Paradise ponders: another crazy day edition...

Paradise ponders: another crazy day edition...  I got up a bit early today, getting all my morning chores finished before 6 am so that I could help my friend and neighbor Tim D. move irrigation pipe this morning.  We got to share the sunrise and the setting full moon, along with our usual companionable conversation.  Moving irrigation pipe isn't something I ever thought would be something I looked forward to, but ... I do.

After Tim and I finished, I cranked up my tractor and headed a half mile or so up the road to pick up the pipe cart I'd arranged to borrow yesterday.  You can see it, attached to my tractor, in the photo at right.  I loaded up 26 pieces of 3" diameter aluminum irrigation pipe, lengths varying from 10' to 40'.  Most of my pieces were around 30' in length, but I had a few oddballs.  All but one piece has fittings on them, and most have sprinklers (usually with risers) on the female fittings.  I couldn't get the cart very close to the places where I had pipe piled, so I ended up moving each piece 50' or so to pile it on.  Then I drove to the corner of Heath's field (in the photo) and unloaded it all.  That was much easier, as the cart was alongside where he wanted it piled.  I'm really glad to see my old beat-up pipe going to someone who can really use it.  Heath will be here tomorrow setting up a couple of water lines on his pasture, just as soon as the baler is finished picking up the windrows you see in the photo.  After finishing all this, I was especially appreciative of the kindness of Mike C., who lent me that cart.  This would have been a far more difficult task without that handy little thing!

The contractors were here to work on the filling station today, and ... they finished!  The three photos below show what it looked like at different times today.  I've got a bit of woodworking to do in order to allow the nozzles to be racked, and the hose to move smoothly.  My electrical contractor will be here on Monday to hook up the power, and at that point we should actually have a working filling station.  It only took about 10 months!  At the end of this month we'll be traveling up to Kalispell, Montana again to pick up some more metal work we've had done.  Among the goodies on that trip will be the (lockable) door for the filling station.  Once that's one, our masons will be able to put all the rock veneer up around it (on their schedule, of course!).  Then it will actually be finished...

Our sprinkler contractors were also here, and they've now installed (if I'm counting correctly) 7 of the 22 total zones our system will have.  The part of the yard they're working on looks like hell – trenches and piles of dirt everywhere, and great big holes every once in a while where the valve boxes are going.  I have to keep convincing myself that the end result will be good, because it sure doesn't look like it right now!

My office air conditioning got repaired today.  The problem turned out to be a simple (and relatively inexpensive) one: the refrigerant had leaked out of the unit.  All they had to do was refill it, fix the leaking connection, and now my office has the feel of a meat locker.  Lovely, that is!

Debbie and I went up to Tractor Supply this afternoon to buy birdseed (we're going through about 40 pounds a week right now, I think because the parent birds are busy feeding babies).  While there, I spotted the ... thing ... at right.  It's a $200, 6' tall, sheet metal rooster.  Why?  This one store has eight of them in stock.  Are there really eight people in the area who would buy such a thing? 

Paradise ponders: remembrance edition...

Paradise ponders: remembrance edition...  My mom died one year ago today.  It's a lot easier for me to think about this today, but still painful.  This morning as I walked out to my barn, I looked up at the flag she made, now installed on my barn (at right).  I often look at it and think of her, but knowing the date today it stopped me in my tracks for a few minutes, just thinking about what my day was like a year ago.

That morning our phone rang about 1 am.  It was my mom's hospice nurse, a friendly and ever-helpful young woman.  The call woke me up, of course, and while I was still half asleep she gave me the news that my mom had died – peacefully, painlessly, in her sleep.  As I worked myself out of my grogginess, it occurred to me that this poor nurse must have to make calls like this often – how awful!  I started a conversation with her about this, and she told me that these calls were by far the hardest part of her job.  She loved caring for the people in hospice ... but letting her patients' loved ones know that her patient had died was really tough for her.  I told her that I admired her courage – I'm not at all sure I could regularly do that – and that I, for one, appreciated the way that she did her job.  I was able to tell her, truthfully, that my mom thought she was one of the nicest people she'd ever met.  And I seconded that opinion.  I've talked with her several times in the ensuing year, each time because she was calling to see how I was doing...

