analog_kidd

I've got the exact same problem. There is a cardinal that pecks on my windows ALL DAY LONG. It starts at sunrise, and quits at dusk. I'm surprised it hasn't injured itself yet. It pecks on the sunroom for a while, then heads around back and pecks on the back room windows, then goes to the side of the house and pecks on the side room windows. It will land near the window, then fly at it in attack mode, wrestle with itself for a moment, then land again. Repeat that over and over and over. I'm sure it's going after it's reflection, but we have waaay too many windows to try and cover them up with anything.

My dad installed a transfer switch next to his breaker panel to be used with a generator. He picked a few circuits (refrigerator, lights, etc.) and connected them to the switch. If the electric goes out, he fires up the generator, and transfers those couple circuits over to it as a source. When the power comes back, he switches it back to the utility source. You could just as easily use solar panels as the source, and transfer back to the utilities if you ever needed to.

I've often wondered if someone was to make up official looking bills, with items like "meter box attachment space rental" or "meter reader site access fee", and send them to the utility companies, would they pay them?

We have a little over 5 acres that we keep about 2 mowed all the time, 2 on a slope that we mow a few times a year, and one that God takes care of. We have a zero-turn mower and it works generally well. I cuss every time I have to mow the sloped field. The front wheels are free turning, and not used for steering in any way, shape or form. All of the steering is done by positively accelerating the left or right rear wheels. When you get going down the hill, and get close to the bottom, if you have any speed at all, you won't be able to make the turn. I have run my mower into the fence at the bottom of the hill so many times because I couldn't stop or turn quick enough. For that reason alone I wish I had a tractor style mower. I keep talking about buying a small, one-family tractor with a mower and tiller attachment. The previous owners had one. For now, the zero-turn does mostly what I need, as long as I know it's limitations. We also bought one of those small lawn carts to pull behind it. It is so nice to use that to haul dropped sticks & branches, or potting soil, or whatever. The other thing that has been incredibly useful (and fun) is a used ATV. The very back of the property, down the long, steep hill, is the shooting range / camp ground. Using the ATV to haul gear and butts up and down that hill has been a life-saver. Although the mower and cart combination worked well for carrying gear too, just not people.

I always tell people, if at all possible, try not to live West of where you work. Otherwise, you will be driving into the sun twice a day. 5 or 6 acres is nice if it's not all cleared. Trust me, mowing that much land every week gets old. You will need to dedicate an entire afternoon to it. Do you have a riding mower? You'll need one, or a small tractor. Pay close attention to your potential neighbors, and the neighborhood. You meet all kinds of people out in the country. Try to see if they are your kind of people. Are you really willing to not see neighbors every day? That was a big thing for my stay at home wife who didn't want to be a recluse. Think about what you want to get out of life by living in the country, and then make sure the properties you look at support those things. Is there a place for a garden? Can you shoot there? Is there a good place to shoot with a backstop? Is there a place for a barn, or a chicken coop. Check out the availability of Internet. Having to use a satellite dish for internet sucks. Be sure to check your cell signal when you visit a place. We ended up having to change providers because Verizon's signal was so poor here. How close is a store, gas station, hospital. As you get older, the last one may be pretty important. Where is the closest fire station, or ambulance. Overall, living in the country is amazing, if that is what you like. The peace and quiet is awesome. You'll see and hear wild life. You can see the stars at night. Good luck in your search.

I like this idea a lot. In fact we could make it a TGO team effort. Everyone offers a suggested response, then the OP picks the one he likes best and replies, then posts their response.

Perhaps tell them you would rather have payment sent to you in the form of an Amazon gift card, or one of those Visa pre-payed. IF you actually get one, check the balance and cash it or convert it to another card that they don't have the number to. It really sounds like a scam and I believe you'll never hear from them again if you do this.

