Topsy Turvy Tainer

Busy Busy

2012-01-26T22:03:00.000-10:00

I guess I could work backwards from today... sure I'll forget tons.

I installed new front struts on the new red Del Sol. Boy that made a really big difference for the ride. Then I wrapped up working on the doors on the open kitchen counter cabinet. They fit so tight that I don't think an ant could get through. Smoke plexiglass. Still need some magnetic catches and handles.

I bought a "new" 1995 Honda Del Sol, red, 170k miles on it. It's the gas saving model of course like my white one. So, now I have twinkie cars. It is in great shape, but needs a few things. I've bought and installed new car radios in both Del Sol's, the white car's stereo quit getting AM/FM reception, and the front input jack was only working for the right speaker. The red car had the original Honda cassette radio, and was missing the antenna. The new car stereos have a USB jack in the front, and I can load up a thumb drive with music and plug it in. How cool is that? Other things I need to do are tint the windows, struts, grease the door catch mechanisms from inside the doors... I charged the A/C which is working fine now.

Clay has been around some running the wood chipper. We have been making some great progress on clearing. It's been pretty dry this past week or so, and I was able to relocate some dirt around, filling in some low spots, giving the creek a more direct path. It's really weird remembering trudging thru the brush, sinking in a mud pit, etc., and now that same area is totally clear and almost ready for grass to grow (minor hand grading to fill in the bobcat tracks). It's really odd being able to see so much of my land now, and now my neighbor Tom's roof. The modifications I made to the chipper are phenomenal. It no longer gets plugged up, and is able to take in bigger trees even faster. Schweet! Tomorrow Clay is back again, and that is probably what we will be doing.

Clay did score a really great 2001 Dodge Caravan for $800, plus about another $300-$400 in parts, and he now has a really nice reliable vehicle. We even charged up the A/C system, and he's chillin. Lots of little things add up to someone else dumping it, and for someone handy, a great cheap ride.

The hydroponics system is doing great. I continued to have problems with the digital timer resetting, so I bought a mechanical one with the little clips on it. So, now, it should do even better when it continually cycles 15 minutes on, 45 off vs. daily a 5-6 hours of no-pumping. I'll have to post some pics. The Spinach, Lettuce, Celery, Arugula are all doing great and healthy, and I've even been getting a strawberry a day from the transplant. I should plant more of those. Small but very flavorful berries.I also have some tomato plant starts coming up, and I planted a Muscelix Mix. Still more space not yet planted in the shelves. When I need to add water to the system, I'll scoop it out of the fish tank. Maybe I can siphon off the goop on the bottom of the fish tank, that would be even better.

I have taken down the green house, listed it on Craigs List, and now have only one above ground garden bed, with carrots, onions, and garlic going. Bugs don't seem to bother those, and they seem to do pretty well. I'll have to be sure to water them when we don't get our nightly showers.

Lucy and Gray are doing fine. Cute as ever. Lucy lets Gray have his popcorn, but then she knows she gets more than Gray always. Gray is getting pretty big. He's been staying out in the bush all day, almost like he's deciding he is an outdoor kitty. Not that living indoors at my house is so very different really then being outdoors.

Well, there has been more stuff going on, but this is enough.

Local Fisherman's video

2012-01-16T13:03:00.000-10:00

The commentary on this video is just too funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25RZ1WDKpz8&list=UUmZTqZMN62ftmsJAoqA_tmA&index=2&feature=plpp_video

Rain is over for the moment?

2012-01-09T20:25:00.001-10:00

The weather this past week is much more "normal" with some rainfall, but not all day or really heavy rains for extended times. It's almost been dry these past 4 days.

Gray kitten has been great fun, and he's managed to fit right in with Me and Lucy. He's super cute and very laid back. He sleeps on my bed and with Lucy, apparently taking turns. I have to say that perhaps one of the best things that humans ever did for humans is to domesticate cats and dogs.

Not much progress has been made toward the home construction project due to the rain, and after a few recent days clearing trees, I'm now thinking that I might should wait to start the house construction until the tress and land are cleared of the invasive trees. My view of Mauna Kea mountain continues to improve, however to get any better now would require removing the trees between the hut and container house. So, maybe those tress can remain until I'm ready to relocate the hut. I should have a building permit in around 4 weeks, and so maybe I'll not really get started just yet. Also gives me more time to save up money so that I can delay getting the construction loan, and it can be for less.

I had a close call on Saturday with one of the dead Albezia trees while I was clearing some plants. I always figured if I was under the tree when a branch fell off that I might should just stay still, odds are that I would try to run, and right into where it was falling. Hummm... Lucky break #1 only having one ear plug in, #2 Clay had turned off the chipper. So, lucky break # 3 is that I actually heard it (see # 1& #2). Lucky break #4 is that I looked up, and saw that it was branches right over me. Lucky break #5 is that I was quick (incentive). Made it out of the way, and when I looked back, they had fallen exactly where I was working. At bare minimum, it would have been a hospital trip for sure. 10" & 12" diameter branches fell probably 80'. Yikes. So, new rule for my land, no working of any kind under the 2 Albezia trees. I can run the bobcat under and do things that way, but not much else. Walking from point A to B is probably OK, but should be avoided if possible. I would like to cut down the one tree (30" trunk diameter), the culprit in this case, but If I do it will for-sure take out my avocado tree, and most likely 2 really nice Ohia trees. And I'll have to move the outhouse as it would likely be crushed. The outhouse is safe distance from naturally falling limbs, but not from felling the whole tree. The container house is just far enough away to be unscathed. So, with all that, you can see that I don't want to cut it down, but then again... The other much larger Albezia tree (8' diameter trunk) is not really located where it matters or needs to be avoided. But same rules do of course apply there.

Nothing new or exciting with work. I'm hoping for some new interested clients in the new year. Mom had a few great ideas on some social media marketing efforts. I did add a horse rescue/farm as a new volunteer scheduling client, and they will be using lots of the features, so that is great.

My 4x4 vehicle is still broken. I did buy and install a $80 gasket set, and yet, still having problems with water getting into the oil somehow. Just has to be where this gasket set is installed, but then you would think that the gasket sets would not be so crappy that they really did not work like this. It's very frustrating.

I've completed the 2nd hydroponics shelf setup, and expanded the compost tea to a commercial 30 gallon trash can. I've not planted it yet, but the water is circulating. My original shelf set is doing well still with great looking plants. Once the plants get a bit bigger, I'll update with some pics. So now it's been 4 weeks since I planted the chinese celery (small celery) as the test which are going like gang-busters. About 2 weeks on the rest of the seeds which all look appropriate for that amount of time.

I've made some new lights for inside and outside the container house. I bought a bunch of 1/2 price LED xmas lights, 100 per strand, and then doubled them up, folded the string in 1/2 to be 8', then pulled them into a 8' clear flourescent light bulb protector tube (like they use in gyms). So, basically making a 8' light bulb that uses 14 watts. They make some great light, much better than the light rope I had in the ceiling. In the kitchen I had 2 strands of lame xmas lights on the cables (mostly ambiance), and now I've hung 2 of these light bars which are much more bright (these are in addition to under shelf flourescents I use when cooking which make lots of light). So, more light around the house now. I plan on making some reflectors and mount the light bars under those to reflect more of the light down vs. the current 360 degrees of light currently. At some point they will show up in a picture.

I've designed the new container house deck railings, and I'll probably be welding those together fairly soon. They will be partially made from the recycled metal from the parts I've cut out for the sliding glass doors, and with stainless steel cables in the top 3/4 of them. I'll need these on the container some day officially in order to pass county code standards anyway, which I always figured I'd have to do.

While making a mess with the bobcat bulldozing down some trees, I managed to again break off a valve stem on one of the wheels. Man it's a pain to fix that. Gotta drive it back over to the house, remove the steel over-the-tires tracks, remove the wheel (like 100lbs), then take it into town. Barely fits in the honda. Last time I needed a innertube, they charged me, no screwed me, to the tune of $78 for the tube, and $20 to install. This time I found a different place that charged only $24 for the tube and $10 install. I'm always happy to pay a fair price, it just sucks when you know that you are being taken advantage of. Glad I found the new place. I also welded a "U" shaped metal guard around the valve stems on both wheels on that side of the machine so that this won't happen again, at least on that side.

Mom and Whitney are coming for a visit the last few weeks in February, so that will be fun. My place has changed lots since either of them was here last.

Anyway, that's enough stuff for this update.

10" of rain in 48 hrs and counting

2011-12-12T18:10:00.000-10:00

Santa Fe gets 14" of rain in the typical year. We just had more than 10" of rain in 2 days. Yikes that's some rain. The tarp roof over the bobcat got blown off, but then it had some really old lame bungies holding it on. Replaced those today. The river was running, and the lakes full. I couldn't leave if I wanted to. Some of the wind gusts were pretty impressive. The deck roof does some nice flexing when that happens, which is OK since that it how it was designed.

The hydroponics using the Black Soldier Fly maggot compost is working great. (basically compost tea vs. the previous aquaponics) The vege sprouts are looking great and healthy. Looks so far like a real winner. They never looked healthy when it was aquaponics.

Some kitty pics

Just been doing lots of programming with all this rain. Watching some BBC TV shows online.

I scored an awesome 1960's "Atlas" sewing machine at the dump last week. Just needed a new drive belt. The guys at the sewing machine repair place seemed to think of the machine as a real score. It's much nicer and better than the new piece of crap singer I bought here a few years ago. I'll be putting that one on Craig's List. Cannot believe it was just tossed out. I can no longer buy the hiking type nylon pants that I had been getting online for cheap, so I'm going to give a try to make them myself. These are the pants that you see a REI and other places for like $50-$100 per pair. They are great here in the warm damp environment. I hardly ever wear jeans any more (pre-Hawaii I lived in jeans), mostly only now when welding and the like. And there is no way I'm paying $50 for nylon pants made in China.

Kitties and Fish

2011-12-05T12:09:00.000-10:00

Decided to keep one of the kittens, the last one in the photos from the last blog entry. His name is "Grey". Not very creative, but it's not like he cares. Quite the character.

I've decided that Aquaponics is a waste of time. Partially as the mainly nitrates that the fish provide are not good enough to grow food that actually has any real dietary value (grown on nitrates only). So, you CAN grow plants, but not "quality" plants. Sure glad I started with a mini-system first to get my feet wet in that type of system. So, now I have placed the 8 Tilapia in the 100 gallon tank that I was using to grow the duckweed to feed them, and I'll be getting some larger pond plants from Don today for food/cover for them. So, I still want to grow the fish for me to eat, so I'll still at some point make the 4'x4'x4' concrete fish tank(s).

Since I have the Aquaponics system already setup and going, I've decided to try using the Black Soldier Fly maggot dirt to make it a Hydroponics system instead. So, same sorta of deal, just rather than fish in water, it's the BSF compost/waste in the water with a bubbler (bacteria need oxygen too), and recirculate that uky water for the plants. I'll update how this goes later. Maybe it will work great, maybe not. I know when I pour the BSF liquid only on plants, they sure like it and have a visible growth spurt.

Still been raining like crazy. A few sorta dry days mixed in there, but overall, still lots of rain and puddles/mud.

I'm taking down my green house. For several reasons. One, the Ohia trees are too close, and the beds are rife with tree roots taking over. Two, for home permitting/finaling, there can be no non-permitted structures on the property that are 6' or taller. So, when the house is done in 12-18 months, it would need to be taken down anyway. The hut I'll pick up with the bobcat are relocate off the property for the week of the final inspection, then put it back afterwards. Third, veges are really cheap at the local markets, so it's hard to justify the time/energy unless I was just bored anyway. It's good to have done it, and know that I can do it later. I do expect to have a green house again in the future.

Slow progress

2011-11-24T09:14:00.000-10:00

I took the architect stamped and signed plans to PWC, Building, Engineering, then Public Health yesterday. PH should call me Friday/Monday to pick them up, then drop them back off at PWC where they will issue a building permit in hopefully less than 8 weeks. In the interim, I can get back to work on the foundation and concrete forms. Maybe go ahead with getting the electrical pole setup, and poles going back to the house run.

It's still been generally very rainy, with significant rains every day. The morning here looks promising of a dry day today.

I've made lots of great progress on the scheduling software tweaks. I think it's a much improved system now. And I'm on a roll, so not going to let nice weather slow me down. More to do on that.

The 4 new kittens are as always, pretty darn cute.

All from the same momma kitty, but all very different looking kitties. They are also trying to play with Lucy, and Lucy gets her toys, and tries to give them to the kittens. Here kitten, throw this ball which is half your size.

Finally some SUN!

2011-11-15T19:36:00.000-10:00

It's been raining for like 2 weeks straight until yesterday morning (Monday). Monday and today mostly sunny. The ground is super saturated. I've not had my worker Freddy here this whole time. Just too much rain. I did have some couch surfers here for 5 days. Two girls from the N.E. mainland, they have been house sitting locally, and the owner rented out their house for 5 days, so they needed a place. They made a few dinners and were pretty low key. Unlike most couch surfers, they didn't need to discuss Hawaii ad nauseam.

I've been doing lots of programming during the down time. Adding new features to the scheduling system. Working on some "social media" type features and options. It's pretty cool. I think I'll have it done in the next few days. I've also gotten re-ignited on programming to host the local Freecycle group. We have been using a Yahoo Group, then we tried to move over to a website the Nat'l organization developed, but it's severely lacking, and very little progress will be made on improvements (or so it sounds). I've long thought that I'd create a convergence of eBay, Craig's List and Freecycle, and now I'm going to get after it. I can bypass the programming that Freecycle has done in less than a week. Ideally I'll use it for our group, then open it up to Hawaii, then we'll see where it goes from that. I think there is a possibility it could replace CL.

I've picked up 4 new kittens to foster today. About 8 weeks old and 1lb each. They will be here for 4-8 weeks, at least till they are 2lbs. Back to scooping kitty litter/poop 2x per day. My least favorite thing to do in life.

Dave and Margie picked up some stuff for me at Costco on their run on Sunday over to Kona. Then last night we had dinner, and Dave showed off a new military surplus auction acquisition... they (12) are water heaters that run on gasoline. It's like a really big doughnut (16" around), with 2, 3" pipes going down into it next to each other. You submerse the doughnut and about 18" of the pipes. One is a smokestack/exhaust pipe, and one is the air inlet pipe. There is a gas can where you let gasoline drip down the air inlet pipe, where it hits a grid and atomizes, then it's flaming, and the draft of the heat going out the exhaust pipe draws air in the inlet, keeping air coming into the system. It's sort of simple, and works really well. I guess they have been using these since Vietnam time, maybe before. Anyway, when Dave saw them online, he immediately though of a hot tub heater, and he's right on the mark. It's prefect. We heated up a big metal trash can of water in about 20 minutes. We are guessing that you could heat up from ambient temp a hot tub of water with 1 gallon ($4) of gas. If done with electricity, we are pretty sure you'd have to pay 2x that (on this island, electricity is the most expensive in the entire USA). So, now I'm wanting to continue my ferrocement fish tank project, and use the first one for a hot tub. No jets, just hot water. The form is mostly together already for the tank... maybe I'll get to that very soon. In between other projects I suppose?

I've dropped off my house plans at the architect's office, and will pick them up with his changes on Thurs. I also will have the first set of container house plans to show him as well. It's exciting to have the plans almost ready to go to get permitted. Then officially I can get started on the house. The plan is to build a massive 40'x100' tent frame that can be raised up as the project progresses. When my contractor neighbor Michael heard about that, he decided it would be a real help to him on his clients new home build project he is about to start. So, if I can get it all ready now, then he will rent it until I need it. So, like maybe that would cover 1/2 the cost of the setup? We will see. Michael has a few of the corner pieces that I could use, but I don't want there to be any question about ownership of this setup. When I'm ready for it, I need it back, period. There are allot of corners and peaks and connectors to fabricate/weld up, and I don't want to have to fabricate it again later if he is not "done" yet. I don't want to leave him in a lurch, but I'm not about to put myself in one instead.

Still have not repaired my 4x4. So dreading those 2 long days under the hood. Again, 4th time. Ug. I need to use the 4x4 and trailer though, so I better get over it and get it done.

The 8 small Tilapia are sill alive and well, eating their duckweed. Lucy is doing well. She needs a bath, if it's sunny again tomorrow, I'm on that.

General Update

2011-11-03T16:09:00.000-10:00

Everything has been going along just fine. The past couple of days has been fun-flooding kind of raining (i.e. lots). Since I have yet to fix the 4x4, I cannot leave as the water is too deep for the honda.

I've been going back and forth with the draftsman, Val, and the plans are very nearly ready. I spoke with the bank, and they confirmed that I really do have one year only to get the house done-done, permitted and finaled. So, that just means that it has to be done in a year. I think that is doable, but in looking at the plans, man there's allot to do. In some ways it's simple, like no walls inside the 30' round house. In some ways, it's not, like building the whole thing while it's 8-10 feet up in the air. But wow will it be awesome.

My work trader has moved on at my request, and I've hired a guy to chainsaw and run the chipper. I can now see Mauna Kea (mountain) from the container deck, so that is very cool. Assuming it's not cloudy here, or on the mountain which it often is one or both places. LOTS of ground to clean up and make ready for grass seeding. That is more work then the downing of trees and chipping. Pull up the roots, then clear rocks & left over roots, smooth or round things out, etc, etc.

Work has been OK, I had a pretty big hit this year in website client losses, scheduling probably expanded some. I've offered a $40 credit to any client that refers an organization to me, and that referral does a 30-60 minute software walk through. Hopefully that will generate some new leads. I've contracted with a ex co-worker from my days in Austin to do some testing and reviews of the software to help me locate any bugs, and streamline things. Although it's taking them a while (they have a real job and a life), so I may need to locate someone else to do this. I just see it too much to be able to see it. Cannot see the forest for the trees sorta thing. I've been doing allot of programming as well, added a text message notification system if people want text reminders, etc. Also just added an option to keep a history of cancellations from up to 14 days before their date. This will let staff see if people are routinely canceling so that they can make efforts to limit this. And for volunteers who regularly cancel last minute, they can make those volunteers "request" scheduling vs. self scheduling.

Lucy is doing fine. She's topped out at 55 lbs now. She is such a sweetie. She gets really bored on the lots of rain days. Naps all day, then wants to play at 11pm.

The Tilapia and mini aquaponics is going OK. New fish seem happy (the first set all died or committed suicide), the bigger tank is working well, and the water stays really clean. The vege starts I've had in there since the beginning aren't doing so great. Not sure if I need more fish to create more stuff to feed them, or if they are just stunted from starting off from no nutrients in the water in the beginning. I need to drop in a few new seeds to see how it goes. Or find a way to test the nitrates level. But so far nothing edible coming from them. I did manage to get duckweed though, and have that growing in a separate guppy pond, and daily I just grab a hand full and drop into the talipia tank for them to eat. So at least the fish feeding situation has gotten easier. I still have 49lbs of fish food left from the 50lb bag. Not sure what to do with that, maybe sell on Craig's List.

Muerte Pescados

2011-10-18T20:34:00.000-10:00

First 3 of the 5 Tilapia died, I think from the "cold" of 60 degree water (gets to 60 here at night). Then the last 2 apparently committed suicide by jumping out of the tank (apparently they do that some times). Lucy still has a bit of fish breath. Ideally the water temperature would be around 80 degrees, Tilapia being the tropical fish that they are. I've upgraded their tank from a 5 gallon to a 10 gallon, and procured 8 new Tilapia from Don's house. So far, so good, 48 hours in. The new tank top is very close to the shelf above it, so that should prevent any more from jumping off the bridge. The larger quantity of water seems to also not drop so low overnight.

So, this 99% movement is interesting. Glad to see people in the USA protesting for what they believe in. The US media might be intentionally trying to portray the "average" 99er a certain way. That way seems to be that the government has a responsibility to provide jobs, and regulate almost everything so that we Americans can have our American lifestyle. Protect and regulate our lifestyle at all costs for us. What I don't see is the 99ers taking responsibility for their participation in their current situation, and in their giving corporate America the power that they have now. Somehow this is our governments fault?

How many of those 99ers currently have an account (or before their current possible financial failure), a credit card, etc. at one of those huge banks? Everyone who has an account at one of those banks that everyone is poo-pooing BOUGHT into the convenience, into the points plans, into the "it's good for me so I don't care what they do to anyone else" mentality. They PAID the banks to become the monstrosities that they are now. If everyone would use their brains, and choose to pay attention, they wouldn't be using those behemoth banks, and therefore those banks would not have been able to become what they are today. Most of those huge banks have the absolute WORST fee structures imaginable. I have family and close friends who use those banks. Banks who take them to the friggin' cleaners with fees every once in a while, and they still continue to use them for some reason.

How many home "owners" were there that could still afford to pay their mortgage, but *chose* to default their homes when the fair market value is now 1/2 what they still owe? Where is their personal responsibility in having made an agreement with a home seller and mortgage company to pay what THEY agreed to in the first place? And how many home buyers chose to purchase a home which was not affordable for them, just because the bank would let them? Where's the personal responsibility for their part of that? Now we all get to pay for the non-responsibility of those people. And of course also pay for the greed of the banks for their participation.

You know, when a friend of mine tells me that they've had a bad experience with a company, where the company took advantage of someone, I won't patronize that company again. For me, it's because if they would do that to my friend, then they would (or will) do that to me. Even if they wouldn't do it to me, they should not be screwing over anyone. I cannot tell you how many times I've told people my negative experiences with a company, and I don't think anyone has ever taken it into consideration. Not that I think everyone should, but I would have thought at some point someone would have. So, basically, by choosing to be selfish, to get those airline points on that credit card, that is charging someone else 25% interest to pay for your points... for having cheap car insurance, but knowing that they screw over the other party and not pay for the damage that they should... flying an airline where they routinely wantonly cause major havoc in peoples transportation schedules and cause them to spend hundreds more dollars than the $10 you saved to fly them...

In this 99% movement, why do I keep hearing all of this entitlement language, and why can I not see any personal responsibility in all of this?

We as consumers and neighbors and conscientious people need to have each others backs. We need to make choices that don't empower the companies to rule our lives. We can control the companies and make them accountable just by choosing to not use them when they do bad things. We have options if we just choose to see them.

In case you haven't heard, most all of the "big" banks will start charging a MONTHLY fee for having a ATM card. That means that Visa or MasterCard "check" card that you use. There are federal regulations limiting the fees that Visa & MasterCard can charge with those cards since there is almost no risk involved since they only work if the money is actually in your account. So, they want to make yet MORE money off you. You are probably already paying a monthly fee just to have an account at that big bank. When will people decide to take back their power from their bank? Local credit unions have the same FDIC guarantee, almost never have even half the fees that the big banks have, and in many places, all the credit unions use cooperative ATM's so that you can have as many or more free ATM's as the big banks have in your area.

If you buy a home, or refinance, find a local credit union, and be sure that they will not "sell" your mortgage to the highest bidder. A bank that keeps it's mortgages in house is more stable, is a better neighbor in your community.

Come on people, own your part. Then YOU do something about it, make a change in YOUR life.

Chippin' Fool

2011-10-02T21:56:00.000-10:00

Been doing lots of chipping since my work trader hasn't been here. He's supposed to be back tomorrow... we shall see. I used the bobcat to doze a trail to a mosquito pit, and then proceeded to move a bunch of really big chunks of tree into it. I got the bobcat really stuck there for a while. Then later it seems that I have a faulty hydrostatic oil pressure sensor. Which means 30 seconds after starting the machine, the engine will be shut off. Kind of nice that it protects itself. Except if the sensor is faulty, then it's just sorta annoying. Did some additional guavie tree trunk pulling up before the sensor. Working on getting some areas 100% cleared and done so that grass will come in and I can mow.

Talked to the draftsman today. Looks like I've added a 10' square "observation deck" above the middle of my lanai roof. It will just be a non-roofed deck.

I finally bought a telescope via Craig's List this past week. The stars & planets here are killer, and I've been wanting one for a while. Of course I didn't want just any 'ol telescope, so I got a 8" diameter one which includes a drive motor so that when you get it lined up on a star, it will stay on it for quite a while with no adjustment. If it didn't have this, it would only stay on the star for maybe 5 seconds before the earth's rotation would move it out of the view. The moon in this thing is amazing. I have to keep in mind that the moon is about 1/3 the size of the earth. It "feels" like I would be able to see the tracks and equipment left behind, but in reality, not even close. I also have been checking out Jupiter and it's moons. I can see the swirls of color in the planet. No other planets are current available for viewing. Gee, a "observation deck" say 20' off the ground sure would be handy for this...

The kittens are almost 2 lbs, apparently that is the adoption criteria, so about another week of kitty chow, and they will find new homes. They have been having fun under the house. I probably don't want to know what they have been up to under there.

The mini-aquaponics system is coming along. Seed starts seem to be doing well, and the fish are still alive... I bought some algae eaters and some guppies (for a separate pond) today at the farmers market. No Duckweed around that I can find yet. And, most people *think* they know what it is, but so far I have yet to meet anyone who knows what the real thing is.

The Kale in the green house is totally going crazy in the cool "winter" nights we have been having. The Poha Berry bush is huge and making tons of little lanterns with berries inside. A.K.A. Golden Berries or Cape Gooseberry. Lots of carrots are popping up. Just dehydrated a rack of apple bananas from Don's house.

Nuevo Gatos

2011-09-25T21:23:00.001-10:00

I have 3 new kittens after taking a week or two off from fostering. These 3 are even more cute if that is even possible. All long haired, 2 white, and one tiger. They were barely 4 weeks old when I brought them home about a week or so ago. Tonight, one climbed up my screen door, all 8' of it! Made me nervous. Good thing reverse seems to work. I think I'll have these 3 for another week, maybe 2, then they will be old enough to return for adopting out.

My work trader has been gone for like 3 weeks now. We had agreed that he could take a week off when he found a one week house sitting gig, but then he's no showed for about a week, and when I called him, he said he was staying with a woman who broke her hip, and would be back this coming Friday. On one hand, it's nice that he's not around, on the other, nothing is getting done on the things I wanted him to be doing.

Which segue's into my running the chipper for a while this last week. Nice to get rid of some of the tree piles he had created. The input chute finally about rusted off, so it was time to also do some work/maintenance on it as well. I reconstructed the entire input chute from new steel, cut off the old, and welded it all up. Looks great, like new and original. I also added a vertical divider in the output chute, to hopefully prevent twigs from clogging up the output, which is a fairly common occurrence. I also added a flap which I think will increase the air flow through the machine, and help throw out the chips faster. As well, I increased the diameter of the air intake holes from 1/2" to 5/8". Then added some new vertical supports for the gas tank which were very much needed. An adjustment to the feed wheel so that it will grab even the smallest sticks (had a 1.5" gap), and sharpened up the grabbers on it. I have yet to run it with all these new changes and tweaks. I think the flap I added might be a problem when a larger chunk of wood makes it through, and manages to end up in exactly the right spot where the flywheel and that meet up. Will be sorta like trying to cut a popsicle stick with super dull scissors. If this does happen the flap should just bend some. Anyway, I'm hoping that all this will make the chipper eat and discharge the trees faster, making it even more efficient.

