Something just doesn’t seem right about this. How can DRIED cranberries be “Whole & JUICY?” But don’t get me started.

Couple of hours after going to be last night I had to pee (because: Old Guy) but climbing out of bed hurt my back so much I was tempted to just crawl to the pisser and back. Even contemplated (that means “thought about”) having SWMBO take me to the ER cause I just plain hurt! But I went back to bed instead.

At 0600 when I woke up I sat right up, climbed out of bed, and had no more than a twinge in my back. Been that way most of the day. Go figure.

Date Day! Took SWMBO to the teriyaki place in Gig Harbor for lunch/dinner. Stopped by Walmart for a new Roku (since the one built into the big tv doesn’t want to work anymore). Then stopped by St. Vinnies where she bought 15 old cd’s for $3. (Which I now get to rip for her. I don’t mind. Most of the time I enjoy doing things for her.)

And that was Date Day. Simple dedicated time to spend with each other. Going on 37 years now.

Before we headed out I took my new tractor out back and started working on the path/trail. I think this thing is going to work out fine. As long as I don’t cut too deep I can move a lot of dirt. Nice. Need some plastic drainage pipe …

Freeze dried some pulled pork riblet things. Made them up as pulled pork sandwiches by slow cooking them in Dr. Pepper. Ran it an extra cycle but it all still feels slightly oily; so I think it’ll only be good for a year or two on the shelf even with Oxygen absorbers. I don’t add the BBQ sauce until it’s time to re-hydrate so all that flavor is sucked into the meat.

Tomorrow is “meat” day and I’ll be cutting up and cooking 8 large chicken breasts, a whole chicken rendered and pulled apart, and will BBQ (well, Grill) the rest of those riblet thingies and get everything on trays and into the freezer. More taters to do before they go TU. Oh, I did a couple of slices of German Chocolate Cake that didn’t turn out too bad. Won’t be “re-hydrating” them though.

Got SWMBO’s new Roku up and running for her. She’s been Jonesing for This Old House.

Which was a real headline, BTW. Nice to know I can still air out my junk as long as I wear a mask. Even 10 years ago it would have been illegal AND (probably) a sex crime to be naked in public in a mask.

But y’all ain’t seen nothing yet! Wait until the “Monkeypox” measures are slammed in place. COVID will seem like a cold or something. Wait …

I did hear a police call the other day where the Officer on-scene reported “She’s completely naked now and still talking to someone who isn’t there. I can’t get any response from her.” Some people get all the good calls.

How times have changed! I “grew up” with 720k floppies. Then 1.2mb. Backing things up was a real pain. Used a program (called “Fill” appropriately) that took a directory of things to be copied to floppy and filled each to capacity if possible. Had hundreds of the things in sorted boxes.

Hell, my first “IBM Compatible” was a twin floppy Hyundai XT. (640k ram. CGA monitor. Four colors whether you needed them or not!) Started out with a Vic-20 then C-64 and the external floppy drives for those were nightmares. But one upgraded from the tape drive as soon as one could!

So, where have times changed, you ask? I just looked at a directory of video files (CSI Season 5) that came out to an astounding 41.6 GIG and thought “That’s not so bad.” (Haven’t been run through Handbrake yet which will bring it down to about 15 gig or so.) 41.6 Gig &”Not so bad.” Wow.

Went out yesterday and bought a Tractor. It’ll be delivered Thursday. Basic with a bucket and backhoe and a 3-point hitch connector thing. A bit bigger than I wanted/needed but anything smaller really had no attachments or any real power to get those (slightly) bigger jobs done. Diesel. Of course, my neighbor up-hill will get on about “You shoulda got this and you shoulda got that.” Which would work great for his 60+ acres. But I have only 3.2 acres and don’t need a BIG tractor. I need something that’ll mostly keep a 70 year old guy from having to pick up a shovel to move some dirt or drag a downed tree out for chopping up. Semi-annual driveway care. You know: Stuff!

I think it’ll be fun. $22.5k worth of fun; but fun. And what the hell else am I going to do with my money?

So, got it today instead of tomorrow. Cool. Now, what’s the first job I’m going to do with it?

Hmmm…

Yeah, I know.

Youtube took down a video of mine of my grand-daughter operating my digger about 10 years ago. Child safety rules or some other liberal bullshit thing. Bet y’all can still find video’s of kids skateboarding off cliffs or down stairs or such though. Couldn’t win if I fought their decision, so, why bother? (So I did anyway. Still took it down.)

Tracked my NAS problems to drive #1. Took it out, re-partitioned and re-formatted it and stuck it back in. Seemed to work until the next time I rebooted the NAS. Had to do the “pick a raid type and reformat.” But, so far, it seems to be working like it outta.

So SWMBO bought me a 8TB drive at COSTCO the other day and I’ve been copying all our content to it and will glue a raspberry Pi4 to it’s side and use it as a NAS until I decide to rebuild the original or not. Meanwhile my computer has spent a couple of days copying “stuff” to the old NAS to try and break it again. If it doesn’t break then it’s probably safe to use. With backups made at least weekly now.

I can learn.

July 22. 0900. Took dog for our morning walk. Needed sweater. Global Warming is going to kill us all!

