Lots Of Mulch But No Takers Yet?

 Actually I thought by setting the trailwer out by the end of the lann, someone would have grabbed it right up being it's free. I guess if no one stops tomorrow I'll take it and dumb it all down over the bank.

 

Maybe they don't like the color? Maybe they want black, red. or some other color. Fact is you can buy stuff to color it whatever color you want. Besides that, it really doesn't matter what color it is, a few month during the summer months it will all be the same color, grey.

We been cutting a lot of trees down and still have a lot to go. Although the tress ain't big in dimeter at the base, they sre pretty tall though and being they behind the pool and the shed it's like you have to be careful how you cut them, so far we been lucky.

In the picture below you can see the trees (on the left) we been cutting down.

The next picture shows most of what we cleared off so far off the bank.

Most of these trees are "Thee Tree Of Heaven", some name for a tree that is an invasive tree, should have been called "The Tree Of Hell". I must have cleared that bank off at least 5 if not more times, those tress grow like weed and they are almost impossible to kill unless you get all the roots out or... use a tree killer which is expensive, like $200 for 1.5 (maybe 2.5) gallons. Either way, it's expensive.

You also can see a small pile of wood I cut for firewood being a few people I know makes fires at night to sit around and bull shit. Actually I thought this would was "shit wood" not worth anything, not even to burn. When cutting the firewood I noticed the wood seemed to ring like a hardwood so I looked it up. Turns out it's not a bad wood for burning. It's kind of like in between a softwood and a hardwood, probably closer to a hardwood though. I guess they use it for making cabinets and other furniture.

Anyways, that's what I've been working on. Probably the worst part is trying to stand on the bank to cut them down, it's a real pain in the butt being you slide on the bank, plus there are vines all over the place to trip you while trying to move around. How bad are the vines? There so bad that they grew to the top of the trees and when you cut the trees they don't fall over because the vines at the top hold them up being the vines go from tree to tree at the tops.

So when cutting the trees you have to tie them off on other trees so they don't fall on the shed or on the pool, then sometimes you have to use a come-a-long to pull them over and or to pull them from the vines from the other trees. Yea, no fun! You wast more time trying to get a tree down more then what your cutting down.

Now Things Can Get A Little Scary

Haven't done any tree cutting or wood chipping the last few day's and probably not tomorrow because of rain, rain, and more rain. Although I got a lot of trees cut down, the scary part is coming up. A number of these trees are like a cluster of trees growing up from spot. The scary part in cutting them down is getting them to fall without hitting the railing/deck, the pool or the shed when they come down.

I basically have to try and drop them between the pool and the shed in an area that's only about 8-feet wide, so there going to have to drop pretty straight. Another set of clumped trees are right in back of the shed which means they have to be dropped sideways else they will fall right on top of the shed.

I'm thinking some of the trees are going to have to be tied off to try and keep them from falling one way or another. On top of all that the trees are on a pretty steep bank which is hard standing on because standing there you tend to slid down the bank.

The whole thing is just bad, no easy way going about it. Another thing I've been wondering about is to notch the tress or not? The trees might have a base of 6-8 inches so there not like big at the base, but they are tall. I have half a notion just to cut into the one side then try to push them over, yet on the other hand, if I cut a notch, it might keep them from wanting to twist before they fall and going the wrong way.

That's the reason the tress got as high as they are..... kind of afraid to cut them not knowing which way they will fall. If I had the money I get a professional tree trimer with a bucket truck to take them down but they would probably want a small fortune just to cut them down. Of course if I mess up and they hit something, it again will cost me a small fortune.

Guess I'll just have to wait to till I get out there and look and the situation good and try to come up with a good plan.

Testing Out The Wood Chipper

 Yesterday I finally got to try out the new wood chipper. It's seems to work very good! Although it can handle up to 6" stuff, I'll probably never put anything that big into it. Anything 3" or above could be used for firewood, Not that I burn wood, but some one might want it, if not I'll just stack it on a pile out of the way for now.

Anyways.... here's a short clip of the wood chipper being used.

DNA, I Don't Get This.

