Running Bear's July 2025 Coffee Shop

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Good morning all,

The heat dome moved off and we are seeing 59 with steady rain. 1" in the gauge this morning.

Supposed to be cool all day, then gradually warm to the upper 80's by Sunday.

Gonna rain most of the day so no outside work on tap.

Getting used to the idea of checks coming without going to work. My SS comes today, pension on the first, wife's SS on the second Wednesday.

Remember, SS is not a gift from the government. Especially painful when self employed and paying 13% plus. Those of us believers are giving our 10% as well a small token in light of eternity. I considered that my retirement plan. Getting a pension as well purely Providential.

I enjoyed several Twins games, have not followed them since the new stadium. All I remember are Harmon Killabrew and Kirby Puckett. I think Halsey Hall was an announcer.

Dave LASM
 
Yep, mine arrived today too. Paid bills for the month and bought groceries.

Guitar not arriving until Thursday due to FedEx screw-up.

Another hot and soggy day here with storms later. A repeat of yesterday. Currently, 82°F/77°F here.

Air you can wear.
 
Well, howdy there internet peeps and those with Social Security benefits. I'm still 4.5 years away from when I'd consider taking it. But 1.5 years from when I could begin.

Wife says walking in low 70s with 96% humidity was like walking through a puddle. we're currently 78°F and 86% humidity. I might fire up the machine to nowhere in a bit.

Managed to get through 4 chapters this morning doing a light edit to them. I added an event planner and her sidekick, so I had to retool several scenes to include them.

Got some painting and assembly done on more toy soldiers. Then I remembered I should wash the sprues BEFORE starting to assemble the models.

Here are some of the sprues:

Screenshot 2025-07-16 at 9.51.48 AM.png


And here's one of the models assembled. Sprues above are for different models, but you should be able to see why washing it first, then assembling is smart. For those not aware, the metal molds are often coated with a mold release spray prior to plastic injection. Since the new unit is an older, softer plastic, I realized I'd better get any residual mold release coating off before priming. the darker grey sprues above usually don't give me any problems if I forget to wash, but, while I had the tub of soapy water, I gave them a bath. Squeaky clean dwarves are always a good thing.


Screenshot 2025-07-16 at 9.51.56 AM.png
 


Patrick said:
Morning all,

Not sure who won last night, (or is the game tonight?), but once again pandemonium reigns over the network. I think I have it fixed, but strange things like network switches unplugging themselves. We have a camera pointed at the switch, but it shows nothing. Must be light biters or ghosts, not sure at this point.

Never heard about the Disco sucks riot in 1979. I was in basic at Lackland AFB at the time and one instructor told us that John Wayne had passed away, about the news we heard during our 6 week visit to Texas.
Click to expand...
Patrick: You talking about Cat5 plugging into the switch(s)? Is the link connection led lit when this happens? If so, probably not cable and you need to look elsewhere. Sure, the following is bonehead stuff and YMMV; network cable/connections do strange things, so you might try plugging them in one by one and yanking on them. If they come out, bend up the catch/tab on the RJ45 plug just a tad, try again. If it happens again, really look at the RJ45 jack to make sure that little stop is there. You should hear a mechanical 'ting' or the like when inserted properly. With power on, you should see the 'link led' come on when both ends are connected. Wiggle stuff to see if you can make it go out. Remember to do *both* ends. Sounds st00pid, but quick tests. If you rolled your own cable/connections, get out your headset and make sure all the wires are all the way inserted into the plugs; IE, you should see copper looking into the end of the plug butted against the plastic frame. The plug wire crimp connectors all the way down; IE fully crimped?

L8r
 
Good Morning All. Partly cloudy and 76°, maybe mid-90's today. Mother Nature must not have read yesterday's forecast, because when we got home from my retirement anniversary dinner out, there was 0.1" of rain in the gauge. It wasn't in the forecast. Not enough to make any difference, this morning it's the same as a heavy dew.

