Shelves and speakers

A busy end to the year.   This morning Tammy and I washed all the house windows inside and out.  It was sunny in the morning and I noticed a layer of dust on the windows.  We also vacuumed the rugs.

In the afternoon we put up brackets in her office closet so she could hang some shelves.

In the evening I hung four of my home theater's speakers (the mid room and back speakers), and wired all of them into the home theater receiver.  Now that we've eaten supper it is time to run the microphone setup that balances and adjusts the speakers based on the room configuration.  Then we'll watch a movie.  Too bad I watched Iron Man 2 last night, that would have been a good test of the speaker's surround sound.

Happy New Year!

Alone in the Wilderness

I finally got around to watching the documentary that my uncles Curt and Larry, and friend Jeff, all recommended to watch.

"This documentary tells the story of Dick Proenneke who, in the late 1960s, built his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park.

Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself.

The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness."

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437806/

The documentary is about an hour long and apparently has been shown on PBS.   The documentary is very interesting.  This guy had an amazing talent.  He made wooden handles for his tools then built a cabin that allowed him to live through an Alaskan winter.

He was in his early 50s when he built the cabin and lived there until he was 83 years old.

Speaker wires in attic

To go with my new TV I bought an Onkyo HTS5400 7.1 home theater system.  Since my living room is so long I had to buy more speaker wire so the two rear speakers could go against the back wall.

With all my new components: TV, home theater with  a receiver, 7 speakers and a sub woofer, a DVR, and my old VCR, I have wires everywhere.  Tammy wasn't too thrilled with the home theater system with the speakers as that meant wires strung all about the room.  She thinks it looks too much like I'm a red-neck.

Even though it was more work that running the wires along the ceiling, I decided to run the speaker wires through the attic.

I wanted to put the wires into wall behind the receiver and TV but that was a "no-go".   The wall is an outside wall filled with insulation.  In case I could fish a wire through the insulation along a stud I went up and checked out the attic.  Nope.  The top of the wall is covered by a board and the roof is a low roof.   No way to drill a hole into the wall from the attic.

Then I thought about running the speaker wires "kind of" outside the wall.  A number of years ago I added panels of R-12 insulation between the wood siding and the plywood outer part of the wall.  I could drill through the drywall and plywood then run the wire up under the insulation panel.

When I looked at the wood siding I remembered that I had been concerned that gravity would pull down the 2 inch insulation panels and the wood siding so I nailed them real good, and used ribbed nails.  I did a good job as the wood siding and insulation panels are fastened tight to the wall.  I didn't want to ruin my insulating work so I discarded this idea.

So I ran the speaker wires up the inside wall to the ceiling.  I do have a window and curtains nearby and that camouflages most of the wire.

In addition to the hole for the wires to enter the ceiling, I drilled four more holes for the back speakers and the mid-room speakers.  I ran some stiff wire up the holes so I could find the wires and holes once I got in my attic.

Years ago I insulated my attic real good, so moving around it was harder than usual.  In some areas the insulation was so thick I had trouble finding the wires poking up through the ceiling.

Tammy fed wire up into the attic and I grunted and moaned as I tried to move about the attic by keeping on the studs and not falling through the ceiling.  The entry point for the wire, and the rear speakers, were along outside walls with the speakers being in corners.  Very difficult to move around.   Grunting and moaning did help me move about.   Tammy found my sounds humorous.  That was because she stayed in the living room and didn't have to move about the attic.

Fortunately I bought two 100 ft rolls of speaker wire as each roll only wired two speakers, with some wire left over.  That left over wire will go to my front speakers mounted on the wall by the TV as the wire I bought was 16 gauge, an improvement over the wire that came with the speakers.

This wiring job took all afternoon.  Even though I wore a coat, hat and face mask, I had enough of insulation.  Once all the wires were threaded though the ceiling and to the speakers I quit for the day as taking a shower was my main priority.  Tomorrow I will hook up the speakers.


Photos:

The attic for the original (core) part of the house.  The roof has a steeper pitch so I could actually partially stand up in this section.   Here is the amount of insulation I have up here.

Below is where I uncovered a walkway.  After I had insulated the attic years ago I had left some boards over the studs to allow for walking.  I'm glad I left those boards.

The house was built in stages over the years.  When a new addition was built they cut a hole through the roof to allow access to the new section.   Whoever cut the hole must have been small.  This is the opening in the attic between the core of the house and the living room.  And this is after I had enlarged the opening back when I had added the insulation.

The attic over the living room.  Notice the roof isn't as high.  Here I had to move about on hands and knees.  Also notice the "walkway" I had left earlier.