I had another busy day yesterday.

My replacement router arrived, and I was able to bring it up, completely configured, within just minutes.  It worked on the first try after installing it, and my office IT situation is back to normal.  Yay!  Even better, when I contacted Amazon (where I had purchased the failed router), they told me they'd be happy to refund the amount I'd spent on it, no questions asked.  They just want the old one back, and they'll pay for the shipping.  That kind of customer service keeps me in the mode I'm in these days: the first question I ask myself when I want to buy something – anything – is: can I buy it on Amazon?

The laptop I'm using to write this post is a five year old Macbook Pro.  It still works just fine, but it's a bit short on storage (just 500GB) and the battery life isn't the greatest (about 2.5 hours).  The most recent versions of the Macbook Pros are considerably better on both counts: 2TB of SSD storage, plus around 10 hours of battery life.  That's good enough to finally tempt me into getting a new one.  I put mine on order this morning; should be here before the end of the month.

The sprinkler contractor is making good progress.  The first two zones were pressurized yesterday – first water!  The first two photos below show one of the solenoid valves that control the zones, along with a drain (open in the fall, closed before first irrigation in the spring).  The third photo shows a set of sprinklers going.  Yay!

Because the sprinklers are going in, I now have about 20 lengths of sprinkler pipe that I no longer need.  A new neighbor of ours (Heath C.) bought a 2.5 acre lot about a quarter mile north of us.  He and his family are pinching pennies to save up the money to build a house on that land, but he needs sprinkler pipe to keep his land green.  I offered him my pipe, and he eagerly accepted – though he swears he's going to find a way to pay me back (I wouldn't take any money for my old, beat up pipe).  I noticed a pipe cart (for behind a tractor) parked up on the land of someone I know.  This morning I stopped by his house to see if I could borrow the cart, and he said “Of course you can borrow it!”  So tomorrow morning I'm going to run up and grab that cart, haul the pipe over to Heath's, and then take the cart back.  This will give me much pleasure, to give back a little to the neighborhood that has been so kind to us...

This morning my friend and neighbor Tim D. started moving irrigation pipe for the first time this year.  Debbie spotted him out there by himself (he's 74 and just had back surgery!), so she called me to go out and help.  That's always fun to do with Tim – lots of companionable conversation and smiles.  Amazingly enough, none of the sprinkler heads were plugged up by anything.  That rarely happens!

Yesterday morning I took a nice walk, on my usual route, with Cabo.  Our little valley is so beautiful this time of year.  There's still a bit of snow on the highest peaks, but I suspect that will be all gone within a week.  Green stretches right up to timberline now.  In a week or two, some of the mountain grasses will start turning brown, so things won't look quite as verdant up there.  In the valley and on the lower hillsides, though, the irrigated fields will be a beautiful green all summer long...

Yesterday and today my filling station contractor is hard at work mounting the pumps.  I've been helping a bit, on the wooden mounts we needed for the pumps.  Once that's done (should be any moment now), the rest will just be plumbing.  On Monday my electrical contractor should be here to put in the explosion-proof electrical feed for those pumps.  At that point we should have a grand filling station!  Toward the end of the month the steel door for the filling station should be done.  It's lockable, so we'll be safe from the predations of any unsavory characters who might decide to liberate some fuel.  That's fairly unlikely around here, but you never know...

Paradise ponders: a confluence of contractors...

Paradise ponders: a confluence of contractors...  So many things happening yesterday!  All good, too, though it meant that my day was basically one giant interruption.  :)

But first: on Monday Debbie and I both had a craving for sushi.  That meant an afternoon out at the Black Pearl, where we both had sashimi (along with our standard avocado egg roll as an appetizer).  The photo at far right was mine, with ahi, hamachi, sake, and white tuna.  Debbie's was in the near right photo, unagi and white tuna.  Yummy, they were!

