May 14 - catching up

Well, I did a bunch of stuff, some easy some exhausting.

First off, I did finish up the work on the UPS and it's now online with its two car battery backup.  The six gel-acid batteries have joined the bunch up in the garage.  I also have two full sized car batteries up in the barn and I checked with Clapperton and he does take all these for recycling.  For all I know he might be reimbursed for the car batteries but I don't care.  I could, optionally, cart them to Florida since they would be trade-in's on new ones for the boat but that's not worth the 2x$12 that I'd get for hauling batteries that far.

I couldn't get the 4-wheeler going without quick start.  That's how I got it going the day before but I'm out now.  I must have some water in the gas; will give it some treatment and pick up some more quick-start in town.  I should have added something to the gas the day before but once it was running it purred; thought that my problem had been solved.  I did change the spark plug but that didn't make any difference.  If I have to haul it to Parry Sound for some work, I have just the little trailer for that ....

I also got the generator going but it was running rough.  It wouldn't start at Christmas; perhaps -38 had something to do with that.  I added Sea-Foam to the gas and let it run for a while; it smoothed out.  That's what I should have done with the 4-wheeler.

Jim picked me up at 8:45 and we went to the dump to help with cleanup.  There was a good crew there and we were basically picking up plastic bags that were outside of the fence and visible from the road.  Plastic goes back into the woods for at least a mile -- I've seen it with the 4-wheeler a couple of years ago -- but that wasn't our mission.  One school of thought would be to fence in the dump completely so that the bears couldn't get in but apparently the MNR won't allow that.  I guess that the bears would either break in anyway, through the fence, or they would get in from the road access and then be trapped, possibly causing people damage. 

I took the 4-incher out for a spin (the bike with the 4" wheels).  Even on clear roads that's tough riding.  I only went to our end of the road and back, with Abby following.  I'll have to get out on it again.  The treads throw sand at you, up the back and the black flies were coming out, attracted by the warm day (it hit 67F according to our thermometer).

Then I got my real exercise, moving the big dock out in front of the gazebo and the little dock in its usual place.  I took down the Christmas light strings and then the well worn tarps, folding them and putting them in the boathouse.  Since it was going to rain later in the day and into today, I thought that this was my chance to get them away dry.

I then got the big dock in place and, using the bumper jack, lifted it up onto its ledge.  That wasn't as easy as last year when I simply floated the dock into place.  My intention had been to get the 4-wheeler down and use its winch to put some pressure on the dock land-wise, then lift with the jack and it would come onto the ledge one side at a time, but I couldn't start the machine.  I suppose that I could also have used the 120 volt winch out of the boathouse,but that takes some time setting up.  So ... I tied the dock in as tight as I could with ropes and lifted the one side with the jack and then basically tipped the jack over so that the one side of the dock went onto the ledge.  I then did the other side.   Back and forth, back and forth, jack down in the water and me pumping from above, I wiggled the dock into place.

By then it was about 3pm.  I was expecting Sandy at any time and sure enough, five minutes later she arrived, car fully loaded.  I'd already been up and down the hill and stairs a hundred times, it seemed, but I had a few more times to go as she was putting stuff away while I did a lot of the hauling.

So ... we're back in business.  I did a stuffed rainbow trout for dinner, poor fare compared to the meal that Sandy had at Stef's the night before, by the sounds of things, but we managed :).

Kylie turned 19 on May 14... makes one feel old.  I have a PC beside me right now that's called Kylie.  It was hers to use while they spent time with us in Radnor.  It's hard to believe that the PC is that old, but it is.  I have three "spare" PC's here -- the Kylie PC, setup with Adaptec SCSI, still a fast machine; then the one that's attached to the Nikon film scanner, with two physical 1000 mhz processors, not too bad a machine and reasonably good at what it does, interesting setup and even older than the Kylie machine; then my time-before machine, retired just last year with, again, an Adaptec SCSI setup and 15k drive and compatible with current Ubuntu Linux and VMware.    It's a full backup for my current setup, useful if something happened to my processor or motherboard. 

I'm sure that my iPhone has more processing power than the dual processor machine but hey, I can't attach the film scanner to the phone ... and I do have some film to develop ... should get at that !

Jason, Lo and Gav are supposed to arrive today.  I learned that Kim is still in South America.  I had thought that she was back because I wasn't seeing anything on her SPOT and stopped looking.  Gav has just started walking on his foot, injured in Toronto some time ago. 

David and Megan were supposed to come up this weekend but David now has a project to do -- a deck refinishing job -- for the weekend.  Good for him.  I'd heard that Stef might be coming up but then heard no.  If anyone decides to come up last minute, they'd better bring their own food !  I can make bread to feed everyone and we do have water.  In a pinch there is stuff in the freezer but not much in the way of veggies.

What else ?  I guess that's about it.  I was tempted to get out on the bike yesterday but then thought that I'd get some exercise with the 4-incher, but that didn't work out.  I got my exercise, but not biking, with work around here.  The next few days are supposed to be rainy so I might not actually get out on the bike until Monday.  I will setup the yellow bike on the trainer and get at it. 

Onward ?  not much time before we head to the U.K. !!!