Should probably annotate these pictures from the weekend now that it's Wednesday and all. Not used to being this busy at work anymore. :)

End of last season the neighbours came by with their tractor and mowed the "lawn" but this year we have to start acting responsible and doing it ourselves. As fun as a riding mower might have been, there just isn't enough stuff to mow to justify it, and I think it would actually take longer than a walk behind because of all the turning and manoeuvring. Now a zero-turn professional style would work, but I'm not dropping $3-5k on a dumb mower and I'm not paying some illegals to come cut my lawn. I'm not some prissy that lives in Cary, I can do chores.

The mower is AWD and has a Honda motor which seems to be the most important part. The all-Honda version of this mower was $300 more and I didn't think that Honda made a better bag or blade than anyone else but getting an engine that's common and easy to service was important. Doing both yards took ~30 minutes and I imagine it will take ~45 once it's growing more constantly due to having to empty the bag more often. It does mulch, maybe I should try that.

Another project on Sunday was replacing the weak ass bathroom vent fan. The ceiling paint is starting to show signs of moisture damage because the fan is pretty wimpy (50 cfm). I wanted to replace the one that's in there but it's wedged under the joists in a spot with very little clearance so I couldn't actually put a larger fan where the existing one is. Instead I put a 140 cfm fan right sorta in the middle of the shower area hoping it draws from the whole shower opening instead of just one side like the current fan. So far it seems to be working really well, and since I shortened the vent run over 6' and took 2 bends out of it the fan can actually get the steam out.

The new hole I cut is 10.5" and the old fan hole is 8" so I can easily use the drywall I cut out to patch the old hole when I pull the old fan out but the woman doesn't want me doing that now. She would rather there be 2 fans in the ceiling until we plan to paint the bathroom than look at an ugly unpainted patched section.

The neighbour down the street got this "free" mini pony so we had to go visit. This is one of the critters on the woman's "must get" list. It's not as scary as an actual horse, but WTF do you do with it? It can't even pull a cart.

While visiting the pony I snapped a pic of the road sign toward sunset.

The stray cat keeping watch on the driveway. Not sure what he's (or she's) doing since I already fed it but sometimes it likes to sit there and look around.

Poured for like 5 minutes on the way to work. At least it got the dust off the car.

Springtime rodent population boom. Let's hope they're breeding like this elsewhere so I can get some for jerky when the season opens!

I should be on my motorcycle trip, but I'm not so I'll take the money I'm not spending on that and pick up a case of 380. I shouldn't have to buy more than this 1 case in the life of the gun if everyone is to be believed. I put 50 rounds through it today with no issues though so it's not like it's that unpleasant to shoot.

My large press has been laying on the floor since I got here because I couldn't come up with a way to mount it. I wanted it facing into the room but that would mean it blocks one of the doors on the table which is dumb. Mounting it on the side so I could open the cabinet doors means the door to the room is in the way. So what I needed was some way to mount the press off the side of the table. With a trip to home depot and the new saw, I whipped up this:

It's crazy strong in the direction of motion of the press and there isn't really any left/right pressure when using it so just a few brackets holding it to the main bench does the trick. I used the wrong type of screws, countersink wood screws don't work when you're using metal brackets, but they're good enough for now.

I also watched the youtube video on how to sharpen the chainsaw and got that taken care of today. Might go cut up those last down trees tomorrow if the weather is as good as it was today.

Sticker upgrade. The Trijicon sticker was too obvious for the crowd around here. This should be a little more obscure.

Also, more flowers popping up in the yard:

I was in Southport all day (on the coast) at a customer site, the woman was at home at managed to sneak a picture of the goose eggs in the nest the geese built in the burn pile. Ducks and geese? Damn zoo around here is what it is.

Trees are growing in again, the house is starting to vanish.

I've been asking the woman to find me a hat rack to put in the corner of the bedroom so I could hang my robe and "comfy clothes" on when not in use. She kept saying I could just put them in the closet but I didn't want them in the closet so I ended up just tossing them on the floor in the corner. For my birthday she got me this ridiculous wall mounted clothes rack thingy that looks like a deer head. It's crazy, but it does work now that I have it mounted up on the wall. It's all metal and they say it's got an 18kg load limit (it's German with a manual I mostly can't read) and they included 3" wood screws to mount it with. I drilled another hole in the mount so I could put two screws into the stud and not use the wall anchors for the outer holes. It's solid.