My 4x4 vehicle is dead for the moment. I had a consistent coolant leak, and once I figured out that it was the intake manifold, decided it was time to remove the top 1/2 of the motor to correct it. Someone had clearly dumped in lots of fix a leak before now, so it was just time. To not bore you with the details, assuming you actually even read this far, I'll be taking the engine apart for the 3rd time sometime soon, this time to replace a head gasket. Really not what I want to spend my time doing. Ug.

I've been futzing around with the "shelf ponics" system I found on the internet and mentioned before... It's finally all come together. It's an up side down plastic shelf (4 shelves), with a aquarium on the bottom shelf. There is a water pump to pump the aquarium water up to the top shelf, then it circulates through the expanded clay marbles (growing medium), and down to the next shelf, until it ends up back in the aquarium. So, it's basically a self contained aquaponics system. The fish expel their stuff into the water, then bacteria on surfaces (the expanded clay marbles) converts the ammonia into nitrates, which the plants consume as their nutrients. Basically the plants clean the fish water, acting like the filter. I've actually added an extra gallon container of the clay marbles into the system for extra bacteria processing, so that I can handle more fish, and thus have more concentrated vegetables growing. I've got the system currently on a 15 minutes on, and 30 minutes off cycle, 24/7 (the roots need air as well as the water). The air bubbler for the fish tank is also on that same timer. Both the water & air pumps use 18 watts of power together. I'll locate this at the end of the container by the washer/dryer where it gets sun for the first half of the day, and I'll paint the back of the aquarium black so that it will absorb sunlight to heat the water. I have added 6 Tilapia from Don's house, and they like really warm water, they can die if the water gets below 60 degrees. So far for feeding them, I've been chopping up soldier fly maggots. (Yucky job!) They are too small to eat them whole. I've also tried feeding them fruit flies which I've caught in a trap, and again, I think they are too big (almost as big as houseflies). So, in some ways, I think it's easier to have larger Tilapia than small ones. I'm also trying to locate a source for Duckweed which grows in water, as that is an ideal food for them. I'll have a separate tank growing the Duckweed most likely. Sounds fairly complicated, but once I have figured out what works, then it will be much more simple to maintain. Of course the goal is to eat the vegetables and the fish. I've planted Spinach, Cress, & Arugula to get started. I'm calling it my "salad bar". They have all already sprouted, now I'll find out if the "system" is working and processing correctly if they flourish, and the fish don't die.

I've contracted with a draftsman to design my new house, so that is in process. You can read about that on the other blog I set up just for that (link top left on blog page).

Post Camping and Pics

2011-09-07T13:26:00.000-10:00

First to catch up on a few pics. I had some requests for kitten pics. This was typical for them when not chasing each other around the deck.

Lucy sporting her home made doggie backpack. That was a 1 hours quickie. She carried her own food, bowls, leash and toy into Waimanu Valley for the camping trip.

A Monk Seal was hanging out on the beach the whole weekend. I guess if you aren't hungry, then there is no reason to move. At all. For 3 days.

Then we ended up reluctantly sharing our website with 5 guys who kayaked into the valley. They brought so much gear it was not even funny. This is Matt, who is quite the waterman, and went spearfishing, and returned with at least 5 different types of fish which we all shared for dinner.

Just as last time,Waimanu Valley was awesome. I very much enjoyed the new lighter camping gear, but I think I added other things (like cooking gear) to my pack, so in the end, my pack was still pretty heavy. Lucy did great hiking in and out and really didn't seem to mind her backpack at all. I do need to adjust the size and hang of the pack just a bit for next time. Someone lost their new REI tent tarp, which I brought back with me, so I have a nice big piece of nice siliconized nylon fabric to use for some sewing projects. The weather this time was clear and dry after the rain showers Friday & Saturday morning. Since the 5 amigos had set up their 20'x20' tarp already, I didn't get to try out my new 16'x16' one I packed in. I did use my hammock though, that was really nice. Swam in the ocean, and in the river quite a bit.

I'm actually thinking that maybe I'll try to make a backpacking trip into Waimanu one weekend every month.

Big news for me, I'm about to start the construction process on a new home here on my land. I'm creating a new blog for that, mainly for me to document the process and progress. I'm not emailing out that blog, so if you are interested, you can use the link in the top left list of links on this blog, or here. Over there, I've described the house, first steps, etc.

I've also been doing some flying lately, and that is going well. I did some carburetor tuning this morning on it. I am still really happy with my choice of engines.

Rainy Weather

2011-08-21T17:55:00.000-10:00

I'm usually pretty happy about the amount of rain we get here. And I still am, but now that I'm flying again, I do find it a bit annoying that I'm not finding it more favorable to flying. There have been a few missed opportunities due to actual working. Don't you hate it what that happens?

I traded in the 3 kittens for 2 of their siblings. These 2 are much easier to handle than the rambunctious 3 I did have. I'm able to let these 2 out of their big kennel and run around the deck and kitchen. They have taken to sleeping in the kitchen cabinet in the basket I usually take to the grocery store. So, I put one of these in their kennel as well. During the day when they aren't chasing each other across the deck, one can be found in the basket under the counter, and one in the basket in the kennel napping. One of Lucy's favorite pastimes is to give them both a good ear cleaning while they are napping in the baskets. A better ear cleaning surely could not be had anywhere else!

The chipper broke on Friday, the integrated coil is shorted out. Found one on eBay for $70 with shipping. Speaking of eBay, I'm really annoyed with them. When I sold my fuel injection system which I had on the Scout, I started bidding at $600. When I placed the auction, they indicated there was a like $0.40 insertion fee. What they did NOT disclose is that if it sells, it would be another $60 fee, yup, a full 10%. It's not like I started bidding at $5, they KNEW that if I sold it, it would be at least $60 more in fees since the opening bid was $600. I consider this to be unethical and misleading. Not sure I'll ever sell anything of real value on eBay again.

I'm going camping again soon in Waimanu Valley, this time with my friend Brenda from Honolulu. After the last hike in with a crazy heavy backpack, I decided to treat myself with some new lightweight camping equipment which I've ordered online. A 16' tarp and 2 break down light poles for rain or sun cover, 2 nice but light camping chairs, a 2.5" thick air mattress (2 lbs vs. the 8 lbs of the vinyl one I took last time), a "summer" sleeping bag (my other one was WAY too warm last time, and again 4lbs lighter), and a cheapo fishing rod and reel to hopefully catch some fish in the river. I also just ordered another same-same air mattress and bag since I figure if I want some future unknown girlfriend to go camping with me, it would probably be good to have the gear for both of us. I feel like that is being slightly optimistic, but you never know. I'm going to sew together a dog backpack for Lucy, so she can come along and carry her own food.

Today I took my first trailer load of garbage to the transfer station. Lots of misc stuff that needed to go away, old plastic roofing, various metal stuff, some decaying lumber, A/C system from the Scout, bag of concrete that had setup in the bag, etc. Nice to have a small lightweight registered trailer to use for that.

I used the bobcat to clear a small area crossing the wanna-be creek to the hut. I've tossed out some grass seed. This should allow me to get the riding mower back there vs. push mowing that still. Made a muddy mess out of the path to the hut though, but the grass should re-instate pretty quickly for the path.

The work trader is kinda-sorta working out. A bit iffy still. He's made these great piles of guavie trees to chip, but then doesn't do so great feeling out the chipper to make good progress (then of course it broke). Also, his diesel truck is broken, and he has no money to fix, so it sitting out here with maybe no prospect of running. But he does stay out in the hut and gone mostly on the weekends, so that is nice.

I bought a 2nd hand 100 gallon aquaponics setup to get going. Don is going out of town for a month again, so I'll look after his place, and harvest some starter talapia from his ponds. Gotta figure out what I will feed them initially. His place is always great for banana harvesting as well. I may borrow a few "keki" (Hawaiian for child) banana trees to finally get some going over here.

Guess that's about it for now.

Roomies

2011-08-08T21:54:00.001-10:00

I have a new last minute work trader. He's doing OK, and staying to himself mostly out in the hut. He did break the chainsaw by trying to forcibly remove it from a bind in a tree. Right after I told him he needed to get it unbound first or he'd break it. The way things are made these days, I don't think it's fixable, so he may need to work off some hours to pay for it.

I also am fostering 3 Siamese kittens, and probably getting 2 more tomorrow. Just until they are old enough to adopt out. Messy little buggers, but then 3 of them are in a small space. I don't trust them in my container house to not poop or pee somewhere they aren't supposed to. Maybe in a week or so. Pretty cute guys.

I went camping last Friday until today with the local Sierra Club to Waimanu Valley. We hiked into Waipio Valley, stayed the night Friday, then up early and up the "Z" trail in and out of valleys for 9 miles. It's pretty intense hiking, and I took a 6" thick air mattress and 4 D batteries in the inflator. My pack was surely 60lbs. I opted for the non-cooking mode since we'd be back on Monday. 3 cans of Chili & Soup, lots of pecans and almonds, granola bars, and 5 single servings of yogurt (they will last a few days without refrig) and some bananas. The valley is super beautiful. When we arrived, there were 2 waterfalls going, not very big. Then it rained Saturday night, and by morning, there were 11 waterfalls visible. Pretty incredible. In both Waipio and Waimanu there are river crossings (carry your pack over your head in some cases). Clay and Aaron were also along, and Aaron and I swam in the river quite a bit. Surprisingly nobody else from the camp sites was. A few nudie campers in the ocean, but the waves were intense, and a large rounded rock (5-10lbs each) beach with zero sand made for a inhospitable surf for me anyway. There are sadly too many helicopters going in and out, those darn tourists paying to see the waterfalls the non-physical exertion way. Aaron and I did hike out to the largest and closest waterfall, man it was some intense water. These are some of the tallest waterfalls on earth, although they don't make the entire fall in one go, some with a few levels to them. All of the group except for Aaron and I headed out Sunday morning, to stay on top of the valley since it was looking rainy that day (at 9am). I figured whether we were on top, or in the valley, we'd be getting rained on either way, so why go up and for sure get wet, take down and set up the tent in the rain? They were also nervous about the river crossing which dumps into the ocean, however even though it had raised the water level by probably 18" over night, it was still easily passable (we tested this theory several times while swimming around). Some must have's for next trip in... a BIG tarp which we can set up so that everyone can get out of the rain and still be social vs. inside our respective tents. Light weight fishing gear for maybe some fresh dinner. Camp chair since rocks hurt my butt. Still the comfy 6" air mattress, that was worth it, maybe a lighter hand pump though. I did do some video shorts and put them all together, you can see that on the video site linked top left of this page. And a few pics here. My friend Brenda and I are looking at going weekend of Sept 2nd, but we need to talk about gear and the intensity of the hike and such. Today would have been a glorious day there in the valley. The sun was out, the sky just patchy clouds, and all those waterfalls. We were on the trail out at 7:30am, and back in Waipio at 12:15. Aaron and I were moving along pretty quickly passing other hikers even, but never caught up with the rest of the Sierra Club group. Not that we actually needed to. Since Clay headed out with them the day before, he hitched a ride up out of Waipio Valley, and drove my 4x4 down to pick us up. That last hike out of Waipio on the road is a miserable stretch that we were happy to not have to do.

First view of the falls on the hike in.

My campsite/tent.

Bored in the tent while it's raining.

Lots of water falls

Finally Airborne

2011-07-24T15:02:00.000-10:00

This morning at 6:30am, I finally got back into the air. The breeze was coming down from the mountains, opposite the way I originally thought I'd be using my runway. Launched on first attempt. Today I decided to "go somewhere", so I headed for the ocean, about 8 miles as the powered paraglider flies. I flew over Shipman beach which I have hiked to a few times. It was really nice. Then back over Keaau town. Over 20 miles total distance. The flying machine did great, no issues at all.

I also took a short 1 minute video flying over my place (link to videos top left).

While I was reviewing that video later, I realized that I had not yet put up my Bolivia/Peru videos, so I've posted like 4 videos from that as well.

Server data migration is going well, at least I think. I may be making the move tonight for the websites server. The real test is an hour after I'm done when I can start testing things, and see if they are working correctly. If this goes well, then one down, one to go. The configuration is going much better than the last time I tried, and failed to migrate the servers. The company I used then I believe was trying to get me to upgrade to their very much more expensive support package. Usually, like this time, the server come pre-setup with the basics to get you going, but not the previous time. Anywho, it's going well, and I may have the email server also migrated this week.

I went down to Pahoa Farmers Market earlier, and now I'm taking a break from relocating rocks from the end of the container house to the ever growing pile in front. I need to contour the area under the old rock pile so that grass can mow there so I can just mow it vs. weed whacking around the pile of rocks. Lots of little projects always to do. Yes, I know, very exciting, moving rocks.

Mid July

2011-07-17T17:57:00.000-10:00

Let's see... I did do the aluminum TIG welding on the flying machine frame, and it looks great and very solid. We've been having some weather, so I have yet to go up again, but am looking forward to it.

I had a 3 night couch surfer, Moon Jean from the Seattle area (although grew up in Taiwan). We went snorkeling and to warm ponds. Then Brenda from Honolulu came over for a long weekend. We went on the waterfall hike in Waipio Valley, and she did a some quick surfing there as well. There was the most water I've seen yet coming over the falls. I usually swim a bit in the bond below the falls, but not this time.

My "waterproof" cell phone (to 3 feet) has proven to not be so waterproof. As *soon* as it was in the water while snorkeling, it filled up with water (I got a few fishie pics anyway). Then the replacement cell phone also got swamped on the waterfall hike. The replacement for that one survived 10 minutes at the bottom of my deepest cooking pot, so maybe this one is a keeper. Now, if I can just figure out how to get the pics from the phone to the computer (I intentionally don't have email or txt msg. service on it).

I bought a truck bed & frame converted to trailer off Craig's List for a whopping $300. Bargain. I'll use this to take garbage and junk to the transfer station, for materials runs for projects, for moving lots of wood chips around the property, etc. etc. Maybe I'll clear up the junked cars and garbage on my neighbor properties where my runway is. As if I need more to do.

I have Lucy's replacement electric fence collar, we are both happier since she cannot go visit the neighbors any more. OK, so I'm happier about it than she is.

I'm getting 2 new servers this week, and will be migrating the configuration & data from the existing 2 servers over. This is huge work to get it done, and done in a way so that nobody is "down". The server company is giving me a $500 credit since they initiated the move sorta as an incentive to do this now. I had been thinking about needing to do this lately. I usually have done this every 2 years, but this time I think it was 4 years. Same money I am paying now for the servers, just probably 4x-10x faster. All 64 bit systems, hopefully no compatibility issues there.

I've relisted the remaining Scout parts on Craig's List and have gotten some interest. I had just thought about a "hi lift" jack that I had not listed, but needed to since I don't use it (I had tried to use this to pull the guavie trees up before the bobcat showed up). Then out of the blue in less than 24 hours, a guy who came here any looked at some Scout parts a week before calls and asks if I have one for sale. It's under the house not visible, so no way he had seen it before. Weird enough, and it's gone. Maybe I'll try just thinking about selling things and wait for people to call me. I could charge people and do this as a service.

Had dinner over at Dave and Margie's last night along with Lisa. Nice visit, it's been a while since they were off island then I was in S. America for 3 weeks.

I think I'm headed into Hilo to the $1 movie to see Poppers Penguins here in a few. Beautiful day today!

Home is where your dog is

2011-06-30T18:13:00.000-10:00

Well, I don't think I could be happier to be home. The trip was actually great, even though I did some bitching about it here on the blog. Everything here is fine, Lucy is happy and healthy, the house and property are fine. Not much has changed, but then it's only been just over 3 weeks. It seemed like I was gone months.

The water jar is 100% full and was overflowing this morning. RE: sand filter overflow; I think maybe during the heavy rains that it was not the sand filter that wasn't fast enough, but perhaps the jar was full, and I have plastic wrap over the overflow (no screen installed there yet), and so it couldn't overflow the actual tank fast enough (only 1" pipe for air vent), and so backed up all the way to the sand filter... Once the proper overflow height is set and screen installed, water will overflow at an appropriate time and amount (ideally I'll divert to the drain vs. filtering water I don't need). I'll of course get to test this theory sometime soon at the next crazy hard rain. The slightly domed tank cover is cracked. I didn't exactly give it time to harden before installing (28 days for concrete to fully harden), and added no metal at all. I was impressed that the 1/2" thick cement was holding so well. Almost so well it turns out. Doesn't take much to make a new one, so I'll do that, and probably add a couple of metal wire rings to it.

Greenhouse was exploding with plants. Those I planted just before I left are doing great, but were being overwhelmed by weeds which I pulled today. Tomatoes are on the outside plants, but those plants look pretty bad (need anti-bug Neem sprayings 2x weekly) even though the tomatoes look great.

Last night when I got in bed after 22 hours travel time, and 28 hours awake time (maybe a few hours plane napping in there), I awoke this morning at sunrise (as always) to the birds chirping away. I had not moved at all during the night. Usually I'll turn over, adjust something...

Don't think I'll be making any trips anywhere any time soon.

Almost Homebound

2011-06-27T11:03:00.000-10:00

Still in Cusco... Saturday was the religious part of the festival, where is where I pick up from the last blog entry. Sunday, Lisa and Edgar went up the hill on the outskirts of town to the "mystical" part of the festival. This was a performers/spectators type event. There was a parade of sorts starting in town, with many bands, marching through town, then up the hillside roads to "sexy woman" (pronounced) historic location. I opted to not participate in this days events, too many people. Lisa has some great stories about getting up there, and in just sitting and watching and being handed some random baby, and some random tamale. At some point I discovered it was telecast live, so I was able to watch some of the proceedings. I stayed at the hostel most of the day, not really feeling so great. Major runny nose and some coughing. I watched some american movies dubbed in espanol.

Met up with Lisa Monday at Jack's for breakfast. She picked up a cool double stringed small guitar type instrument, and a set of bamboo pipes/flute. Both very nice. We basically just hung out in town, went by the locals market. Did some internet at the hostel. I've decided that there must be something at this hostel I am allergic to. On our outings, my nose is still stuffy, but not runny. We had decided to switch hostels before, so that will be in the morning. Since it's a day later now, I can say that this turned out to be true.

We are both pretty much ready to be back in Hawaii. Just biding our time. Today, we went by the local market again, and Lisa picked up more xmas gifts and other woven items. I picked up some alpaca hand woven socks for wintertime slippers. Also some pants which are sorta like scrubs or less baggy yoga pants. Things here are very inexpensive compared to what they sell for in the US. Except for Pecans, same price as home.

Tonight I pick up some custom made clog type slippers which I'm hopeful will be as I've envisioned. They are different than anything they usually make, and the translation from ordering with daughter might not make it back from dad who makes them... As long as they fit, I'll be happy.

The wi-fi internet at the party hostel totally sucks. Didn't work the last time we stayed here, and definitely not this time either. So, I caught the Irish owner Liam, and asked if I could have a go with the 2 wireless routers. Now my 2 nights stay are comp'ed, maybe a round of drinks as well... I'm just happy I can check my email and use skype again.

Tomorrow the plan is to shower, dress in the last bit of clean clothes, have "pan" for breakfast (Joy! not!), then catch the taxi to the a-port. 11 am flight to Lima, 12 hour layover, then on to LA, then Maui, then Oahu, then finally Hilo at 5pm. SO READY to be home!

Cusco & Machu Pichu

2011-06-23T12:23:00.000-10:00

I much enjoyed my flight to Cusco vs. the 11 hour bus ride. Whitney warned me that the cabbies would try to get 40 soles from me to get from the airport to their hotel (a 5 star hotel). I finally got a taxi for 10 soles. I spent the morning walking around, and hanging out in the lobby of the hotel using internet to do some work before Whitney and Mom arrived from their adventure up to Machu Pichu.

Dinner was at a really great place, the type of excellent food you'd expect to find in any major city. I opted to split a Pisco Sour drink with Mom since I'd gotten a headache a few times after drinking at altitude. Then I had a grande tappas sampler, and a tappas plate of quinoa encrusted prawns. It was all really excellent.

Breakfast was at “Jack's”, and was the best breakfast I'd had so far on this trip, along with great coffee. We shortly met up with Lisa from her bus ride in from Arequipa, after her Colca Canyon adventure. Sounds like it was a great time.

We found the big “local” market, which was really awesome in it's diversity of food, fabrics, etc. I picked up some pecans & almonds, which are usual snack staples around my place in Hawaii.

Lunch was at another really great “fancy” place, I had the Burger Club, which had an egg, fried banana, carmelized onions, and french fries on it. It was really great. I ate the whole thing myself.

Lisa had already checked into the hostel, so it was my turn next. Another "Wild Rovers" hostel, which is if you recall from La Paz, the party place. This later proves to hold true here as well. We then dropped into the local Star Peru Airlines office, and bought our airline ticket to fly from Cusco to Lima when it's time to head home. We had planned a day in Lima, but now will fly in at noon on the 28th, and fly out at 5 minutes after midnight on the 29th. 12 hour layover. We might make a short trip while there into Lima. Next we needed to get our tickets for the train from Ollantantambo up to Aguas Calente (Machu Piccu) as this is the ONLY way to get to Machu Pichu. Turns out, the trains are almost ALL booked, and we barely get tickets up on the 9pm train on the way up, and the 5am train on the way back, which aligns with our hostel reservations by the skin of our necks. Note for travelers, get the train tickets first thing when you can. Also, the cheap train has windows in the ceiling just like the expensive cars, so don't go for the expensive seats (since I'm sitting in a cheap seat as I write this. Although at 10 pm, the windows in the roof don't improve the experience very much). That night at the hostel, Lisa and I partook of the 2 for one drink special in the bar several times, and had an order of french fries. When I leave the bar, Lisa is starting to play a drinking game some Brits have come up with. I do spend part of my time at the hostel trying to hunt down the hostel kitten. I finish my night with a hot shower

This AM, Lisa and I headed over to Jack's for breakfast since she had missed out the day before, and because I was being pushy. Then it's time to get checked out of party house, and find the 10 soles van for the 2 hour trip up to Ollantantambo, where we will pick up the train up to Aguas Calente, the town where we will crash for the night, then catch the bus up the hill to Machu Pichu site. Lots of transportation involved in seeing Machu Piccu. Bus, train, bus, hike. Our hostel will pick us up when we arrive at the train station at 11pm, then just crash for an early wake up, and on the bus at or before 6:30am.

The van drive into Ollantantambo was pretty nice. I could see if I did this again I might say a few nights in the smaller towns like Ollantantambo. It's nicer than the big cities like Cusco, not so rushed and noisy and polluted.

The three pics below are Ollantantambo. There are ruins in the mountains here, similar to Machu Pichu. We didn't take the hikes up to see them. This was a mistake since Machu Pichu is so incredibly crowded and expensive, and really, it's the same sort of stuff. The fitted stones in this little towns building, and narrow streets probably date to the same time (or nearly) as Machu Pichu.

The train trip went fine. Our hostel was not waiting for us when we arrived, but we did locate it, and crash for a 5 am wake up call to quickly get breakfast, and purchase our Pachu Pichu entry tickets, and the round trip bus ticket to get up the hill to the entrance.

Everyone watching the sun rise from the terraces.

I made a hike bass-ackwards from the typical up the Inka Trail around the valley to get a nice distant overall view.

It was a beautiful morning. This would be your view if you lived at Machu Pichu.

And, a parting shot.

Machu Pichu was very cool and all, but I personally enjoyed the hike around the valley more than the ruins. The ruins are very cool, and have some unique features that make them special from other ruins, however, considering the cost and extreme crowd, I would have rather just been hiking in nature. I would have liked to hiked the ruins at Ollantantambo (free I think, and waay less crowded). Even here in Cusco, you can see some really great examples of the incredible stone fitting of that time period.

Staying in Aguas Calente was very convenient for our visit to Machu Pichu, but the town has reached critical mass/saturation point for hostels and restaurants. They are incessantly trying to get your attention and your business every 20 feet (seriously). It's very annoying, and ruins any good experience that might be had if they would leave you alone. So, for ME, I'd say skip Machu Pichu unless you just need the T-Shirt that says you were there.

Up at 4:15am this time to catch the train, then to a crazy van ride back into Cusco, and checked into our new hostel. This one is a big old house with hardwood floors, and is pretty close to the party hostel we stayed at before. Lisa wants us to move over to the party hostel (it's a bit cheaper) for the rest of our stay. I've emailed them, but they have been booked up solid due to the festival, so no telling if that will happen or not.

Today in Cusco I've been laying low mostly, doing some work online, went for a walk to the main plaza with Lisa and her new friend Edgar, who was her Colca Canyon guide, where the festival is raging, tasted some Guinea Pig (traditional festival fare). Today was the Catholic day for the festival, tomorrow is the "Mystical" day of the festival. The crowds are humongous, and I'm not thrilled about that part. It does help that I am taller than 90% of the people here. I'm doubting that I will participate in the events tomorrow.

I assume the local market will be open tomorrow, so if anything I'll go there, and get more 100% cacao bars to take home ($1 each) and check things out more. The market is massive, and is definitely a local sorta thing with the occasional tourist.

Maybe I'll try Jack's for breakfast in the morning...

Arequipa

2011-06-18T07:33:00.000-10:00

So, I just updated the blog with the past week of travels, the complaints entry is actually from today, so it's out of order. I'm not emailing those updates, so go to my blog page if you want to read all that and see photos.

Yet another lengthy bus ride from Puno to Arequipa. We have been told it's a beautiful place. The bus ride itself is in fact a beautiful ride. We have the upper deck, first 2 seats with basically a direct view out a windshield, this proves to be a blessing for the view, and a curse as we bake. So, to close the drapes not to bake and miss the views, or to apply sunblock and remove most of our clothing? Our bus goes over one pass which is 4,500+ meters, or almost 15,000 ft. I'm really hoping for lower elevation since I think I'm feeling the effects of the 12,000+ elevation of Puno. It might also be the addition of the pollution. While in Peru few own a car here, they certainly make up for it with unmaintained/old vehicles belching out 10x their normal amount of pollution. There are zillions of private cabs here, all with passengers (locals mostly). So, it sometimes seems everyone does own a car, or perhaps one cabbie per family?

I've gotten sick again, this time for real (started last day in Puno). Pukes and Poops. Lisa said this is "Wes' Peruvian Diet". Been staying in bed mostly now in Arequipa. 3 days later, I am feeling better, and went out to get eggs and coffee for breakfast. I thought maybe that if they served cappuccino that would mean that they had a espresso machine, and hence real from the beans coffee. That was wishful thinking. Instant yet again. I'd almost kill for real coffee about now.

This city has some very historic and huge and architectural buildings and streets.