I've been keeping bees for about three years now. They are fascinating creatures and I'm always learning something new about them. I think you may have supered too early. Generally, you want to let the bees draw out comb one box at a time. The super goes on after the two deeps are fully drawn out. The bees have an interesting way of laying out their colony. Think of it like a bulls-eye. The queen will lay brood in the center, then the workers will put pollen around the brood, and then honey around the pollen. This bulls-eye usually spans between the two hive bodies. For some reason, the queen usually won't cross the honey boundary. If you put a super on now, they will just span all three boxes and you'll end up with brood and pollen in the box that you want to collect honey in. If nothing else, get a queen excluder and put it on between the deep and the medium. That'll at least keep brood out of the medium. Usually the first year is spent building the colony, and you probably won't get to rob any honey. I always say the first two deeps are their's, the rest belongs to me. But the whole point of them working so hard and making honey is to be able to eat though the winter, so you need to be sure that the two deeps are full up. Once they are squared away, you can start to think about your own honey. I would recommend getting into a bee keepers association, you will learn so much from attending the meetings, and talking with people. I am in the Anderson County Bee Keepers Association, and we meet in Clinton. That's a bit of a haul for you, but I think there is a Roane / Morgan county one too. I couldn't find any info for them other than an email address. Try to find an experienced "Bee-Buddy" that you can call on to help out and ask questions of. Our club is chock full of really experienced folk, and every meeting is spent telling everyone what they should be doing the coming month, and giving lessons on something bee related. Good luck

The Ecobee thermostat is probably next on my list. Although, one feature of the Nest I really like it the ability to link it to their smoke detector. If the smoke detector goes off, the A/C will shut off. That could sway me when I actually go to buy it. I've had two rooms on smart switches for a few months now, and I really like it. It's taken some getting used to the feel of the switches. Mine all sit in a center position, and you click it up or down to use it, but it always returns to the center. It just has a different feel than any switch I've used all my life. I have a couple of routines set up for them. One is to turn them all off at 10:15 PM, which is generally after we've gone to bed. This ensures I haven't forgotten to turn off any lights downstairs where those two rooms are. The 2nd routine is to turn the lights on if either of us arrive to the house after sunset. It's pretty cool to be pulling into the driveway and see the lights all come on. I also have them linked to my Amazon Echo, so I can turn them on / off, or set a dimmer level by voice. And I can use a tablet or phone to do the same. I've been thinking about dedicating an old tablet to use as a SmartTiles command center. It will be more useful the more devices I have. Another project that I have in mind, that would fit nicely on a SmartTiles interface, is one where I take a Raspberry Pi and add a driveway camera (we have a poor view of the driveway from the house) and an outdoor thermometer. Those two things could be added as tiles, plus any switches, locks and the thermostat, for one nice location to monitor everything in the home.

A year or so ago the wife and I planned on renting a car. She found a good price, but we had to go to the airport. We make the 40 minute ride, and she goes in to get the car. A few minutes later, she comes back out and I can see in her face she is not happy (I've seen this look before - don't ask). She tells me they need to see a utility bill to complete the rental. I said, you must have misunderstood, and I say I'll go in and straighten this right out. I go in and the lady at the counter is being extremely pleasant to the handsome guy in line, and I think, OK it was definitely a misunderstanding. I'm next and I smile at the lady and say I'm here to pick up the car, adn that she had just spoke to my wife, who clearly misunderstood her. She tells me that she was clear, and that they need to see a utility bill, or mortgage statement with my address and name on it. I ask why and she says that "local people" are more likely to keep the car, and they need assurance of where to go look for me if I do. I said I have a drivers license and other forms of ID with my picture and address. "Nope not good enough. You could have moved recently". I tell here that this requirement was nowhere to be found anywhere on the website. She points at a piece of paper on the counter behind her and says "well, it's clearly printed out right there". I tell her I'm not driving all the way home to get a GD utility bill, and I want to talk to the manager. She says "No, you can't talk to him". I ask why and she says "Because I'm not going to call him". She then tells me that if I had a copy of my latest pay stub, that would work too, like people just carry those around. I think to myself, I found a loophole because my company emails our paystubs, we don't ever get a hardcopy. I tell her hang on, and pull up GMail on my phone open the paystub email and point it to her face. She says "that's not good enough, it has to be printed out". I said, "are you kidding me? you mean I can go to the hotel next door and print this very copy out and you would take that, but you can't just look at my phone and verify?" She said "Yep". And to make things worse, she said that with an evil little smile. At this point I'm so mad that I knew if I didn't leave right then I was gonna lose my cool. So I stomp off. I go back out to the car and the wife is still fuming, and I'm even madder. After bitching about it for a moment, I call the company HQ, and they inform me that this is the policy of some local franchises, and they back them up. Nothing I can do but go home and get a bill. So I hang up, and get back on Google and look up the number of another rental car company. I speak to someone and ask them what documentation do I need to rent a car? They tell me I only need a drivers license and a credit card. I ask about a utility bill and they say, "No, why would you need a bill?" I say Hold on, I'll be right there. Ended up getting a car at the counter right next to the one that gave me grief, and got a better deal. Of course I made sure to wave, holding the keys, at the "lady" behind the first counter on my way out. The icing on the cake was when I finally got back to the wife and our car an hour and a half after we first arrived, I realized we had left the headlights on and our battery had died, so the car wouldn't start.