Afterwards we went up to Aggie's Creamery for an ice cream cone, and this time Debbie walked in with me – first time in over a year she felt up to that!  She's making much progress, exercising hard nearly every day.  Her strength and endurance are steadily building, and her gait improves a little every day.  So nice to see this!

Our sprinkler contractor was here, with three people hard at work.  Until living through this myself, I had no idea how much destruction was involved in putting sprinklers in.  The three views below give you some idea, but I assure you that it's even worse than it looks!  The contractor brought the “clock” (the indoor, 24 station version of this) and I installed it in the cedar shed – the first irrigation component to go in there.  I also got to see one of the filters that will go in the shed soon – they're huge!  The contractors installed the filter temporarily outside, on the pressurized irrigation line, so that they could pressurize the line they're installing and use it to wet our (burned, dry) lawn down. 

I got a most pleasant surprise in the afternoon: the plumbers who are going to install the pumps in our filling station arrived and started working.  The first step was to drain fuel out of the existing lines (I helped a bit with that) and then to disassemble all the fine work they did three weeks ago.  This morning they're supposed to be back to do the pump installation.  Hooray!

Then our electrical contractor contacted me yesterday to confirm that he will be here on Monday to wire up a subpanel in the cedar shed, and run an explosion-proof circuit out to the new fuel pumps.  Amazingly enough, the timing on all these inter-dependent jobs is going to work out just fine.  The only bad news there was that he insisted that I must be sitting down when he presents me with the cost (before he starts working) for the fuel pump circuit.  He's afraid I'm going to keel over when I find out what those parts cost.  Just to give me a heads-up, he told me that the junction box inside the filling station costs him about $200.  If you're not familiar with junction boxes, a typical one at Home Depot goes for about $3 (but that's not explosion-proof).  Yikes!

I got a phone call in the morning from a vendor in Logan who I'd contacted a couple weeks ago to find a source for western red cedar, 3/4" tongue-and-groove, that I'm planning to use for our deck's ceiling.  It was good news: he's found a source, and he's going to call me this morning for the pricing.  He's getting the raw wood, then milling the tongue-and-groove, so there's some work for him to do in order to get the price.  But I'm going to be able to get the wood.  That western red cedar is getting quite difficult to source, worse than redwood.  But this fellow found a Canadian source, at the quality level (small, tight knots) that I wanted.  Yay!

Finally, late in the afternoon a roofer referred to me by a contractor whose work I really like showed up to look at a repair job we have.  Our little second-floor balcony's floor is a disaster.  We just had it installed two years ago, and the contractor who did it really messed it up.  This fellow was all about doing it right.  He had lots of ideas, good ones, and was very straightforward about what things were done well and which were not.  He ended up poking around for about an hour, and will be calling me back today or tomorrow with an estimate on the materials.  He's working “off the books”, so I'll be paying for the materials up front and then for his time.  Ordinarily I wouldn't proceed this way, but he's got a stellar reference from someone I trust, and I was most impressed with his attitude, knowledge, and creativity.  Plus he could hardly be worse than the guy who did it before!

This afternoon my new router should show up, and then I'll be focused on getting my office back up and running, IT-wise.  I think I'll be installing the WiFi controller on my deck today, unless I get a whole bunch of interruptions. :)

Paradise ponders: weeds, rakes, and IT problems edition...

Paradise ponders: weeds, rakes, and IT problems edition...  This morning was a fine, cool morning, so I decided it was a good time to whack all the weeds around my barn.  That's a sizable area, equivalent to a rectangle about 80' x 35' – and it was full of every noxious weed you can imagine.  I got perhaps 1/4 done when my friend and neighbor Tim D. interrupted me with an unhappy look on his face.  It seems his tractor was acting up, and he really needed to get his hay windrows turned over.  So he wanted to know if he could borrow my tractor.