I got a lot of mowing done yesterday before the blade belt rolled over. It and all of the pulleys were too hot for me to fix immediately. Now it has to wait until everything dries out so that I can lie on the grass without getting wet. I only have about 200 sq ft left over the septic leach field left there. Then it's on to the north side around the train shed and pond. My neighbor Marty, came down yesterday and mowed the rest of the hayfield that was too wet a couple of weeks ago. He's been removing the large round bales a couple a week directly to his sheep instead of into the storage area. He had run out. He didn't bale any last year because the tornado trashed the whole field and he has been feeding the sheep with the bumper crop from 2023. The rain last night will set him back a couple of days.
Today's outdoor chores will depend on how quickly it dries out. Most likely it will get too warm before it dries.
Wife ordered two new tablets from Amazon's Prime Days sale that arrived yesterday. A replacement for hers and one for me to try out. I wasn't expecting it but I had talked in the past about being able to keep up my fleet maintenance records from the train shed instead of handwriting everything down and then adding them to the database at the desktop later. So a bit of educating me is coming up. Son-in-law says that I can set it up as a remote workstation, but I will more than likely just duplicate everything on it and transfer files as needed. I am not too sure that our wifi will reliably reach that far without one of those boosters. I know that the existing set-up reaches the steps, but is iffy at the workbench 8' inside. Haven't opened the box yet so I don't know the brand or model.

I ran into an issue out in the train shed yesterday, that took a while to resolve. A rarely used Blue Box SD40-2 engine kept derailing on even the broadest curves. I determined that the problem was that the front truck wasn't swiveling freely in it's mounting cavity. After I disassembled it, I put a small grinding stone in the trusty Dremel and made a few careful passes. Issue resolved. This engine is my only one in the BNSF paint scheme but will probably be retired in late fall when I am expecting 6 new pre-ordered ScaleTrains SD40-2's. Those will all be in the ATSF blue/yellow warbonnet scheme.

Tom O - Our community mailbox was not mandated, but was a gift from some unknown neighbor. For years, our mail was delivered to a free-standing mailbox 1.25 miles away. It was clustered with ten others of various sizes, shapes, colors and with an assortment of individual support poles. Mine was a treated 4"x4" stuck about a foot into the ground, and at various times leaned one way or another; as did most of the others. Finally about ten years ago, a person bought the property behind them (20 acres with home about .25 miles back) and didn't like looking at the motley collection of mailboxes at his driveway entrance. So he, at his own expense, built a nice painted brick enclosure for everyone, even supplying standard-sized mailboxes and affixing numbers to them. One immediate advantage was that the boxes were no longer easy targets for teens with baseball bats on weekend nights. Over 30 or so years, I had to replace ours about once every 3-4 years! In between I used too bash dents out until they no longer could be repaired. It's still 1.25 miles away though, and we still have to go 12 miles to the PO for packages.
Dave - Never had to get used to checks coming, as everything is direct deposit, and wife is in charge of keeping up with the inflow and outflow. I also waited 2.5 years before applying for SS and used RMD's from a retirement account in the interim.

And just for Louis, today is National Hot Dog Day.
Everyone have a great day.
 
TLOC said:
I never question people as to how they set their thermostats because we all have different needs and wants. But I do occasionally chuckle. If the AC was set to 65 I’d freeze but I’m in shorts and a T-shirt at 68
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Of course those needs and wants can change daily.

It’s amazing how much your environment affects your perception. In winter, house set to 68 is cold. In summer it’s nice. That sort of thing. But even more so, what your immediate surroundings are affects how you perceive it.

Our house has been running 74-75f. When it’s hot and you come in that feels nice and cool. But a cold front came through a week or two ago and it was in the 60s out. That same temp when I came inside felt hot and stifling. After an hour or two it felt fine again.
 
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By the time I got up it was already 86F and doubtlessly hotter now. I’ll walk again tonight.

I need to work at getting into a routine of going to bed earlier and getting up earlier.

