Running Bear’s April 2026 Coffee Shop

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Morning All! A balmy 54 today in the Brew City, and rain. Happy happy joy joy! Just what we need. 🤬 Cloudy the rest of the week too. Oh well, at least I'll need less excuses for bench time, and at least we had a decent weekend. The area is greening up which is nice. The mud jackers are supposed to be out here tomorrow for the last of the renovation projects, and hopefully all I'll have to do is live in it for a while. Need to go see the accountant this week. The first year of retirement brings many adjustments and certain things are no longer done for you, but the IRS expects them to be done anyway. They don't send you a "Welcome to retirement" letter with a "to-do" list. You just have to figure it out. That should prove interesting. No private jet to write off either. Bummer!
 


The gun store I work at part time has decided to start carrying some live bait. The folks there aren't always wrapped real tight, as this is what they have on the sign out front to announce this.
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Good early evening at 7:07pm as I start typing.

The 2 yards are cut and it took 2 hours of cutting! The batteries in the new mower are rated for 80 minutes so a 50 minute break was needed to recharge to finish off. Self propelled mode also engages the blades to increase speed to cut through the heavier grass. We are hoping that because the lawns will be on a regular schedule the grass won’t be any near as thick as today.

The newness lawn cutting entrepreneur talked to me about this was wasting time waiting to charge batteries enough to finish. I offered a few suggestions and he said he needed more batteries! Bingo…

Then he went to HomeDeport web page and said, $219 for 1, “That’s crazy”!


Asked if I could help and I said absolutely I will loan him $500 and he can buy 2 batteries and replacement blades! He can pay me back by money or in trade lawn services. We discussed that $500 is a lot of money and it’s equivalent to 2 of his hockey sticks and that he went through 4 sticks this year. He was going to talk to his parents 1st.

Terry wrote out the agreement and emailed it to his parents and him! He’s getting a sub prime rate of 3%. He is aware I am not charging him to use my new mower on the 3 neighbors yards he’ll be doing.

He did a nice job
Home depot ad says "Limit 5 per customer".
If you're spending over a grand on batteries for an electric mower, I believe it is time to re-think a gas mower. 🤪
 
FYI
Live feed

Very good info and he seems up to speed in reporting. Just wish they would stop planting their face in the video. It's a distraction, their face is not important in the information being shown. Japan TV is constantly doing this. At first, I thought it was narcissism, like utoob, but it may be worse than that. Could be that the audience needs to feel that it is ok to have the reaction that they are having to the show, the situation, or the whatever. Or they need guidance to know that it was actually funny, or horrific, or whatever. They even do this while reporting a murder or big catastrophe of all things.

I see this on tv, I change the channel. I told my wife that if that's what they want me to see (their bobbing heads), then why watch the show?

Sorry, must be cranky this morning.

Anyway, you folks be safe out there. Hope the storms pass by without incident.
 
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Well...
In typical Corporate America fashion, the company I work for, instead of scheduling the work when we have staff available, has now decreed we all get to work every Saturday, no exceptions. As you might expect, that is going over like a crap-flavored snowcone.
What's your OT rate? Seems like they could use a part timer.
 
I would be suffering withdrawal symptoms after 4 days ! How do you do it! 😬 :D
Because I over did it for the previous 8 days! Not burnt out though just too much of the same thing! Today was mostly weathering of pick up trucks and adding legs to the supporting structure for the paper mill’s blow tank. Tonight as of right now it’s NHL hockey games, only 2 tonight
 


I'm like Karl. I need to visit daily if I am at home.
As I’ve mentioned over the years I experience burnt out. But this isn’t burn out more like boredom with the same thing. Today though some weathering was done and working on the paper mill’s blow tank. I did sell this morning what originally was going to be 35 trees. He took home 181 trees from a small section of the layout coming down next month. He was thrilled and I made a few bucks.