Well, of course he could!  But there was a bit more to it than that, of course.  First we had to disconnect his broken tractor from the rake, and get it out of the way.  Then we set about connecting my tractor to the rake.  Even though it's a “standard” three-point hitch, the parts didn't fit right.  We had to do a little modification with my grinder, which took a half hour or so.  Finally we got the darned thing mounted on my tractor (an Italian rake on a Japanese tractor!), and Tim set off to turn over his windrows.  I went back to weed whacking.

Then, when I was maybe 1/2 done, a smiling stranger came up to me.  This was while I was behind my barn, a most unlikely place for someone to stumble upon me.  When I got my hearing protectors off and could talk with the fellow, I discovered that he was here to do the semi-annual maintenance on my backup generators.  He'd never been here before, so I had to show him where everything was located.  Then I went back to weed whacking again.

This time I was able to finish.  By that time I was soaking wet with sweat (it's only 80°F, but I was in full sun) and quite tired.  So I went upstairs to my barn office to take a break.  Sat down to review my email, and ... no Internet connection.  WTF?  It took only a few seconds of troubleshooting to figure out that I couldn't even ping my router (which my computer is directly connected to).  Bad.  Tried rebooting the router, but it didn't make its usual beeps and boops.  It's looking dead.  Dang it!  It's possible that it's just overheated, so I pulled the power and I'm letting it cool.  Most likely, it's just fried.  I'm not real happy about that...

Paradise ponders: small town edition...

Paradise ponders: small town edition...  Starting this past Wednesday, signs like the one at right have been hung on utility poles along the roads approaching Paradise, including the road we live along.  Free homemade donuts in the town park, to celebrate the last day of school (this past Thursday, here) and the beginning of summer.

Debbie spotted this gorgeous (and large! about 2.5" long) moth hanging out on our deck screen.  Nice looking thing...

When we went to get the mail at our Post Office box yesterday, we found these three goats and a cow all lying together in the only shade to be found in their pasture adjoining the Post Office parking lot.  They got up as I approached to take this photo, with the cow moving away and the goats moving toward me.  The goats all wanted to be scratched. :)

Yesterday Debbie made us a delicious salmon dish that she's made before.  The salmon is marinated in a sauce that includes maple syrup; that sauce is then reduced to be poured over the salmon.  She sprinkled our pieces with sesame seeds and chopped green onions, and we had broiled asparagus along with it.  Yummy, it was!  The salmon itself, though, isn't as good as the Ora King farmed salmon that we love.  This was wild salmon, caught by friends here and given to us as a gift.  It was good, but not as good as the Ora King...

Paradise ponders, mesh WiFi and sun room plants edition...

Paradise ponders, mesh WiFi and sun room plants edition...  I spent most of the day today bringing up a mesh WiFi network, using four of Ubiquiti Networks' UAP-AC-M-US Unifi Mesh Access Point devices (photo at right).  Mesh WiFi networks have long been used in corporate environments, but only recently have they come down in price to the point where one might consider them at home.  Ubiquiti Networks' entry to this marketplace isn't the cheapest, and actually isn't the fastest one out there (though it's close) – but it comes with an enterprise-ready management server that is just awesome, and Ubiquiti Networks gear has been the favorite of ISPs for years, for its reliability, capabilities, and manageability.  Those are all important things to me, so I sprang for the extra $100 or so and got them. 

Bringing them up was mostly a matter of (a) fixing the errors in my router configurations, and (b) building cables.  The access points all worked on the first try once I had that done.  The Unifi management server is, if anything, better than I expected – it gives me the best overall picture of a WiFi network that I've ever seen, including the enterprise systems I've worked with.  Configuration, firmware upgrading, provisioning, and monitoring are all a breeze.  Three of the access points directly replaced WiFi routers I used to have, and those all have wired uplinks.  The fourth access point, however, is going on our deck (mainly so we have a clear WiFi path to our irrigation controller, which is managed via WiFi).  That access point wirelessly links to the access point in our kitchen, and that was an absolute piece of cake to install.  Love this thing!