Seems like this city has a history to it unlike the other big cities so far. It may be in part due to the closeness of the local limestone quarry which has not run out in the probably 1,000+ years they have cutting these big limestone blocks out of the ground. The new local homes are often using the blocks for their fences vs. the typical terracotta bricks, so it must be cheap. There was also the largest cement factory I've ever seen on the way into town.

The plan was to be here one day, then head off to Cusco Canyon (2x as deep as Grand Canyon, where the Condors still live). But, I've decided to remain here in our comfortable hostel, and let Lisa make this excursion by herself. I hate to miss this part since it's more about nature, which I like better than cities and architecture... but I also don't want to keep moving along while sick and perhaps really be sick.

Rather than take the 12 hour overnight bus from Arequipa to Cuzco, I've decided to spend the $265 to fly 2 hours on Sunday morning, and meet Mom and Whitney as they return from Machu Pichu. I'll actually sneak into their crazy nice Monastery converted to hotel for 2 nights. Lisa will join us Monday morning after her bus ride, and Tuesday Lisa and I head up to Machu Piccu to our next hostel. After which, we will return to Cuzco hostel for like 5-6 days. I'm looking forward to being in one place for so long at this point. Cuzco will have their largest festival on June 24th while we are there. Should be fun.

Work has been OK so far. A bit delayed on some responses, but nobody having fits about it, so that is good. Lost a hosting client, gained a scheduling client...

I've heard from Rachel at home, things are OK there. Lucy is OK. I played with a local stray dog on a stop after La Paz, and have been missing her. Been raining allot at home, so maybe the new water jar is full. I did hear that the sand trough did overflow the sides one night in a hard rain. Guess I'll have to look into that and possible mitigation for the future. I'm SO looking forward to being able to have my veges and fruit again it's not even funny. And of course, real coffee.

Taquille Island

2011-06-18T06:06:00.006-10:00

We were a little bummed to be departing Isla Amatani at 8am, but the rest of the tour is not staying over on Taquille, So they need extra time there before heading back to Puno. The feedback from other on their host family experience varied, mostly good. The boat ride over was better. Mostly because it was so much shorter at 1 hour. They sure drive their boats slowly.

To get to the square on this island was a 45 minute hike, fairly steep. After hanging out there for a little while, we all went up to lunch where we had Trout, rice, very fresh veges, and pappas fritas. The fish was a bit small, especially after we saw the huge trout at Uros in their hole in their island with netting dropped in. But, it was good. Next we went down to the square again to check out the local wares.

This particular island is apparently know as having the finest woven goods in S.America. I ended up getting 2 wool vests, very nice indeed, both for 85 Sols or $28 USD. Which is really absurd since they harvested the wool from their sheep, spun the wool dyed it, tightened it, wove it, sewed it, etc. I couldn't see getting a classic Peruvian hat since I would never be able to wear it in Hawaii.

Local *important* guys wear this particular hat, single men a different one than married, singles also how you wear the hat means single: not looking at all, looking for date for tonight, or looking for marriage. Single women wear lighter colored tops than married (pink vs. red).
We tool a short hike up the hill, and just absorbed the sun and beauty.

Back to our host house where Lisa was able to take a short siesta.

Then back down to the square where Lisa gave away some of the things that she brought for the kids, Crayolas, pens, stuffed animals, etc. Our host family this time had dinner ready for us at 7pm, and we had asked to have dinner with them, but they thought better of it. Lisa gave their kids colored pencils and ink pens. They gave us a candle for our room. Which was nice otherwise we would probably just go to sleep at 8pm since it's so dark. But very nice that we got to just hang around on this island since other wise both would have seemed pretty rushed.

Cold Showers

2011-06-18T06:06:00.004-10:00

So, the cold water/no water problem persisted at our hostel in Puno. Bummer. So, rather than stay here again when we returned from our 2 island stay overs, we got Juan Chi (Chi as symbol, not letters), our Puno expert (island tour, bus company, and now hotel) to book us in a hotel that he recommends, 50 Sol or about $17 USD. Also nice that it is closer to the bus station for our departure to Arequipa the next day. We even got him to take our dirty laundry with him, so that when we check in, it will be done and waiting for us.

Saturday I think I managed to get a bug, although not a bad one since I was mostly better Monday. On Sunday we did walk around Puno the first half of the day to see the things they pointed out on the tourista maps. Mainly churches and squares, and one arch. We did find a really cool market where they have sub-divided it into genres, meat, veges, sundries, fabrics, etc. Also by prepared food types, smoothies, soups, meats, etc. it was pretty cool. We picked up some pan, tomato, onion, local cheese, cucumber and made ourselves sandwiches for lunch.

The last half of the day I spent in my bunk with a fever (and other symptoms). I did take some of the doxcyclene which I brought with me, so maybe that helped.

At 8am Juan Chi picked us up in Puno, and took us to the dock, and we first headed over to the floating islands of Oruro.

For more than 2 thousand years now the Oruro people have been making their own islands from the floating reeds native to the area. The reeds actually create their own floating dirt type bases, so in nature it appears the reed are rooted to the ground, when in fact they are not. So they cut the reed bases into blocks, and tie them together, then lay lots of layers of the reeds on top, and wa-la, you have an island. They make the houses as well from the reeds, and their boats (although nowadays they do use some lumber for the house frames and regular wooden boat.) Typically there are 8-10 families on each island, and each one has a Presidente who handles all the “issues” that come up. All families must work, and if a family is not working, then their part of the island is cut off, literally, and they are set afloat to find some other island, or to just create their own island (which I would bet is a lesson in what work really is). They fish and hunt ducks and other water fowl. They were raising some what looked like young storks on the island we visited which I'm sure were destined for the dinner table at some point. I really feel for this community, and while I can see that they must change in order to survive, I really hope they can hang onto who they were/are, and not become solely tourist attractions.

Unfortunately our boat has an valve cover oil leak, meaning that oil is dripping from the gasket onto the hot exhaust, which then smokes, and comes into the nice passenger compartment. I tried to spend most of my time on the roof or the back deck to not be breathing it (along with ½ the passengers) for the 3 hour boat ride to the first real island, Amatani. I did tell our english speaking boat tour person that this was really not a good thing, but he just told me basically that is the way it is. Somehow they just don't get that if the tourists are comfortable, that they will likely tip you something or more than if they are nearly gagging from the smoke. And, a valve cover gasket is like $12 USD, not like it's much.

Boat ride aside, it is beautiful here.

We were met on the shore of Amatani by lots of the local women in their distinctive dress, which the MEN actually sew for them.

Then it was a matter of matching up singles, doubles, triples with homes which have accommodation for that many. Not all locals ended up getting touristas to host. They are of course paid for this, and then have the opportunity to purchase the usually woven goods made by the family.

Our host family's home

We ate lunch (quinoa soup, then cheese and fresh veges) with our host family, then met in the square to take the hike to the top of this island. Fortunately they have rock stone paved the whole trail up to the top where we watched the sunset. Pretty chilly up there.

Each of the 10 communities on this island has an arch on each side of their community. We can see the snow capped mountain tops in the far distance. Then back down the hill and to the host home, where dinner awaited us.

They have planned a festival, where they dress up the touristas in their local garb, and have a dance. Lisa and our accidental German traveling partner since Puno went, but my stomach is not quite feeling OK (hasn't stopped me from eating though) so I didn't go. This island has about 4,000 inhabitants in 10 different communities, and each again has it's own Presidente. There are no police, no electricity unless they have a solar system, no internet, but they do have cell phone service. There is no crime or theft. The Presidente must be male, married, older, and his term is for one year. It does sound like a busy job being basically the moderator, police, court, planning dept, etc all for their community. They also have weekly Sunday community meetings where they discuss everything. We will be up for breakfast, then to the boat by 8am, to head over to Isla Taquile. Very short trip (few miles?), but we are told it's very different from this island. I think we Lisa and I are the only ones staying the night on Taquile, the other touristas are just visiting for an hour or two, then heading back to Puno.

Complaints

2011-06-18T06:04:00.000-10:00

First, let me just bi-ch and say that sometimes traveling sucks. Yes, I'm so lucky to be able to travel, to have the money, the time, the job that allows me to, etc, etc. But man it can suck. I don't think most people will really tell you that about traveling sometimes. It's all great pictures and interesting stories, etc. They don't mention the stifling pollution, the cold, the lack of non-instant coffee, the real likelihood that you will get sick vomiting and diarrhea for days. The transportation issues, the inability to eat any fresh veges or fruits (even peeled since a human may have touched them with unwashed hands), the lack of viable drinking water (I don't consider plastic bottles viable)... So, yes, I'm lucky to be able to travel to Bolivia and Peru, at the same time, for ME personally I'm not sure yet if it's worth it. I'll get back to you on that one. Then again, I do LIVE in Hawaii, living MY dream, so it's hard for me personally to want to go *anywhere* away from home. I don't feel like this makes me less cultured, less open minded (as many will say travel to other places cures), just I have traveled (I think Peru makes 25 countries), so maybe I've just been there, done that, and every day, even without reminders like now, I *very much* appreciate what I have.

Uyuni to Puno

2011-06-11T16:16:00.003-10:00

So, we managed to pull off our bus round the rosie well enough. We caught our overnight bus to Uyuni, and it was pretty miserable. It was very cold (no heat???), and the ride was very rough, partially due to the rough road. And, some exhaust fumes were getting inside when they stopped. So, no sleep over night for us. We booked our 7 hour tour of the salt straight away, and our tour operator helped us find a great local place for breakfast and coffee (remember that NOTHING is open before 10am.) Right after that, I went to the previous nights bus operators office, and got us a 70% refund for returning the ride home tickets. There was absolutely NO way we were going to put ourselves through that again. 8:30am we loaded up in the 4x4 with 4 from Argentina.

Salt flats tour guide

We started the tour with the Train Graveyard

Just before the salt flats is a little town, and this is a little close museum (before 10am), and all of these pictured building are made from cut salt bricks. You can get a better view of the bricks in the El Bano picture below.

Seems to be lots of pigs running around, and of course dogs as well.

Lovely experience was had here. Note the salt brick walls.

Salt brick building out ON the salt flats

Hand piled up salt for harvesting. This will be hand shoveled into trucks, and taken back to their town where they will dry and package it. I thought it was comforting to know that our salt might have had people driving and walking on it before packaging.

This is one of the islands in the salt flats. Not really an island since it's not surrounded by water, but a salt island no less.

Some of the building on the island, and Saguaro cacti which grow 1 cm. per year.
You can also get an idea of the size of the salt lake from the mountains in the distance. The island is covered in coral heads since it was once upon a time under water in a inland salt ocean.

A new friend. She can be a little hard to get along with sometimes.

Another good view from on the island. Mountains in the distance.

We also stopped off at some holes in the salt flats which were full of water, and salt crystals were growing. Lisa harvested some to bring home. The water table for the salt lake is essentially just a few inches below the surface of the salt. We were told the depth of the salt flats was 28 feet deep, and diameter is like 120km (76 miles) diameter. I think that diameter number is incorrect (low) as we drove for HOURS across the flats.
It was pretty cool, but we were READY to be salt free by the end of the day. Most tourists seem to take 2-3 day tours (maybe to justify the overnight bus rides?), but Lisa and I thought 7 hour tour was plenty enough. Then we located a local place and had some local beer and on site made pizza.
Then onto the much improved bus ride back to La Paz, where after locating some coffee and Pan: (we sat in the back corner)

onto another bus headed to Puno, Peru. We actually were out of La Paz pretty quickly which was nice. I hadn't seen too many trees so far. Eventually we were circumnavigating part of lake Titicaca, and this was really worth it. It's the largest and highest lake on earth this size (it's really, really huge). At one point we were directed to take our papers and off load the bus, and weren't really told why, or didn't understand (espanol), and what we eventually discovered was that after paying 1.5 bolivian ( about $0.25 USD), we hopped on a boat, and left our bus with our luggage behind, and crossed a probably 1/2 mile waterway. Surprisingly, shortly after we saw our bus getting a boat ride of it's own across the span. (pics from Lisa soon) I had 2 empanadas from a street vendor for about $0.40 USD each. The scenery was really beautiful. Almost all hillsides are trellised, big and small, mostly not used now, but just the thought that they did that by hand is incredible. The Bolivia/Peru immigration was pretty easy and quick, however we then had to wait 1.5 hours for the Peruvian Police to literally drop 2 chains across the road in front of our bus so that it could cross the border. I'm not sure why they were refusing to let the bus cross... odd, but they finally did. We spent a total of $143 USD each in Bolivia (5 days) which includes EVERYTHING, lodging, tons of transport, food, etc.

So far, we are not so impressed with Puno. So, we have also chosen to shorten our stay here by a day (after our boat trip to the floating islands and staying the night on 2 other islands with local families).

Tonight rather than go to the "tourist" block here in Puno, we came across a local place, and had a HUGE bowl of chicken soup for 3 Peruvian Sole, or $1 USD. On the way back to the hostel, we stopped by a Pan store (bakery) and picked up a ton of goodies for $3, which we have already consumed. Since we have been operating on 15-30 minute increments of sleep the past few days, we figure to not do anything really tomorrow here in Puno, just take it easy and rest, laundry, more Pan, and sleep. Hot showers too, but as I discovered tonight, that can be sorta hit and miss.

Bolivia Day 1 (3rd travel day)

2011-06-08T13:25:00.001-10:00

1 hour airtime Hilo to Honolulu
7 hours airtime Honolulu to Dallas/Ft Worth (meet mom, who leaves on separate flight to Miami)
2 hours 45 minutes Dallas to Miami
7 hours airtime Miami to La Paz, Bolivia. (same flight with Mom)
Almost 18 hours in the air...

Arrival in La Paz, don't believe the Bolivian Consulate website as to what you must bring to enter the country. Not that you should leave anything behind, but don't be upset if they don't ask you for those items. Pay the $135 entry fee. Get the passport sticker. See the next guy, get the stamp. See the next guy, give him the green sheet which he will stamp and give you a stub, see the next guy and give him the importation papers. Your $135 USD cash must NOT have a single teensy flaw, or they will not accept it from you. My guess is that they don't expect those USD's to ever leave the country, and so new money might have a longer life span?

Since we arrived at 5:30 am, we exited the a-port just in time for sunrise over the mountains. Awesome. Driving through El Alto section of town of La Paz, I'm reminded a bit of some of the areas I've seen of Mexico, except here they are trying to cover every square inch of land with a building. Virtually all are terra-cotta hollow brick construction, usually 2-4 stories, metal or tile roofs.

I'm not sure if I've see a single personal automobile yet. Lots and lots of mini-van taxis with "callers" trying to entice you into their particular van. the callers are passengers who get kick backs for packing them-you in. There is not an intercity bus system, but many, many private "cama bus" companies running lots of routes inter country. Cama buses are the modern, double decker, with bathroom and a blanket provided.

The city is bustling with activity, but not till after 10am. Almost no stores or anything else is open before then. We walked over to the witches market, before 10am, so not too busy. Then most take a siesta, and, I guess are open late (long day, not going out tonight). The locals, an estimated 2.5 million of them, are a myriad of traditional dress and western current stylish. Virtually everyone speaks Spanish and most we communicated with knew a few words of English.

We've tried the local Coca candy and Coca tea. Seems to be a local way to help with any altitude sickness. No discernible effects from either at all. The coffee is very good. Lots of walking today into Witches Market, around town in general, finding the bus station, etc.

witches market

Mummy embryonic Lama's are apparently good luck for things like burying under your home foundation. Pretty gross really.

The hostel is great, within walking distance of everything we care about, very clean, and hold at least 50 people. Our room has 3 bunks sets, and so far appears it might be only Lisa and I tonight.

We've already altered our plans, and will be taking it easy and exploring the city more Thursday, then at 7pm, we hop a bus to Uyuni arriving at 7am. We will locate a tour operator there for the day and check out the salt flats, then back on the bus at 8pm, overnight again to arrive at 7am on Saturday back in LaPaz, where we will hop a bus @ 8am and head to Puno, Peru where our next hostel is, arriving at 3:30pm.

View from Whitney's and Mom's :La Paz Hotel.

Typical electical system for La Paz

Street our hostel was on.

cool building in La Paz

Many building are falling apart.

Below, pictures from the central square, just a few blocks from our hostel.

presidential palace

A non-typical local vendor with fresh stuff. Most sell gum, candy, sodas, etc.

Lots of pigeons in the central square where vendors sell feed for them for the mostly locals to "play" and be covered in them.

Fortunately no pigeon poop incidents occurred during the taking of these photos.

This local guy made a kids toy, a car/train withworking wheels, etc all from used 2 liter soda bottles. We bought it from him for 10 Bol ($1.30), and went back to the square where we gave to a kid we had fun playing with (see videos - may not be posted till after June 30th).

Thought this was a cute lost dog poster, if you see Nacho, please return him.

Water is Water

2011-06-04T20:25:00.000-10:00

This is what it looks like with 1,000 lbs of sand in it! Just a little bit heavy. Guess I won't be painting behind this thing anytime soon. I ended up getting 500 lbs of size 30 sand, then 500 lbs of size 20. 30 is half the size of 20, so better filtration. The water goes through the 20 first, then the 30 last. I was not aware that 30 was even available here. The second pic is the initial water I poured through the sand filter, and the resulting sand dust. After a whole lot of pouring water through, and some fresh rain filtering through, it was very nearly clear-clear, so I connected it to the water jar at that point. So, basically the water system is complete! I'll check the water quality in about 6 months, and see if I can eliminate the disposable media water filters, and not likely, but possibly the UV sanitizer ($8 monthly electricity + $80 annually bulb). If it can be entirely sustainable, that would be ideal of course.

I now have some free space on my deck where the previous 2 water barrels sat. And 2 empty water barrels to store probably under the deck somewhere until I can come up with a new use for them, or sell them off.

Still have yet to have a really hard downpour since connecting the sand filter. I'd like to see it at max rain input to see if it can filter fast enough, or if it would overflow. I'm betting it cannot rain so hard/fast to back it up.

Fun stuff. One more project DONE.

What's next...? New shower, Talapia Tanks, Murphy Bed, Paint inside/out, inside middle divider/doors... so many choices still. Since I have the knack for the TIG welder now, I'll start by fixing the flying machine frame and take a break and do some flying about.

Water System

2011-05-29T21:01:00.000-10:00

Just an update with some pics. The water jar is done-done, and the lid is on and sealed. Looks pretty nice. I did add a air vent to the top of the lid since its pretty much air tight, and that would make it impossible to get water into and out of the tank. I used 4, 90 degree corners basically making a 360 degree set of corners, and I painted the inside and outside of the pipe with black paint so that no light will be transmitted through the pipe walls or though the pipe itself. I also place screening across the pipe on both ends to prevent any insect access. The tall pipe to the left will be the over flow, which will be cut off at an appropriate height later, along with a bunch of corners and screen again to avoid light and insects, but allow overflow water.

And here below, you can see the completed sand filter. You can see in the far end, the support bars which will hold up the screen (removed for view), as you can see in the close end, then there will be another set of screens on top so that the water doesn't wash around the sand, and to screen out the "big" stuff before the sand. Basically the sand will have screens below and above. The water enters the close end where you can see the white plastic pipe.

And, here it is mounted to the end of the container. It should look slightly lower on the right side than the left since I specifically mounted it that way so that the water would all run to the right end and out the pipe to the water jar (not connected in this pic). Most likely I'll redo the water board (filters and pump), and it may remain mounted in this same spot, and it will be all hard-piped (vs. food grade water hoses).

All of the plastic water supply pipes before and after the pump will be painted black as to prevent any light penetration. Any light at all will allow algae to grow. Except of course in the UV light sterilizer, that zaps all the living stuff. I cannot get filter sand until Tues/Weds this week, but once I do, I'll run all the rain through it for a few days into the water barrels on the deck to run off any sand dust first. Then direct it all into the water jar.

And, here is a Cuc from the green house. I let this one sit on the vine a while too long so it would be bigger and more mature and then I can use it for seeds for the next round of them. There are lots of them on the vines now. Still not one iota of insect damage in the green house. I do have some powdery mildew on the leaves of the cuc's, but that can be mostly controlled by spraying some neem oil on them.

Saturday Projects

2011-05-21T23:11:00.000-10:00

Got lots done today. Completed the neck of the water jar, filled in a few spots inside, and formed a 1/2" thick, 36" diameter cement top for the water jar in the satellite dish. Hopefully it will be light enough for me to be able to lift up and place. Not sure how breakable it will be since it's so thin. Doesn't have to do anything but keep the sun and rain out. I'll use a foam seal around the top lip.

Then I hooked up the washer machine, kitchen sink, and rain gutter over flow to a drain system which takes all of that out to the "creek". No more pails by the sink to be dumped. This was 65' of 3" pipe, with 25' of it trenched and buried going out to the creek.

I also trenched from the water jar to under the house, this will be the water coming into the jar from the sand filter. I'm just using a 2" pipe on that one. Most likely I'll get that one done Sunday. At the lowest point in this pipe is where I will have the tap where I'll draw off water for use. The point being that I would drain the entire system of every drop of water at some point. So all water in storage is usable.

I still need to complete the welding on the sand filter, and weld it's support brackets to the container. Mom picked up the 40x40 stainless screen in Toronto, and postal mailed it Friday. This will go under and over the sand once set into window screen frames. Photos will make this much more clear as to how that works.

On the water jar, I still need to do a last slurry coat inside, which is like rubbing it with cement mud to fill in any crevices. I also need to get a propane torch, and pre-torch the inside walls as there are some spots where the pallet stretch wrap is stuck in the cement, and that will melt/burn it out for optimal slurry adhesion.

Since I've returned Dave's water bladder, while doing all this, I have to be sure that I am still able to catch water in my 2 barrels.

Great progress.

Nickle Tour Video

2011-05-16T20:24:00.001-10:00

I just posted up a walking tour of my place on my video site:
http://www.Vimeo.com/HawaiiWes/

Cooked up a whole Talapia on the grill tonight... yum. Looking forward to having my own here and available for fishing for dinner.

Today is Today

2011-05-15T22:42:00.000-10:00

I've been working on welding up the sand filter box. Finally got the TIG welder out, and am learning how to use that. Still really bad in 90 degree corners. I tried to weld the threaded outlet flange onto the bottom, and made a big mess, so I used the MIG welder to do it up correctly. But, the TIG is coming along. I had to weld 24, 1/4" stainless rods horizontally into the 14" wide by 17" deep, by 8 foot long trough. I drilled holes through the walls so that I could just weld them up from the outside. At first it was tough going. Then I figured out that if you just give it some gas (it has a foot pedal which controls the amount of power/heat), and get the melted pool of metal going quickly... then you are sorta pushing that melted puddle along. Anyway, the side toward the container doesn't look so pretty (practice side), while the side that you will see looks much nicer. I'm actually thinking this will be done here in the next couple of days. Which means I need to wrap up the last bit of cement work on the water jar, and get some piping going. I've been looking for a rain water diverter valve, so that once the water jar is full, you can simply divert the water to the drain out to the creek (which still does not exist yet either). No reason to filter all that excess water. I haven't been so impressed with what is commercially available so far. But in brainstorming, I think I have come up with a great design which will work really well. Part of the issue is that it needs to work on a horizontal drain pipe, vs. the typical vertical. Pretty simple. So the water runs into a "T" pipe from the top right, and there is an inside sleeve, which has a hole in it. If the sleeve is rotated so that the hole lines up with the vertical/down part of the "T", then it is sent down the drain. If you rotate the sleeve, it covers the hole, and the water runs through and into the sand filter box. There would be a knob which slides in a slot which is attached to the inside sleeve to turn it. There might could even be a little dam inside on the same side as the hole so that when the hole is aligned, the dam helps prevent any overshoot... How is it that I'm forever coming up with things to make? I guess though I like making things, so that's good.

I just ate the first cucumber from the green house today. More on the way. Kale is looking good as well. I think the nearby trees have sucked all the nutrients I added to the closest bed out. The things in that bed aren't really doing anything, while the newly supplemented & worked side is going off.

WWOOFer Clint has been cutting down trees and chipping allot. The property is REALLY opening up dramatically. It's a bit of a mess currently, but once cleaned up, and probably grass started, it will be really nice. It's very wavy with ups and downs. If Clint was staying (departing this week), I think it would be pretty soon that the junk trees between the container and hut would be gone too. Those will have to wait until I get back from Peru. I will at some point be relocating the hut I think to a new location. The new water tank holder attached to the side of the hut is doing well.

The cement Talapia tank form is about ready for assembly, but I'll leave it apart until after the trip since I have enough other projects to keep me busy between now and when I depart. Easier and smaller storage in the current state.

Work is going OK. I have some programming I need to get cranked out this week if at all possible. Thursday will be Mauna Kea for high altitude time again. We've missed the past 2 weeks due to snow and ice storms on on top, and both Lisa and I have been pretty busy in general with our own schedules and stuff.

New Stuff

2011-05-06T20:29:00.000-10:00

I've given my WWOOFer Clint 2 weeks notice... I need my space back. In the future, if I do that again, the hut will be set up with it's own kitchen (like it was when I lived in it for a year). Clint has made some great progress on the tree cutting and chipping, so it was nice to have him here. I must say I'm ready though.

The Bolivia & Peru trip planning is coming together. Mom will fly into Dallas while Lisa and I are on layover, then we all go to Miami, then on to La Paz, Bolivia. Our schedule is looking like:

Arrival Day 7am, get settled in, adjust to altitude (12k ft)
Day 2: Cloud Forest (sea level)
Day 3: Tiwanaco (12 k ft)
Day 4: Salt Flats
Day 5: travel from La Paz to Puno, Peru; Immigration, etc.
Day 6: Lago Titicaca from Puno
Day 7: Go to Isla Taquille, then to Amantani (stay over)
Day 8: Back to Puno
Day 9: Arequipa
Day 10: Cocola Canyon (2x deep as Grand Can., Condors, etc)
Day 11: same
Day 12: return to Arequipa, maybe all the way to Cusco
Day 13: Augas Calente near Machu Picchu
Day 14: Machu Picchu
Day 15: Cusco (day trip)
Day 16: Cusco Festival
Day 17: Cusco (day trip)
Day 18: Cusco (day trip)
Day 19: Cusco, travel to Lima, maybe by plane
Day 20: Lima
Day 21: Fly home

We've managed to book hostels the whole way for on average $10 per night which includes breakfast, internet, hot showers, locking lockers in the room, etc. I bought a light down coat just for this occasion. Lisa and I are both taking only 1 backpack each, which is small enough to be carry on luggage. No second bags at all. I've bought a mini-laptop for work, so that I can actually work if I need to. Hopefully mostly just emails as needed. I have a friend staying at my place while I'm gone to look after things and take care of Lucinda.

