store, not used stuff out of the used pipe department.
And the fact that no blame will be assigned, there will be no apology or confession. Instead he will used the modern tactic of denial in the face of all evidence-and he will sort of get away with it.
We went through this before when his brother broke the windows in all the old cars below the hill. Total denial and of course his parents backed him up. Despite the fact that he and his friends were the only people on the farm with wrist rocket slingshots and despite the fact that he had been cutting up old bearings for the steel balls earlier in the day.
Without a resolution there is no renewal of trust.
I didn't make a scene.
There would be this big inquisition. I would be questioned on how and when I found the gun. Chronic boy could never admit to playing with toy guns as a 20 something. Uncle would get all uptight. Chronic boy would deny it all.
I would then get really angry and there would be another scene. I would probably point out that we all know that he gets stoned out behind the shop and that he is lazy and kind of incompetent. And the discussion would go down hill from there. The thing is I really don't give a rip if he gets stoned and fakes an arm injury for access to painkillers. I just don't like him stealing.

Farmer interactions

I was looking at the Workforced.com blog, specifically the post: "My Handshake Brings All the Boys to the Boardroom," yesterday.
I commented and then I got carried away. I thought I would bring my post back to the Lazy Farmer and talk about interactions between Farmers.
On the farm we also have our unwritten rules of behavior. Have you ever watched two farmers meet at an auction or a fertilizer company meeting? You almost always have to have a good handshake if names are exchanged. If you know the fellow real well you don't shake hands. If you have not seen the fellow in a long while then there will also be a handshake. Some people do not welcome touching. They acknowledge you with a verbal greeting, keep their hands in their pocket and kind of slouch back. If they are still smiling then they like you. Perhaps they will fidget with their hat.  They just don't like to touch people.
There are a few very shy farmers. They kind of shuffle their feet, keep hands in pockets, and keep an eye out for the exits. I always want to yell boo!
I like the grumpy farmers. They put a lot of effort into having a bad attitude.
Personal distance is kind of a big deal. Most farmers have a good three foot personal distance. Some farmers measure that in meters but is the USA we think those folks are commies and don't talk to them. One old farmer tends get closer and closer as he talks. You keep backing up as he often has egg on his lips and huge globs of snot in his nose. He is pretty much deaf so while this is annoying it is understandable. The other farmer who violated folks personal distance turned out to also be the sort that violates little boys so people kind of a avoid shaking his hand.
Farmers who are way too enthusiastic about shaking hands are also suspect. Those who shake your hand and also pat you on the back are not to be trusted unless they are your uncle from another state. There is a retired fellow from California who comes up and farms in the summer. He is way too enthusiastic, cause he is having a good time. When you are not having that much fun, say when it is 102 degrees in the shade and you've busted your knuckles and the combine is plugged from stem to stern, and you are having problems with anger management, someone being very enthusiastic and suggesting simplistic solutions you've already tried, then giving you a pat on the back and a hand shake, is not so welcome. (that was a long sentence) He also drools when he talks. Long strings of drool, and he likes to ride with you. This is bad when there is a wind and you are on an open tractor. Or if he is between you and the A/C vent on the combine.
Mostly we just hide from him....