Earlier today Debbie and I went to a couple of nurseries in town to pick up a few plants for our sun room.  We got a dwarf Japanese maple, an ornamental bamboo, a Boston fern, and a flower we don't know called Veronica.  All very pretty stuff, in ugly nursery pots.  So very shortly after I post this, we're headed to Lowe's to see if we can't find ourselves something mo' bettah...

Scotland...

Scotland...  Our friend and former colleague Simon M. is presently touring Scotland with his wife Carrie.  He sent along some photos that make me want to go there with Debbie!  In order: Cuith-Raing, Loch Ness, and a view toward the Isle of Skye...

Paradise ponders: cedar sheds, sunny cats, broken pipes, and handsome weasels edition...

Paradise ponders: cedar sheds, sunny cats, broken pipes, and handsome weasels edition...  Wednesday night as I was nodding off to sleep, my phone beeped: I had a text message.  It was our neighbor, Alan L., wanting to know if I was awake.  “Barely.” I told him, and asked why.  He wanted to know if I had the “key” (a tool, really) to shut off the irrigation water.  It seems that one of his kids' friends had driven an ATV over one of our irrigation risers and busted it.  Sigh.  I got myself up and dressed, and ran over to the broken riser with my key.  After I shut off the water, we inspected the break.  To fix it, we'd need to dig a hole around the broken pipe, about 2' in diameter and 18" deep.  Alan volunteered the three boys for that job, the following morning (yesterday morning).  I said I'd be back by 9 am with the parts.  Well, next morning I called Tim D. (our friend and neighbor), and it turns out he had all the parts on hand.  So I was out there by 8 am and “supervised” the boys with their digging.  I ended up doing the heaviest part of the digging myself, as it was beyond their ability (these are all 7th and 8th graders). Once we got it dug out, I cleaned the pipe off, sawed the break off flat, then glued in a female-to-female coupler, a short section of pipe, a female-to-threaded coupler, and finally screwed on the aluminum riser body.  After waiting ten minutes for the glue to set, I opened the valve.  The fix held, and the kids committed to filling the hole in.  That used up much of my morning yesterday!

We've recently started letting the cattery cats up into our sun room.  Debbie's  been decorating it (still more of that to do), but that cats are loving it already (see documentary evidence at right).  We've had as many as six at a time up there, lounging in the warmth and sunlight, and watching the birds (aka “cat TV”).  We let Jahar out there with them, under supervision.  Most of the time they all get along ok, though we've broken up a couple of tussles between Konani and Jahar...

The cats come up into the cattery through one of the metal basement window casement covers we had built earlier this year.  I put a short cat tree under the hole, and within a minute the boldest cats were up it into the sun room.  That's Konani at left, poking his head out of the hole to see if the coast was clear before coming up...

The cedar shed is nearly finished; I will be completely finished with it in just a couple hours.  I took the second photo below just before knocking off last night.  The only remaining work to do is the trim around the door!  Overall I'm very pleased with this kit.  No parts were missing, and none were damaged.  There's a small bit of leftover wood, perfect for repairs if needed.  The shed is sturdy, and it looks very nice.  It will look even better in a couple of years when the sunlight has bleached the wood...

Yesterday evening Debbie and I took a nice drive out to Hardware Ranch.  Blacksmith Fork Canyon was full of things in bloom, and wonderful scents (especially from the abundant choke cherries).  We saw some deer, an American dipper, and a weasel (we're pretty sure it was a long-tailed weasel).  I got a couple photos of flowers in the canyon, both species I don't recognize.

Our sprinkler contractor has been working away at trenching.  His helper (Dave) should start laying pipe and setting sprinklers today.  In a couple of weeks, we're told, we should have something that actually looks like a lawn – instead of the aftermath of a nuclear war...