Today the water catchment stand for the Hut collapsed from wood rot. It's basically been wet now for 4 years. It was really just holding 2, 44 gallon trash cans (about 600 lbs of water) and a sink. I added on a new 1 barrel stand which is attached to the hut itself. It will need the ability to divert water manually once the barrel is full so that it doesn't constantly overflow the barrel and splash on the hut all the time. I think I have that one figured out, just it's not perfect since it requires manual diverting when needed. But since it will return to the lighter duty of guest cottage, that should be fine.

The fix on the hole in the bottom of the water bladder is doing well, and it's more full now than ever before, it's been raining ALLOT the past 3 days, filling the lakes on the road up to about 2 feet deep one day. I hope to be welding in short order on the sand filter box and be using the water jar very soon.

Lisa had the gang over to her place for Cinco de Mayo. It seemed funny that there were no mentions of this on the radio, or parties at bars, etc. We all made tamales, and had those and chlles verdes, and enchiladas and of course Margaritas.

Project Central

2011-04-29T21:19:00.000-10:00

Projects abound lately.
The water jar is still not quite completed.
I've been working on the concrete form for the Talapia fish tanks, the outer form is almost done, and the wood panels for the inner form are cut out, ready for assembly.
I picked up the stainless steel for the sand water filter which will be bolted to the end of the container. I may get to welding all that together this weekend.

A tree limb fell onto the tree chipper (of it's own accord), and broke off the cast iron exhaust manifold. (Um... pretty sure there is some irony there) The supplier in Honolulu wanted $500, but would give me a bargain at $350. Two places on the mainland quoted me $210. Keeping in mind that this thing is like only 5 lbs of cast iron, that is exorbitant. So, I figured I cannot break it any more than it already is (4 pieces), I'd try welding cast iron back together. I had read in my online research that perhaps stainless steel welding would do best. As well, either "cold" or "hot" weld it, meaning get the whole thing red hot, then weld, or, leave it room temp, and do very small welds letting it cool off fully in between go's. The reason for this is that the cast iron and steel welds will cool at very different temps, and the steel welds will "shrink" some. If not done correctly, you will hear a "tinkling", which would be tiny cracks forming in the cast iron piece, and it could possibly break more from an incorrect weld than it was before. Anyway, it's back on the chipper, and is doing fine. I did order 3 new seals, at $1.70 each.

We have all sorts of stuff going in the greenhouse, the cucumber plant is for sure in the lead, and spiraling up the trellis. Green beans are second, and some volunteer tomatoes are third. Although I don't think we will get any tomatoes in the green house since it's so well screened in (no pollination of flowers). Once the other plants catch up some, I'll post some pics. We have been watering with the kitchen grey water, and that has been working really well. It's been pretty dry overall lately. I think the water bladder has developed a leak in the bottom, so we need to get the sand filter and water jar done ASAP.

Projects

2011-04-19T21:14:00.000-10:00

Lisa and I went again last Thursday up Manua Kea for our high altitude training... not much snow left this week. Took Lucy along, she didn't like walking on the snow, but did like eating it. I think this week we will probably park at the visitors building at 9,500 ft, and hike up as high as we can or have time to do.

Last Weds Lisa and I also went to a Bollywood movie showing at the University. They had a little pre-presentation about social issues, etc. There is another this Weds I think we may also go to.

Today Lisa dropped by to pick up a rack of banana's that I harvested from Don's property while he and his wife are in Vegas. While Lisa was here, I also handed off 4 hens. I had just gotten 2 more last week from someone, so I only have 2 left now. These darn hens are just too annoying, and driving me crazy with their harassment trying to get me to feed them. Not even a few gunshots into the ground seems to help them understand that they don't want to be doing that. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd just cook one up for dinner each night until the problem was no more. Lisa has a coop & hen house where they will live. I'll catch the other 2 in the next few days and also deliver them to Lisa. Guess I'm done with hens until maybe one day I'll build a coop for them, and just feed them vs. free range. Or maybe just let Lisa have them, and bargain for eggs...

Things have been going really well with my WWOOFer, Clint. He's been making great progress on the tree clearing and chipping. It's really looking great and amazing. He found a Lilicoi vine with probably 30' runners. We will try not to damage it, and set up a fence just for it to take over. It has some fruit on it already. Clint just had me order him a bicycle engine kit for his bike. It's a little 48cc motor setup so that he can motor around on the bicycle faster and easier. It gets up to 150mpg.

I just launched a new "dashboard" for my volunteer software admin area. It is much easier to use than previously, getting around from tool to tool, and finding what you need. Or at least I think it is. It also incorporates a FAQ for each tool, and a program updates section, etc. I'm hoping to get some feedback on it soon. This was a very much needed rework.

I had an idea recently about using broken big chest freezers (like you might have in the garage), and taking off the lid, and using them for big fish tanks. The idea being to put Tallapia in them, and then float the plants on top, make it an Aquaponics system. The fish "stuff" feeds the plants, and by the plants consuming the fish stuff, they clean the water. And the vegetables LOVE it. You can just float trays on top, with the root dangling, but with screens around the roots so that the fish don't eat too much of them. For food for the fish, I'm going to try putting a bug zapper light over the tanks at night to attract in the bugs, who will ideally fall into the water, feeding the fish (no zapper part). Also a source for free food is to harvest the Coqui frogs (abundance of those), and chop those up and feed them to the fishies. I will have to have a bubbler for air, and I'm thinking that maybe I can have a solar panel running the bubbler in the daytime, and maybe at night they don't need it? With the recent foray into ferro cement water tanks, I've designed a octagonal mold so that Clint and I can literally pour in cement (with fiberglass for strength). The vessel would be literally 1 piece of cement, basically 4' diameter, and 4' tall, 1" thick walls. So, since those freezers are hard to come by (and just rot), I'm thinking I'll make 4 of these, and connect them all together with 4" pvc pipes to make one tank so the fish can go round and round. So, another sorta cool project. Don has a table saw at his place, so can make use of that as well (he previously said that would be fine).

I picked up a all stainless steel propane BBQ table top grill at Costco for only $100. The all stainless thing is very important here as everything rusts very quickly. Even those $800+ grills they sell are falling apart in a year. They are all regular metal in the stands and internals, only the "pretty" areas are stainless on those. This one is 100% stainless. I was surprised to find this at what I think is an very reasonable price.

I have yet to use the TIG welder still, so flying machine frame still not fixed unfortunately.

I also need to be working on the fast sand filter for the new water tank... will be TIG welding that as well.

Lots of fun projects to be had around here...

Snowed today

2011-04-07T20:05:00.000-10:00

Nope, not April Fools. I am in Hawaii, and it snowed on me today. Lisa and I are preparing for the Bolivia/Peru trip, and so visited the top of Manua Kea, and it's 14,000 ft high. There was snow on the ground already, but it really felt special to actually be in a significant snow shower. We walked probably 1.5 miles up and down hills. Machu Pechu is at 14,000 ft, so it would be nice if we can just cruise around already mostly acclimated to the altitude. It's also looking like Mom will also join us on the trip. It's going to be really awesome.

Water jar not quite finished yet. Still the inside coat to do. Sortof waiting till the portland cement chemical burn I have on my one finger heals, which is about now. (Hands in wet gloves handling portland for 2 days) Also, been raining allot. So, very soon.

Water Jar

2011-03-28T09:17:00.003-10:00

Wow, this water jar thing is some work. Who's idea was this anyway?

So, after the first coat, the next step was to wrap it in steel wire for strength. In this case I used "barbless wire", the same wire used for barbed wire without the barbs. I set 6 vertical pieces, then tack welded the wire to those as I went around to hold them in place.

Below, after the final outside coat of ferrocement. I'll wait about 5 days for curing, then climb inside and remove the metal framing, then do the final inside coat of ferrocement. This final outside coat took about 12 hours to do. I'm pretty sore this AM from squatting down to the ground to load the trowel up from the board surely a thousand or more times, and arms from then forcibly smearing it on, then smoothing with the previously just added material. WWOOFer Clint used the mixer to keep me going, and loaded up the board.

But, overall so far, I'm really happy with the results, at least it looks beautiful. We will see about the water holding capability before too long.

Then I have planned to make like 2 more of these...

A few pics

2011-03-26T11:38:00.000-10:00

1st coat of ferrocement is complete. It's already extremely hard even though it's about 1" thick.

Water bladder on the left, Skidsteer with a bucket of sand, cement mixer. Water jar under cover...

Lucy...

Water, Water, Water

2011-03-24T21:08:00.001-10:00

Up to at least 15 rats total now. Lucy is turning out to be a ratter herself, and I've encouraged that behavior. Seems like maybe they are almost all under control now...

Looks like it's finally, finally time for water catchment tanks. I built the base, and welded together the frame over a year ago now, and now finally it's come time to build one. In the example water jar directions, they covered the jar in burlap before the first coat of ferrocement. I had wrapped one panel in weed fabric, but that was pretty time consuming and not so tight and flat. So, I decided to use pallet wrap, that cellophane/shrink wrap sort of stuff they use in shipping. And since the ferrocement won't stick to it, Rachel and I then wrapped it in chicken wire. I forgot to take pics of the water bladder, which now after another few patches, is mostly full. I am planning on setting up the video camera when we are actually building it. I'm thinking it will be 3 coats of 1" to 1.5" thick. After probably 5 days cure time, I'll get inside (hence the ladder already inside), and remove the frame, then do one more coat inside to smooth it out and cover any exposed chicken wire. (click photos for bigger)

For the top lip (below), I decided to just use the many mini clamps I have left over from the days of a tarp roof on the container to hold the flashing in place. Seems pretty rigid which is important since I'll be pressing ferrocement up against it.

The shrink wrap also makes for a nice drum when you beat on it.

So, I think tomorrow morning we will start up the cement mixer and begin. We're hoping to get it all done in one day. I have some heavy gauge wire which will wrap around the container like a corkscrew between coats. Photos & video to come...

WWOOFer Clint is making some good progress on the tree chipping almost having finished off the trees I cut down a while back. We now need to do some tree trunk pulling, so that we can relocate the chipper closer to the area of trees where he will be working.

All of the seeds Clint and Leila planted have sprouted. Leila planted like 30 cucumber seeds, the whole packet... I guess she didn't realize that each one plant can make many, many cucumbers.

Saturday Lisa is having a big party. The other night we tried out her Ginger, Banana, Tangerine mix wine, and it's pretty darn tasty.

Whitney is headed down to Bolivia and Peru for work soon, and so Lisa & I are a grabbing her coat tails sorta, and have a trip planned during Whitney's off time, and Mom might make it along as well. I had 4 vaccinations yesterday, MMR, Influenza, Hepatitis A, and Yellow Fever, and in a month will have the second Hep A and Typhoid. I thought for sure I'd be sick today, but seem to be fine. Hopefully no side effects or related sickness from those. Seems like in the past the Influenza vaccination made me ill. Maybe it was a coinkydink.

I had hoped that the state property taxes this year would show a significant decrease in property values... and they do, except for one oddity. So, all the 3 acre rectangle properties around my property are valued at $25,500 each by the county (there are over 2,000 of these in my community). However, all the square lots, the same 3 acres are valued at $60,000, more than 2x the value (only maybe 100 of these in my community). I spoke with the county property appraiser for my area (newbie this year), and they said it's based on the TWO square properties that sold in the past year here. One for $63k (empty land), and one for $139 (with Yurt, etc). They have not had enough sales to actually drop the lowest/highest and average. So, my argument was that in this case, I think it would be more "fair", to look at say the previous 3-5 years sales of square and rectangle lots, and take the annual average price difference (probably 10-20%), and apply the percentage to the square lots. So, rather than do this, they valued the square lots at 200% the value of the rectangle lots. I'm sorry, but in NO situation would ANYONE buy a square lot for $60k, when they can get the lot next to it for $25,500. So, many people are going to pay taxes on an additional $34,500 of value (really probably $30k). Doesn't quite seem right... I might be seeking to take this to task...

Rachel and I picked up some nicer quality shower curtains at Ross tonight, and strung them inside across the 12' sliding glass doors onto the deck. With WWOOFers around, privacy can become an issue. I'll soon add a stainless steel cable across vs. the temporary rope.

I picked up the 100% argon tank the other day, but haven't made time to try out the new welder again... Maybe this weekend I'll get to that and get the flying machine fixed. I'm ready to be airborne again.

Rats, Rats, Rats

2011-03-20T08:37:00.001-10:00

Since my last post, I had a 2 week Couch Surfer, Rachel, and now I'm hosting some WWOOFers, Clint and Leila from Wisconsin. Rachel moved into a house down near Pahoa, gotten herself a job... getting right down to living in Hawaii. We've been still hanging out some, went to the Roller Derby this past weekend.

Clint and Leila have worked in the greenhouse, and planted a bunch of seeds, and transplanted some of the Papaya & Lilicoi starts from the previously worked garden bed that had the compost in it. It looks like the bug screen I've covered the green house in doesn't really allow significant water through, so we will have to hand water in there. Clint has been indoctrinated on the tree chipper, and has made some progress there. It's been raining a fair bit lately making some of these things a bit challenging.

A rat and a mouse invaded my kitchen about a week ago. Not much to be had that is not in a jar or other container, but they did get into a baggie of surplus granola and some bananas. Those 2 have been trapped, and I've noticed that there are other rats and mice around on the property. Maybe I was not really paying attention or something. I did set up one of my motion cameras in the chicken house a few weeks back as I was sure that rats must be making off with the food at night, but I only caught chickens on the camera... but since then I've not only spotted rats in there dining, but have trapped probably 3 in the chicken house, and around another 5 others in other places, plus 2 I actually shot which were under the chicken house. I think I'm up to around 10 now. I have quite the "pet cemetery" going on. Another banana on the counter was mangled last night, so another one is in the kitchen... I'll get him tonight. Annoying buggers. It seems that the feral cat isn't doing her job anymore. I'm considering getting a kitten as a outside cat/pet/ratter. I'd get an adult, but then I'm not sure that they would tolerate Lucy's attentions so well. I'm pretty sure the feral cat that used to love on Lucy has become scarce in part as Lucy can be a bit much.

I've removed the all remaining sellable parts from the Scout, and one of the guys who bought most of the body parts will come get the frame and cab next weekend. I've just given that to him so that it would go away. I was getting some interest in it, but not enough to think it will sell very soon, and I want it gone and out of the way.

I have a pile of 9 tons of "#4 sand" which is actually rock chips since Hawaii doesn't have silica sand, and beach sand is not usable to make cement with. I also have 40, 90 lbs bags of portland cement, and a 1,000 ft roll of barbless fence wire. I borrowed a military 2,000 gallon water bladder from Dave which after at least 3 rounds of repairs, has maybe 500 gallons in it. And I've had Dave's cement mixer hanging out for months now in anticipation... all of this is leading up to construction of the first 1,000 gallon water jar. I've *only* had the base and frame ready for like a year now. So, perhaps this week, the first of 3 water jars will be completed!

I was all set up and ready to take off flying about a week ago with the new changes to my flying machine motor, when one of the "J" bars fell off the frame. With further inspection, it looks like a couple of the aluminum welds were non-penetrating, and so were weak to begin with. Rather than go pay another $75 to the local welder for 10 minutes of aluminum welding (I felt like I was screwed last time), I bought a TIG welding machine so that I could do this and any other aluminum welding myself. I have to get a different bottle of shielding gas, then I should be ready for some practicing. I think I had blogged here that I intended to build my own frame as well... so this is sorta confirmation that I want to do that even more so. Tig welding is great for very small and very strong welds on almost any type metal.

The official water surge measurement from the tsunami was 5.7 feet here in Hawaii. There was some damage on the other side of the island (the side facing toward Japan), but really nothing scary. There was one house floated off it's foundation and into a bay. We did have like 8 hours advance notice, so everyone but the crazies were up at a safe elevation. The last time we had a tsunami evacuation here, it turned out to be a measured 1" (one inch), so many people were trying to believe it would be the same situation this time around. Also, the water didn't rush in and rush out, so that also helped minimize the damage (other than simply flooding). The water level just rose up like the tide coming in, but just didn't stop. It was interesting that I found it very difficult to get any news at all about what was going on here in Hawaii. I had to go to the BBC website to get news on Japan (and still do). I feel like the American media pretty much sucks with it's coverage, not that this is some new revelation or anything...

Update...

2011-03-10T23:07:00.000-10:00

We just had an earthquake here... had to be over a 3, maybe a 4. One quick wave of energy, like only 1-3 seconds. 4.5 is the official size. Out just barely off shore near Kalapana. We do have one of these about this size every few months.

Red glow in the night sky

2011-03-10T22:22:00.000-10:00

It's looking like a very interesting "earth" week. Earlier this week our island made national news with photos and video of 100' tall fountains of lava which occurred as the lava lake I've been watching online drained and a separate crater bottom collapsed. The lava erupted from a fissure and gave quite the show for a few days. I could even see a red glow in the sky from my house initially. Now, it's all almost eerily quiet. The fissure has stopped, the collapsed crater is not showing any activity, and the lava lake has receded beyond viewing over 1,000 feet down the tube... The lava action is always around 20 miles away from my house.

And, just now, Tsunami warnings from a almost 9 earthquake in Japan. The very little video that has shown up online so far looks like a horribly devastating tsunami there in Japan. They anticipate the wave will arrive here in Hawaii around 3am local time. If there is a wave at all. I guess at some point they will have a better idea as it arrives in other places first. They have issued tsunami warnings here, and the costal areas for the entire state will be 100% evacuated by 2am local time. Sure would hate to live in Honolulu, must be a madhouse over there right now.

Of course, my place is 8 miles from the closest shore, and about 700 feet up, so no chance anything would make it to where I am. And if it did, well, then most of the entire state of Hawaii would be gone.

I would post other news, but I think anything else just seems absurd to post along with this. Yikes.

Another Year

2011-02-20T20:36:00.000-10:00

This is the first blog post for the new domain name: www.TopsyTurvyTainer.com, I've owned the name for a while, and just never did anything with it. The old blog address still works as well. No other changes with that, just the address.

I have a couple of WWOOFers coming from Wisconsin March 14th, and saying an indefinite period of time in the cabin. They will exchange 8 hours each per week for the place to stay, and I have additional junk tree removal type paid work for them if they want it. Should be fun.

I've flown a few times in the mornings now. Once over a few miles over to Lisa's house, and once just around the hood. My propeller bolts keep loosening themselves up, so I need to take my prop shaft into the machine shop and have the back side flattened so I can add nuts (it's actually threaded itself). And a few other tweaks to lighten it up. While I'm at it I'll take care of the other changes I've been wanting to do to the engine. One morning as I was just about to have feet off the ground, my left wing tip reached out and grabbed a tree next to the runway, so I took an abrupt left turn into the bushes. That tree is no longer with us (not that it was the trees fault).

Lucy just had her B-Day today, she's 1 year old. She is doing good, and the wireless fence collar is working great to keep her home.

I've been able to find all the chicken eggs lately, some are laying in the hen house again which is of course ideal. I'm thinking of getting 2 more hens from Dennis and Sharon, but those would probably not be egg layers for a while yet.

I've been programming like crazy still lately. I just added the ability for volunteer categories or qualifications, and on any project, date, shift, you can allow any one or more category (denying all others), or deny just certain folks. So, some of my clients only allow court ordered volunteers on certain projects, and not at all on others. Some have in person training on the cash register before they can sign up to volunteer doing that one thing... I can also incorporate an online training/test with this, so say a hospital wants someone to complete an online course, then it would automatically allow them to be able to sign up for those shifts online once completed. There are actually not too many "big" things on the board to program now.

I've also recently reworked my navigation system software for my clients, and have been working nightly to convert the existing sites over to that. It does the "flyout" when you mouse over, however, once in a section, it stays rolled out (as before). Along with this in the admin tools is a way for adding and removing pages from their site themselves (usually only I can do this), although I probably won't tell them about that one as I can already predict some of the issues allowing them free reign over this!

I think I'm going to order a load of sand and some portland cement this week. It's about friggin time I get the catchment tanks done (and a real shower by the container). I hope to have the shower pan and one catchment tank (1,000 gallons) done before the WWOOFers get here. I've been lax on those as my 88 gallons of catchment on my deck very rarely run empty on me with our consistent rains.

My friend D'Art has been running my tree chipper for me lately. Says he needs the exercise. I personally think he's crazy when he could be doing projects on his own place. However, it is nice to see that huge pile of trees diminish without me doing it.

Today and last Sunday I rode the bike into Pahoa to the market. Nice 25 mile R/T ride.

Flying Local

2011-02-01T17:10:00.004-10:00

So, finally... (click pics below for larger view)

First attempt to take off this afternoon, and I'm off the ground. Engine is running very nicely, the new prop is balanced superbly (no vibration). I made a exhaust silencer from a spray paint can, hardware cloth, and fiberglass insulation, and I'm almost shocked how much quieter the engine is now. So that worked well. I'll be glad to not annoy people on the ground with my flying about. Only about a 15 minute flight as I wanted to inspect my exhaust and make sure that all looks "solid", and it does.

Above Pic, far left is the Hut, then going clockwise, you can just see the outhouse and a pop up cover over where the catchment will be, then the "V" of the container roof, car parking, front yard & driveway (Pohaku Dr), then covered car parking where the remains of the scout are and where usually the bobcat is. Top middle is the bobcat and tree chipper and big piles of chips. Straight below the container is the green house, and the little maroon roof just below & right of that is the chicken house.

You can really see the "V" in the roof in this above pic.

And this last one is a view which is where the runway begins in the lower, then straight down Pohaku Dr, and finally you can see the ocean.

Next flight... maybe I'll go a few miles over and see Lisa's place, and Dennis & Sharon's.

Below are a few new pics of the kitchen. I "ordered" some stainless things from Ikea via Mom up in Toronto, and had her ship them to me (Ikea doesn't ship the things I wanted).. and now I no longer have a dish drainer on the counter (it's suspended right over the sink). The shelf on the left end is made from 5 round bars, and the shelves under hang from the rear bar. They really help the "feel" of the kitchen since now there is basically nothing on the counters at all.

Aloha!

Busy Week

2011-01-27T19:32:00.002-10:00

Last weekend I hunkered down Sat. & Sun. and completed some much needed changes to the volunteer software. Before, a whole project could be private, using an access code, or public. So, if you have a public project, and needed to create some shifts that were private, you couldn't do it. Some of my clients were creating 2 projects in the system for the same project. Now, every shift can be private or public or a combination of both. This opens up lots of new potential. Along with that, in the admin tool to create Access Codes, before it was simply having date A to date B, but not multiple date unless they were within that set. Now, you can willy-nilly pick any dates and shifts on any projects any way you want. And, to continue with that, I'll very shortly be adding the public's ability to create an access code themselves. One of the benefits of using Access Codes is that they are very often associated with a Group or Organization, so anyone who uses an Access Code is automatically associated with the group in the system, much better for reports, sign in sheets, etc.

I've also been working on my new website for the new name, VolunteerMatrix.com, although I thought of later, VolunteerMetrics.com, which might be better??? I did buy the name, I thought it was at least that good. Any opinions? In working on my new site, I've also created a new feature/option which I will begin rolling out to my clients, the ability to change their own navigation and add new pages. I actually don't trust them to do this "like they should", which is why I haven't really set this up for them before. I can see now many of my clients will have 20 things on the top level navigation... also, their navigations will have what I call a flyout. So, when you mouse over, the subnavigation will appear. Unlike most sites that do this, my clients navigation will appear "open" and no flyout when already in a subsection. You will actually be able to tell where you are on the site. In some cases, this is bad, as maybe you need them to read the main Volunteer page, and not go directly to the Volunteer Calendar, which the flyout will provide direct access to. I'm making it so you can disable the flyout on a subsection, but I doubt anyone will use that feature.

Anyway, enough boring programming talk.

My new propeller arrived this week, and is installed on the flying machine. It's all ready to go. So, yesterday I stood around on the end of my street, and made a few takeoff attempts. No success. I think my windsock is poorly placed and giving me bad wind readings. Every time the wing turned and took me off the grassway and into the brush on the right... when it seemed like it should have been to the left... So, tonight I bought 2, 10' electrical conduit, 1" & 1/2", and will fit them together, and find a nice rock near the runway to drill a hole in and affix the 18-19' pole on. That should get the windsock up high enough to really see what is going on. I think when my wing is up over my head, it's probably 15-18' up... And, some night, it will be interesting when lightening strikes the pole.

Lucy had a little walk about 2x this week. First time she was a good mile down the road when I go the call, and today she actually walked with 4 different sets of people that were walking on 40th. The first one called me, but Lucy had already decided to walk with the other folks... This is really not good. The wireless dog fence was working, but on about day 5, the collar broke, so I had to mail it off. So, that day and this one, she spent a large amount of the day miserable on the cable that keeps her on or near the back deck. She just doesn't get it that she is so lucky to have free range so much, and that she needs to just not leave down the road. And she does understand. Ever time I have had to go get her down the road, she is cowering, and knows she's in trouble, when she never does that ever any other time/place. So, I guess until I get the collar back, she's the cable dog.

I've had a worker here on my place now 2 days for 4 hours each... and tomorrow all day. He's only costing me $8 per hour, but he gets paid more than that, and is insured and bonded... some county or state program I think. A neighbor/friend is sharing him with me while she doesn't have enough work for him. He's been running the tree chipper on all those trees I cut down recently. Not having so much luck really though, the chipper keeps getting bogged down with him. I thought he wasn't paying attention, but then today I ran it for a few minutes with no earplugs, and realized that he cannot hear the engine bogging down for the cutter noise, but with earplugs it dramatically cuts the cutter noise, and you can hear the motor... I had insisted he wear the earplugs the first day, but didn't check on him today. Guess I will have to "make" him wear them. Today at one point he had on his music in earphones! Geezus, he must of had the music loud to be able to hear it. I'm not sure what he could be thinking.

The guy (Till) from Germany who was also on the New Zealand flying trip made a professional quality video of our antics... and I have a copy now. It's really great, so if anyone visits, remind me to get it out to show it. It was a real trip down memory lane. It's only 45 minutes, so bearable for those not so flying enthusiastic.

Since the wankel engine that I was all psyched about is not turning out as rosy as I had hoped, I've been knoodling on my current setup... I am still happy with my engine choice, and I've been thinking about mounting the motor differently than it is now, which would allow me to cut off even more of the motor casing. I'll need a new mounting plate, but I should be able to buy, and have the needed holes cut locally. As well, I think I have a great idea on a new frame configuration which should be much stronger, and lighter than other frames (but cannot be broken down like almost all others). Initially, I'll just make one out of 1/2" electrical conduit. It's just too cheap and available. And if it all goes well, then I'll source some 1/2" cromolly thinwall tubing, which will be much lighter than the conduit, and stronger even.

I was having a issue with my car battery in the Blazer going dead when I don't drive it but once/twice per week. After lots of troubleshooting, I've figured out that if you use the courtesy light over ride (to turn it off), and leave it set that way, that little relay that they use for that function stays activated, even when the car is off, drawing almost 2 amps of power the entire time. I'd say that is a pretty big design flaw.