 I'm sure you know a little about DNA, but there is something I don't get. Ever watch a crime show where they collected DNA then arrest a suspect? What attributed to the arrest was the persons DNA they left at the crime scene. I often wonder how many criminals that dead serious crimes are now looking over there backs wondering if they left DNA behind and if they did, when wile the law catch up with him/her.

Ok, what I don't get about DNA testing when either the police are told or the suspect is told that there DNA matches what was found at the crime scene. Not only that, but the odds are like 2-trillion to one that it could be someone else DNA. How do they come up with the number 2-trillion when there is only 8-9 billion people on earth? 

A match is a match right? So you would think they would say a one in 9-billion that someone else matched the suspects DNA. I just don't get that 2-trillion (or more) number. I'm sure there is or might be an explanation for those numbers but I don't understand how they come up with those numbers.

How Do You Know When Your Getting Old?

 That's easy! You know your getting old when you don't like anything in the world today. Lets see, first there might be music. If you don't like "today's" music your probably getting old. I don't like most if any music of today. I might by accident hear something I like but most of the time I don't even listen to the radio anymore.

Or how about TV, what is it you watch? I don't watch much TV because there are to many commercials which a lot of I don't even understand. I don't like sitcoms, realty shows and talk shows anymore. I do like real detective shows and a good movie which most movies anymore are crap. I really found out about all the crap movies when VHS first came out. You would see the picture on the box which looked good then read the discription of the movie which sounded good, but when watching it, the move was crap.

Then there is the question of what ever happened to "metal"? Everything these day's are made of plastic. Remember the big heavy chrome bumpers on cars?. Now days they don't even really have bumpers, just some piece of plastic curved under the front of the car which if it scraps on something gets torn off.

Then there are electronics, why do they try to stuff everything the can into an electronic gadget? I think a lot of us first ran into trouble with electronics when you tried programming your first VCR to record something.

Even the radio in my Jeep is kind of a pain in the butt. It seems we went backwards rather then forwards when it comes to car radios. The really old tube type radios you had to wait a bit for the tubs to warm up and even after they did they had a tendency to drift off station, more so with weaker stations. Then transistors came out and you turned on your radio and it was on and stayed on frequency. Now were into computer chips and radios do a lot of different things, but guess what, you turn on the radio and you have to wait again until the radio does a self check, etc.

As with all electronics of today, how much of what they can you do, do you really use? I think most of us just use the basic things of the electronics we use, most of what they can do will never use. Yes, there are some people who will learn everything they can about an electronic gadget, as for me other then the basics, I only use something if I need too.

Then there are commercials which kind of killed the fun of watching TV, and now they are doing the same thing with the Internet and cell phones. I believe a lot of people that use cell phones see's and app that they are interested in but don't realize all the info about them that the app is going to collect about them. They might collect all your email contacts, your pictures, where you been on the web, etc., etc. and they can use what they collected for whatever purpose they want to because you agreed to it when you installed the app. On top of that most of these apps won't allow you to delete what they collected, while other you have to request them to delete it.

Yea, ok, I admit I'm getting old and I don't like where the world is or has been heading for a long time. There is just way, way to much info collected about people these days.

Then there is one more thing I really don't like, "using "clouds" to store your stuff on. When you store stuff on a cloud you have no idea who might have access to it. Of course a lot of cloud services say it's encrypted, but is it really? And do they really not have access to it? I think I have only two files stored on a cloud and both files are compressed and password protected with a big long password that would take thousands of years for a computer to crack.

Besides that, what's mine I want to keep it mine and have access to it no matter what. If you keep all your "stuff" on an external hard drive you always have access to it. If your Internet goes down or the cloud service goes down, your out of luck.

What it all comes down to is they made the world and the things we use to complicated anymore, then pitch in the ads, commercials, personal data collecting, and people lying to get you to use or pay for there services, it's all comes down to in some way taking a bite out of your wallet.

A New Microwave.

 Everyone has a microwave.... don't they? Were going on our third microwave in about 35 years. Our first microwave lasted for years and years until it finally gave out. Our second microwave which we are still using we had for about 14 years. It still works but it's rusting out in the back two corners and we don't trust it to much any more.

The new microwave we are getting (shown below) is smaller then the one we are using. The one we are using is 1200 watts where as the new one will only be 800 watts. I don't think the lower wattage will be that big of a problem being we don't actually use the microwave much for cooking. I use the microwave the most, mostly for making my coffee hotter after it comes out of the Keurig coffee machine. It's hot enough when it comes out of the Keurig, but after adding sugar and the milk it's not hot enough for me so I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds.