Paradise ponders: bicycles, neighbors, and a whole lotta shed edition...

Paradise ponders: bicycles, neighbors, and a whole lotta shed edition...  Yesterday I went to our local hardware store (Ridley's) to pick up some deck screws.  I needed them to attach the steel connectors between the floor beams and the joist-and-floor assembly I finished the day before.  When I parked near the hardware store entrance, I noticed this girl's bike leaning against the fence.  I'd seen it there quite a few times before, so I guessed that it belonged to an employee.  But this time I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before: that bicycle is not locked to the fence.  The lock is there, but it's not being used.  Curious, when I went into the store I asked about it, and sure enough, it belongs to a young woman who works there.  Turns out she's worked there for 3 years, and she's never locked it.  And obviously, it's never been stolen.  This is in the town of Hyrum, which has a considerably higher rate of crime than we do in Paradise, just four miles south.  But ... apparently it's not all that high!

In today's mail we got the card you see at left.  I had no idea what it was, but our friend Michelle H. filled me in: it's an announcement of Sarah's imminent high school graduation.  The card looks very professionally made.  Apparently it acts as an invitation to the graduation ceremony (though there's nothing explicitly about that on the card).  It also is a nudge for a graduation gift. :)  Sarah is a neighbor of ours, so I'm not surprised we were included in her broadcast.  What gave me a really big smile, though, was that envelope.  It's addressed simply to “Tom & Debbie Dilatush”, but the post office had no problem delivering it.  Small town America!

Yesterday and today I've been working hard on the cedar shed, and much progress has been made.  Yesterday Debbie helped me a lot – it was very nice to have the help, but even nicer to see that she could do it.

The first thing I did yesterday was to tap the four floor beams carefully into position, mark the concrete to match, then flip up the joist-and-floor assembly (first photo).  Lifting that sucker by myself was hard – right at the limit of my lifting capacity.  But I did it.  Then I screwed on four connector end caps (second photo), on the side away from the flipped-up floor.  Next step was to secure the four beams onto the concrete slab; I did that with 12 Tapcon 5/8" concrete screws into holes that I drilled into the concrete to match the holes in the four beams (third photo).  They worked great!  I torqued them all down to 25 ft/lbs and those four beams aren't going anywhere at all.  Then I flipped the joist-and-floor assembly back down (amazing how much easier that was that lifting it!), and scooted it over the beams to mate up with the end cap connectors I'd previously installed (fourth photo).  Next step was to lift the side of the floor away from the connectors, prop it up on a log (fifth photo), and install cap connectors on the other side of the four beams.  That done, I lowered the floor and put approximately 3.7 billion screws into those eight cap connectors, along with into six straight connectors along the sides of the front and back beams (sixth photo).  That was a bunch of work!

This morning I started assembling the side panels.  There are ten panels all together.  Debbie helped me with this part, keeping panels in alignment while I tacked them into place with a few screws.  When we finished with that, we trial-fitted the door (it was perfect).  Then I put about 2.4 billion more screws in, to tie all the panels firmly to the floor and to each other.  Next step was to install top plates (2x3s) all the way around the top, which did wonders for the rigidity of the longer sides.  Finally I put the two gables up (at right) and put the first two roof panels on.  Those I could do by myself, but the next two roof panels I need help on – and that help is arriving in about 45 minutes, in the form of two of Michelle's strapping sons.  Each of them is much stronger than I am, or was even at their age (late teens/early 20s).  We'll put the next two panels up this evening and I'll tack them into place.  Tomorrow morning I'll put the last two roof panels up on my own, and then all that's left on the shed are details.  Important details, mind you (like the ridge cap), but details nonetheless.

I'm a tired puppy again tonight. :)

A year ago today...

A year ago today ... Debbie was miserable, and my life was just a tad more complicated that it is right now.