I've decided to splurge and get a new cell phone. I was impressed with Johanna's waterproof cell (to 3 feet for 30 minutes), and when I'm out on my board, or off flying, that would be really nice. I've heard it takes great underwater photos as well. I'll have a new cell number, but that really doesn't matter since I tell everyone to call the home number which I forward to my cell if I'm not home. And, of course, text messaging and internet access on the phone have been disabled.

OK, well this is plenty long enough... I had told myself that I was going to work on my website more tonight... maybe I'll go do that now.

Hawaii Weekend

2011-01-16T20:04:00.003-10:00

Had a great weekend... on Friday, I met Johanna and her visiting friends Captain Cook bay, and stand up paddled around the bay. It ended up being a bit choppy, so I mostly did sit down paddle like a kayak, which actually works really well. Then we had dinner over at her friends rental place which was right on the ocean.

Saturday morning Johanna and I SUPed out of A-bay, really probably a full 2 miles out into the ocean. It was a beautiful morning with almost flat waters, and a slight breeze. Our mission was to go out to see some of the migrating whales, and we actually ended up in the middle of a pod of them actually. We were probably 100' at the closest, a Mom and her calf. Then on the way back in, a pod of dolphins swam by. After that, we headed over to Hapuna Beach, and the surf had come in, and there was some great waves, perfect for boogie boarding. I had always wondered why so many adults were out there boogie boarding. I figured it was fun, but didn't expect it to be as fun as it was! It was great to ride the wave all the way in, then swim back out for the next run. Then Saturday night, Lisa and I hung out at her place and had dinner with Dennis and Sharon. By the way, Johanna had her waterproof cell phone with her while we were way out there.

Sunday, today, I pretty much chainsawed and chipped trees. I've downed a forest pretty much. Making lots of work for myself for sure. So many trees to chip, I'll be at it for weeks probably. I wrapped up the work day by making a 36" square column of rocks at the corner of my property, which is close enough to the container to see, and near the area where I cut down all the trees.

Tomorrow is a holiday I guess, so maybe I'll continue chipping trees.

In talking with the designers of the potential PPG motor, I'm not sure that it's a good fit at this time. They have designed the liquid cooled version (which will go into production soon), but I found out that it doesn't have a water pump integrated into the motor, so I'd have to build the reduction propeller drive to also include a water pump drive... just sounding more complicated than I want it to be (and more weight)... although today I did figure out how to simply integrate a pump into the prop drive. They are supposedly designing a air cooled version of the same motor, so maybe it would be better to wait for that one. In the mean time, I think I may try to design and build a new PPG frame for my motor (for eventual use with the different engine). The one I have now, I bought complete, and matched my motor up to it. My current frame is very complicated in design. My goal would be a sturdy frame which is lighter by at least a few lbs. I need to strip all the non-frame stuff off my current one to see what it weighs first to see if it's worth the effort.

Oops

2011-01-13T19:14:00.003-10:00

Well, I finally did get to fly this past Sunday... for about 120 seconds anyway. Sometimes the breeze is just not quite enough to take off where I'm located, and this was one of those days. Several other times in the past week, I'd walked up the driveway to the launch area, and stood around with 80lbs on my back, hoping and waiting for that just right direction and velocity breeze. And, Sunday, finally... So, up I go, I ended up flying straight up the drive, swung left directly over my house, and out over my neighbor Tom's house where I waved at him and his family. Then across the street Don and Norma came out and waved... and then the motor basically fell off the flying machine. The only reason it was still attached is the radiator hoses and the electrical wires. Had it managed to actually become a UFO (unidentified falling object), I'm not sure if I would have found it, with all the undergrowth in the area.

Oops.

Actually, the 4 rubber motor mounts failed, and so the motor was no longer attached to the backpack. The prop then proceeded to smack into the frame, decentigrating more of it with each turn, into the exhaust, folding the tube over 90 degrees... by the time the motor stopped running and all inertia was used up, the propeller is about 12" long. The original length was 48".

So, when this happens, it's time to look for a place to make a safe landing. One of my neighbors has a mowed 3 acre property which was an easy zig zag, and landing. I don't think they saw me land, but did see me in a minute, and offered a ride if needed... they didn't realize I started just at the top of the hill from them. So, walked home, got the car, and performed ambulatory service for my flying machine.

This is why I fly what I do. In the event that there was a catastrophic failure like I had, it's not really any problem. Now, we could get into a discussion about the motor mounts, and the fact that these same ones all PPG places sell turn out to have a shear force of 10lbs each, for 40 lbs total. My motor weighs 35 lbs. So, just sitting on my lanai, it's almost supposed to shear off. I cannot believe they use these crappy things. I ordered some "sandwich mounts" online, 40lbs shear factor each (160lbs total).

Since I'm going to be designing and building a new flying machine this fall, probably as a new business even, I was tempted to not fix my machine... but really it's only a new $200 prop and $12 in new (upgraded) motor mounts. The frame took a couple of hits, but nothing actually to be fixed surprisingly. So, I've ordered a new prop, and the mounts. Most likely this time next week, I'll be ready to fly again. I don't think with all the runway work I've done that I could actually wait until this time next year to fly again.

So, great fun.

Clock's Ticking

2011-01-06T11:31:00.003-10:00

Today is the 6th, and I have not managed to fly yet this week.... in case you haven't been paying attention, I resolved to fly every week this year. It's mostly been raining, or Kona winds (opposite of what I need). Although, it actually looks like if I clear out some ferns, I could fly the opposite way down my runway than I was originally thinking...

So, interesting things this week.

I FINALLY found a wankel type engine which is perfect sized for how I fly. The wankel engine is a very odd & simple engine that Mazda used for a long time (maybe still) in some of their sports cars. In the olden days, there were lots of issues with those motors, but not so much these days. Their power to weight ratio is killer, and so I could have as much power as a 2 stroke engine, less weight, and way better emissions (no oil/gas mix). And, the best part of this news is that the engine will cost about $500, and weigh only 17lbs. My current PPG motor weighs 40lbs. Big difference. The motor will not be available until this Sept most likely. The Mfgr of the engine is interested in finding retailers for the engines, and so I'm sorta considering being that person for PPG (or one of). This probably means I'd actually design and build a whole PPG unit to go along with it. Humm....

Also, this week I contacted a local guy who's about to break ground on a new commercial/retail development in my community. There is an opportunity that if I committed to it, I could open that coffee house/internet cafe I've had lurking in the back of my mind for years. It could have two big roll up garage doors in one corner (if in Santa Fe, think about the dinner movie place), and could have a drive thru (in SF, think Java Joe's). Although I don't think there is space to pull off the video camera your license plate, your beverage is ready when you get to the window idea... So, I'm talking to the developer about it, and *maybe* if all the chips fall into the right places... Wow that would be allot of work.

How is it that I don't have a significant other to participate in any of this stuff with me? Not that if I did have one they would have to do any of this stuff, just if they did want to, it would be more fun. Or maybe they would have ideas...

I have 2 couch surfers here yesterday till Friday from Germany. They made a great Vegan pasta last night, and tonight will apparently be an Asian affair.

Lisa is back from the madland, and her dogs survived my feeding them while she was gone.

Cross your fingers for trade winds today...

Runway

2010-12-30T20:55:00.002-10:00

I decided this past weekend to move the skid steer and tree chipper back down the runway area since my goal was to have that done before new years... Hand chain sawing, then chipping all the trees takes a really long time. So, I decided to try using the skid steer as a bulldozer, and just push over and run over the trees. Wow, that worked really well. I had added those over the tire steel tracks a while back, and boy I'm glad I did. It's like a little tank, and made quick work of all those trees. Since the roots are still in the ground on most of those trees, I figure I'll wait a few weeks, and see which one's survive the trampling, then use concentrated round up on them to finish them off. I'm pretty sure that the runway is going to work. I do think I have one desirable not so big tree in the way that I may have to cut down. It is in the roadway, so not actually on anyone's property... I just was trying to avoid removing any of the native trees. I did also find another whole car which is mostly decomposed, and a fridge. And some garbage. And some more garbage.

I have been doing a few things with the flying machine to get ready in recent months... a new, real fuel tank, which I can see the fuel level in (vs. a co-opted red tank from the store)... I replaced the previous stainless necklace wire mesh protecting one from the propeller, with some stainless steel welding wire. It's super strong (probably one wire would hold 200lbs).

The new Blazer doesn't have a trailer hitch, so in order to be able to transport the flying machine, I needed to add one. The stock bumper does have a place to put a ball hitch, for light weight towing. Under the plastic cover there are 10, 3/8" holes where the cover snapped into place, and so I used those to bolt down a plate, which I welded a receiver square tube to. I already had a "tray" that went into a trailer hitch, but turns out it doesn't quite fit since it has really square corners, and the receiver tube more rounded ones... Geeze, just cannot win. So, I bought some more steel, and welded up a really nice carrier. It locks in the machine very tightly, and will make getting it onto and off the car quick, and transport really safe. With a previous purchased tray once, I ended up dragging a flying machine down the highway on a mountain pass looking for a safe place to pull off the road! Since I've now met 2 other PPG pilots, odds are I'll be driving to go fly with them at some point.

Work has been fairly quiet since xmas. I've lost a few clients this month... gained 1 or 2 more. I've been working on programming and new features as usual.

Chickens keep changing where they are laying their eggs. It can be a while to locate the new spot, but when I do there are typically a dozen or more waiting. Eggs actually last a really long time not refrigerated.

I've been going over to Lisa's nightly and feeding the dogs and hanging out with them for an hour while they do their business before getting them settled for the evening. I usually watch 30-45 minutes of satellite TV... and that is usually enough. So many channels of nothing on.

So, everything is good here. Should be flying again shortly. A new years resolution is to fly every week this next year. Having a runway for a driveway is sorta conducive to that. So, aerial photos of my land should be forth coming. Maybe some flying videos as well.

Stuff

2010-12-19T22:38:00.002-10:00

So, lets see... First, I had forgotten to post some video I had taken before to my video site, so I'm doing that now, so go check those out. Lava flowing into the ocean, and Niagara Falls. I'm hoping that is clear here tomorrow night for the the lunar eclipse. My video camera has this awesome low light mode, and with the tripod Clay picked up for me at the market, I should be able to get a good video of the whole thing.

I've been doing lots of cutting of trees and chipping lately. I should be doing this actually on my runway.... but instead it's over here by the house. I'm also thinking of doing the trees between the House and the Hut, I'm pretty sure I would then be able to see the mountain top then which would be really nice. Although, very often it's hidden in clouds (14,000 ft).

I had two holiday parties on Saturday, one I was invited actually by someone else who was going, although I had talked to the actual party thrower on the phone before. Yetti is also a Powered Paraglider pilot, and teaches people to fly. He has a great place just north of Hilo town. So, stopped in and finally met Yetti. Next was to my neighbor Don's party. SO much food, some of the regulars from the hood... nice to visit with everyone. Then tonight after feeding Lisa's dogs (on nightly dog feeding while she is on the madland till Jan 4th), I noticed Sharon & Dennis' gate was open, so stopped by there and caught the tail end of their mini dinner party. Just in time for dessert.

The chickens are hiding the eggs again. Buggers. One of them is laying in the hen house, and the others don't seem to be following her lead.

Lucy is doing great. She is such a sweetie. Her "I'm happy" thing is to chase her tail, doing circles. Sometimes she does this while we are also running. Sometime we race back up the runway.

Greenhouse 2.0

2010-12-08T18:14:00.003-10:00

Seems I got busy after my last post... at least for a day. I had previously bought some screen to cover the greenhouse, and I finally installed it. The screen is even more fine than window screen, so it keeps out even the tiny bugs. I also worked the garden bed on one side, adding a bag of chicken manure, a wheelbarrow of decomposing wood chips, and a 3 gallon pail of compost compliments of my soldier fly maggots... and lots of mixing. It's now ready for planting. This time I'm pretty sure that everything will do really well. Also, since I've been mounding up grass clippings around my Ohia trees, the one right off the back deck seems to have sprouted a couple of tomato plants. So, I'm rolling with it. I've moved some tomato cages over them, and they are already blooming. I also put up a Asian fruit fly trap which is amazingly catching tons of them, who knew so many were buzzing around? Those guys "sting" your fruit/veges (laying eggs), which ruins the crop. After our mini-flood rains, we've gotten no rain at all, so I'm waiting for the rains to show up before I plant the seeds. Last time I did way more than I would possibly need (like 6 poblano pepper plants), this time I'll just plant one or two of the multi-fruiting plants.

I also *finally* got rid of this huge pile of tree debris which has been by the power pole in the front yard. I started chipping it, and most of it was semi-decomposed, so I decided to just use the steel tracks on the skid steer to chew up the pile. Worked very well, running back and forth over the pile. Stopped a few times to pull out the still solid limbs, and later chipped those. I've smoothed out that area now so that it will be easy to mow. I also removed the rocks and smoothed the side of the "cereal" bowl at the end of the container. I was unable to mow there as there were big rocks protruding. Clay has given me a Brown Turkey Fig tree start, and I will plant it in this newly cleared area.

The chickens are being really consistent with laying eggs now. Finally. I have to sorta crawl under the deck some to get them, but that is fine. I might not need to buy my neighbors eggs any more. I think I'm getting 3 eggs a day from 4 chickens. They are small eggs, so 3 is about equivalent to 2 extra large or jumbo eggs from the store.

Today was a really nice, nice day. The winds were from the west, which is sorta unusual, and it was breezy. We had VOG, but the breeze was enough that it was not concentrated.

I may chip up the remainder of the trees I've previously cut in the container area tomorrow, then I'll move back down the runway, and maybe get that finished in the next week or two.

Pics of the recent work and greenhouse will be forthcoming soon.

Life continues

2010-12-04T21:44:00.002-10:00

Not much going on here. I've had a cold the past 2 weeks which has kept me from doing too much. Sold my trailer that was just hanging around. Not quite for as much as I might could have, but they wanted it as is, and I didn't have to do any painting, installing of the new tail lights, expired tags, etc. Money in the bank. The past few days have been extra rainy. The lakes were up probably 2.5 feet, and the river was running. Nothing so exciting, just hard to sleep when it rains that intensely at night. I've still be working on the volunteer scheduling software... Lisa is headed to the madland for 3 weeks coming up, and I'll be daily feeding her dogs in the evenings. I've found a cache of chicken eggs. Some are green, so one of the new hens is contributing those. I've placed a few of their eggs in the hen house to hopefully encourage them to lay eggs there... I guess it's fine as long as I know where they are and can get to them. Mowed again with the riding mower, sure like that machine. I had broke it last time I used it hitting a softball sized rock, surprisingly I found the part for only $15, so I got 3 for stock. Not sure how you can mine aluminum, cast it into a 4 lb part, machine it some, ship it to the USA, and it only cost $15. Slowly selling off more Scout parts. Need to put some of the higher dollar ones on eBay. Washed both cars here at the house with all the recent rains. First time to wash a car here. I'll be hosting a couple of different couch surfers in December.

Santa Fe Fly By

2010-11-10T16:11:00.003-10:00

Wow did my time in Santa Fe just fly by. I had intended/hoped to fit in a hike up Atalaya trail, which is just on the edge of SF, but it didn't happen. I spent some quality time with Mom, Sis, and Nana, did some internet work, ate some green chile, and that's about it. I guess it was really just 5 full days. I managed to schedule my flight back at 6am, which was really annoying. That means that we would have had to have been up by 3:30am to drive to the a-port. So, I stayed in ABQ at a hotel the night before, and took a taxi in the morning. The weather in SF was awesome, big blue beautiful skies, and the trees in full fall color (I failed to mention I was in Toronto at the perfect time for the fall leaves changing).

I am really happy to be back. Back to the moisture, coqui frogs, my beautiful pup Lucy, the chickens, friends, rain and amazing starry night skies... Every time I leave it's just more confirmation that this IS the place for me, regardless of how nice it is where I've visited.

There is allot of "potential" in life. Both here, elsewhere, in life in general. Living in "potential" is both good and bad. Potential means that there are probably options, and at any moment you can make a choice to do any one of those. It also means you are possibly being stagnant, not doing this or that, basking in the place of potential, of knowing you *could* do X or Y... Feeling like we have choices makes us feel good. Making a choice might mean you won't have that particular potential any longer, and that might be sad or scary. But don't forget that making a choice leads you to a new place, with new potential waiting to be discovered.

My Mom and a friend of hers, Jeff, led a workshop this past Sunday which was a 3 hour version of a 3 day workshop/seminar called "Wild Heart Adventure Seminar" which they do. One of the exercises was to create a timeline of your life thus far, and mark on this timeline events/times that particularly stand out (both positive and negative). Once you have that, look at those events and times, and see if there was a particular thought or force acting in your decision making around those times either precipitating the event, or maybe even as a result of inaction... try to see if there is a recurring theme. Not that everything will be related, but many might be. It's a pretty interesting exercise. Of course they do a much better job of explaining and facilitating the exercise than I have here. I've discovered that in my life, I tend to make choices that will lead to having more choices available to me. And, if I don't really have appealing options, I make a choice and ride it out, looking for the next opportunities. This wasn't really that surprising, but I really had not thought of it in a longer term sorta way. It was also good to look at some of the negative points, and reflect on the causes and my actions. Looking at this in the longer term I think may help us see if there is a trend, and perhaps be able to make changes so that we maybe we can avoid similar pitfalls in the future. I think a very important part of the exercise is to be sure that we are looking at *our* participation in the events (take responsibility for our part in it). Yes, sometimes things happen to us, but almost always, we put ourselves into the situation somehow, or perhaps didn't remove ourselves...

Toronto

2010-10-31T05:58:00.003-10:00

So, ten days visiting Mom in Toronto has passed (Nov 2nd). It was fun. International city, lots of great food. Her part of town, "The Beach" has many 1890's-1920's brick buildings similar to the 4 plex building I used to own in Dallas. Hardwood floors, bathrooms with tiny tiles in the floor... We ate out a fair bit, usually ending up with left overs for lunch the next day. I went in to her office M-F, and was set up with internet access and a phone so was able to do "normal" work. They have a great single serving coffee machine which was sure convenient. All the people we met and talked to were super friendly.

Our usual trip to the office was a 20-40 minute trolley ride, which sometimes could be pretty darn full. Nobody ever wanted to move to the back to make room for more people. The folks who would get on the trolley for just a block were amusing. There were also a fair number of people doing the dash up the block to catch the trolley (including us a few times).
And, we took the subway a few times.
We also went to the museum to see the Chinese Terracotta Army. This is only the second time any of them have been allowed to leave China. There are over 8,000 of these life sized, hand made, all unique soldiers in China (circa 200 bc), and they brought 5 very nice examples, including a life size horse. No actual photos were allowed in the exhibit, so we had to settle for the cardboard guys in the lobby to take pictures with.
We also made a trip up in our zipcar to see Niagara Falls. Definitely better to view from the Canadian side. On the way home, a stop off in an Ikea store and actually Walmart for goldfish supplies (I really thought Canadians were smarter than to allow Walmart into their country). Mom now has a pet goldfish named "May".
I think if I was a "city boy" I would really like Toronto... but I think I would get really bored there actually after a while. Just not remotely the Hawaii scale of outdoor things to do. It was really amazing the number and variety of small businesses in the neighborhood. For the probably 5 miles of trolley ride from the apartment to the office, there are small businesses on both sides on the ground floor, with housing above, all the way. Like literally a thousand or more businesses. A few franchise types stores, but mostly not. Sadly, a significant number of Starbucks, but still more local coffee shops. Their economy is seriously thriving.

Mom's office mates were all great, fun people. Somehow I became the computer go-to guy while there. I may have some guests visit me from Toronto someday.

Mom spotted some pengin's hanging out, and immediately stopped the car for the photo op:
The Canadian newspapers have actual news and insightful articles, unlike pretty much any American paper these days.

I talked to Clay who's staying at my place while I'm gone, and Lucy has been really misbehaving. I think she is testing boundaries. She's been following around the chickens (which means they are walking around complaining, which is annoying to any human in earshot), and has been going to the end of the driveway where she knows she's not supposed to be. She's managed to chew up her harness on the steel cable run... she just doesn't get it that she has a "good" dogs life with lots of things to do, and no fences.

So, now I'm in Santa Fe, enjoying family and the New Mexican cuisine and beautiful skies. Unfortunately my sis Whitney is sick, so I haven't had much of a chance to hang out with her. Nana and she were over for dinner last night, and I'll have breakfast with Nana at 7am tomorrow. We are planning a early T-giving dinner on Saturday... Tuesday I'll fly back to Hawaii. It's been a good trip, and will have been long enough I think.

Animals

2010-10-10T18:56:00.002-10:00

So, I forgot a few things last post...

I was playing with Lucy the other day, and noticed that she had a pencil diameter stick wedged in the roof of her mouth. It's been there so long that it was fully 1/2 embedded into the flesh of the roof of her mouth. In the middle, it was only slightly, so I grabbed a spoon, and popped it out. Yikes. I think it had been there several weeks. Lucy had been having bad breath for a few weeks, and I was thinking she was just getting into something dead somewhere... it was the infection from the stick. She's had a stick similarly wedged in there before, but was acting like she had peanut butter stuck on the roof of her mouth, so I knew something was up and got it out. She hadn't been acting weird this time. She is more perky now, so I think it was painful, or at least the infection was bringing her down some.

I'm pretty sure it was Lucy's cat that got the chicken recently. The cat just LOVES to creep up on the chickens, then pounce and scare the begesus out of them. Then she just struts through the middle of them, flicking the tip of her tail in obvious pleasure. Tonight I saw her chasing one of the new hens (see below). Little twit. If she would let me get near her, I might try to fit Lucy's training collar on her. I'm not sure a cat can "learn" that way though.

Today I picked up 4 more hens from Dennis & Sharon's. We had to chase one down, but 3 of them are adolescents, and were more used to being handled, so they were super easy. I had dropped off Lucy at D'arts place for a short test run with his 3 dogs. I picked up Lucy on the way back with the hens in the cage, and I was just SURE that I'd be driving home with feathers coming out the windows just from Lucy being in such proximity. But, everybody behaved and we all made it home unruffled. The older hen has reunited with the one I had gotten before, probably a sister.

The Kiosk programming has turned into a bigger project than I had first hoped... as often occurs.

I have a would be couch surfer dropping by tomorrow and bringing brunch. She wants to check out the container house even though her plans changed and she didn't stay here.

Disappearing cars

2010-10-09T16:30:00.006-10:00

Geeze, been a while since I updated this...

So, parting out of the scout has begun:
Before (not such a great pic, pretty dirty)
Minus the fenders, hood, doors, tailgate, windshield frame:

Minus the front clip, inner fenders and radiator supports, roll bar, steering box and pump, engine, seats and shifter...
Also already sold are the axles, transmission... It's looking like I will net about $4k from parting it out. The guy who bough the body parts and engine seems very sure he will buy my big trailer in a month, so that's a big bonus. It's really kinda sad. The Scout did have some rust that I was not willing to invest time or money into fixing, but overall, the body is in very, very restorable shape. Once everything else is off it, I'll clean up the cab, and I'm pretty sure I won't have any problem selling that as well.

The "new" 2002 Chevrolet Blazer 4x4:

I had a really interesting and fun couch surfer visit last Saturday, Tanya from S. Africa. We ended up hiking out to where the current lava tube goes into the ocean:
We probably actually walked over the lava tube, as there was an area that was smoking a bit, but the ground was not really warm in most areas. Hearing about life in a big city in Africa was interesting.

In the end of the container, I've added a nice roll down shade. It's intended to be outdoors I think, pretty heavy duty. I was able to finagle cutting 6" off the width so that it would fit perfectly inside. This will also double as my movie screen for the projector. The material is not really so see through at it appears, but I will probably add a piece of material on the inside so that it's a better & whiter screen. The main point was to get the structure of the roll up down so that it fits my space. I may eventually replace the current fabric entirely.
My trip to Canada is coming up quickly. I think Clay will stay at my place mostly while I'm gone, and take care of Lucy. I'll set up a long cable between some trees so that she can have a run and not be able to run off in case she has to spend a few daytimes by herself. The first few days I think I may leave her at a friends house who has 3 dogs already as Clay will be off doing something else. I'm just sure she will come back with some bad habits!

I've been programming like mad still. Mostly updating the admin tools to work with the new features I've added. I need to be setting up a "kiosk" configuration, so that volunteers can walk into a place, register, sign up and sign in, then sign out when done. It's hard to program that when I still have questions in my mind about how some of that will work... but, I need to get it knocked out. Ideally all Sunday for use Monday.

I took a hike into Waipio Valley with some neighbors and Melissa and her beaux who came and stayed for a few days. We hiked into the waterfall which I've been into before. I didn't do any pics since I have some on the blog here from previous hike in there. You can search in the top left search box "waipio", and it will find the pics if you care to.

Johanna and her 24 yr old daughter and son (7 or 8) had to come to the Hilo side, so the crashed in the hut over night. They were fun to have visit.

Mostly I've just been putting in long hours working. I have lost several more clients. Gained a few for secure online forms which is another "business" I see creating a special focus on. This payday, I have lots of clients who have yet to pay (due Oct 1st). Usually I only have a few stragglers.

The weather here has actually be mostly really dry. We did have 2 rainy days, but then dry again. They are forecasting a wet winter, El Nina. You cannot believe the weather man here, it varies so much just from on mile to the next.

I'm supposed to pick up a few more hens tomorrow from a friend... I have a flock of 4 currently. 1 recently mysteriously was dead when I was gone one morning, I think Jack, the neighbors Jack Russell (actually named "snoopy") did it. That Jack is a real trouble maker.

Tonight I'm making India-n Madras beef curry. Should be pretty tasty...

It must be payday.

2010-09-18T22:04:00.003-10:00

I have friends coming to visit this week, and since the Honda is a 2 seater, I was going to have to figure out what to do to pick them up at the A-port... that and the floorboards are about to fall out of the Scout (unrelated to the a-port).... so I bought a car today. 2002 Chevy S-10 Blazer 4x4, so it's a small SUV. The Scout will be departing soon, although I'm not quite sure how that will work. There is no way I would get real money for it here in Hawaii. Just not enough humans around interested in that type vehicle, and interest in spending another $8,ooo for a fiberglass body. Of course my new car needs a bit of love, I always get those since I can fix the issues and get it much cheaper. Rear brakes, drivers window, drivers door hinge... but it's all good otherwise.

A few pics, one by my hidden camera of me mowing on the new mower...

and of Lucy and her cat. I had taken the cat to be fixed, but alas, she had been previously fixed it turns out. Lucy is now 47 lbs.I launched phase 1 with my current clients of the software work that I've been doing for the past month. Looks really good... more to go. I need to knock out catching up the admin tools to use the new features that the public now have access to use. Worked on that today around buying a car and car parts.

Sunday will be car repairs & cleaning day.