Had a good interview with another local company yesterday. This was with the hiring manager. If I passed it they’ll contact me about speaking with one of his engineers. He likes to weed out the chaff applications before wasting his engineers’ time doing an interview. It was supposed to be 1 hour but was close to two hours.

Still waiting to hear back from the place I finished interviews at last week
 
santafewillie said:
Good Morning All. Partly cloudy and 76°, maybe mid-90's today. Mother Nature must not have read yesterday's forecast, because when we got home from my retirement anniversary dinner out, there was 0.1" of rain in the gauge. It wasn't in the forecast. Not enough to make any difference, this morning it's the same as a heavy dew.

I got a lot of mowing done yesterday before the blade belt rolled over. It and all of the pulleys were too hot for me to fix immediately. Now it has to wait until everything dries out so that I can lie on the grass without getting wet. I only have about 200 sq ft left over the septic leach field left there. Then it's on to the north side around the train shed and pond. My neighbor Marty, came down yesterday and mowed the rest of the hayfield that was too wet a couple of weeks ago. He's been removing the large round bales a couple a week directly to his sheep instead of into the storage area. He had run out. He didn't bale any last year because the tornado trashed the whole field and he has been feeding the sheep with the bumper crop from 2023. The rain last night will set him back a couple of days.
Today's outdoor chores will depend on how quickly it dries out. Most likely it will get too warm before it dries.
Wife ordered two new tablets from Amazon's Prime Days sale that arrived yesterday. A replacement for hers and one for me to try out. I wasn't expecting it but I had talked in the past about being able to keep up my fleet maintenance records from the train shed instead of handwriting everything down and then adding them to the database at the desktop later. So a bit of educating me is coming up. Son-in-law says that I can set it up as a remote workstation, but I will more than likely just duplicate everything on it and transfer files as needed. I am not too sure that our wifi will reliably reach that far without one of those boosters. I know that the existing set-up reaches the steps, but is iffy at the workbench 8' inside. Haven't opened the box yet so I don't know the brand or model.

I ran into an issue out in the train shed yesterday, that took a while to resolve. A rarely used Blue Box SD40-2 engine kept derailing on even the broadest curves. I determined that the problem was that the front truck wasn't swiveling freely in it's mounting cavity. After I disassembled it, I put a small grinding stone in the trusty Dremel and made a few careful passes. Issue resolved. This engine is my only one in the BNSF paint scheme but will probably be retired in late fall when I am expecting 6 new pre-ordered ScaleTrains SD40-2's. Those will all be in the ATSF blue/yellow warbonnet scheme.

Tom O - Our community mailbox was not mandated, but was a gift from some unknown neighbor. For years, our mail was delivered to a free-standing mailbox 1.25 miles away. It was clustered with ten others of various sizes, shapes, colors and with an assortment of individual support poles. Mine was a treated 4"x4" stuck about a foot into the ground, and at various times leaned one way or another; as did most of the others. Finally about ten years ago, a person bought the property behind them (20 acres with home about .25 miles back) and didn't like looking at the motley collection of mailboxes at his driveway entrance. So he, at his own expense, built a nice painted brick enclosure for everyone, even supplying standard-sized mailboxes and affixing numbers to them. One immediate advantage was that the boxes were no longer easy targets for teens with baseball bats on weekend nights. Over 30 or so years, I had to replace ours about once every 3-4 years! In between I used too bash dents out until they no longer could be repaired. It's still 1.25 miles away though, and we still have to go 12 miles to the PO for packages.
Dave - Never had to get used to checks coming, as everything is direct deposit, and wife is in charge of keeping up with the inflow and outflow. I also waited 2.5 years before applying for SS and used RMD's from a retirement account in the interim.

And just for Louis, today is National Hot Dog Day.
Everyone have a great day.
Click to expand...
Check just a figure of speech, all our income and most expenses are direct as well.

I refuse to auto-withdraw the credit card, however. I like to check those debits before paying to avoid some unscrupulous dealing that have been known to show up.