About the only other thing it's used for is when I cook TV dinners in the evening, so basically I'll just have to leave things in a little longer, no big deal I guess. About the only other thing is to reheat food, maybe heat up soup out of a can etc. As for actually cooking something, I don't think I ever have.

As I said before, one reason for getting a new microwave is because ours is rusting out in the back corners. The reason we chose the one we are getting is because it's a little smaller (not by much though) which will give us a little more counter space where it sits, plus we like the looks of it.

I like the looks of this microwave. If you ask me, I pretty much don't like the things of today. Cars all look pretty much the same, so much so it's even hard to tell one make of car from another at times. I like the retro look or the industrial look. Everything made today looks to modern, no class, no style. Even a simple microwave when you go to buy one they all look pretty much the same. Yes they do look somewhat different, yet they all kind of have the same looks about them, nothing stands out from one make to another.

Got The Wood Chipper From The Back Of The Truck!

 Ok, I was concerned about this, being the chipper weighs in at almost 600 pounds. The problem is I had no way to unload it after unboxing it, it was just to heavy. Thought about ramps but they would have been pretty steep and if anything went wrong, there would be no way for me to stop it.

I ended up putting a chain in the front part and a strap in the rear. I used a strap in the rear because of it maybe making contact with parts of the motor. I got my neighbor to pick it up by the chain and strap then I pulled the truck from under it then mounted the rear axil and wheels, so everything went really smooth with no strap or chain slippage while picking it up.

At this point I still have to put the hopper on, the exhaust shoot, and mount the battery and hook it up then it will be done but for adding oil the the engine. I did get to mount the tow hitch on it right before it got dark.

Hopefully everything will get done tomorrow and I'll post a few pictures.

Wood Chipper Came Today!

 Well, that's the good news. I went and picked it up and it was a lot bigger and heavier then I thought. I know it was heavy, just couldn't thank of that weight being that heavy, if that makes any sense. So I went and picked it up in the truck and after seeing how big it was I thought I should have brought the trailer, which I should have.

I got home with it ok, opened the box (plywood box) and I knew I should have picked it up with the trailer... I'm in trouble now. I got everything that was lose in the box and set aside for the time being, being I wanted to try and make it as light as possible. I did install the front axil and wheels but ended up taking them back off being I had to lean it the other way to put the mount on for the trailer hitch.

After wrestling it around I did get the trailer hitch on and the front wheels but left the rear axil and wheels off for now. I was afraid if I put the front wheels on and tried to life up the other end it might roll off the truck bed.

The big problem now is getting it off the truck bed being it weighs almost 600 lbs! I thought about getting 4-5 guy's to help pick it up then set it down on the ground but I don't know. I'm also thinking of putting chains around it and have my neighbor pick it up with his front loader high enough to pull the truck out then set it down. Using chains might be ok but you have to watch when picking it up the chains don't go against something when the weight is on them and break something.

As of now I ran out of daylight so it's sitting half way on the skid it was shipped on and half of it is on a board on the tail gate. I knew I should have taken the trailer to pick it up, would have made everything so much easier. Could have put it together on the trailer then just rolled it off the trailer on the ramp.

.

A New Bed And Some Confusion.

 We got a new bedroom suit years ago but after we got flooded, everything pretty much got ruined and was pitched... went to the dump. After the flood we couldn't stay here and we were lucky enough that someone gave us a full bed and someone else got us a new mattress and foundation. I was thinking it was a box spring, but it turned out to be a wooden foundation. Of course as soon as the new bed arrives I'm looking for someone that could use a bed and mattress being the mattress and foundation are just over a year old I hate to take it to the dump. 

A lot has changed from our last mattress and box springs we bought years ago which like are new one is a queen size. First off I was expecting a box spring with the new mattress. When we went to unload the the stuff from the delivery truck onto our truck I was wondering where the box spring was being I didn't see a box spring. The guy said you had to put it together. At that point I was thinking, what the hell? As it turned out it was a metal foundation that the mattress sat on, not a box spring.

