Mark A

***The finding was made by Emily Petroff, a PhD student, who set up an interference monitor at the site to investigate the signals, known as perytons, which were thought to be from space but were also known - somewhat unusually – to be detected only during business hours.***   This right here folks is known as a clue... First rule of troubleshooting is to look for anything repeatable that could be caused by local equipment. Just as a thought, I'm pretty sure that some alien intelligence that was smart enough to be able to generate a radio signal from another galaxy and time it to only arrive during working hours in Australia is smart enough to hop in the ship and just pop on over...   17 years of outstanding scientific work brought to you by the same kinds of folks generating the global warming hype...   sheesh...

  For me, there is about a 40% chance I will be away from home. When I'm on the road I am a minimum of 3 hours away (by car at interstate speeds) and about 60% of that time I'm more than 6 hours away. Procuring a bike with a kiddie trailer is high on my list of things to do to get home. The next biggest challenge for me depends on which direction I'm in. If I'm east I should be good. If I'm west I will have to cross the Miss and the TN rivers. If it happened to be a quake event these could be serious barriers

What I really like about these bikes is the nice healthy V-twin sound they produce...

Nice... When we finally build our house in 2 years we plan on going with a metal roof. Love sleeping in cabins with metal roofs. Mark

Sort of an apples to pizza comparison. Different tools for different problems. The filter you bought is very nice but I couldn't imagine using it daily like we do our big berkey. We keep katadyns in our car bags and have sawyers on our pack bladders Mark

Hah! Kidding of course. We have (5) 4x4 raised beds at the house. The lettuces and chard and stuff like that are doing pretty well. We've actually started harvesting some of the romaine. So far the tomatoes and peppers are surviving. I started all the really hot peppers this weekend. They don't like to get into the ground until late May. I have a couple different habaneros, some Devils tongue, about 8 ghost peppers, scorpions, Carolina reapers and a couple others that are closely related to ghost peppers. If they go like last year I will be in some serious heat by July. We weren't going to do anything at the farm until we move there in a couple of years but my wife asked if she could plant a cutting flower garden up there this year. I was noodling it over and found myself staring at a 10x10 dog kennel at tractor supply. The light bulb went off so next weekend we are installing 2. I figured if it was good enough for her flowers it would be good enough for a ton of maters. She then asked me if I knew anyone we could borrow a tiller from and the other light bulb went off. What is that saying? Never let an opportunity go to waste? Well, I didnt. Anyone think a 74" wide 1,000# tiller is overkill for a 10' flower bed and 10' of tomatoes and peppers? Me neither... We were going to buy one in a couple of years anyway. Now I have to work hard to build the toy fund back up. I'm really hoping to buy a small greenhouse this fall. Mark

I'm confused... my krogers has tomatoes all year long. Doesn't yours?

Did something happen today? This is the thing that happened a couple of weeks back right?

BTW, the new Olympus Device book is out.   Just started it...

I've kind of slowed down my reading in this genre as I'm pretty much caught up on all of the various series. Because of that I've gone back and started re-reading some of the classics.   I'd kind of forgotten what it is like to read books from experienced, polished authors. I spent the last few months reading Asimov and and others and it was really shocking to read them and then come back to the new breed of authors. In general the new guys are pretty hard to read until you stay with them a while.   I'm happy electronic publishing is giving new authors better exposure but some of them are real hacks...   Mark

The only Glocks I enjoy shooting are the subcompacts. I carried a 26 for a while until I found a gently used 33. I carry it pretty much every day in the summer. In preparation for our trip to Alaska 2 years ago I looked high and low for a 20. A few weeks before we left I picked up a 29. It really is pretty fun to shoot. Full tilt Underwood and buffalo bore are a blast. Usually gets everyone's attention. I still want to pick up a 20 someday to get a little more giddy up out of the full power stuff. I bought a couple of full size mags with the spacers for when I'm in the woods. It shoots well with a better grip. I even carry it IWB everyone and then. People who are used to my grumpy mug never understand why every once in a while I go around with a smile. Carrying a 10mm will do that for you. Happy birthday and hug that girl of yours again. She sounds like a keeper... We should do a TGO 10mm range day