I waited until 67 and two months. My plan was 70, however am glad things worked out as they did, since we have "enough" money.

I now realize we are capable of spending it all, no matter what the amount, with no change in the happiness we experience...
 
logandsawman said:
I refuse to auto-withdraw the credit card, however. I like to check those debits before paying to avoid some unscrupulous dealing that have been known to show up.
Click to expand...
yeah I agree there. I do almost all of the payments online but manually. There are a couple vendor type things that draw automatically like the google fiber and xfinity (which is going away soon even though I have a router that can switch over both providers). None of my accounts draw from my checking account automatically (except one 403b loan payment). I do have the google fiber and xfinity, like I said above, that auto pays through credit card. Those I'm less worried about and so a few things auto pay from the card. But (almost) nothing gets direct checking account access.

(I didn't want the 403b loan payment but I didn't have a choice).
 


Patrick said:
Not sure who won last night,
Click to expand...
The National League 7- American League 6.

It was a brilliant game to watch. It had everything. From high heat, homeruns to an old school infield chop and more in between.

The American League came from behind in dramatic fashion. Scoring two runs to tie the game in the ninth.

Byron Buxton (Twins) doubled to rightfield. Bobby Witt Jr. (Royals) doubled down the rightfield line scoring Buxton. First baseman, Matt Olson (Braves) made a brilliant defensive play to save a run when he fielded Jazz Chisholm Jr. (Yankees) sharply hit bounding ball hit down the first base line. With two outs Steven Kwan (Guardians) singles on an old school infield single. A chopped a ground ball to third baseman Eugenio Suarez (Diamondbacks), Bobby Witt Jr. scores the tying run.

Rather than play into extra innings the game was decided by the first ever, "Swing Off' (mini homerun derby) Kyle Schwarber (Phillies) hit three homeruns in the Swing Off to give the National League the win.

It began with high heat. The starter for the NL; Paul Skenes (Pirates) was throwing "BBs"! He put all 6'6" 260lbs of himself into every pitch. He could do that knowing he was only going to pitch one inning. He threw 19 pitches, 17 for strikes. Of the 19, 17 were four-seam fastballs 99-100MPH! Most at the top of the zone. "I bet you can't hit it!" Coming from the big, tall fella's release point it must have seemed like 110MPH, bigtime high heat! He blew away the first two hitters, striking them both out. Only Aaron Judge (Yankees) managed to make contact. With a solid hit ground ball into a perfectly positioned defense to end the inning. The Judge only saw two pitches, both out of the strike zone. He swung at both anyway. After watching the first two hitters go down, he knew, "no time to decide, swing early and hope!"

Certainly not something you will see every day, I loved it!
 
@troyphoto on those soft plastic minis, try Tamiya's Plastic Primer, it is GREAT for those materials.
93 here already, had to restock the Church's soda machine and knocked that out. Other folks there setting up other stuff for VBS this week. Got a lady really upset with me in our subdivision on my way home, I spotted a squirrel in the road that had been hit and was still flopping. I did deliberately run him over to put him out of his misery. This woman follows me home and starts berating me for running him over. I just asked her if she wanted him to just flop and suffer and that's when she called me a couple of hyphenated names and drove off.
No, I missed the Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey but did attend a lot of games there over the years.
 
Good afternoon from a torrential downpour. I'm glad I got the air conditioner swapped this morning. It was working well until the power turned off and on 10 times in 15 seconds. Power and air conditioner are both currently off.
The good news is I can download a couple of movies while my internet is still up using my UPS, because everybody else's power is out...
 


I've been working on this kit for about 6 weeks. It's been too nice to be indoors, but today being 100 I figured I would finish it up. I have one more kit left to build (Getz Gas Welding Supply- Builders in Scale), but I really don't feel like building it. I would rather trade it for something like a yard office or lineside storage building.

Anyways, I had a little piece of foam that was barely large enough to put it on.

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