I never owned a foundation and didn't even know the bed we are sleeping on was a wooden foundation and not a box spring until yesterday when I looked at it. I even had to go as far as to look up what the difference was between a box spring and a foundation.

Yesterday we put the foundation together which is metal and wasn't very hard to put together. It was pretty much just figuring out what parts went where then putting in 8 bolts and nuts.

The mattress was yet another story. After seeing and testing a few mattresses we ordered the one we wanted and the lady said it would be delivered rolled up and that you would have to unroll it and let it sit 24-48 hours for it to fully expand. Again I'm thinking, what the hell?

When we picked up the mattress it was in a box rolled up. Taking it out of the box I found out it was in plastic that was vacuumed which caused the mattress to compress to like about an inch or less. After getting the mattress out of the plastic it did puff back up to it's normal size, strange.

Another thing about the new mattress is unlike the older mattress you don't flip it and turn it, you just turn it, no flipping it over to the other side. Even if you want to you can't because the other side isn't made like the side you actually sleep on.

The new bed looks like the one below:

 

Waiting for almost a month now.

 What am I waiting for? My new wood chipper. Yep, I decided to get a wood chipper being I have a lot of trees around here to cut down, not real big trees, smaller ones but a lot of them. The trees I need to get rid of are called "Tree of Heaven" which is an invasive tree which I cut down a number of times but I really get tired dragging or hauling branches from one end of my property to the other end so I decided to get a wood chipper.

There is one product I seen that kills the Tree of Heaven called Pathfinder II which cost like $200 for around 2.5 gallon. From what I read there are two way's to apply it, either hack around the tree and apply it where you hacked into the tree or apply it to the stump after cutting the tree down. I was planning on the second way.

Back to the wood chipper..... I've been waiting now for almost a month for the chipper to arrive being it had to be shipped from the west to the east. As of right now, it's about an hour aw2ay but it's Sunday, so it should be here tomorrow. 

I've look at a lot of wood chippers and as always, you see good reviews and bad ones. One chipper that did kind of impress me was the 3" chipper from Harbor Freight which seemed to out preform other chippers of the same size. The one thing I don't like about smaller chippers is they have a side feed and a hopper. The trouble I seed is the side feed for bigger branches, it seems from what I seen is a lot of people have trouble putting some branches in that where just a hair to big or had other small branches growing off the branch they were trying to feed into the machine. This wasn't just with the Harbor freight machine, this was with all of them.

Watching people trying to get some branches into the machine looked like more work then it was worth. So after watching number of different video's of different brands of 3" chippers, I kind of got turned off on buying a chipper.

As I kept looking at chipper, I was almost serious about buying a 3" chipper from Harbor Freight being from what I seen, it seemed to perform the best. I'm not big on Harbor Freight products but I have bought a few things from there which seemed to work or perform ok without any problems. Anyways..... after doing a lot of looking around at different wood chippers, I decided to go with this one.

Yea, it's big and it's heavy weighing in at almost 600 pounds! This chipper can chip up to 6" logs which I'll probably not chip anything that big. The biggest I may chip would probably be 3-4", anything bigger could be used for fire wood.

The DK2 Power 6 in. 14 HP Commercial Kinetic Cyclonic Chipper Shredder features electric start, dual swing chutes, 12 in. cutting blades, DOT road legal tires, and a 48 in. extended axle. The rotating load chute is pickup truck height and the engine is covered by a Commercial Command Pro 3-Year Kohler warranty. The 14 HP Kohler Commercial engine has an RPM of 3,600 and the dual 12 in. cutting blades auto adjust to pulverize brush and up to 6.25 in. diameter trees. For increased longevity, the blades are double-edge cut reversable. The tool-free dual swing chutes quickly open for easy drum access. The DOT road legal tires on a 48 in. extended axle are ideal for unlevel ground and increased towing stability. The feed chute features dual integrated handles for easy equipment moving, dual trolley wheel casters, and a 2 in. ball removable tow bar. The chip chute pipe rotates 180° and is pickup truck height for chip bed loading. DK2 Power engineers and manufactures high performance equipment for the hard-working professional.