This gives you an idea of how fast the roof slopes down.

Here is my "path" to where the speaker wires come up into the ceiling (at the far end).  Here I had to move about on the studs on each side of the "path".  At the far end I had to lay to reach the wire coming through the ceiling and hope the ceiling wouldn't give and I drop down.

At the top of the photo you can also see how I ran the speaker wires along the roof.  This was to keep the wire out of the way if I have to move around the attic again.  And I wasn't sure if the wire would be ok to be buried under insulation.

Flat tire finally fixed

I have spent the past month wrestling with patching my bicycle inner tube.  Or I should day: tubes.  It has been frustrating.

I've had:

• value stems come out of the tube  (unrepairable) 

• tires that hold air until you put them in the tire, then hours later they were flat.  Removing the tubes, filling them with air, putting them underwater to find no leaks, putting them back in the tire to have them go flat - frustrating.

• old patches come loose and leak again,

• new patches not hold tight.  I've tried glue-less patches and they don't have a good success rate.  The local bicycle shop still hasn't got a new shipment of kits with patches and glue.

• a tube get ruined when I roughed it up prior to patching.  One time I used a new metal 'rougher' and in thoughtlessness/absentmindedness/frustration pressed too hard on the tube.

• tubes get pinched when putting the tube and tire back on.  This is because the tire fits incredibly tight on the rim that often I had to use a tire iron to put the tire back on the rim and then I accidentally punctured the tube.  *augh!!!*

• One time I was drying a tube over the wood stove after I had tested it underwater only to have the glue on an old patch melt and then leak.

In addition to my bicycle's bad tube, I had four old inner tubes that had been problems in getting patched in the past.  With all I've been doing this month I haven't devoted my full attention to patching my tubes.  Instead I fit the work in here and there.  Over the month I have been working on this problem I was down to my final tube when I finally patched it.

It has been three or four days now, and 20 miles, so - cross my fingers and knock on wood - the tire is holding air.  Good, as I hate to think my streak of riding at least one mile each month would be broken.   The last time I did not ride any miles in a month was way back in June 1983.

Keep your chin up

Static cat

Christmas turkey

From the cooker to the plate...  yum!  Tammy made it all.  Merry Christmas.

New glass table

Tammy likes glass tables.   We moved three of her glass coffee and end tables from Minnesota to here.   We haven't set them up for several reasons.  First we have no place to put them.  Second, I am leery of glass tables.  Glass breaks and I don't trust myself around them.

Well... Tammy didn't like my wood coffee table I use to hold my stereo equipment.  She thinks it is ugly.

So she ordered a table to her liking.  Guess what?  It's all glass.

She got the table and like a kid on Christmas couldn't wait to get it out of the box and put it together.

Here is how everything looks now.

Oh joy.  I can see more of my ugly green carpet.

Now to do something about all those wires.

Nuts

I like nuts.  Snacking on them or ground up and added to my oatmeal cereal.

So much so that when a grocery store had nuts on sale for $1.98 a pound I filled several bags.  Tammy helped me as she likes nuts too.  She held the bags while I shoveled nuts into them.

Once I was done there wasn't enough filberts/hazelnuts left to fill another bag.  There were more almonds left but I thought two bags each was plenty.  For now.

I left the walnuts be.  Walnuts are easy to get and not as expensive as almonds or hazelnuts when bought shelled and in a bag.

A couple people in line made comments to me when I was in the checkout line.  Tammy - not standing anywhere near me - heard other people comment on my nuts.   Right Tammy?  They were commenting on my nuts and not me being nuts? 

My nuts...

These are a little more than 23 pounds of nuts and they cost me about $47.   The hazelnuts weigh more than the almonds do.

Broken handle

I'm still splitting logs for firewood.  Usually I don't get around to this until around dusk.

Tuesday night it was fairly dark when I was about done splitting logs.  For my last log to split I needed one more hit to complete the split.

I missed.

The splitting maul's handle hit the top of the log.  The log split and the handle broke.

*argh!*

Wednesday I replaced the broken handle with an old axe handle from my "treasure" pile in the tool shed.  I had to trim the handle a bit to squeeze it into splitting maul.   Then it was on to splitting a few more logs.  I quit splitting logs earlier this night.

Cleaning ash

The weather was nice today so I decided to clean the ash from my wood stove's pipe.  It has been a couple of months since the wood stove burning season started. The section of pipe that is closer to horizontal collects ash more than the other sections or the chimney.

Here is how much ash collects in the horizontal section of the pipe.

The loose stuff shakes out.  I have to use a wire brush to get it all out. This job is one that is done before a person takes a shower that day.