The woman went to a gnocchi making class with my mom when she was in town so yesterday she made up a huge batch so we would have some during the week. I've got my veal marinara sauce thawing out so I'll actually get to eat some tonight. The 2 I managed to snag as they came out of the cook pot were really good so I'm hopeful that after they're finished off in the oven they'll be fantastic.

The rest of the weekend was mostly chores. I ran a few tanks of fuel through the chainsaw cleaning up more dead trees the woman tagged as well as getting rid of those 50 or so little trees growing on the pond bank that the pond guy said we had to remove. The chain is really dull at this point after hacking through those dead, dry hardwood trees so I'm going to pick up a chain sharpening tool today and see if I can touch it up myself.

My old boss just called, he may want to try to steal me back for another account team. I feel loved!

Also, the mysterious rabbit the woman saw months ago is back... or another one just like it. The little bugger was fast, could barely get a pic off before he ran away. Fastest rabbit I've ever seen.

Never thought I would see one of these with my name on it:

3 days now I've been beating my head against an iSCSI problem. I hate SAN stuff, it's so shitty. And by shitty I mean stupidly complicated and unreliable. I'm sure it's awesome if you don't touch it or do anything with it or try to scale it out. Sigh.

This stone tile piece on the path between the buildings is lose. If you step on it, it moves just a little with an audible click. I keep waiting for a dart to shoot into my leg.

Damn, I thought today was Wednesday but it's Thursday. That means I have class tonight. Ugh, I'm so tired!

The woman saw a turtle in the little creek down the road and today she saw another one in the pond (and tried to run over to take a picture). Looks like wherever they go in the winter they're returning.

Day 2 of working from home trying to develop a iSCSI p4 demo for my cDOT expert qualification. Haven't had to do this much tech stuff in a long, long time. Google can be your friend, or not, just depends on how close to the script kiddies your question sounds like.

Flowers have started popping up all over the yard:

They replaced the vending machines in the break rooms over the weekend, apparently they're tied into the food service company and since we have a new one of those we get new machines as well. They had dropped the prices several weeks ago and it looks like they're the same with these new machines unless you're using a credit card. Fortunately my cheapness and lack of wanting to use a credit card at an unsecured machine will override my love of junk food and keep me from snacking.

People at the office mentioned they didn't know I was so into music. No people, it's not for music it's so I can correct for my hearing loss and still use my headset for calls. I have been using a "soft eq" on the mac and it works very well for anything there including my soft phone. However, if people call my cell I can't very well get them to call me back on the other phone so now I can just pop the connector over to the iphone and get the same correction. It's not exactly portable though, I might have to pick up a second one of these for home.

Rodents out in force this morning looking for snacks. Notice that one lazy ass rodent in the front who's laying down eating. Sheesh.

Barn painting complete. Next up will be the roof. Home Depot down in Funky has the material, and scaffold rentals and trailer rentals, so I should be able to pickup everything I need next Saturday and start doing the roof demo. No idea how long it's going to take doing it myself, good thing the scaffold rental is for a week...

Picked up a cheapo leather reversible holster for the LCP to see how I might carry it. It's light enough that I can actually carry it IWB while wearing my REI hiking pants. That bodes well for summer carry since those are the only things I wear either in pants mode or with the legs zipped off as shorts. Also, the guys at FG&G are putting little bits of grip tape on the back of the slide to help you cycle it. I had some tape left over from doing the dead peddle project on the Jeep so I cut a little out and will try it.

The holster offers multiple carry options and has loops on both sides so it could be may way thinner and lighter. I'm hoping the dude making the custom one for me really focuses on weight and bulk reduction since the pistol itself is so tiny and more importantly light. I mean the pistol only weighs 2.5x what the phone does.

If it's the weekend, it must be time for Home Depot and barn work! Painting phase 1 done. Trim has two coats and is done, main siding has 1 coat and tomorrow we'll tape off the trim, do the edges and then 2 hours later re-coat all the siding a 2nd time and then it's done. They had the roof panels we need at HD, so I feel next weekend will be spent doing the roof.

Parents are off to the airport as of 11am today. Household should be back to normal for exactly 1 day before we have more guests. Having people constantly in the house is worse than living in CA!