I heard this song the other day, and thought, "Wow, nothing has changed in nearly 50 years since this song was released."

The timeline inside the show is what, like 18 months to a year from the when all hell broke loose? Take away a bit of time for wandering about and figuring stuff out, and these people have been a group for probably no more than a year. I don't see a group psychosis happening in that short of time to cause them all to all act so strange. Over a few generations, maybe, but you can't just get that many people to all change that quickly. And these people specialize in gathering things, but they haven't found a single gun? The other thing about the show that bugs me every week... Why are they driving around in broken down beaters? The Saviors met the Kingdom folks in a rusted out old pickup truck and a crappy SUV. They could have their pick of literally just about any kind of car / truck they want.

How dare you not read every post of every thread? One trick I use is, from the main page that lists all of the forums, single-clicking the rectangular box to the left of the forum name will turn that box grey and mark all of the threads within that forum as read. I'll admit there are a few forums I don't regularly read. I'll start off from the home screen and using this trick whittle down some of the posts.

We went to a Titans game a year or so ago, and I forgot to leave my $80 knife in the car, which was parked about a mile away, and would be nearly impossible to fight against the sea of people coming across the bridge. There was a big sign right above the metal detectors, "no gun or knives of any kind." I walked out to the parking lot and found a place to stash it near a jersey barricade. I looked around to make sure nobody saw me, but I was certain it would be gone by the time I left. Somehow or another it never got spotted, and I collected it on my way out.

Thanks for the heads up. I was going to pick up a spare for mine, but in the checkout the shipping came to nearly $12 for one mag, so I passed. have you found a good holster option for the TP9?

I heard on the news that RB has a very large elephant preserve that wasn't even really for just their performing elephants, and that the preserve was funded mostly by the shows. So the irony of it all is that they had to stop using elephants in the show to "protect" them, and without the show they can't keep the preserve open. Another example of the Left shooting everyone in the foot because they think they know what's best. Speaking of elephants and circuses, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before on TGO but I'll do it again. If you don't know the story of Murderous Mary in Erwin, TN, you really should give it a read. It is a fascinating and horrific story of mob mentality. Here's the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_(elephant)

My hub and first switch came in over the weekend, so I got it set up. It works very well. Set up a "goodnight: routine on it to make sure the lights are out every night before bed. Also set up a morning routine for me to have the lights come on, since I pass thru that room on the way to the shower each morning. Unfortunately, I set the turn-off period too short and ended up walking thru a dark room on the way out of the shower. I'll have to adjust that. I mistakenly ordered the wrong switch, I wanted a dimming switch, but what arrived was a regular on/off switch. I really want a dimmer in this room since it will be a home theater, so I'm going to order the correct one to replace it. I think I'll use the one I have in another room with a three-way light. It's downstairs and we are always forgetting to turn it out, so adding it to the goodnight routine will be nice. It's also the room we enter the house from the carport, so I'll add it to the Arrival routine so that lights will come on when my wife or I come home. That room and the lights were wired oddly - there are big fluorescent fixtures with three bulbs in each. The three way switch turns on two of the three bulbs, but a standard switch on a third door to the room turns on one bulb from each fixture. If you want all of the lights on, you have to walk across the room and turn on both switches. I'm hoping I can come up with a way to set turning on any switch as a trigger to turn on the other. I linked it up thru my Amazon Echo, so now I just have to ask it to turn on/off the lights. That is very cool!

Does your dad have one that you can borrow while you are there? If so, you might leave yours home and use his.

Several years ago, the Sears in the Oak Ridge Mall closed down. It wasn't a surprise, as the ORM was a joke and everybody was leaving. They just recently tore the whole thing down and are going to build it back as an open air marketplace kinda thing. Like TGO David says, I guess that's the latest trend. I noticed that a couple of months ago a new Sears Hometown something-something opened up here in Oak Ridge. It's a tiny little store, maybe Dollar General sized. Have not been in it yet, and I really have no reason to. I was wondering what they were all about.