* Kohler 14 HP CH440 engine with commercial 3-year warranty

* Dual belt drive drum transmission with 12 in. dual edge reversible cutting blades

* Auto Adjust cutters for brush up to 6.25 diameter trees

* Auto blade branch feeding

* Extended 48 in. axle DOT approved for legal road towing

* Includes safety glasses, ear protection, work gloves, oil fill bottle and assembly tools

* Electric start - battery included

* CE Safety approved shutoff

* Lock out safety keys

* Dual tool free swing open chutes for fast drum access

* Tool free rotational spout on chip chute - pickup truck bed height

* Extra-large reinforced feed hopper with integrated equipment moving handles

* 3-year Kohler and 1-year DK2 warranty

Dimensions:

Product Depth (in.): 102 in

Product Height (in.): 59 in

Product Width (in.): 47 in

Details:

CA (CARB) Compliant: CARB Compliant

Chipper blade material: Stainless steel

Chipper capacity (in.): 6

Commercial / Residential

Engine Cycles: 4 Cycle

Engine Displacement (cc): 429

Engine Torque (ft.-lb.): 22.7

Engine Type: Kohler 14 HP Command PRO CH440 engine

Features: Electronic Ignition, Portable, Replaceable Cutting Blade, Self-Feeding, Towable

Feed capacity (in.): 6

Fuel Tank Capacity (oz.): 236.8 oz

Horsepower (HP): 14 hp

Housing Material: Metal

Power Type: Gas

Product Weight (lb.): 594 lb

Use a Zippo lighter?

 I posted this before somewhere and some guy like flipped out trying to tell me only to use Zippo lighter fluid being using anything else would void the warranty. Anyways... when it comes to lighter fluid, I don't use Zippo or Ronaldson but rather Coleman fuel. Why Coleman fuel? It's the same stuff, look it up what's in Zippo lighter fluid and Coleman fuel.

So, a 12 Oz can of Zippo lighter fluid cost $10.58 at Walmart, a gallon of Coleman fuel cost $14.99! So buying a gallon of Coleman fuel I get about 10.6 can's of what Zippo lighter fluid  which would come to $112.00 for the lighter fluid!

I don't care what you use, that's up to you. All I can say I've been using Coleman fuel for years and years without any problems. Usually all my lighters wear out and have to buy a new one. 

First Cell Phone!

 The other day (like two day's ago), the wife and I each got a new cell phone.... like out first. Why so long getting a cell phone? The cost and the use of it. Point is, we don't really use "any" phone that much, not even our landline. We did have cell phones years ago, you know them Trak phones. I got tired of buying minutes and never using them. When I gave up my Trak phone I had about 400 minutes left. It was like why keep buying minutes if I don't use them? So I gave up on cell phones.

Of course we didn't know much about cell phone plans but in the end we both ended up with a Galaxy S23. Another thing I don't like about cell phones is the learning curve of using it. I'm a computer guy and one that doesn't like a lot of crap on my computer. When it comes to the cell phone, there is a lot of crap on it but at this time I don't know what I can or cannot remove. When it comes to computers and cell phones, I want what I want on it, not stuff some company thinks I want.

Stuff like Bixby which I'll probably never use and which I already disabled being I don't think you can remove it. But all in all.... there is just to much crap you have to learn plus programs you might want to use or install want access to a lot of stuff, why? I don't want them having access to what I'm doing, where I'm at, such as my location, my photos, my camera, etc., etc.

If you keep your phone on at night when you go to bed, then check the data transfer in the morning, you'll see companies accessing your cell phone and transferring data back and fourth. Most of the time when here at home I keep my cell phone off, at least for the time being. If someone wants to call me they can call me on the landline.

So what have I done on my cell phone so far? Not much other then make a phone call, figured out how to send a text, checked my email, looked on the web, and took a few pictures. The pictures really surprised me, at least the night shot of the sky. 

I took night shots of the sky with a few different cameras just by holding the camera by hand and not using a tripod and most pictures were blurred from hand shake, or the pictures was so dark you couldn't see anything. So last night I took the cell phone out and took a quick picture of the sky at night, again just by holding the cell phone in my hand, this is the resulting picture.

In the picture you can see all the wires, the stars, and the light in the upper left is from the moon. Of course the original picture looks much better, but you get the idea.

Galaxy S23

Well..... I still have alot to learn so I better get busy......