I guess not much new other than that...

High Speed Mowing

2010-09-10T19:46:00.004-10:00

Geeze, almost a month since my last real blog entry...

Well, mostly I've been up to programming, and programming. I'm probably averaging 12+ hours per day. It's coming along well, but there is much more to do. I'll be releasing my current work to my clients here in the next few days most likely, then onto the next significant batch of programming. One of my new clients is the food bank in Wash. DC, so that is exciting. If they are happy with my programs, that could really open up a door to other food banks. I've wanted to work with food banks for many years, it's just never come up since I don't do sales calls.

Lucy is doing great, and is about 45 lbs now. I think she it finishing up growing? She pretty funny. I think she is totally broken from the chicken "interest", so that is good. Sometimes at night went I get in bed, I can hear her do one of those low growls that seems to be equivalent to a human sigh... then I'll copy her, then she'll do it again... and we do that for a while till one of us gets tired of it. The neighbors Jack Russel Terrier (who I call Jack) drops by, and they have a play fest. Although he's been marking my house/deck the past few times, which HAS to stop. Lucy's cat is doing fine. Still not so interested in humans, and that is fine with me. I do have to catch her to get her fixed on the 15th. I do NOT have any interest in her having a litter.

I have what I need to cover the greenhouse in screen, and some chicken manure, and of course lots of wood chips, but I haven't done anything to actually implement those things. I'm currently ignoring the green house. The stuff I planted is still alive, just not growing by much.

I had started dating someone, we only managed to go out a few times really... but that didn't work out.

I decided that since I wasn't feeling like I had time to mow the probably 2 acres of grass which are mostly my "road", that I needed to get myself a riding lawn mower. So, I got one. It has a 52" deck, meaning it mows a swath about that wide. It took me 1.25 hours to do what normally has taken me more than 4.5 hours to do. It's also a "garden tractor", so I can get a small trailer to pull stuff around. I also bought the bagging system for it. Man that works good. I will have TONS of grass mulch each time I mow. I'll be piling it up around my Ohia trees initially. I think they will love that fertilizing. It holds so much as well, like 3 bags worth at a time.

I've been making a few smoothies a week, usually for lunch. Nice having a real freezer. I have/had peaches, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, pineapple. Man they are tasty. I just add almond milk since all the fruit is frozen. Clay has some spirulina and bee pollen, so I add just a tad of those as well. Green Monster, Blue Bandit, Nanocolate... they all get some name when I taste them, and I doubt that I make the exact one twice. I use recycled McDonald's straws since they are big and fat.

There is a Air Show coming to Kona in May http://www.Hawaii-Airshow.com . I'll have a 10x10 tent talking about Powered Paragliding. The real air show will be only the real planes and stuff. Should be fun. I've made a call to the only other guy on this island who flies PPG, and invited him to be included (or even head it), but so far, no call back. I talked to him once a few years back, but we have never met.

So, I'm going to visit Mom in Toronto the last week of October, then down to Santa Fe the first week of November. A pretty short trip, but I'd rather it seemed too short than too long. I think I have a friend coming to visit for a few days next week, but I'm not sure if they will bail and just stay on Oahu where their friends/family are.

It's been overall pretty dry compared to other times. We get enough rain for my rain barrels to stay full, but not much more. Where did those monsoon rains go? I should be careful what I ask for!

I did get my water heater finished and "installed" on a rock next to the shower. It works killer! The middle ceramic piece didn't survive the first few showers though, and that is an integral part to how it works (keeps the heat on the coils and slow down the hot airs departure). I may go up to a place in Hilo that does hi-fire ceramics, and have them make me a new center. The ceramic that I used was low fire, and is probably not considered oven safe I guess? It still looks very cool, so I'll take a pic soon. The snail traps are in the garden, but not really used since I haven't put any beer in them. But then I'm just currently allowing the garden to be fallow.

I tried out some voice software on my computer, so that I could perhaps dictate emails and such, but it's not quite what it's cracked up to be. It doesn't "learn" very well as they say it does. So, I sent it back.

Well, Lucy just brought over the tugging rope, so we have to do that for a while.

Frustration

2010-08-17T17:37:00.002-10:00

Frus-tra-tion - [fruh-strey-shuhn] - noun.

1. act of frustrating; state of being frustrated.

2. an instance of being frustrated.

example:

What results when 3 days, 40+ hours of perfect new programming is deleted inadvertently.

!&$%^)*@!

Programming

2010-08-12T07:22:00.003-10:00

So much to do...

I've been pretty hard-core programming the past few weeks... and will be for a while. Significant volunteer system rewrites and improvements, and I'll be launching a "new" company just for the volunteer scheduling. Sorta in the same line of what I do now, just focused on just that aspect.

I've discovered that while I actually have dirt here on my land (many of my neighbors don't have dirt since the last lava flow in the area was so recent [100's of years?]), in thinking about it, really, the quality of that dirt is probably not so great. I can pretty much tell you what it's comprised of. False Staghorn Fern. When you see land in my area that is still native that is what exists there, the fern and a few Ohia trees (mine has lots of new invasive trees). So, it's not any real surprise that dirt comprised of basically only this one fern is probably lacking in many things. And, thus, my garden appears to be on "pause". Everything grew to a certain size, then stopped. Except for Carrots and Beans, those 2 seem to do fine without what ever my soil is missing. I've also learned that I need to actually insect screen my green house. Neem Oil based sprays help, but as with everything introduced here, the bug situation is not ideal. So, just keep the bugs out entirely to begin with. So, at this point, I think I need to go dig up the oldest pile of wood chips I can find, cart it all over to the greenhouse, and probably just till in all the plants currently there, and mix in my mostly decomposed wood chips. I'll also check at home depot for organic fertilizer... I do have a compost pile going, but those darn black soldier fly maggots do such a good job that there is hardly anything left. Maybe I should be catching the fluid out of the bottom like vermiculture does (worms). So much for the compost pile on the ground.

So, a few minor setbacks on growing my own food. I do have 1 (one) killer looking green bean though... for what that is worth.

Lucy is now 39 lbs, and is doing well. She mostly ignores the chickens, but the Rooster has needed to shock her a few times for following it around. I still have 2 hens sitting on eggs in 2 locations... hopefully they will succeed in their endeavor.

Lisa and I slaughtered another pig, this time a pretty big one, probably 150 lbs? We plan to do another this Friday. She has been feeding these pigs (and their many offspring) for quite a while, and it's time to be out of the personal pork business.

We just landed Kianna (Lisa's grand-daughter) a stand up piano for free via Freecycle. It's good enough, for free anyway. Man it was heavy.

I made more progress on the runway tree clearing... but still not there yet. Maybe after this stint of programming...

So, everything is going along well.

I am making a trip to visit Mom in Canada at her new place and job last week of October, and then fly down to Santa Fe for the first week of November... pretty quick visit. I now cannot imagine leaving for longer than that.

Update

2010-07-31T07:49:00.006-10:00

Been a while since I posted here...

On of the young hens has turned into a rooster... not sure what the future holds for him since he now crows. He is "taking care of" the hens, so I might let him hang out until they have some progeny since I still only have 3 hens. One hen is sitting on eggs in the hen house, another hen is sitting on eggs under the big dead albezia tree.

The avocado tree has baby avo's on it. It had skipped last year with the sudden death of the albezia towering over it and allowance of real sunlight.

Lucy is now 37lbs. Here's a puppy pic of her:

The garden is going OK. I should have been on it sooner, or from the beginning with the Neem sprayings. I think the plants got stressed initially with bugs related stuff until I began spraying. Most of them seem to be on "pause" and are not doing too much. The green beans meanwhile are trying to take over already.

Last week, the lava was flowing into an easy to access area, so Summer and I went down to check it out. It was totally worth it. I posted some videos (link top left) which are much better than pics.

Work has been interesting. I'm feeling like my business focus is shifting, to one where my mainstays will be Volunteer Scheduling, and online submission forms. Fortunately I'm really good at both of those things. I'm feeling like I will be very busy programming for a while.

Here's a pic from when Brenda was visiting a while back, from our drive up to Kilauea Summit at almost 14,000 ft. There were probably 10 telescopes up there:

Drawers

2010-07-11T09:10:00.006-10:00

The drawers are done and installed. I need to adjust 2 of them, but they look and work great.

Brenda is here for the weekend, and brought her pup Iris
Here's the first round of completed ceramics:
The water heater and snail traps are bisque fired, and are ready for their final firing when Barbara needs to fire things next. Might be a while. But they looked really great.

Life is hard for chickens around here sadly. Lucy has occasionally followed them around, but 2x this past week, she escalated to actual chicken contact. The first time I could hear that chicken sound which is basically ... Oh gawd, I'm gonna die, goodbye cruel world! I ran back to where Lucy was and did not actually see the chicken... The next time she was right in front of the container, same sound. Lucy had chicken pinned down, and a mouth full of feathers. That chicken survived (don't think she broke skin?), but the chicken now has no feathers on her butt. It might would be funny if that chicken wasn't quite so horrified to have a dog trying to eat her butt. So, now I have a "training collar" for Lucy, so when she goes for the chickens again, she will get a electric surprise. I cannot leave her out/loose when I leave my place now because she might do in the chickens while I'm gone.

Photos Update

2010-06-30T08:07:00.002-10:00

Just some photos that I've been neglecting to post... You can click on the images to see a bigger version.

The water heater's new location.
Below is the "water board". The water is sucked in from the 2 barrels in the vertical hose on the right. The "T" going off that to the right is a return line from the kitchen sink. I can open a valve at the sink, and allow the hot water pipe to run until the water is hot-hot, returning it to the water barrels so that no water is lost waiting for the water to get hot. So, water comes up, then to the pump, then across through the short blue hose through a 5 micron, then a 1 micon filter, then out. The valve on the left goes to the pressure tank (you can see my homemade pressure tank in the water heater photo, it's a 10', 4" black plastic pipe hanging up at the end of the container). A water pressure tank is basically a big tank that is 1/2 filled with air. The pump compresses the air in the tank by forcing water in. This allows there to be water pressure with out the pump running all the time. So the pump does fewer on/off cycles which is better for the power usage and pump lifespan. So continuing through the schlitterbahn, the water comes out of the filters, then down to the silver tube horizontal across the bottom. This has a high intensity UV bulb in it, and the water just runs through being bombarded with this light. It's like a tanning booth bulb, just way more intense. This sanitizes the water, killing any algae, microbes, etc. (does this mean you are sanitized when you go to a tanning booth?) Then finally, the horizontal blue water hose in the right bottom corner is the cleaned and sanitized water, that is connected to the actual plumbing system, going to the water heater, sink, etc. The idea is of course that this will at some point be relocated and piped directly, eliminating the water hose parts.

Sometimes a palm frond is more interesting than a squeeky ball.

This is typical location for both Lucy and Cat.

Greenhouse, you can see some of the plants now. The cover turned out to be really simple. You just roll up the pipes to open, and roll them down by hand to close. It's already come in hand as we were getting too much rain there for a few days. The plastic jugs hanging down the middle have a hormone that attracts the male Asian fruit fly. They work great. You drill holes and insert a shortened straw or other tube, and the flys can smell the hormone, and go in, but then cannot figure out how to get out. If the Asian FF "stings" your fruit, it will be ruined (sting = insert eggs which turn into worms).

Here's a drawer front which has been welded. There is still a protective plastic peel off coating on most of it to help protect from scratches. Today might be the day to grind down the welds and see how easily they will clean up.

The extended Scout/Skid Steer cover.

Also, I remembered another project that was done this week... I had been wanting to add to angled support bars to each end of the containers 6' overhang on the roof. We very occasionally get wind storms here, and those might flex more than I'd like, so that is an easy fix. You can see one in the top water heater photo, going from the top of the container, angled up to the roof.

Welding

2010-06-29T19:31:00.002-10:00

So, today was about welding together the drawers. I couldn't start over the weekend as I needed a smaller diameter weld wire for the thinner stainless. I did all the back corners of the drawers first so that I'd be better practiced for the fronts. I was sorta hoping that I could get away with leaving the welds, and they do look good, however, I'll try cleaning up the back corner on a drawer to see how it goes and decide if I'll do the fronts. Of course, I can leave the backs undone since nobody will be seeing those. The rest of the drawers will have 3 of the 1-1/8" slabs from the container flooring for the verticals, and there will be no top or bottom. It will be held together by the drawers themselves actually. I'm thinking pop-rivets to hold on the drawer slides to the drawers themselves. Close to having drawers!

I bought some aluminum "c" channel to turn into slider track for 1/4" glass to close in the open front counter as well. A bit of concern of whether the glass will glide in the track, but I think I'll add a 1/4" strip of formica in the slots, and that may do the trick.

The kitchen is really coming along.

Finally extended the Scout parking covered area to fully cover also the skid steer. I've had the set of bars for a while now, and just never got around to it.

Lucy is doing great. She's still not thrilled about going in the car, so I need to acclimate her to that more.

Green house is doing great. All the lettuces are looking like lettuces, still no bug or varmit issues.

I'm sure my ceramics came out of the kiln already. I need to go pick that stuff up.

Still just more programming updates and improvements this past week. 1 new client, Florida State Habitat support org. Those are usually good as others in FL will for sure see the site, and may eventually get referred to me.

Seems like there was some other update I wanted to blog about here, but I'm not recalling. So, later then.

Ceramics and Stainless

2010-06-22T20:49:00.002-10:00

So, today I finished up some final clay/ceramics projects. I think the bag we started with was 50lbs, and I have about 2lbs left. So, the list of things includes:
3 tuna presses
1 medium sized bowl
1- 5 compartment silverware holder
1 kitchen sink sponge & brush holder
1 paloma style water heater
4 snail/slug beer traps
I think that's it. All but the last 2 items will be glaze-fired Thursday, those last 2 will be fired 1st time then, and later glazed and fired again. When I get the batch back from Thursday's firing, I'll take some pics.

Today I also picked up my new stainless drawers. They look great. I could not have gotten as heavy or quality stainless if I had bought these at a store. I also have some scraps so that I can practice welding and perhaps I'll be able to weld these so nicely as not to need any touch up grinding/sanding.

So, the cat is definitely Lucy's cat. And, that cat is happy to have my home. Yesterday, I don't think she left the chair on the deck once. Lucy's surgery to get fixed went well, and she acted as if nothing had occurred at all. I'm going to have to figure out how to get this cat fixed, there is no way I want kittens when I don't really even want a cat.

The green house & garden are doing great. Lots of growth, and no problems so far. I'm super stoked and happy with the green house.

So, two firsts for my place this week. One, I did a load of laundry in hot water from the solar water heater. The water heater is doing SO well, considering we have had overcast days mostly lately. Second, I washed the Honda, water hose connected to the water hose spigot and water pipes I installed recently. Doesn't take much water to wash a car. Boy the Honda needed it. It was growing mold on the outside.

This past week or two I've been working on lots of internet programming projects. Updating some of the volunteer scheduling tools, and the admin tools in general. Really nice improvements.

One of my previous clients' E.D. relocated to the east coast, and contacted me about helping with a website up there... They told me about a competitor that I had not heard of before, who literally is marketing themselves as part of Habitat for Humanity. They charge $1,250 setup (4x my typical setup cost), and $200 per month (4 to 10x what I charge). They are really pushing that they setup up things like google stats, facebook, (both are free for everyone) search engine optimization (or SEO, which is not necessary if you build a site correctly in the first place). I'm *shocked* and appalled at what they are charging Habitat affiliates. It's a total rip off. They push the SEO aspect, but for most Habitat's, they need LOCAL web traffic, not national, and so it's pretty simple to make ANY website show up decently when doing a local search. It's just eye opening, and I'm hopeful that in this economy, they aren't able to take advantage of too many money strapped nonprofits.

My friend Brenda is coming for a visit again over July 4th weekend.

In my last post I included a link to look at a lava event. Figures that the next day, the volcano fumes would return, and make it unviewable again. For about a week, there was little fume, and you could totally see this big lava pond.

Lisa had a party this past Thursday. It was great fun. Great food, various homemade wines...

Modernizations

2010-06-12T20:28:00.003-10:00

So, last week, I drew up the kitchen drawers... and then took that to the sheet metal place. They are working on those now, and I think I'll have them on Tuesday. They are just cutting out the metal and bending it, and I'll have to weld the 4 corners on all of them. I also ordered the drawer slides, and those may also be here Tuesday. It will be very nice to have those.

I'll also be adding 2 sliding glass doors to the open shelf counter perhaps this week as well.

I decided since my solar water heater has been sitting in my driveway for months now, still not connected, to locate it temporarily where I can use it. The project to install it on the roof is a big one, and won't be happening soon. It's now about 18" above the ground on blocks so that I can mow under it. It's in a place where it will stop getting sun around 2-3pm each day, so I'll be missing out on some heating potential. Previously however, it was routinely boiling the water in the tank, so perhaps this will be good enough.

I've also decided to actually do all the real plumbing on the container, running hot and cold water under the deck to the washer and sink. No more water hoses. I mounted the water pump, 2 stage filters, and UV sterilizer all on a board, which I'm thinking will be mounted under the container. I'll also be running two water hose spigots, one on each end of the container... This should all be completed Sunday.

Here's a pic from the west end of the container deck. You can see the hen house, green house, an area I just rocked up, and the compost bin.
I actually planted most all my sprouts this morning in the green house. I'm planning on putting the carrots, beets and onions in the rocked in bed below the green house. I have a chicken wire dome thingy to put over them until such time as they are large enough that the chickens won't eat them.
I picked up seeds tonight for poblano peppers and zucchinis, and planted a few of each.

Lucy has a cat... or is it really my cat? I have been feeding it at night, and have put flea drops on it (since Lucy and she play, or is it that she tolerates Lucy in order to have food and a dry place?). I didn't really want a cat. I was just fine with the cat coming around at night and mousing. I liked that arrangement. But this cat is apparently determined to be a domestic cat. I'm not feeling like it's giving me any say in the matter.

The weather has been great lately. A bit of rain at night, beautiful days.

There is some new interesting lava activity... You can see it here.
Check it out both at night and daytime to get a feel for what's going on (at/before 9am there should still be dark here). Basically, there is this crater, where there were several holes that have just been belching sulphur dioxide for the past about 3 years. Then this month, the lava has started coming up and filling the crater. It's fairly slow so far, but it would be cool if it filled it all the way up to over flow. It's in an area where all the most recent flows have been, so no new threats or anything, it's just cool to see it in action (via these cameras).

Also, my friend Brenda from Oahu who visited for a few days with her friend Melissa has posted on her blog about her visit along with a few pics. You can read that here.

No Comment

2010-06-03T20:35:00.005-10:00

A week has passed. Last Thursday in pottery class I threw a really nice bowl. Today, I trimmed the bowl, and this week it will be bisque fired, I'll glaze it next Thursday. I also made a cute boxy thing to hold my sink brush and sponge which will be ready for glazing next week as well. Today I left class early as there wasn't time for me to work on my water heater design. I brought the clay home with me to hopefully get that built and dried before next Thursday. The tuna can strainers I made work awesome. One of the annoyance of life resolved. I'll take pics of everything in a week or two.

I just made a cup of hot coco. The powdered packet kind. It comes with mini-marshmallows, however with my over stirring, I never actually saw them.

The programming is completed that I was working on, and I think my admin improvements worked out well. Not that anyone will actually tell me. One of my new clients for the scheduling system was meticulous, and found quite a few minor annoyance or inconsistencies in the system which I also corrected. Nice to have the thorough review so I can fix those things. Now, I have another new program which I need-need to do. This one is so that you can mark no-shows so that they don't get the automatic thanks email, and so that if you are tracking their hours, it won't include those as well. It will also allow you to indicate different hours (if the leave early), and if you received a signed waiver... It shouldn't be too tough to program really. I just need to get into the mood to do it.

I worked 2, 6 hours days this week clearing junk trees on what I hope will be my runway. I probably have 2 more of those days to go in this one spot, which is the most dense and tall spot I have to clear. I am SOOOO glad that I have the tree chipper. It works so well. I do need to weld on 2 small pieces of metal in a spot in the out chute where twigs sometimes get stuck, then cause the whole thing to get plugged up.

I've drawn up a set of stainless steel drawers for under my counter where the fridge used to be. They will be 44" wide, 24" deep, and 26" tall. I'll split that space into 2 sections, 22" & 18" wide sets of 4 drawers each side. I'll have to order the SS full length drawer slides. I think they will be pretty slick looking. I'll recycle some of the mahogany container flooring for the sides and divider, and recess the slides into that.

I made an effort to seed grass in the dirt areas in the front, and rake it all in well. And of course now we enter a dry spell. So much for that $36 in grass seed. Out of the about 100 vegetable seeds I planted in the starters, *only* the bell pepper seeds have germinated. I would not think that the others would take longer than now... perhaps they are all bad? Dampness or age? I'll give them a bit longer to see if any more pop up.

The road crew in my community have been working for months now on the river wash out area, putting in a huge concrete "+" in that intersection. It's finally completed, and they should have it open for traffic in a few days. The river will just flow over it, so still no crossing mid-flood, but once the flow stops, it will be passable. A big improvement.

Just what I did NOT want to do today

2010-05-26T20:13:00.003-10:00

So, yesterday D'Artanian called up with plans to go after hours to the view the lava... Lately the lava has been closer to where one can park, so sure, why not. There was a chance that we would go down a 4x4 road to a beach, then hike up the beach to where the lava is entering the ocean, so we took 2 cars (since the Scout will only carry 2 people). When we arrived, I realized that the Scout was profusely loosing motor oil. I literally left a line of oil down the road! Yikes on several points, one being the environmental aspect of that, and other being my engine sans oil.

So, since we had the other car as well, I opted to leave the Scout there (vs. just filling up on oil, and drive quickly home, hemorrhaging surely 4+quarts on the way). So today was going to get new oil pan gaskets, where it appeared to be leaking from. I drove the Honda the 25 miles there from my place, and in the parking area (the side of what used to be a highway), I proceeded to remove the oil pan. I also noticed that it looked like perhaps the oil filter mounting flange might have been the leak. Both were looking pretty bad off. So, I got those both all cleaned up, re-gasketed, and bolted back on. That took about 3 hours.

I'm fairly sure that the laughing Japanese tourists who were walking by had some joke about me... that's OK. Something maybe like I drove the Japanese Honda to work on my American built car which is broken down on the side of the road... or just an American under the hood of a car (I think there's a bit of that stereotype around?)... first of all, I CAN fix my cars, which is most likely more than they could probably do (I was saying that as I was all greasy lying under the car), and secondly, the vehicle is over 35 years old. I don't think we will be seeing very many 35 year old Honda's. Anyway, I really don't mind if I was their entertainment, since the daytime lava viewing area is not worth seeing currently anyway. We did see lava in the distance Tuesday night, but that is not anything new. We did see some glowing red down in the deep cracks of the lava we were walking on, which was about 2 weeks old. The ground was pretty warm, but overall, not that exciting. Sometimes not exciting is good.

So, I drove the Honda back home, and I'm going to get a ride back down in the next hour with a neighbor, and pick up the Scout.

I've been recoding lots of my scheduling system this week, and making good progress. Used to be that you could have only 3 shifts on any one project, and date. Now, there will be an unlimited number of shifts. As well, the admin tool to add volunteer dates to the calendar is improved, and hopefully more clear to add and edit dates.

Lucy is doing well. I've been fighting fleas actually lately. I give Lucy a bath every 4-5 days, and have put some drops on her back, and she did have on a flea collar... Sadly, I think she got the fleas while we visited a friends house, she didn't have any before then. She's doing much better at being patient with the baths. She really just endures it as she really enjoys the towel drying rumpus that ensues afterward.

2 stray dogs showed up the past few days, not looking like strays though. They chased and eventually got one of the hens. I tracked them down to a neighbor, who has a fenced in property, and actually intentionally put the dogs out of his property assuming nobody was within their range. I made it clear that if they return to my property and kill another chicken, that they won't be returning to him. I don't want that to be the solution, but now that they know where to get hens, they will not be able to restrain themselves (they are just being dogs).

Landscaping

2010-05-17T21:27:00.006-10:00

For quite a while now there has been a strip of weeds along the front of my property where there were too many rocks to be able to mow the area... I've finally cleared and smoothed out the area, and while I was at it cleaned up the water flow pathway since it goes through the front yard. The stack of big rocks started as there was one monster rock which would have been hard to move, so I made a cairn out of it instead. Don't ask how I got the other big rocks on top of it. Part of the water flow path (far end in second pic) needed to be bare lava, and so I dug it all out. I didn't need to go so far down in the whole area, but I like seeing the lava, and there is a layer of good sandy dirt down there that I transported to my green house for the raised beds.

Exposed lava where the water will flow through during flooding type rains, it's sort a low spot, so water will probably pool in there a bit, but that is fine. I'm probably going to need to create a rock wall there on the left where you can see all the roots hanging out. One of the good things about digging out the lower dirt as well is that there shouldn't be any weed seeds to sprout, so my new garden beds should start fairly weed free. This was a pretty long day working on all of this. The bobcat did the bulk and heavy lifting, but there was lots of hand shoveling, wheel barrow ing, etc.
I went over to Dave's today and got a few scrap sheets of old roofing tin, and cut it into 11" strips. I didn't even need to use stakes. Just set some rocks in place to hold it. The initial bed is 3'x12', and I should be doing a second one other other side. Maybe I'll get more dirt when I dig more when I make that rock wall by the water drain route.

Also at Dave's today, I harvested some bamboo to use on projects. It looks like some pretty straight nice stuff. I need to make a screen/wall for the outhouse, and probably some uses in the green house. I think it needs to dry some before I can use it.

Last week, Lucy found and chewed on the phone line as it went across the ground from the pole to the container. So, after some phone and internet issues, I relocated that wire directly to the container house. I also replaced the Hut screen door as it was having some issues.

After killing that feral pig a week or so ago, the other 2 seemed to disappear, but I heard them back last night...

It's interesting to see the waves of different weeds that come through the area. First one, then another. However the previous is never gone, so it's a building weed diversity. Mostly the type that have seed spread in the wind. They are changing the landscape here where so much land is unused. I'm really hoping that the native ferns will successfully shade out any seeds from sprouting in most areas. Just in the 3 years that I've been here, trudging through my neighbors undeveloped lots I can see a significant difference for the worse. Uck.

Lucy had found where the chickens were laying eggs, and had brought them to the edge of the deck, so that was really convenient for a few days.... but she hasn't fetched any new ones for me lately. I need to locate where they are laying their eggs.

Ha. Earthquake just happened. Itsy bitsy one. Since I could feel it, that means at least a 3. Just checked online, 3.5.

Guests

2010-05-15T20:04:00.005-10:00

I have a little buz from the homemade guavie wine. Apparently the alcohol content is deceivingly higher than one might think, so please ignore any typos I might make... :)

Brenda just departed today to go back to Honoloulu. Melissa left on Thursday.