I have been remodeling a room in our basement to be used as a home theater. While I had everything demoed, I decided to run new wiring for lighting, networking and sound. While doing that I started thinking about home automation, specifically for the lighting. I want to be able to control the lighting from my phone, tablet or Amazon Echo. It looks like the Samsung SmartThings hub is getting good reviews these days, and works with a variety of devices. That is what I am leaning toward to get things started. That and a smart dimmer switch attached to the new can lights I installed. Next on the list of smart gadgets to buy would be a door lock and then a thermostat. The idea of arriving home and my phone telling my house to turn on the lights, adjust the temperature and unlocking the front door is cool to me. Plus I like the idea of having a routine that will make sure the door is locked, and all lights turned off at bed time. Does anyone else here have any smart stuff? If so, what are your experiences? What products do you like or not like? What are some of the ways you are using them?

One of my favorite Christmas time tunes is "Baby It's Cold Outside". It's been around for decades, but apparently now its a "forbidden song" and should not be played anymore. The whackadoodles who find something bad with everything are saying that it represents rape, due to the fact that the man is trying to keep the woman inside. You be the judge:

You might be surprised to know there are over 1500 Top Level Domain names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains That radio site is pretty cool. My geography is only so-so, I wish they would put borders on the maps. Was trying to find stations from my Polski motherland.

We used to live in the heart of Oak Ridge, where there is absolutely no discharging of weapons allowed. There are many greenways throughout the neighborhoods, and deer are very populated there, especially with no two-legged predators. It's not uncommon to see them grazing in peoples yards while you are driving down the street. The neighbor across the street from us has a greenway for a back yard. One time a coyote took up residence in her side yard. It would just sit there on a stump she had. It would run away if approached, but would return. Everybody was concerned, especially the ones with cats and small dogs. I called TWRA and they said they don't trap animals, and that if I did, it is illegal to transport a live wild animal. I called the city / animal control, and they told me they are only responsible for domestic animals. If I wanted the animal trapped, I would have to hire a trapper. I asked if I could shoot it myself, and she said, "Absolutely not! You can't fire a gun in the city." I said if I trapped it, how was I supposed to dispose of it? I kiddingly said "What, am I supposed to just club it to death?" She told me, "Sir, clubbing a defenseless wild animal in the city limits is... a perfectly acceptable way to get rid of it." Eventually, after a few weeks, the coyote moved along and we never saw it again.

The irony is that the press has given him free passes and complementary spin for the last eight years, and now he is scolding them? The fact is the stories (facts) regarding Clinton were just too big not to report. They want to make the story out to be that Russia hacked us, when the reality is the story is the things they did and said. It just so happened to be that Russia was the messenger. They have yet to apologize for any of the stuff they got busted on, or even accept that those actions could have been the cause of their failure. I'm not happy that Russia was hacking us, but anybody who thinks that they were not doing it all along (or that we are to them for that matter), is a fool. They should have secured their network a long time ago. THIS is on reason to not have private servers in apartment bathrooms. Clinton is claiming that Putin has it out for her and was targeting her to throw the election. I'd proffer that they were likely trying to hack the RNC as well, but the RNC took cyber security a little more seriously. Besides, I would think that the Russians would prefer to have Clinton in office rather than Trump. The Dems have a habit of saying "we caught you, stop doing that, and if you do it again, we'll tell you to stop again." Plus, even I know enough to not say cross things about my boss or management or other employees in emails or texts. Those things always have ways to come back and bite you. I have no expectation of privacy in a corporate email system, or even on Gmail for that matter. Obama knew that Russia had hacked them months ago, but he kept quiet about it. Now that Clinton has lost the election, he starts his laughable chest thumping bit. If its a big deal now, it should have been a big deal when it happened. He was just hoping that the press would help him sweep it under the rug, just like every other time, and not bring too much attention to the story. He clarified his "we'll punish the Russians" statement by also saying "at a time and place of our choosing." That means, "I'll be on a golf course in Hawaii until January 20th. Trump can handle it when he gets in office." In other words he is drawing another meaningless line in the sand.

The "Make me a bullet" scene made me cringe. There is way more to making a bullet than just the shell and projectile. Where did they get the powder, or the primer. Did they get the correct amount of powder? Did they test fire one? And they spent all day there, and she got ONE bullet? If you get set up, make a bunch. I would have thought their time would have been better spent scrounging for ammo and guns. Surely there has to be some houses left with a pickup truck and fishing boat in the driveway that have not been cleared.