So, got clumsy yesterday (23rd) trying to teach SWMBO how to use the rider-mower with the land-leveler(?) I borrowed from my friend up-hill. Was standing on the leveler-thingie when she popped the brake and took off. I started to fall over. Cause I’m not 20, co-ordinated, nor any means suddenly graceful by any definition of the word. I’m Old.

But, I did recognize that if I didn’t DO something I was going to fall under the thing and probably wind up with a mangled leg (or two) so did what any over weight outta shape old guy would do: I jumped sideways. After twisting and falling (forever!) I solidly impacted the Earth with my ass. The pain in my coccyx was immediate; but NOT as, what’s the word I’m looking for?, excruciating as the pain in my kidney areas. Yeah, that word. Perfectly describes the double tap to the kidneys.

Not to mention that my lovely-young-bride of 37 (or so) years finally made it to the end of the driveway, turned around, and came back only to stop and laugh as I barely breathing writhed (yes, writhed!) around on the (mostly) grass of the front lawn. That hurt almost as much as the fall; the fact that the lovely-young-thing I married, the object of my total affections, She Who Must Be Obeyed, stopped and laughed at my misfortune. While I was still misfortune-ing.

So, didn’t actually break anything, but, did spend the night hopped up on (the wonder drug) Ibuprofen with a heating pad strapped to my upper ass and got almost no sleep. Barely managed to not call for help to get up and go pee. Which happens fairly often in an old guys night.

Still hurts today. Even thinking about pooping makes my back hurt. I’ll be checking for blood in my urine for the next couple of days anyway.

So, I haven’t accomplished anything outside that involves riding anything and not much more inside other than cleaning the fridge out (cause I GOTTA do something!) and getting the next load for the freeze dryer ready. Hurts so much to get up I try not to sit or lay down unless I really need to.

Ah, well.

So, turned 70 last Monday. Joy. Except for the Bear coming through at zero-dark-thirty it was a SSDD day. Well, except SWMBO took me to Red Lobster for lunch where we spent $70 on shrimp. That was fun! She’s still the best date ever.

Walked the Silverdale Mall afterwards and didn’t see one thing I couldn’t live without. Which says a lot about where am these days. Seems I have the bucks; no longer feel the need to spend it all. What a weird place to be in life. Don’t get me wrong, I have TONS of projects that we’ll be spending on, but I’m not in that “gotta have it!” place anymore. Maybe I’m getting old.

But there is that new Yaesu FTDX10 Compact HF/50 MHz 100W SDR Transceiver … ($1400.00 ON SALE!) But I probably ought to get a better antenna. A multi-band yagi and rotor. I mean, I do have a tower and it should hold more than a couple of 2-meter/440 antennas.

And we’re thinking of Starlink. This DSL crap is really getting old. High initial outlay and $30/month more expensive than what we’re spending now; but maybe worth it. We do a lot of Youtube, Discovery+ and Wondarium. Not to mention the Roku stuff SWMBO watches.

Today is July 4th and around here there has been an awful lot of “practice” explosions. People testing their fireworks. Shooting into the freakin’ air! Dorks!

OK, I admit. I’ve been sitting on this post for almost 2 weeks now. Got busy and when I’d remember I hadn’t done anything here I didn’t want to get out of bed to finish it.

The guy that was dating SWMBO when I stepped into the picture almost 40 years ago called her out of the blue and wanted to bring his wife and daughter to stop by and get caught up. Cool. They were hot and heavy way back when and he even got her preggo (which she lost to miscarriage (bummer)). Good thing i have absolutely no jealousies of her life from before US. None.

So, they’ve been visiting for the last 3 days. Turns out they live over in North Bend. He brought his black-powder rifle and pistols and we’ve been out back shooting some. (He handed me a loaded pistol and I looked at him and said “Aren’t you glad I’m not the jealous type?”) Was fun.

But it has been a hassle cooking/making 3 meals a day for 5 adults. And the cleanup!

And I’m kinda tired of hearing sea stories or health issues. Nice guy but he’d be the rock star of the Old Folks Home.

Anywho. Enough. We went down the the USS Turner Joy (DD-951) the other day and I got on free because I’m a shipmate. Was fun walking around and telling stories from the last deployment and seeing my Sick Bay again.

Was adding their daughter to my NAS so she could watch movies on her laptop and the damned thing gave me that updating circle for a minute (way too long), rebooted, and all the drives came up empty. Damned thing forced me to choose a raid type and reformat! AAAAAarrrrgggghhhh!! Fuck! Fuck Fuck!

Yes, I have everything (or mostly everything) backed up (except the actual Backup directory (go figure)) and can rebuild the NAS; but that’s damned time consuming.

So, I’m almost convinced to just set up a raspberry pi with a couple of 5-tb drives as a NAS and go that way. Wouldn’t use as much power. Take up less room since I could hang it on the wall behind the tv. Hmmm… One drive for movies and one for tv stuff. Hmmm. May have to futz with the power some… I already have the pi4 set up with KODI…

Want to give a shout out to all you folks I “follow” and get your posts when you post. I don’t stop by your sites much; but I do read your posts when they show up in my e-mail.