GPS smart phone app

Tammy found a GPS app for her smart phone.  It is called: Backcountry Navigator.  I tested it out by walking around much of the ranch's boundary.  I then downloaded the data to Google maps.  My mapped route is pretty close to Google's (via the USDA Farm Service agency's) satellite image for the ranch but not perfect. East/west and north/south are off a few feet with east/west off by a greater amount.

The mapped route had me walking through part of the barn when in reality I walked just south of it.  The route did have me start and end correctly in the house even though my entry and exit into the house were through the same door, which is in the NW corner of the house.  Therefore the line from the right going into the house is wrong as I have no door in the NE section of the house.

 
And the GPS app had me some distance off the fence line when I actually walked right next to the fence.  In the photo below I had walked to the corner even if the track does not have me doing that.  Also I walked in a straight line to under the tree where I marked an X.  I wonder if walking under the tree threw the GPS app off and it then guessed that I had walked north of the tree?

Also when I walked along the river I often was shown to have been walking in the river.   In the photo below I walked to the right of A, the end of land.  Then I backtracked to go to B as I had to walk around the tree that is in the 7 o'clock position from B.  I then walked a little to the left of B then up to C.   As you can see this doesn't not match the route mapped.  The route here is in the middle of the river and I assure you I did not walk in the water especially as this is December and the water is very cold.

I've noticed the same problem with my property boundaries/fence lines with other government agencies who have mapped the ranch using satellite photos.  I think the original GPS coordinates for the USDA Farm Service Agency satellite photos were inputted a little off, or is this in the margin of error for GPS units?

The distance I walked seemed to be correct.  However the elevation gain and loss were way off.  The GPS app had me gaining 679 feet in elevation and losing 820 ft.  I walked in a circle starting and ending in my house.  The elevation gain and loss should be identical.  Also I think the elevation numbers are off by a more than a factor of 10.  My estimate of the elevation gain/loss to have been 20 to 30 ft.

Still, for a $9.99 app, this may be a good deal as a decent GPS unit - or at least the one I would like - is $600.

Birds

The birds have been working on the suet.  Yesterday the sun shone so that was a bonus day.

Bohemian Grange Hall expo

Sunday, December 11, Tammy organized an expo for home based businesses like her Tastefully Simple business.

For a place to hold the expo she found and rented the Bohemian Grange Hall south of Whitefish, Montana.  Because part of the goal of the expo was to collect winter clothing for the Evergreen Panty, Tammy was able to get fifty free posters printed for her event.

Fourteen vendors including Tammy said they would be at the expo.  Twelve vendors showed up that day.

Because Tammy and I were running the expo we had to be at the grange before the other vendors started to arrive at 9 am.  We were there at 8:20 am on a cold frosty morning.  I had to take care when driving as some sections of the road were slippery.

The grange is a two story building and some vendors had to be on the second floor.  There were plenty of electrical outlets for vendors to use.

All the vendors were ready when the first customer showed up right at 11 am.  What seemed to be a good sign, wasn't.  It was a slow day.  All total we maybe had around 30 customers. Tammy and I put posters up all around Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls.  We had the expo listed in the events sections of the locals newspapers and on a number of radio stations.  So the word should have been out there for people to know about the expo.

Maybe it was because it was a Sunday. Maybe it was because people are worn out from all the Christmas shopping.  Maybe it was the location.  I don't know why the turnout was so light.

A number of vendors sold a few items, but overall it was a dead day.  Even though the expo was to go until 4 pm, we all made the decision to pack up and leave after 3:30 pm.  All the vendors were gone before 4:30 pm.  Tammy and I had to clean the building in order to get our deposit back so we didn't leave until 5 pm.

Bohemian Grange Hall

We could have made better signs.

All the vendors were to bring sweet and/or salty food.  Most vendors brought sweets.  One vendor brought Cosco wheat bread on top of which he added Parmesan cheese and with his homemade Ratatouille.  It was very tasty.

Some of the food the vendors brought

Tammy's location.

Bunny and pie

I made another apple pie today.  The brown streaks on the crust are from the cinnamon and sugar I sprinkled on top.

After getting my mailbox smashed several weekends in row, my mailbox was left alone this weekend. It appears putting a board and bar across the top has deterred the vandals.


Late afternoon near dusk, as I was working on moving more of my boards and stuff from my pole shed, I noticed a large black rabbit sitting in the corral near the loafing shed.  It sat there until I looked away.  Tammy had seen this rabbit before but I never have seen it. I have seen its tracks in the snow.  The rabbit is very large and completely black.  I've never had a rabbit at the ranch before.  I don't know if this is good or bad.  I don't have a garden right now.  The rabbit is cute.  So I guess having a rabbit around the ranch right now is good.  If the rabbit ever becomes a problem I can always have Tammy research rabbit stew recipes.