Debbie had shattered her left knee joint and right kneecap just a few days before.  She'd just come out of surgery to reconstruct the knee's socket and had been admitted to the TCU (Transitional Care Unit) at Logan Regional Hospital.  She was in considerable pain, and both legs were strapped into braces that locked them straight.  We hadn't learned of her osteoporosis yet, but we knew that something must be wrong with her bones.

My mom had just arrived at the nursing home in Logan, and was giddy with happiness at having done so.  We had no idea, at that moment, that she had just ten days or so to live.  All we knew was that she was here, bubbling over with the joy of being here, seeing my brother Scott and I, and meeting some of the Utahans she'd been hearing about.  Scott and I were very busy getting her room outfitted.  The only concern we really had was that her mental state seemed out of character and almost unreasonably happy, and we didn't have any idea why.

I had just picked up our two new field spaniel puppies, Cabo and Mako.  The two of them were quite a handful – bundles of non-house-trained energy and joy.  They were a lot of work for both me and Michelle H. (who pitched in to help on many occasions for a few weeks starting late May last year).  I have trouble imagining how I could possibly have coped with Debbie's injury, mom's arrival, and the puppies' arrival without Michelle's help.  She was the good friend we could count on, going out of her way to check on me, calling every day to coordinate where I needed help with the chaos, and always, always cheering me on.  Despite being a lot of work, the puppies were also a source of peace and happiness for me.  Amid the chaos of my life, I could count on them to bring a smile and calm me down. 

By comparison things seem downright placid today...  :)

Remembering...

Remembering...  I woke this morning around 4 am, realized that today was Memorial Day, and started thinking about Luke, Dave, and Bill – the three people I knew who were killed in Vietnam.  For some reason Dave is the one who was foremost in my thoughts.  I knew him while attending “C” school for Data Systems Technicians (DS rating) at the Mare Island Navy base, near Vallejo, California in 1972.  Dave was a big, friendly, bear of a guy, from Nebraska if I remember correctly.  He entered the Navy without much in the way of math skills, and zero prior knowledge of electricity or electronics.  He'd struggled mightily to get through “BEEP” (basic electronics) school in San Diego, and was struggling harder in DS school.  After a few months, he was booted out of DS school – he just couldn't keep up with the pace.  At that time, students booted out of DS school were sent to the PBR (Patrol Boat, River) school, also at Mare Island.  There Dave excelled, as we heard when he proudly came to see his DS friends after graduating – and just before deploying to Vietnam.  He was in Vietnam for just a couple of months when he was killed by sniper fire from the shores of a river whose name I've long since forgotten.  I didn't learn of his death until after I'd deployed to the USS Long Beach (CGN-9), when I came across an article about the incident in which he and another crew member were killed.  His photo was there, and caught my eye. 

Within the Navy, the PBRs in Vietnam were notorious for their high casualty rate (casualty, to the military, is both deaths and injuries).  Depending on what source you find, the casualty rate was between 5% and 8% of the crews per month.  At a 6%/month rate, if you served on a PBR crew for a year, you had more than a 50% chance of being a casualty.  By comparison the four years I served on the USS Long Beach were effectively risk-free.

I didn't know Dave all that well, but nevertheless well enough to know that he had no well-formed rationale to support risking his life in Vietnam.  He'd have simply seen it as his duty, once he'd signed up to serve his country.  I remember Dave as one of the few young men willing to say he saw signing up for the Navy as his patriotic duty.  At the time ('71), the country was being rocked by antiwar protests, and many – perhaps most – young people perceived military people as despicable “baby killers”, and someone unabashedly patriotic, like Dave, really stood out.

I shed some tears for you today, Dave, and I'll be thinking of you all day...

Paradise ponders: ahi, joist boxes, and plywood floors edition...