One of the buddies was going to stop at Michael’s this evening and he will buy me some wire so I can create wire armatures for future trees
 
Home depot ad says "Limit 5 per customer".
If you're spending over a grand on batteries for an electric mower, I believe it is time to re-think a gas mower. 🤪
I loved my gas mowers over the years. The gas mower I believe had a bent drive shaft and it was time. I purchased electric to appease the grandmother and mom of the budding lawn service entrepreneur.
 
Good evening from a more damp part of Wisconsin than wet. The rain gauge out front has had nothing in it all day though we have had wet sidewalks a couple times today. The winds have been and currently are strong enough to dry the sidewalks. Looks like we are going to avoid all the severe stuff

The grandson road his bike the mile from school to talk about the battery and blades loan. Surprisingly he also asked about buying a mower but we tabled that. Told him 4 clients isn’t enough for another mower yet! He did talk to 2 of his neighbors about cutting their lawns but the lots are much bigger in his neighborhood than mine. This is fun to watch develop. He and his parents had the discussion about he has agreements and has to honor them till 10/15. He doesn’t think playing sports and cutting more lawns will be an issue. He’ll learn…

Sold some complete trees off the layout this morning.

Did a grocery run with Terry. Earned $1.53 in gas discounts per gallon but came home with no pop. Diet Dr Pepper was $6.99 per 6 pack of 16oz bottles and at that price I drink water. I have enough for another couple of weeks. Terry has enough Diet Pepsi caffeine free for 6 weeks unless I help her along

Be well
 
Because I over did it for the previous 8 days! Not burnt out though just too much of the same thing! Today was mostly weathering of pick up trucks and adding legs to the supporting structure for the paper mill’s blow tank. Tonight as of right now it’s NHL hockey games, only 2 tonight
One advantage to my layout, is there are several places that I haven't finished yet; the current turnback loop area is one. I also have a few blanks here and there to finish up elsewhere. If I feel boredom or burn-out coming, I can switch to something else, or just run trains for a few days.
 
Made it through the line of storms unscathed. Rain is starting to taper off now. It rained a lot. Wish I had a rain gauge. No wind though, and that was a blessing for my antenna farm. After it was dark, the supercells merged into a squall line with more tornadoes than the individual cells were producing earlier in the afternoon.

Folks up in Carlyle, Germantown, and another small village about 50 miles north of here had confirmed tornadoes on the ground. There were warnings close to me south of here but dissipated before crossing the river and the tornado warning was cancelled. This system produced a number of tornadoes from Kansas City to east of my location.

There is a news crew on the way out to Carlyle to film the damage and report. I've been swimming and camping at Carlyle Lake many times while growing up into my late teens. Nice area out there.
 
My OT would be time and a half of $36/hour. Of course, I'm the only tech that is hourly, everybody else is flat-rate.
Well, at least you get 1.5x. I only got 1x for OT and was dissuaded from charging it. I was encouraged more to go f-off somewhere else if there isn't anything going on for quality of life since we were worked too hard and needed time to go blow off steam and be happier when we returned... 😵‍💫
 
Well, striking out with cameras it seems. The Sony won't connect to wifi. Sony corp doesn't care to respond and have been working with a forum member to try to resolve. It won't even connect to my iphone hotspot (no special characters, spaces or weirdness in the ssid or pw) and won't connect via bluetooth either.

Going to take it back tomorrow and hope they will exchange it.
 
Well, striking out with cameras it seems. The Sony won't connect to wifi. Sony corp doesn't care to respond and have been working with a forum member to try to resolve. It won't even connect to my iphone hotspot (no special characters, spaces or weirdness in the ssid or pw) and won't connect via bluetooth either.

Going to take it back tomorrow and hope they will exchange it.
Is the Sony's wifi card compatible with your wifi? I had to enable legacy wifi on my router so some of my equipment would connect and work.
 


Is the Sony's wifi card compatible with your wifi? I had to enable legacy wifi on my router so some of my equipment would connect and work.
I don't know what legacy mode is. The router is an R7800 Netgear and so far, haven't had any issues with connecting anything to it, including my ipad 2 mini 2, which came out way before the camera did.

But, since it won't connect to my phone via the hotspot or BT, I think the camera is faulty.
 
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