It was fun to have them in town, and as with all guests, an excuse to go do things I might put off doing otherwise. We went down to see the lava, although we missed the action by about a week. We could see the glowing red in the distance a few miles away, and that is about it. Swimming and snorkeling at Richardson's beach was good. Big turtle. Melissa admitted her family in years past had actually eaten those same turtles before they were protected. As many island families did. A nap in the dappled sunlight through the tree was great. Brenda and I drove up to the top of Mauna Kea in the Scout, to 13.7k ft above sea level. The Scout did great until the very top, where it acted as if it would run out of gas with still 1/2 a tank. We literally crawled up the last several hundred feet. (click on images below for larger) It did fine on the way down, and since. Odd.

Under all those clouds is the island somewhere.

Neither Brenda nor Melissa had driven a stick before, and when they were headed over to Kona to do the Manta Ray dive (both Padi certified), we had to do some quickie lessons. The Honda was returned no worse for wear, and now the both can drive a stick. I've heard that Melissa is pretty zippy even. They were able to see quite a bit of the island since they went around the north route on the way there, and over the saddle on the way back. The only other way is the south route.

I have a new scheduling client, and a new website client. So that is always good.

Got a bill from the IRS today for $242 for interest for not paying quarterly in advance. I'll call them this week, and see what I need to do since I only get paid 2x per year, and as such quarterly penalties should not apply, or as much anyway.

Lucy is doing great. She did give Brenda's pug Iris a run for her money while here. I'm pretty sure Iris was happy to go home and get a break from the puppy attention.

Concrete

2010-05-06T20:33:00.002-10:00

Concrete base for the first water jar is done. From this side you can see the inlet/drain, and the 8 hoops which will connect into the jar itself.

I'm having some feral pig issues. This one was a 75 lb male, which one of my neighbors was happy to take off my hands. There are at least 2 more. Tonight they were probably 20' from my house. I'm sure the "creek" bed is all rooted up now.
Today I hand cleared a bunch of invasive weeds and baby trees from an area which is in the direction of what will be my ocean view. I really did this so that when pigs are over there, I can get a clear shot on them. I also cleared a trail in another area so that I can sneak up on them without making too much noise. The vegetation can be so thick that you cannot see them for the brush. I was 10' away from another one today, but had no shot at all since I could only see the brush moving.

Lucy is doing well. Getting bigger by the day.

I finished up the one end of the deck under side rust removal and paining. Got the deck back in place, and corner bolted back in. Glad to have the washer/dryer back over there out of the way. I still need to complete the rust removal and painting on the main entrance end.

The other night I installed the new aluminum deck roof stretchers that I had made since my welder doesn't do aluminum. The old ones were steel pipe. The new ones are 4 lbs each, the old almost 13 lbs. each for the old ones. Big difference. The steel ones were causing a slight valley in the middle of each end of the deck roof. Not really a problem, I just wanted them to be flatter. It will help spread out the rain where it drops off the deck roof, onto the container roof, and into the rain gutter. This would be opposed to more of the water trying to fill the rain gutter mainly in the middle.

Saturday, Dave and Margie will have their own homemade wine party. Should be fun. Dave and I made like 8 gallons of wine a while back, and we will siphon that off into bottles.

My friend Brenda who lives in Oahu is coming for a visit with her friend next week. It's a pretty short visit, so I'm not sure what they have in mind to do while here. Brenda will bring her Pug along, so I'm sure Lucy will have fun.

Projects

2010-05-01T14:35:00.004-10:00

First, the container is officially bolted down. The hammer drill was quick and easy, blow the holes out, then epoxy the stainless studs in. Actually, the deck side only has one stud in each currently. Those deck panels are large and will be difficult to move to get to where I need to drill those in, so I'll wait to install those the first time I need to remove the back deck panels. I also caulked on some covers over the holes in the corners.

While I had the end deck panels off, I decided to also remove the rust from the end deck supports (never preped and painted before now), and get those painted. You can see I have the deck panel tilted up in the image below. I have this end almost completed. It's started raining today, so I only got so far a priming. After my hands started feeling like they are vibrating from using the rotary wire bush, it was time to work on the foundation for the water jar. I set up the tent a few days ago, then this morning I built a small rock retaining wall as the area where it will go needs to be just a tad bigger. You can see the rock wall, and the relation of where the water jars will go to where the container is.

I leveled and packed the gravel, so it's all ready for concrete mix. That might be a Sunday project.
Lisa had her home made wine tasting party on Thursday. It was great fun. I'm pretty sure gallons of wine were consumed. Most of the different types we all made were really good. Guava, Guaivie, Starfruit, Hibiscus, etc. It was great socializing for Lucy as well to play with Lisa's dogs (big and small). She had a few accidents inside, but I would imagine it's hard for her to figure out how to tell me she wants to go out with all the people and strange house.

Pottery class is going well. First Thursday I made some tuna pressers (to press the water out of a can of tuna before using it). This past Thursday I made a 5 section silverware holder for my counter. Big & small forks and spoons, and knives. It should hang on the back of the backsplash and not sit on the counter top. It looks OK, but I'm not totally thrilled about it. Maybe once I sand it some and fire it. Maybe Thursday coming up will be the water heater project.

I'm checking in on a neighbors house & solar system and their cats for the next few months. He has some banana trees going off, so I'll be in the bananas shortly. (If I had visited Dave lately, that would probably already be true).

The new fridge is nice. It's 5' tall and 2' wide. 10 cu ft. of space. Nice to have the extra room and a real freezer. I'll probably be bummed about the power usage, but what ya' gonna do?

There are 2 pigs harassing my land currently. I need to go hunting. Very annoying.

Lucy is definitely getting bigger. Still has puppy breath, but I can tell she's growing.

Footings and puppies and refrigerators

2010-04-26T19:48:00.003-10:00

Great progress on the footings. I built the deck in panels that can be removed for just such occasions. I've now jacked up each corner of the container 1/4" inch, and slid in the stainless steel plates, and welded them on. I've borrowed Michaels hammer drill, and will be drilling the holes in the next couple of days. I'll epoxy the 12" long, 3/4" dia. all thread stainless anchors in, and then it's all set.

Lucy is doing great. We are communicating well. I felt bad though since today we spent 4+ hours in the car driving over to Kona and back so I could pick up a refrigerator I bought via Craig's List. She just sleeps the whole time in the car, so maybe it's not so bad.

I think maybe summer is here. Beautiful weather the past few days.

Bad call on the eggs. No new eggs since the morning with the 3.

The secret to perfect sticky rice

2010-04-19T19:49:00.005-10:00

Before last night, I had yet to really figure out what the restaurants do to make perfect sticky rice. Turns out, you place a trivet in the rice cooker so that the sweet rice is not in any water at all. It's only steamed. You have to cook it longer than if it was in the water... so in my pressure cooker, I think probably 2x as long, like 14 minutes vs. 7 minutes. How much water you put in is also pretty flexible since the rice won't be sitting in the water at all. In the pressure cooker for regular rice for one cup rice, I'd use 1 1/2 cups water. With the sticky rice there was still water left in the pot when it was done.

I still need to figure out what the local restaurants are doing to make their massaman curry. Mom and I found some massaman curry paste, and it's good, but not quite that killer taste we found in the local Thai places.

Lucy is doing well. She's sleeping allot in between frolicking about in the grass. I was so proud last night that she hadn't had any accidents inside... I was on the phone, and right when I said it, she squatted... so much for that. This evening she seems to want to stay inside. I have let her sleep during the day in a papasan type chair, perhaps it's too comfy.

I picked up a real roof for the green house, although I've had plastic over it for the past 4-5 days, and now it's time for watering, so it's off. I have a piece of plastic pipe which I'll roll the new roofing up on when it's time to remove it using some rope. I also need to get started on the raised garden beds. I do think I'm seeing some sprouts from the seeds finally, but it's still hard to tell. I'm still sorta thinking that they all drowned. Seems like last time I sprouted seeds, they all popped up in a few days vs. almost 3 weeks.

Out of 4 adult hens, I may be getting 3 eggs per day now, so that is good. They are pretty small, so 3 eggs is about the same as 2 large regular eggs.
They have also discovered the pond Mom and I put together, and this seems to be their preferred drinking water now. I'm just waiting for one to fall in since the rocks on the edges that they stand on are pretty small and could just tip in.

I've replaced all the hoses on the catchment system again. In looking further, the rubber hose I bought does say it contains stuff known to the state of California to be toxic. Walmart sells some specifically drinking water safe water hoses (no lead), so that's what everything is now. I think that means that I can start drinking my catchment water starting tomorrow. Good bye to my 3 blue 6 gallon water jugs.

I received an email today from someone at Habitat International about an article they are writing, and an accompanying feature chart for comparison of all the different volunteer scheduling/management systems out there. This will be published in the newsletter which goes out to over 1,500 habitat affiliates in the US. I'm pretty sure that my system blows any competition out of the water, so this could be really great. I'll be curious to see how the article turns out and how I think my services compare based on their research.

New arrival at the homestead

2010-04-18T07:50:00.004-10:00

Lucy is 8 weeks old, mostly Black Lab and Husky, and arrived yesterday (Sat)

So far she loves playing in the grass with the seed aerials, so I guess I won't mow that area for a while so that she can roll and play in them. She has only had a passing interest in the chickens. She seems to be already house/deck broken, no accidents thus far. She slept all night in her kennel just fine, no whimpering at all.

She was great in the car. She just found a spot behind the seat in the honda and crashed out.

Not in Mexico anymore

2010-04-14T20:17:00.003-10:00

So, I've had this weird rash thing on my back for months now. At one point, one of the pustules managed to become infected with Staph, and if you've been reading my blog, you will recall me mentioning the staph. Sorry if I'm grossing you out... Well, that time, a visit to the Doc, antibiotics and steroids fixed me right up, and entirely cleared up the rash sores... coincidentally, I was having soreness in my back shoulders I thought was related to my working too much, and that also cleared up just 2 days after I started the antibiotics. The rash has been slowly coming back ever since, and the past few days I've been having that back tightness again, so I headed back to the doc.

His theory is that since I'm using unfiltered and untreated catchment for my showers and dishes that I'm living in a hotbed of bacteria, and that is the cause of my woes. He is also very sure that rats are urinating on my roof, actually urinating everywhere might have been his exact words. While there are some rats around on my land, they would have a hard time getting on my roof, and since I don't have an attic, I would be hearing them up there if they were in fact having drunken parties on the roof..
So, again today, a $4 prescription at Walmart.

Eventually I planned on putting together a water filter system so that I can drink my catchment water. Today, that happened. A 3 stage filter, 30 microns, then 5 microns, then through a Ultra Violet treatment. Think of that last one as a tanning booth for viruses, bacteria, etc. I guess they don't tan well, and it kills 99.99% of those guys. Actually better than any other way to treat water apparently. Sorta stinks that it uses 30watts of power, 24/7, even though water will only be moving past it perhaps an hour a day. Since our power here is $.41 per KWH, that means.... 30wx24hrs=720w per day x 30days = 21,600w per month (or 21.6kwh) x .41= $8.86 per month of electricity. Not horrible I guess. I was told that the bulbs which have to be replaced annually ($79) would not last a year of they were turned on and off all the time, so better life for the bulb, but not great for the electricity. I also replaced all the water hoses that supply my kitchen since surely the old ones have scum inside them (algae, etc). I'll give the system a week of running water though it to be sure that anything in the faucet itself (the only thing not new after the filters) has cleared out. Then, no longer will I have to tote around 5 gallon jugs of drinking water.

The shower has a separate water supply from the hut. For now I'll clean out that barrel, then add a small amount of chlorine (bleach) on a regular basis to help ensure nothing is living there. Of course at some point my shower will be closer to the container house, and thus on the drinking water system.

Sometimes living in nature can be complicated. No wonder the average life span of humans was once 35-40. Just think, I would already be dead if I lived back then. Lucky Me.

Photo Update

2010-04-13T17:42:00.002-10:00

New Chickens. The lower 2 are the mom and new chick, and right is the other new hen. The fluffy one isn't new.
This is the Americana adolescent hen which Lisa gave me.
A view of the "grounds" now with the just finished greenhouse. I have a temporary plastic cover on it until I decide for sure that I will be able to take it on and off easy enough. Then I'll spring for a nice 10yr clear cover.
The orange plastic fencing is to keep out the chickens. Maybe too, the bright color will confuse any other birds who might spot colorful vegetables growing in the garden. Now, I'll need to dig up the inside and plant lots of things! I've actually listed my property on WWOOF, so perhaps I'll get some gardening work traders coming thru to help.

In other news, I've signed up for a pottery class every Thursday 9am-noon for 8 weeks. Should be fun. I have a list of things I want to make. Barbara has indicated that I can pretty much make anything I want, I think some students use her class as a lab so that they can just make things and use her equipment and kiln. She told me that I'll be only the 2nd male person taking her class in 15 years. Hummm...

Post Weekend

2010-04-11T20:48:00.002-10:00

I guess it's been a week since my last post...

The busy week came and went. Ended up being a party at Julie & Chris' place in celebration of Julie's graduating with her masters. She is now working on starting up a local nonprofit organization in support of community health and issues.

I finally started putting together 1" PVC pipes to build a green house. I had bought special 3 way corner connectors over 2 years ago. the design is turning out pretty well. As typical, the design has changed for the better mid way through. It now has segments so that I can add new sections at any time, lengthening the green house. I'm starting at 12'x12'.

Clay was here today, and helped me drain the solar water heater, then carry it over to the driveway where it will sit until I get some packing materials for the glass tubes and can disassemble it. I'll revisit the heater once I'm ready to mount on the roof.

Lisa gave me a new hen, and "Americana", which lays the pretty blue green eggs. It's a adolescent, so it looks a bit scraggly. At first, the 2 Silkie hens were harassing new hen, and kicking her out of the hen house. I was unable to locate her a couple of nights, so she spent the night outside probably in the bushes. Now though, new hen actually forces herself sorta under one of the silkie hens in the house. Forcing her to be a reluctant mother figure. Once they get outside the mother hen chases her around and squawks at her.

Then, Karen, a woman I met who lives at a local "community", needed to get rid of some hens who won't stay in their fruit orchard. One of the guys at the community had designs to eat the rebel hens, so Karen is seeing giving them to me as saving their lives. So, we caught a mother hen and her adolescent, and another hen, 3 total. They have settled right in here on my homestead... so, once the 2 youngin's grow up a bit, I'll have 6 hens, maybe all laying eggs. The 2 new adult hens are already laying eggs in the hen house, even though they are roosting in the trees at night.

Today, Clay and I also relocated the hen house to a new spot since I don't need a fence around it any more. I also used the skid steer to dig our a trench for water to not just pond in a front area. It will work well once I get more dirt moved into the area, and throw down some grass seed. It's a bit of a mess currently. I also chipped up a big pile of tree limbs created a while back, then used the skid steer to mostly smooth the area. Again, I'll be seeding some grass in the area.

I have waaaaay to many projects in progress. I really need to finish some of these things up.

I still have yet to build those 3 new clients websites, although I've had a pretty busy week programming and fixing a few things on the scheduling system. Also, a day was spent jacking with one of my servers since my server hosting company relocated one of them, and totally screwed things up AGAIN. Next time I upgrade my servers, I'm going to have to find a new service provider for those. They've repeatedly screwed things up. And, on their website, they have a little "live" ticker for how many people are waiting on hold, how many newly opened service requests there are, etc. But, it's lying. Open a service request, and you get an email saying they are forwarding your request to the data center, then you wait like a minimum of 4 hours, then have to call anyway... and their live ticker shows that your request must have been answered. I want to leave them for intentionally deceiving would be customers like this. BLAH. BLAH. BLAH.

Anyway, everything is going great, just busy.

Busy Week

2010-04-04T19:53:00.002-10:00

Last weekend, I went on a hike down to Shipman beach. It's about 3 miles from the dead end street where you park. It was a beautiful day. The largest sea turtle I've seen yet was sunning itself on the rocks.

Today, I spent Easter over at Lisa's house. Julie, Chris and Rosie were there, as well as Anna & Kianna. Clay dropped by in time for grub with his puppy Maggus. We (the adults) all dyed hard boiled eggs which was pretty fun. Lisa had gotten some young hens recently, and gave me one of the "Americana" hens which lay a big light green egg.

This next week is a busy one. I have 3 new client websites to build out... as well as: Monday I have a Hwy Task force meeting, Tuesday I'm going to check out a men's group, Wednesday is the free day at the Merry Monarch Festival, Thursday is a Puna CDP special meeting (which I have a ton of material to review before hand)...

Tonight I drew out the 4, 1/4" thick stainless steel plates which I'll weld to the container corners, then bolt down to the 4 concrete columns. I'll plasma cut those out from the one piece of steel very soon, as well as pre-drill the 2 holes in each plate for the rods to go thru. I'll have to jack up each corner of the container to slide each plate in, then weld it on, then hammer drill
2, 1" holes 10" deep into the columns, and then epoxy in the 12" stainless rod. So, each corner will be secured down with 2 very large nuts. That ought to take care of any earthquake concerns.

A few days ago I finally welded on the last 2 vertical bars on the water jar frame. I had left those off as I had run out of the rebar, and so I could climb into and out of the frame to do all the welding. I'm really all ready to do the base... so any time now I'll decide it's the day, and get it done.

Completed my taxes, and will be mailing a check off this week. I'll finally be paying my taxes 100% in advance this year vs. paying all or half the following April as I had been doing. Work is going OK. I've lost like 6 clients in the past 4 weeks (since invoices were due). None of them had any issues with me or my services. Those darn "free" website offers, which most of which will turn out to be not so great after all.

Yellow Curry

2010-03-29T18:45:00.004-10:00

To be served with sticky rice. Sticky rice is made in your pressure cooker, 1 cup "sweet" rice, 1.5 cups water, 12 minutes, let pot cool. This made just a bit too sticky rice, so try a tiny bit less water, or use a steamer basket for the rice.

Ingredients:
Yellow Curry paste
1 pint Coconut cream (adding a bit of water) or can Coconut milk
2 frozen chicken breasts (sub with tofu or other as desired)
some onion
about 3/4 of a zucchini
2 carrots
1 small idaho type potato
2 smaller purple sweet potatoes
some fresh green beans
1 can baby corn
any other stuff you have lying around

In a pressure cooker, place in a steamer basket, and your 1" thick potato slices. Cook for 6 minutes, let pot cool.
While those are going, in a large saucepan on low heat, add the curry paste and coconut cream. Cut chicken breasts crosswise while frozen into 1" wide strips (cuts easier while frozen with a sharp knife), and add them to the saucepan. Remember to wash the chicken juice off the phone. Since we didn't add the carrots to the potatoes to cook & soften, cut them into quarters, and get them in the skillet right away. Let this all simmer for 5 minutes. Terminate mosquito on ankle. Add the onion, green beans cut into 1" sections, zucchini medallions, and any other stuff you have lying around that needs to be eaten. Since we are having rice (starch) already, all potatoes but 2 slices of the purple ones will go into a dish to become mashed potatoes another day. Let simmer another 5 minutes. You still have an unopened can of baby corn for another day, after all, you've only had it 6 months.

Serve up on plate keeping sticky rice separate from the curry. Start with some sticky rice on fork, then fork the desired veges and meat option. Rub fork in the curry sauces, insert into mouth. Repeat until plate is clean, or you feel satiated, or plate is clean. Leave awesome leftovers on counter overnight in sealed containers to cool.

Since a beer would really have been tasty with this meal, insert one bottle each of 3 different kinds of beer into the fridge so that a variety to choose from will available for next time.

Clean up pots and pans and dishes.

Airports

2010-03-25T21:00:00.004-10:00

The natural order of things has been turned upside down...

"My" feral cat, who is supposed to be catching mice and rats while hanging out on my deck at night is instead walking on my counter tops looking for tidbits (feet prints on the stainless in the AM). Meanwhile, I've trapped 3 rats now at the doorstep of the chicken coop entrance just 30 feet from the container. What's the world coming to when the feral cat won't mouse anymore?

Mom and I drove to Kona yesterday to the a-port. We stopped by Waikoloa Resort (A-Bay) to hang out on the beach for a while since we got there early. We watched turtles in the tidal pools, and walked down to some lesser used beach areas and scoured through piles of coral for the best pieces. Dinner at a tasty restaurant, and "Made in China" Hawaii souvenir shopping at the tourista store. Departing the a-port was a bit weird, sorta like I had forgotten something.

The drive home was actually really nice. I took the saddle road vs. the north route. The moon is about 1/2 full, and the night was absolutely clear. I stopped at the top of the saddle (6,600ft), and donned my beach towel in the probably sub 50 degree breeze, and could see all 3 major mountains in the moonlight. I've never seen them all quite like this before. Crazy beautiful planet we live on.

Tonight at the special meeting of the PCDP, the topic of road connectivity came up. Specifically the connectivity of my community to the neighboring community, i.e. my dead end street is one of those. The rest of the members won't ever have a need or want to use a connection we are discussing, but they all think there should be some. I tried to address the connectivity as "recommended" in the CDP, and not just my dead end, and wasn't successful. At some point, it will come up again, and I'll get specific about why at least on my dead end it's a bad idea... like the 2 rivers which cross which would require bridges, and the feral cats that won't mouse.

Oh, and by the way, I've added photos to the past few days blog entries if you visit the actual blog page. As well, Mom made a bunch of movies which you can watch by taking the link on the blog top left area.

Dueling blog entries

2010-03-22T20:25:00.004-10:00

So... we have been up to lots since the last blog entry...

The catchment base is ready to be built, the jar body as well (just need sand and portland cement), but with *things* to do, places to go, rain to fall, it just hasn't happened just yet. But very soon.

So, this past Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday we returned to Kona side (raining when we left Hilo side), and stayed with our ever gracious host Johanna. Tuesday we were at A-Bay by 9am, and were out Stand Up Padding (SUP) and later windsurfing. Mom gave SUP a try, and was a real natural at it. She paddled all over the bay. We also did some nice snorkeling, going out past the buoy, probably more than 30 feet deep. We saw many sea turtles which became a mission for mom. Last week when I had gone wind surfing, the sail stretching attachment point broke, and I received the replacement the day before we went this time, great timing. I finally had the sail really rigged right and tight, so all was great. I pretty much always wear a long sleeve "rash guard", which is basically a stretchy top, which has a UV rating of at least 50, and application of sunscreen, and wearing a ball cap, etc. ensures that I don't get sunburned. I get enough sun just in living here.

Thursday I had started off the day with cold like symptoms, which progressed enough for me to call off going to the Puna CDP meeting which I am a member of. I spent the whole next day in bed, and kept it low key on Saturday as well. I'm almost over the bug now. Mom thankfully had picked up some echnacea for me, and that did seem to help. Sunday morning we headed into Volcano for breakfast at their local farmers market (open only 6am-10am), had some great pancakes, mom bought 3 knit/crochet hats, some way over priced spinach, and a few other edible thingys.

Today (Monday), mom kick started a real garden where we have lots of things planted, and spread some wood chips (got lots of those around) for hopefully weed & mud control. The hens were already eying the area, but we have it all fenced.

Then we dug out and dropped in a 25 gallon pond liner just behind the container deck, and got that all fixed up. The egg ladies provided some mosquito eating minnows, and plants from Green Lake... although tonight there was an inordinately large amount of skeeters while we made dinner.

Lately it's been seriously making up for the dry times we had. No flooding to speak of, just really consistently wet. I think we might get a rain break these next few days.

I drive mom over to Kona for her flight this week back to Santa Fe, so a few more days of mini-projects.

Pictures on some of the projects and such to come.

Almost time to return from Avatar world to Real World

2010-03-22T20:05:00.003-10:00

Jeannine Here: Alas only one day left in paradise. I will return to the mainland on Wednesday! So, we have been very busy finishing up some projects .... if the rain will let us! Yesterday we made custom prayer flags for the deck. They are very Hawaiian and everyone will want one when you see the pictures.
You can see the pond lower left as well. The flags span 23'.

That evening we spent trying to perfect Masaman Curry for dinner. Ours was good but no the heavenly flavors we get at the Thai place in town. Over to Wes now to refine and conquer. Today we really got with it on the garden and now it is all fenced in with two rows and about 10 starter pots all planted with seeds for carrots, beets, beans, peppers and tomatoes. It's all mulched and very tidy to grow lots-0-food for Wes. Then we moved onto the pond. Wes dug out a hole (I'm guessing a 3' circle) for the black pond insert from Home Depot. We sat it in and then put big rocks all around and little one across the top. We had collected some pond plants from our hike at Green Lake and they are so happy in there now. As well, Wes got about 6-8 mosquito eating fish from down the way and they are VERY happy. I have arranged rocks and coral to decorate the whole thing and it is lovely. "We" have so many more things I wanted to help with ... certainly the water catchment but I will just have to cheer him on from Santa Fe. Wes has been such a patient host and a great tour guide. I just bet he will be so very happy to have his place back to himself but I am going to miss the hut something awful. I love being in the jungle and sleeping practically outside. Oh, well, there's always next year .... Wes, really, only a month next time, really .... OK maybe 2 ...but really not 3 ....really ... well, we will see ;-)

Squeeking close to concrete

2010-03-12T22:22:00.003-10:00

Today I welded together the rebar which will be inside the concrete base. Here's a pic of that. I made a loop for the water pipe to fit though, and the vertical hoops are to tie in the walls of the jar to the base. They will also be handy to be able to tell when this rebar is floating mid-height in the concrete since you cannot see it once covered without those. I'll probably pick up Dave's mixer tomorrow, and we may be pouring the first base in the next few days.

Also, here's a pic of the new clothes lines
So, living the rural life, it can really suck sometimes that everything is always trying to eat everything else... you might guess where I'm going with this. The night I spent up in Volcano, the hen house was open. The fence was closed around the house though. When I returned the next day, we discovered that ALL 8 chicks are gone. We aren't sure what exactly has happened. A cat maybe? Mongoose during the daytime? The only clear thing is that they are all gone. We are really bummed. Here's my last pic of the chicks, when they *finally* learned to go up the ramp and into the house on their own.
Saturday, Mom and I are meeting Clay and will be going on a hike at "Green Lake". Later in the evening, there is a party at a friends place in the community next to mine.

A love Affair with a BobCat

2010-03-10T20:47:00.002-10:00

Jeannine here: OK, I get it. This BobCat machine is amazing. Of course, it helps to have a talented operator who also has a well thought out plan. Wesley had a extra large load of "drain rock" delivered and the pile was almost 5' high. Dumped it right in the middle of the parking area. I retrieved the big rakes and thought we were going to spread this rock (big gravel) across the parking lot and drive way. It has been raining a lot all week and it will be nice to have the drive drain water away versus create a mud puddle. But Wes started up the BobCat and moved that rock where it needed to be .... all smooth and level .... a lot like icing a cake. Beautiful ... I put those rakes away. We did get to slave labor for the day as we built a retaining wall of BIG rocks to complete the formal drive pad. It is beautiful! Since I have been here Wes has used the BobCat to pick up and move the chicken coop ... twice!! and to remove large stand of "weed" trees and to move around boulders. Yes, this BobCat is a machine to love. I'll post pictures in the next couple of days.