Zero horses

The last two horses left Sunday.  They were way out in the south pasture but came when they saw their owners' horse trailer and heard them call.  Loading these horses was much easier than loading the first two horses.

So the ranch feels empty once again.

With the horses gone I rolled up and put away for the Winter the hoses I had used to fill the water trough.  Definitely on the 'to-do' list next year is to get a pump for the well by the water trough.

I put the salt blocks into the barn for Winter. As I now no longer need to get into the barn until Spring I laid some boards and fabric inside the large door to prevent/reduce the amount of snow that could get blown into the barn by the mean ol' north wind.  In the past I've had some hay ruined when snow blew in then melted on the hay.  The wind doesn't blow much here, but in the Winter, on occasion, cold air will spill over the mountain passes from the east and will roar down into the Valley.

I'm still working on clearing a spot for Tammy's van in the pole shed.  I'm still splitting more logs for firewood.  I finished clearing the logs off two pallets. I am down to one towering 6 ft pile of logs on one pallet.  I do have enough logs split to last the Winter.  I think.  Tammy likes the house warmer than I usually have it.

Turkeys

There are a flock of turkeys that roam the neighborhood.  Now that the Corriente cattle are back in the neighbor's pasture the turkeys show up there and in Bob and Jan's yard more often.  In Bob and Jan's yard the turkeys eat the bird seed that the birds spill from their feeders.

(Tammy took this photo with her new smartphone.)

Two less horses

Today the owners were in town to fix a flat tire on their horse trailer.  They decided to take two of the horses back home even though there is little to no snow and the horses still have lots to eat in the pasture.  The owners came this afternoon and loaded two of the horses: one older horse and one filly.

Once the horse trailer door was closed and the two horses left behind understood what was happening they now wanted to go too.  Especially the filly.  She ran around the trailer and pawed at the ground trying to figure out what to do.  The wife and I got the two remaining horses out of the corral into the pasture and this enabled the husband to drive out of the corral with the horse trailer.

Once I let the two remaining horses back into the corral they ran to the front gate in hopes of joining their friends.  It was not to be.

They are sad tonight.  They would whiny calling for their friends.  They ran around the corral in hope of spotting them somewhere.  Whenever they saw me come out of the house they called to me.  When I walked to the corral they would look at me then turn their backs to me.

They get over it by tomorrow.

Here are the photos of the remaining horses.   Photo 1 is the older horse (Fancypants) looking for her friends who left.  The second photo shows the filly who ran around and around the corral looking for her friends.

Here are two photos of the oldest horse. Now and when she first arrived this past Spring. Being at the ranch fattened her up and did her good.

Here one horse is unfriendly and the other is accusing.  The two photos also are now and then to show how the filly grew over the Summer.

Looking out to the pasture for her missing friends.

Sqeaking refridgerator

My refrigerator makes noises quite often. Some days are worse than others either with loudness or frequency. Sometimes it sounds like it is full of a herd of crickets.  It is driving Tammy crazy.

I don't hear it half the time as I am so used to it making noise.  If the refrigerator is quiet for too long I worry it has died.

I don't know how old the refrigerator is.  Since dad didn't leave a warranty instruction manual, the refrigerator must pre-date dad's ownership of the house. Therefore it may be from the early 1970s or 1960s.

Here is a 23 second video of it squeaking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lorpp3IYqI

Damaged mail box

A week or so ago someone dented my mailbox.  I pounded out the dent.  Then I put two wooden poles in the ground on each side of the mailbox to prevent someone from again whacking my mailbox as they drove by.

This morning I found my mailbox dented again.  This time it was worse than the first time.  They had to stop and then hit the mailbox from the top to dent it.  I haven't seen any other mailboxes a short distance up and down the road that were dented so I don't know why seem to be only targeting my mailbox.

I again pounded out the dent and straightened the mailbox so I could close its door. I added a board and bar to protect the top of the mailbox.  It doesn't look pretty but hopefully it will protect my mailbox.  I have an idea now on how I can use some odds and ends of re-bar and pipe I have and make a cage around my mailbox.  That will have to wait until next year and warmer weather.

The two poles on the right exist to protect my mail box from the snow coming from a snowplow.  Once it snows I nail a board to the poles to deflect the snow and protect my mailbox.

The two poles on each side of the mailbox are what I added a week or so ago.  Monday I nailed the board to the poles and added the re-bar over the box.