I've planned my route for the NRA convention at the end of the month and booked some hotels. Long, long days in the saddle with a few hours of walking around at the NRA convention in the middle but I think I can do it. If I'm not feeling up to that much riding I can take the 4runner or just rent a more comfortable car (and by more comfortable that means just about anything :). This route is way longer but it lets me run Deal's Gap and all that nonsense on a Friday afternoon.

Cool jazz music for the "conference call not yet started" music now. I wonder how often they change it and why isn't it a customizable option? Didn't they used to let you pick the style of Muzak you had to endure?

I actually found a Radio Shack and they actually had the audio adaptor I needed in stock. What are the odds? Yea, it's a really obvious thing to stock but Best Buy didn't have one.

I took dad to get a new iPad for mom as the original iPad 1 they have won't upgrade to the latest OS even one that lets mom play some of the interconnected games she wants to play with people. I guess that's a good use of money, but it does come with word/pages/etc now so she can use it to write stuff and not have to use the old XP based PC which is the only thing they have a copy of word on.

While at best buy I impulse bought a Chromecast widget. Only got to play with it for a few minutes but it does what I want, that being showing web pages on the screen so we can show people pictures without crowding around the laptop screen.

My birthday went off reasonably well, nothing too odd other than the clothes hanger the woman got me which I've yet to mount and take pictures of. Dinner was at a place called "Cowfish" which is a burger and sushi place that surprisingly wasn't all that bad. I was expecting mediocre sushi and an average burger but in fact we got really good sushi and a damn good burger. The pickled cucumbers were probably the best thing but the roll was tasty too and I think my box was $12. We'll go again, it will be something funky to take out of town guests to. Dessert was mint cupcakes at home.

Most of the weekend was finishing up the barn, and we made pretty good time on the doors. Enough that we got a little creative putting the brand on there. Dad was constantly griping about the lack of a table saw or a mitre box to do the angled cuts but freehand with the skill saw turned out OK and with the magic of caulk and paint no one will be the wiser. It still needs paint, a roof and block and wire along the lower edge but I can do most of that myself (not the roof though, I'm going to find the materials at the discount place and then pay someone to put them up).

After the barn was done for the weekend we dropped those 3 trees that required a little finesse. I dropped two of them without any drama but the worst one was quite a battle. We used the manual winch and tow strap to put some tension on it to keep it from falling against the barn and then cut it with the hopes of guiding it down on a curved path. It was too far leaned over when we started to drop it anywhere but right on the barn by conventional means so the strap helped, but eventually we had to have Michael come over with the tractor and drag the base out as it got tangled up in the surrounding trees. Took a while and provided much entertainment to the neighbours behind us but otherwise was uneventful.

My fractured toe continues to not heal, and this will be week 3 of me missing class because I can't even do the warm up not being able to move my foot. Lame!

Mom was fishing in the pond again this time from the far side. It's a different from from the other side, and still amazes me how you can see through all the trees now vs. in the summer.

Went to the range tonight with dad to let him shoot a modern plastic .45. That went fine, but what was surprising was the LCP and how fun it was to shoot. More fun than any cheap POS pistol has a right to be really.

It's not really April 1 yet, but I figured I have time while listening to this call to update the journal and roll the month. Close enough.

Dad and I spent all weekend working on the barn. There are a ton of pics on the main page but the short version of the story is that we picked up the materials on Saturday (ended up with an enclosed uhaul trailer because it was raining heavily) and began demo work, framing, window placement and siding. It was originally built with "dimensional lumber" back in the day when a 2x4 was actually 2"x4". Unfortunately the new 2x4s are smaller so while we were saving money by reusing as much framing and lumber as we can it took some extra skimming work to get the structural 2x4s to be the same thickness as the existing 2"x4" lumber.

The old siding was actually 1" thick boards of various thicknesses and although many were rotted there are enough in salvageable condition to rebuild the interior wall and to hopefully build the sleeping benches for the goats. The framing shims we made were almost entirely reclaimed so that was cool.

We finished all the big siding Sunday so today dad should be doing the trim work along the top and then the side trim.

Someone pointed out that the windows look strange so high up in the wall and in the back but the woman wanted it so that a full sized pygmy goat standing on it's sleeping bench would not be able to reach the window screens and try to eat them. That means putting them all the way at the top in the back. It's an Eichler design. :)

Gravel delivery today so the annoying pot holes in the driveway will be a thing of the past once it all packs down. Good thing we have a neighbour with a tractor.

Looks like the fish survived the freezing of the pond, now will they survive mom's fishing attempts??