Paradise ponders: ahi, joist boxes, and plywood floors edition...  Yesterday afternoon Debbie made us the most delightful meal: baked ahi with a sweet 'n sour salsa to accompany it, over rice with diced avocado on top.  Oh, so delicious it was!  That's my serving at right, moments before I attacked it.  If you're wondering what that pink concoction I'm drinking is, that's prickly pear flavored Pelligrino sparkling water.  It's one of my favorites of a line I like in general.  I somehow managed to eat that entire mountain of food.  Debbie gave out part way through hers, and that isn't the kind of dish that could be kept and reheated – so the dogs had an unexpected treat.  Much appreciated, it was!  :)  As I write this, Debbie is making today's meal.  I don't know the dish, but I know it involves cabbage, ground pork, and ground beef.  No way that's going to be bad!

Yesterday and today, Debbie and I worked on building the cedar shed that will house the weather-sensitive components of our irrigation system.  The first step was for me to fabricate the four pressure-treated beams to hold up the floor of the shed, and at the same time compensate for the slope of the concrete slab they'd be sitting on.  At right you can see one of the cuts I had to make, in this case to a 4x4 (I ripped two of these, and also two 4x6s).  First I had to put my saw back together after I tripped the brake the day before, and then I had to run my saw in “bypass” mode so this wet lumber wouldn't trip it again.  That all worked fine.  All these cuts were carefully calculated in terms of the height of the resulting beam, and the 1.6° angle of the cut.  I had to dust off my high school trigonometry to figure all this out! :)

I also had to fabricate three holes in each of the four beams, where the hold-down bolts will go through to the concrete slab below.  Each of these holes has a 1.75" high hole that's 9/16" diameter, just big enough for the tie-down bolt to extend through.  Above that, through the remaining thickness of the beam, is a 1.25" diameter hole that will accommodate a nice thick washer to spread the load on the wood, and my socket wrench so I can torque that bolt down.  The photos below show me doing the holes, with the last photo showing the debris under my drill press once I'd finished.  What a mess!

After finished the fabrication of these four beams, I loaded them up on my tractor and hauled them out to the site where we're erecting the shed.  I put them down in the approximate position they'd be under the floor, and then put a test board up across them (at right).  Note how the closest beam is quite a bit taller than the furthest – that's to correct for the fairly steep slope of the slab.  I was testing for level and for alignment of the top surfaces of the boards, and I was very happy to see that both of them were spot on.  Yay!  Trigonometry and careful fabrication works!

Finally it was time for some actual work on the kit itself.  Much of the first step (constructing the floor) would be easier with two sets of hands, and Debbie volunteered to help.  It's wonderful that she's recovered enough to even consider doing this, and she not only did it, she did it well.  I took the first photo as we were building the first (of six) “joist boxes” for the cedar 2x4 joists that would support the plywood floor.  In the second photo you can see a finished joist box leaning up against a wall section.  The third photo shows the lazy man's way to transport the joist boxes from where we assembled them to where we'd be using them.  Love that tractor!  The fourth photo shows two joist boxes being screwed together.  The clamps are holding them in alignment while I'm screwing in the screws – they made it very easy to get everything perfectly lined up.  The fifth photo shows the plywood floor sections (each the size of a joist box) laid in place.  Finally, the last photo shows the floor completely assembled, glued and screwed to the joist box (and, most importantly, all aligned correctly).

Tomorrow I'll be leaning that floor up against the fuel tanks adjacent to it, and fastening the four big beams to the concrete.  Then I'll be putting the floor back down onto the beams and installing the metal connectors that will tie the floor solidly into the beams.  Some of the metal connectors (for the shortest two beams) will have to be modified slightly, as they're bigger than the beams at the moment.  I'm expecting that to take all day, and perhaps a bit longer if all doesn't go well.

Tonight I am one tired puppy – more tired, really, than I ought to be.  I sure hope my thyroid's sluggishness turns out to be the problem, and that once we get the dosage adjusted correctly I'll regain my former energy levels.  Last year this amount of work wouldn't leave me in the quivering-muscle state I'm in right now.  I don't like this at all, not one little bit.  As Debbie likes to say, getting old is not for sissies...