Real progress on projects

2010-03-10T20:08:00.002-10:00

So, let's see... Mom and I had cleared out an area for the first water jar before the party. Monday we cleared out the rest of the area so that we can actually have room to build all 3 water jars (10'x20'). Turns out the will all be in a row, as the shape of the land dictates. I had already welded together the stainless steel 2 1/2" tube with a 90 degree bend, and a 2" threaded fitting for the drain. Tonight I picked up the supplies to build 2 more drains, and the rebar to weld up 3 rebar frames which will be concreted into the bases. I had 14 tons of 1" drain rock (gravel) delivered yesterday, and moved some it over to where the jars will be for the base. Today, I used the bobcat to spread the remaining gravel in the parking area, then Mom and I finished spreading the gravel over the entire parking area which is a big improvement. "Drain rock" is gravel only, no dirt or sand, so when spread, it allows water to drain quickly right through it making for a better surface to park on and walk on in the current extra rainy conditions we are having. As well today, we completed the rock retaining wall that goes around the driveway, and back filled that before the spreading. Then the area where I used the bobcat to move some dirt around where the water jars will be was *super* muddy. I decided I needed to dig a trench and lay a drain pipe so that the water wouldn't just sit and totally saturate the ground (facilitating mud). That turned out to be a bit challenging since the lava was high in a few places and I had to pick axe some of that to get a decent angle on the pipe. That was a real muddy mess. Today I also bought 2 soda size cans of grass seed, which I will try to get started. It's a Japanese grass that almost never needs mowing. I have some in front of the hut which looks pretty good. It used to be allot better, but pigs plowed it all up one night last year.

The chickens are doing pretty well. We've had some learning curve issues in getting them to use the ramp (and thus the chicks to see them use it, and learn to go up it). For several nights now, we have had some stragglers who haven't made it into the coop at night, and we had to intervene so that they stay alive. So far so good, still 8 chicks. I saw the mother hen give them lessons today, or what appeared to be lessons, and they all were inside the coop after all being out at least 2 times today. Mom and I are staying tonight at a friends house up in Volcano (about 30 minutes from my place), so if one doesn't make it in on their own tonight, they will not likely survive the wet night. They are all very cute in the morning when they all march down the ramp, then all jump off and flap their mini wings. I'll get this on video in the next few days.

Somewhere in the past week I welded new pipes onto my deck roof supports, and stretched 2 stainless steel cables for a clothes line. They are a good distance from my sink so that you can easily work in the kitchen if things are hanging there. The bars are also perfect for chin ups and behind the neck pull ups. Now if I will choose a spot to install some dips bars, I could sell off the exercise bar set taking up room in the container shop area.

While I had the bobcat out, I pulled up all the junk tree roots/trunks from an area to the side in front of the container. I had cut all those down and chipped them a few weeks back. Since it's been raining since I completed this, it's clear that I've created a small lake. At least till I trench out the drain path. This is also where I drive the bobcat through to get to the water jar area, so driving through there any time soon with it won't happen as I'll make a bigger mess in the mud/lake.

The new steel tracks on the bobcat are nothing short of amazing. I could NOT have done even 1/4 of the projects that I did the past few days without the tracks. My tires would have just been spinning and slipping. (Mom just posted to this blog about the bobcat which I will include in the email).

I have decided to relocate my solar water heater to my roof... but that is another project for another day for sure.

No advancements on the murphy bed project or the container footing attachment pads.

I'll definitely get some photos soon of some of this stuff and post them here. I'll probably attempt a time lapse video of the water jar building as well. There is actually a Hawaii Island Sustainability Forum on March 20th that I would LOVE to have the first water jar completed before so I could have some photos to share.

Some photos I've been meaning to post

2010-03-03T21:43:00.002-10:00

Here's the Honda all loaded up for the Kona visit. My MPG did drop for that trip.

The sheep under the chicken coop looking for chicken scratch (corn).

Clay's dog actually played with the white sheep. The sheep was very tolerant of him.

Bonfires, moon shine and star light

2010-03-03T08:48:00.002-10:00

jeannine here: yep, it's pretty darn wonderful. Wes and I made a fire pit for the party last Sunday, which was so fun ..... even in the lovely rain! No chance to try out the fire pit for sure. We huddled around on this marvy deck and just talked and talked and consumed a LOT of pizza. Wes has some very fun and interesting friends. We plan an "after-party Party" soon to polish off the beer and to make the Smores we did not get to make.

Back to the bonfire .... which we had last night and it was wonderful. The stars came out so bright about 7:pm and around 8:pm the moon showed itself .... beaming down on our fire. We just sat around and watched logs burn. Yes, that's it, just basked in moon light and watched logs burn with smoke drifting up to the tree tops. Wes wanted to change the channel but I said the logs we had going were just fine.

Pressure Cooker - that is not a statement about life which is were some of us seem to operate (ha!) no that is a statement about cook ware. Wes purchased one and "we" have had it a week. Oh-my-gosh it is such a wonderful thing. We are so pleased with some of the dishes we have prepared we may post the receipes !! Guinness Beef Stew (4 lbs of beef ..complete meal ready in 40 minutes! and so tender and yummy) We had a wonderful soup last eve and Chicken Curry is on the menu for tonight. If you can find your Granny's pressure cooker somewhere, dig it out and check the internet for instructions/receipts and discover a whole new FAST, yummy way to prepare 'everything'.

Later, I'm off to watch orchids bloom.

It's Party Time

2010-02-27T21:22:00.002-10:00

So, my neighbor Jose spotted his sheep at the end of my driveway, and so the sheep saga has ended. This was about a week ago now. Turns out that some stray dogs attacked his sheep on his property, and pretty severely injured his ram. He assumed that the dogs chased down and killed the two sheep that ended up at my place. He was happy to have them returned to him so healthy and safe. They were fun, but really I was happy to send them on their way.

The mother hen has hatched 8 baby chicks. They are super adorable and so tiny. They are variations of white, yellow, and brown. I've made a 3 minute video of them (check video link top left of this blog).

Mom has incited me to have a party finally and invite everyone over. The guest list is about 50 people, so far 30 have RSVP'd. The party is Sunday the 28th. There is a local guy who operates a mobile pizza kitchen (school bus), and he will be here making pizza for everyone. Mom and I have been pretty busy this past week (when we weren't in Kona) adding some walkways, straightening things up a bit, etc. in preparation. I picked up some walkway lights, and Dave will bring over some string lights which we will hang up. We created a fire pit area, and will have smores makings for the evening fire. Should be great fun. Lots to do before 4:30 Sunday to be ready for that.

I ordered a set of pressure cookers a few weeks ago, so Mom and I have been busy using those. They are great. It's amazing how well the work, and how quickly. They cook using 70% less energy and time (seriously). Anyone interested in saving energy, creating less heat in the kitchen, or cooking things faster, should look into a pressure cooker. I think it's sort of like a oven on the stove, only it works better. The steam/moisture inside transfers the heat much faster than a dry air oven to what you are cooking. Of course this won't work on a cake, but you get the idea. The pressure also allows the steam to get up to 250 degrees.

I really enjoyed Mom and my 3 days/2 nights in Kona. I took along my stand up paddle board and windsurfing gear, as well as a 2 seater kayak I borrowed from a friend. We crashed at Johanna's house up the hill in Waikoloa, so that was very convenient, and great to hang out with her and her family. Thursday we kayaked about 1 mile across a bay over to the Captain Cook monument, which has the best snorkeling on the island. Turns out the county/state had just started enforcing a "landing permit" requirement. The officials who met us in their kayak as we approached a landing area explained this all to us, and granted us access (grace period?). This area gets large numbers of tourists on huge boats. The sheer numbers of people who make it to this area now was negatively affecting the area. On the weekday we were there, there was easily 100 people in the water snorkeling. So, perhaps on any given day, there are perhaps 300-500 people who visit. The new permitting system will significantly reduce this to around 70-100 per day. It will make it difficult for people to visit the area, however, the area does need to be conserved.

Sunshine in Kona

2010-02-26T08:21:00.006-10:00

Greetings Blog followers .... this is Wes' mom posting here. I am over visiting and we are having great adventures and since they all involve Wes and Wes' property, I've requested a little blog space to help keep track of my visit.

The last two days we were hosted at the home of his great friend Johanna ... she is this amazing woman beginning with being a great MOM, a super water sport jock and wonderful tutor of middle school kids ... then she is a generous hostess of two drop in's looking for water fun!

First we visited Anaehoomalu Bay (locally called A-Bay since it's real name is too hard to pronounce!) and played all morning with paddle boards and Wes caught some wind for wind surfing. Picture tour of A-Bay at http://tinyurl.com/yafbxfp
That evening Joanna and very interesting friends and family joined us for a spaghetti dinner.

Next morning Wes has the paddle board and kayak all strapped to the little car and off we go to spend the morning at the cove called Captain Cook in Kealakekue Bay about an hour south of Kona. We had to lower the kayak about 6-10 feet down off a pier and then lower ourselves. I'm pretty certain Wes must have been worried about how I was going to manage my end of the deal but it all worked out just fine. We paddled over to the cove and it was THE most amazing snorkeling ever. Not just pretty fish but schools and schools of pretty fish swimming in glorious coral. The color of the water ....besides just plain CLEAR ... was the spectrum of blues from azure to turquoise to the deepest blue. It was just the best, some photo's included here. We then paddled back and hoisted ourselves and the kayak out of the water. Funny, this couple came over to offer a hand (it does look very difficult to come up that 6-10 foot wall) and Wes says "No, we got it" (I was so pleased he figured that I could do "it") but said, "you guys look familiar.. do I know you?" They quickly said "no, not possible we are from New Mexico" ..... Ha! little did they know it's a very small world ..... unless you are in the ocean swimming with schools and schools of beautiful fish! Enjoy the pictures ...more info to come!

Rain is back

2010-02-14T22:06:00.002-10:00

We've slowly been getting some rain for the past few days. Tonight it's really raining. The ground should be pretty happy.

The water jar frame is basically done. I've added the tabs which will secure the sections together, cut the sections apart, and done some welding on areas which couldn't be done until apart. 5 of the 8 sections have been cleaned up and primed. So, it's basically ready to be used now. I will need to create a top next neck insert, but that should be simple...

So, nobody has responded to the Craigs List ad about the sheep. So, I guess I have 2 sheep now. They are very sweet and gentle. The white one likes to be petted on a bit. The do follow me around if I'm walking around the property. They like to eat banana peels, crackers, papaya skins, etc. There is sheep poop everywhere. I think the rain will help clean that up. The white one is Baa-Baa White Sheep, and the brown one with the dreads is Rasta.

I bought a bunch of stainless steel for the container footing project, and for the murphy bed setup. I think the bed might be a project for this week.

More guests

2010-02-09T17:10:00.004-10:00

I'm not sure where else you can live where you look out the container house doors, and see that you have 2 sheep visiting.
It's starting to look like a farm around here. I've posted a FOUND notice on Craig's List and will keep an eye out for lost sheep signs in the area. So, not quite sure how long they will be visiting.

The rooster is driving us NUTS. So, I gave him away today. Sorta anyway. I tried to catch him 3 times today without success. I'll keep him locked in his house tomorrow morning until the guy returns to pick him up. I'll be happy to not have have to listen to him crowing all day.

The brooding hen is still sitting on her 10 eggs (2 fell out of the access door, fixed that today). So, we are still on track to have chicks in a few weeks.

Yesterday, Mom, Barbara and I went over to Dave's farm and harvested probably 50lbs of star fruit, and another 15 of tangelos, then proceeded to juice them all. Ended up with 7 gallons of juice. So, in a few months, we will have star fruit/tangelo wine. We added 10 lbs of sugar, and since Dave once upon a time owned a vineyard in CA, he tested the sugar content, acidity, and will add some yeast today. We think we will end up with about 5 gallons of wine after everything settles out of it. Lisa had challenged all of her friends to a wine making contest for a party in May... hopefully it will be finished and be wine by then.

I pick up my repaired welder tomorrow, and probably some stainless steel for the murphy bed project and for the container footings. I'm going to bolt the container to the concrete footings by welding stainless steel tabs to the container, then drilling holes and bolting them down to the footings. This was inspired by the fairly large earthquakes that seem to be occurring on planet earth these days.

Not yet completed with my water jar frame yet. Hopefully I will be in a few days.

I cut off a whole area of Guavie trees about 2' above the ground, then proceeded to tree chip them all. LOVE the self-feeding tree chipper. Soon, I'll use the skid steer to pull up all those remaining 2' tall stumps. I'll do some minimal grading, and rock removal, and may seed for grass. This is basically a litmus for what I think will be the process for how I'll end up clearing most of my property. My vision of how I would clear the invasive trees has definitely changed in the 2.5 years.

I think we are all off to Thai tonight.

Jar Frame Progress

2010-01-31T18:32:00.002-10:00

I started the day with just enough holding it together.
Then by 5pm, definite progress.
I still need to weld in the top 2 rings, then tabs on the inside so that it can be bolted back together once cut apart. I primered most of the welds that I did today. Things rust here very quickly. It's 6' diameter at the widest point, and will be probably 6'2" tall when finished.

Some rain yesterday and today. I think just enough to help the grass so maybe it won't fully die.

8th egg today. I hope one of the hens is going to sit on them soon. How many chicks does she think she can handle at once?

Water Jar Frame

2010-01-28T20:08:00.005-10:00

So, I finally got off my butt, and got over to Dave's and picked up his welder. The past 3 days I've been working on the bending of the 5 circles for the horizontal, and the 48 vertical bars. I created some jigs out of wood from the window and door crates.
This side had the template for 3 rings, and I screwed the other 2 to the opposite side. My jigsaw motor froze up and died as soon as I was done with this jig.

Next was creating the jig for the vertical bars, which curve in at the top. You can see some lying on, and hanging off the deck, and one lying in the jig.
When using a wire brush on a angle grinder tool, the wires eventually come flying off. They penetrate and stick in denim pretty well. How's that for some leg hair? My shirt was also full of them.

The lower 3 rings, the largest ones, I welded on 8 pieces, creating a octagon inside each ring. The 3 big rings are not "relaxed" into their circular shape, meaning if cut without those 8 bars, it would spring open. These bars will help keep the form's round shape when it gets cut into 8 sections, since they cannot spring out of shape. I think I might be over explaining it... I'll have pictures soon.

So, Friday, I'll work on setting up the frame, and start welding it all together.

I did talk to the welder repair place, and they said that it's the same broken part as the previous 2 times. The manufacturer, Miller Welders, has said that in like 5 years of this model being produced, they have only had a total of 5 with the same bad part as mine (3 times now). It is almost out of warranty, and I assume they will fix it one more time. They have indicated that they were investigating if anything else could be causing this problem (hence my calling the electric company, etc). I'm just praying for a welder that works, and continues to work. It just doesn't make sense that it could be anything outside the welder. I've asked them to just find a used one, same model and send it to me. I think somehow, I just ended up with a lemon.

The chickens are doing fine. Today a 5th egg showed up. Should be any day now that one of them will start brooding. 21 days of brooding, and little chickadees should show up. The rooster has been crowing some at night, 1:30am last night. But then it's almost a full moon now. I covered up the coop door tonight so that maybe they cannot tell it's a full moon? But then I think he crows at night when he hears others in the distance crowing... I plan on using the skid steer to clear the far end of my land of junk trees, and relocate the coop to there. That should be far enough away that if he crows at night it won't be loud enough to wake anyone (me).

The skid steer track parts showed up, and so those are ready to go on. I've rented it out to one of my neighbors for today and tomorrow. I could hear him using it all day long today...

Lost a client today. One of those that never bothered to talk to me about their site, and one day I get the call that they have a new site ready to go... I'll be curious to see how their new site looks, and if it's very functional.

Monday, Mom arrives... It will be fun. I just hope the rain doesn't show up with a vengeance. It's been very, very dry here. That means beautiful, but no rain to speak of at all. Many people have been having to pay to have water trucks bring them water for their tanks.

Projects delayed

2010-01-20T19:57:00.004-10:00

Here's a pic of the couch surfers, Daniel & Marguerita. They made us a spanish "pancake" for dinner which you can see there on the table.
Chicken Update:
The morning routine goes like this... Rooster crows once from inside the hen house, not sure what time. About 6:30, I am up, and let them out. Rooster immediately makes up for lost time, crowing. Inbetween calls, he's chasing the girls in circles trying to "get busy" with them. Looks like they are running laps at the local H.S. track. After I have b-fast, I give them my 1/2 papaya skin, which they will totally eat over the next few hours. They have started staring at me, I think they think I'm supposed to feed them or something. In the hen house, they have a feeder with "egg layer" feed in it (feed w/ extra calcium for egg shell production). They don't seem to eat much of that since it seems they are being fed pretty well just with their scratching around. If I'm not home at dusk, I'll find them all snug in the hen house, and close the door for the night. There is one egg in the hen house, not sure if it was from the first day, or survived the car drive. I'm going to let them keep their eggs and make chickies, then I'll start using those for breakfast. They are fairly small though, it will take 3 to make a regular 2 eggs. I'm pretty sure the rooster is doing his job, so as soon as they lay more eggs, it shouldn't be too long before major cuteness arrives.

It was Rosabella's 2nd Bday on the 15th, and so her party was at the Zoo. It was fun. I think there might have been 7-8 kids. In the pic, Rosie is left, and Keanna is right. Most of the adults seemed to be covered in stickers.

The Skid Steer tracks arrived today. Took longer for them to get from Oahu to this island, than from Washington to Oahu. Looks like they will be sending me one more set of pads for the tracks as once installed, there is absolutely zero slack in the tracks. Just too tight. Hopefully they will get those off to me quickly.

No word on the welder yet. I've talked to the Mfg'r, and they had me call the power company and have them come check out my power (all A-OK as expected). Supposedly, the input power card is getting blown, and that "never" happens since they are designed to handle up to 250V. I haven't borrowed Dave's welder yet... so the water jars project is stalled.

I've also drawn up a murphy bed (bed folds up against the wall) situation for my queen bed in the container. It will be cool. I'll use the shipping container flooring (1.1" thick mahogany marine plywood), so you will see that when it's folded up. While up, it will have a fold down table top, for projects, non-computer desk, or for eating (I'll prob always still eat outside). Should be pretty groovy. It will be high enough above the floor when the bed is down to leave a coffee table underneath (in case I go that route at some point). Of course, I need the welder for this one too, as it will be *really* attached to the wall.

I sold my small Sears wood chipper via Craig's list ($300). I've listed my big trailer, but no interest yet ($6k).

In a bit less than 2 weeks, and Mom will be here for her visit.

Work has been fairly busy, a few new clients every once in a while. I've been emailing/talking with a bunch though, so at some point soon I'll be very busy with those.

Friggin' welder

2010-01-13T22:38:00.002-10:00

So, I bent the first piece of rebar around the form, and welded the first bar on. Then POP. This expensive "quality" welder has broken for the 5th time in 2 years. It's still under warranty, but it will take 3 months to get it back.

I had a couple from Spain who came through for a few days via CouchSurfing.org. Daniel & Margarita. They cooked up a nice "pancake" for dinner, which was sort of like a souffle . Good stuff.

Went over to Dave's to help him on a tractor mower welding project, after which I was going to snag, I mean borrow, his welder for a week. We almost got it done, but not quite.

Maybe tomorrow I'll snag the welder, and get back onto the project.

Lisa noticed on Craig's list some "Silkie" chickens and coop available cheap. So, we went by and picked them up today. 1 white rooster and 2 tan hens. I guess the hens are laying eggs pretty regularly. The coop is decent, and is a good start. I'll keep them "cooped" up for at least a few days, until the understand that this is their new home, and expect food to be in their house, and hopefully then return there nightly. I'm sure some of you are saying to yourself about now... "You got a rooster?" since we all know what's ended up happening to some roosters here on my land in the past... Well, we will have to see how this plays out. Perhaps being locked in their house until I get up every morning will keep him quiet... and I do plan to relocate their house to the other end of my property before to long, and if he's in the coop and not 40 feet from my windows, that should be OK. So, I guess it's an experiment sort of. Initially I'm planning on letting the hens keep their eggs since they have a rooster, and see if they will make some chickadees. They would have a much better chance of surviving with 2 hens looking after them than chicks you could buy at a store with no hens... I'll need to make a ramp for their door, and to make a new door as well for the coop in the next few days before I let them out. Any stray dogs better beware if they show up on my property now. I'm done with chicken killing dogs.

So, we had literally no rain for 4 weeks, ending yesterday. Finally the rain came. Not flooding, just normal rain. With the surplus water, I did 2 loads of laundry. I added a second rain barrel to the Hut, and the new one was filled up totally in the one day of rain (44gal), so I drained the other barrel of the "old" water. We should see more rain soon to refill that one.

Killed another pig on my land last week. You should see the mess in the forest he made in the days before I could get to him. I think they are a real contributor to the spread of the invasive species of plants here. They uproot and kill the native plants, giving the invasive ones a real foothold and opportunity.

Julie & Chris' little girl Rosabella's 2nd birthday party is this weekend. Jeeze they grow up fast. Rosie is quite the conversationalist already.

Workin on da land

2010-01-01T19:10:00.004-10:00

So, the chipper wasn't quite fixed. The "easy" conversion from what should have been 6" outlet to 5" didn't work. I had welded up a really nice rotation flange and everything. Sometimes longer twigs would get caught crosswise, and then plug up the outlet. Bit of a pain to clear. So, I had to cut off all of that, and at first I tried a 6" ventilation swivel ducting corner. That worked good, until a larger chunk of wood was thrown up and split the sections. So, I bought a 6" pipe, and cut pie shaped sections out of it, and welded it back together into a corner shape. Works perfectly now.

Here's a pic with the old outlet on it still.

So, I've spent the whole day today chipping trees. A bunch down the runway that I had cut 2 weeks ago are all chipped, and the logs in front of the container as well. There are lots of others over near where the water catchment will be... maybe I'll do that, maybe I'll start on the water jars framing....

Cheryl (a friend who live across the highway) and I went down to Richardson's beach on Wednesday. She had her kayak, and I was on the stand up paddle board. It was exceptionally flat when we showed up, but then the surf kicked in after we got our gear in the water. I mostly sat down and paddled (sorta like a kayak at that point). After we returned to the bay, I was mostly standing up, and actually caught a wave. It was actually the first time I've every actually "surfed" a wave. Groovy Man. No, really it was great. So, I made loops in the bay catching waves and paddling around.

Here's a pic of the honda with the new surf gear rack I built on it. It's actually level, but doesn't look like it in this picture.

Clay has been working in Hilo quite a bit lately, and so has been hanging out at my place. He also got himself a puppy today...

My New Years was pretty quiet. I went over to Lisa's house, and we watched a movie. I was home and in bed by 11pm. My neighbor Tom must have been having a party/get together as they had fireworks going off, music, etc. No worries though.

There are a couple of pigs on my land again. They found some sweet potatoes that I had *just* stuck in the ground the day before. Buggers. Also, the one remaining rooster started crowing at 4am, so he met his end.

The solar water heater gets hot enough daily that it boils the water in the tank. The vent on top was gurgling out water for a while, but is finally low enough inside that it just steams now.

Wood chips, wood chips everywhere...

2009-12-22T22:21:00.002-10:00

Well, I would have thought that it would have taken longer to get the chipper up and running. I had to re-mount the engine, create a panel for the choke, starter button and kill switch (all 3 were totally missing). Remount the gas tank and weld up a hole. Had the blades sharpened, and rebolt those on. I replaced the 2 hydraulic hoses, and ordered a new 4" wide drive belt. The old belt is pretty toasted, but I used it that way today. The new belt arrives tomorrow. I bolted on the exit chute today after letting it just rain chips for a while. The bobcat has been very helpful to lift the engine off, and lift up the chute to bolt it on. I do need to re-do the exit chute setup as it's a square exit, then a rotating joint with a much larger square chute on top which then curves. Problem is that where those 2 meet, the less chipped twigs get caught up, and eventually plugs up the exit and machine, which is annoying to clear. I'll see if I can get together the parts I need to build my own square to circle conversion, new rotating joint, and new chute tube... Sounds like a x-mas project to me. I did chip up lots of trees in the soon to be runway which I cut down a few weeks ago. Big 4' high pile of chips. I'm so stoked to have this great tool. The engine runs great, it was built in probably 1960, still running like a champ. Renting a smaller chipper at Home Depot for 2 weeks would cost more than what I paid for this one.

Maybe I should have called this one Projects, projects everywhere. Projects getting in the way of other projects. I wouldn't have it any other way. :)

Drought to Flooding

2009-12-19T16:15:00.004-10:00

So, for the past 2 weeks, we've had virtually not a drop of rain.

It started raining last night. Some of those incredible downpours I've talked about before. My rain gutter just overflowed for the first time ever in one spot. Incredible amounts of rain.

We also are getting tremendous amounts of lightening right now. We very rarely get lightening, but when it comes, it's like nonstop thundering. And it's doing it now. It's making me think I should unplug everything and sit in the middle of my bed.

I did pick up the chipper yesterday. No chance to try to start it or anything. It's raining if you haven't heard.

I've been updating my clients sites with some new versions of the secure online donation form. It' takes a while, but at least it's something I can do indoors.

Rebar

2009-12-15T16:27:00.002-10:00

Today I picked up the rebar which I will use to weld together the water jar framing. I've drawn the design up based on the water jars they used and built overseas in many countries. Their models were only up to 500 gallons, and mine will be 2x that. Now I need to cut out a bunch of templates which I will use to bend the rebar into shape consistently. Maybe I'll get to that tonight. Lots and lots of welding on this one.

I apparently have a cat now. I've noticed that if I leave a meat related packaging on top of the garbage in the can, it usually ends up off the deck a bit chewed up. So, I put my game camera on the deck, and sure enough, every night I get a feline visitor. I haven't seen any rats or mice on my land at all, so I'm assuming that the cat is doing a good job. She looks very well fed. And she likes sitting in my chair to groom herself.

I also had a couple of new roosters show up about a month ago now. An older one, and a youngster. The older had a bad habit of crowing at 3am, so you can guess what happened to him. The younger one has started crowing, but not till after 7am (and around 5pm for some reason). So, he gets to stay around, although he is very skittish, staying at least 50 feet away at all times.

The temperature on solar water heater went from 90 deg. to 150 yesterday in sunshine. This morning it started off at 140 deg, and last time I looked the thermometer was at 155 deg before noon, now it shows all 8's. So, I'm guessing I reached the max temperature for the device. Guess I can remove it from the vent tube.

The new chipper was supposed to be ready for pickup today at the ship yard, but nobody called about it. Hopefully tomorrow.