My senior year in high school our football coach was a real jerk. Lousy coach too... He was about 6'3" and I'm guessing about 265 and was in freakishly good shape. Ex-college lineman who didn't get soft. We were not a very good program and near the end of the season at a pep rally a couple of senior boys started heckling the coach when he was speaking. He set the mike down and walked over to the bleachers and asked them to repeat what they'd said. They did and he just exploded up through the bleachers. He looked like a human bowling ball. Both of the boys bailed off the upper back row of the bleachers and took off. I'd never seen anyone that big move that fast. Anyway, one of the kids quit school (already was a loser kid). The other one's dad heard about the event and "counseled" his kid when he got home. The next day father and son showed up at school where the son apologized and then offered to apologize again in front of the student body at the next pep rally. The coach accepted the apology and that was the end of it. That kid was one of my friends. He was a pretty good guy in general who learned a big lesson about not biting off more than he could chew. Could you imagine that happening today? The dad would probably be brought up on charges and the coach would have been fired and arrested. Instead, a young man grew up a bit and learned a bit of right and wrong. We still laugh about it to this day... I hope the coach heals up ok. Thug boy better watch his 6. The team will catch him out somewhere and administer their own justice.

I turned 18 in June of 1980. Back then the revised requirement was all over the news and was a pretty big deal for us guys. Those of us who were 18 had pretty fresh memories of the mandatory draft and Vietnam. I was at a party where some obnoxious girl was talking about equality and blah blah blah... I distinctly remember telling her that when she was equal enough to be required to go get killed for the country that I would start worrying a lot more about her equality. I guess my viewpoint was a little distorted. I grew up knowing many successful women business owners. Those women's didn't sit around and cry about equality, they just went out and took it for themselves. For me, competency has never been about sex or race. It has been, oddly enough, about competency...

This has been high on my list for a few years. I think a SBR AR in 357 Sig would be a hoot and a pretty darn good home defense gun. I was just about to order the pieces/parts from that fella who makes DI pistol caliber AR's when Sig announced the MPX. I'm going to see how it does and then decide which way to go... Mark

  I really like the seasoning they put on their fries.

I like Prince's best of all but I can't always dedicate 2 hours to lunch. I've been there when they decide to open an hour late because they aren't ready. When I can wait it is so worth it...   Big Shakes in Franklin is generally pretty good. they consistently get orders wrong but the food is usually cooked well and tasty. I found Pepperfire and Hattie B's really inconsistent.   Mark

OK, I'm officially over the rain. I've got things to do that require a semblance of dry ground...   I understand it is my fault. I have on my list getting guttering installed on my out building and running the downspouts to a storage tank for watering purposes. If I had already gotten that done we would have experienced the driest winter/ spring in history...   I'm concerned that the real farmers in our area are getting hosed on getting their spring stuff done... I don't need any excuse for food prices to go up any higher than they already are.   Mark

  Re-purposing something instead of throwing it in the landfill? How un-American of you...   My wife would give me her "you're crazy" look then by the time I had dirt in there she would be out with her paint stuff decorating them in some happy garden theme.    I'm curious to see how this will work out. I'm casting about for ideas that could work for pulling larger plants in and out of a greenhouse. It will be a year or so before we get to build it but I'm going to try some figs and a few other things that will have to be able to be pulled in and out during colder season.   If you do this please keep us up to date with what you've tried and how it is working out. Remember pictures or it never happened...   Mark

Also ordered 6 more apple trees, and a bunch of various berries: Heritage Red Raspberry & Dorman Red Raspberry, Austin Blueberry and Pink Lemonade Blueberry, Aronias, Gojie. A couple of those will go into the slowly growing edible backyard we are building but most will go to the farm.   Going to have to hire a guard dog or something for the farm or I will have the best fed deer population in the state...   Mark

Ordered a tiller and subsoiler for the tractor yesterday. I'm hoping it will be here Wed or Thursday of next week. Now we need to dry out. 3 consecutive days without rain/snow/ice would be really nice. Especially if those 3 days were with sunshine...

  I called these folks today and they seemed extremely nice. Going to meet one of their folks this week to look at the property and see about getting on their schedule.   Now if I can get the county guy out to approve my perk site I will be off to the races...

My first thought was no thanks... But, that rifle is oddly compelling. I'm with the others in liking how it looks like wood a short distance away. Probably give some kid nightmares...   Looks like they did a really good job

Was waiting for this guy to show up. One of my faves... The other stuff is cool too and demonstrates a talent I will never have but I think old springy there is just cool Mark

I make my own by melting down old tire weights. Only rookies buy theirs in the store

Only needed to run the fan. It can also be run with some D batteries. I'm sure if the room were small you could run it without the fan just fine.   Mark