I lent (gave) my pellet gun to Tim down the street, he's having a lot of problems with squirrels and his vintage 60s pellet gun isn't cutting it. Hopefully the one I have is better. As a thank-you he gave me some extra tomato plants he was going to toss. They were stunted from being stuck in just 2 pots and all grown together so they're about 25% the size of the ones he actually planted, but maybe they can catch up and produce this year being front and center in my little garden box:

It's guitar cleaning day, and after another month of trying to get the remaining plastic protective film crap out from under the knobs on the electric. I looked up how to remove the knobs and they show taking a cheap fork and breaking out the center two tines to make a tool that just lifts the edges of the knob. Didn't have a fork to modify, but I do have a variety of trim tools one of which looks like what would work. It did.

Interesting how scratched up the guitar is already considering it's never been anywhere but the shop and my room. I didn't think I was scratching the pic guard, but here we are.

This camera died during a power outage, or so I thought. I tried a different PoE port and got nothing to the old cam nor the new cam... it was the cable. I've not seen a cable fail due to a power cycle but it happened somehow. Cable wasn't damaged, it just lost one of the pairs. TX was still working, I was getting some funky MAC errors when I put the new camera at the same IP as the 'dead' one while the 'dead' one was still attached. Anyway, ran a new cable and all is well, but since I had the newer higher res camera there and this is a popular one for the woman to watch I just left it. Saved $4 by picking the black housing instead of white.

Delivered this to a customer last week, a GV70 with the 3.5L twin turbo V6. Almost 400 HP, it gets up and moves for a fat old SUV. Not sure why the old farts that bought it bought it, they didn't seem like very fast SUV owners trying to flex on the poors, but who knows. The trade-in I picked up was a boring ass Subaru wagon. Nice enough, but boring.

Took the shotgun class this Sunday, learned a lot. I have a lot of specific skills to practice if I want to get good with it... not sure my shoulder could keep up with the volume of practice required. :) Here is one of the instructors demo guns, a 590A1 with the good stuff on it and my wish.com equivalent M500 with less good stuff on it.

A picture from the trainer's instagram feed. You can see me there on the end.

I should also just briefly mention here that Melissa is crazy, the woman thinks she either bipolar or a huge borderline. She (Melissa) totally freaked out when taking care of Jason after his horse accident, so much so that Jason actually talked to me on the phone to try to track down one of the prepper chicks that Melissa is friends with. My woman also had a debrief with Jason to try to figure out what was going on. Kinda scary.

Driving range this morning (which sucked because of my shoulder) and then blackberry picking and ice cream. Busy morning.

Another Jeff class in the books. Pawn Shop Guy and Bean Counter Guy were both there for this one, so some newer / less experienced folk getting training. That's a good thing.

I look like I was just photoshopped on the end. No shades, no tactical pants, way too much color in my shirt.

There was a giant dead tree in the corner of the paddock that was all weighted to one side and would have fallen on the fence or coop if left to come down on it's own. There was no way to cut it to drop it against all that weight, so Sean and I rigged up the winch from the truck to a snatch block on another tree and pulled it in the direction we wanted it to fall. It worked, and no one got hurt. Even with the tree partially cut it was heavy enough that it pulled the truck forward so we used his LC as a weight to keep the truck from sliding.

Lots of cleanup after, and one of the smaller trees the woman wanted taken down ended up falling 1000ackwards and right into the fence.

An easy fix, but still embarrassing.

A movie of the big tree being dropped.

The woman didn't end up on the local news at the protest yesterday, but made it on the cable carrier news, which I didn't even know what a thing:

Some pictures of dad in the hospital after break surgery. He's home now, we'll visit him Saturday and see how he's doing.

The woman's car was 'squeaking' and she said it didn't have anything to do with being on/off the brakes. I thought wheel bearings, but they seemed OK. I ordered some new pads and installed them, and I bet it's the pads. The old ones were... let's say 10% at best:

Update, she made it to a real news channel too.

According to the ASP guy (who's analyzed 40,000 shooting videos) he's never seen someone with a gun start with or switch to a knife. So either it never happens, or no one carries a knife and a gun, or... well that's about it. So, I've decided that when I have my pistol there is no reason to carry a dedicated 'fighting knife'. It's just a waste of space and weight. Instead, I want to carry a more usable tool. I searched around and found the Leatherman Skeletool CX. It's got a straight blade (so it's easy to sharpen) and pliers and a bit driver. It uses their proprietary bits which are flat which seems like a dumb scam to sell you bits... but it actually makes sense. Their bits are very narrow so the tool is narrow and you can carry 1 bit inside the handle so you end up with 4 usable bit ends. That's worth being oddball. I got a 2" extension which fits into the flat driver and converts it to standard 1/4" so I can use any bit. That and $7 for some chinesium bits gets me all the torx bits and other stuff needed so I wont' have to carry that huge driver and bit set in my range bag anymore.

The brake pad order for the van arrived, with one of the pads missing. The box was open/damaged and just taped shut so it's either a return or something. Lame. Had to take it to Whole Foods to put it in the return bin while I wait for the next shipment. Sadly I'm sure they'll stick that one back on the shelf and screw the next guy with an unusable set.

The woman gave her speech at the Holly Springs town council meeting tonight. Won't make a difference, but it helps those who are being screwed feel like someone cares (hint: not the government).

Upgraded the redneck ramps today by adding a 3rd board (with a slight bevel). Now it's more gentle to get onto the first board and it won't slip when it gets to the next one. The board is the old bottom of the old manger, just pulled the wire and staples and it's good as new.

Used the ramps right away to change the oil in the van. No mess!

We went to the farmers market on Saturday, got some bread, tamales (that were sold out last time), some hummus and pitas, duck eggs and this custard:

The duck eggs are for my edification, I want to see how they bake vs. good chicken eggs. First up, just another pound cake but with duck eggs and no other changes:

Drove down to almost Charleston SC delivering a car on Monday (not my usual day, going to class on Friday instead). Had to clean out the settings in my phone, lotta junk building up: