Running Bear's March 2025 Coffee Shop

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Good Morning All!
36F @ 85% and partly

Last fall we heard that Libby is getting a new motel - Comfort Inn me thinks.
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Welp, ground breaking started. They took out probably 100 trees. This is just South of the Town Pump on Hwy2 just east of town proper. The other motels in town are 'up in arms' about this. If I remember, the Inn is to have 200 rooms, 2 stories, not sure about any sort of restaurant or small cafe. Liquor license around here is $150K so who knows about that. This should help during the summer price gouging the rest do. For instance, during 'Ignite the Nights' you can not get a room anywhere; here, or Eureka, Kalispell and Bonner's Ferry. Most are sold out a year in advance at almost triple the normal price. The pharmacy building just behind where I am sitting also has a failed cafe business, which will probably be resurrected. Other than that Town Pump does have a hot case, and there is a ongoing restaurant about 1/2 mile away. Might see a whole bunch of stuff spring up.

Speaking of ground work, almost time to start on Maria's 12x20' chicken/buck house - this summer's project; along with other stuff not finished last fall. Seems to be the never ending story.

Time will tell.

Maria gets to do a Colonoscopy this morning and drank almost a gallon of washout starting last night. Think that she will be about 2 hours, so instead of sitting and waiting, will get down to the tracks with camera and see if BNSF cooperates.

L8r
 
I now see that overseas chip manufactures are developing plants here in the US. Only 20 miles from where I live in Fishkill, NY IBM had a huge chip manufacturing plant back in the early 90's. The photo below is only a small portion of the complex. It's like a mile long. Why didn't they just keep that going. A lot of my friends worked there but no more.
Swal

IBM.JPG
 


Good Morning All. Ash Wednesday today. It's still windy here, with cloudy skies and 40°, not as cold as predicted but still cold for us. The weather Monday night was more severe than I realized until I read of possible tornadoes occurring in a couple of cities between here and Dallas. Daughter #2 finally got her power back on around 4:00 pm. I read later last night that 360,000 homes were without power in our area. Winds here are still in the 18 mph - 25 mph range and are slowly dying down. Fair weather with cold nights until Saturday when another brief cold front arrives with rain.

After making the car dealer/LHS trip yesterday, we picked up a couple of pizzas from our second-favorite Italian restaurant nearby. They make better pizza than our favorite. Part was eaten, much was frozen for leftover lunches. Even though I didn't need to start the fire in the wood stove until after supper, I did have to spend time retrieving the quickly dry firewood that I anticipated needing. Around this time in the heating season, I get lazy and don't stay as on top of the dry firewood situation as I should. My excuse is that I may have too much inside and have to take it back out if it warms up unexpectedly.

Who knows about today! If the wind dies down after noon as predicted, It will be real pleasant outside; I can go through the yard and retrieve debris that has been stirred around. I can see two pieces of somebody's metal roofing/siding in my hay field that just got plowed Saturday. We're ready to plant and recover from last years disastrous year. I should be able to hoe the onion rows that I planted last month to ruin the lives of the just germinated weed seeds. Ground surface dried out enough with the wind yesterday.

I did spend some time out in the train shed yesterday. Reviewed the booty from Discount Model Trains. Most of the stuff that I got was replenishment of supplies, along with drill bits and couplers. But I picked up 7 Oxford vehicles which were my main objective.
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Included was another Corvair on the lower right. I also found this billboard kit to satisfy the urge to add a building-side billboard to 2 structures.
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Not sure where I will put the third one, probably just mount it on poles.
Then to enable a planned rooftop restaurant scene, I got this Preiser kit.
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There's a few more detail kits that went into the stack.
I planned out a project with an old Model Power home kit that I built in the late-80's. It's been in storage since I moved out of the old train room. Like many modelers at the time, I didn't realize that the white plastic walls would eventually discolor over the years of exposure to light, either natural or artificial. This one also suffered the effects of a "dirt dauber" nest attached to one side.
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Mike - The alignment usually does more for our vehicles than the tire replacement. The last mile of country road to our house is a killer on alignments and suspension.
Tom O - A friend who recently retired as a career postal employee had told me that that last mile for Amazon or for UPS in some areas was a real killer for their post office. Not here at my particular location. Parcels from everyone but USPS are delivered to the door. I have to go to the PO to pick those parcels up.
Swal - My wife is not familiar with the latest version of Turbo Tax, so is unable to answer your question. Her limited exposure over the years as an H&R Blockhead, was really just folks who had tried and failed to use it and came to see her as a last resort.
Hughie - I can relate to the whole "squat and kneel" thing.
Troy - Senior discounts are aplenty, but it's a niche market. Depends on what's important to the individual. I use very few, but that's also because I don't live close to certain places. I use them on haircuts at Pro-Cuts, food at Schlotzy's and used to get one at Kroger.
John - I only visit Discount Model Trains 4-5 times a year, but I generally make it worth their while when I am there. Did you ever get an opportunity to visit back in the 90's when Bob and Barb Wilson owned it, and the entrance was in the garage of the car refurbishing place behind it?
Jay - Thanks for the comment. It's come in very handy for me.
Terry -
bnsf971 said:
Good morning. It's cloudy and 68.
I'm looking for a second opinion about my dental situation, hopefully I'll find an alternative that won't make me broke.
Click to expand...
It's a no win situation. Either you're broke but can still eat, or your teeth are broke and you can't eat. Hope that you can find a cheaper but quality alternative.

Everyone have a wonderful Wednesday
 
Good morning all!

Currently 46F right now and that is our high for today. Had rain in the area yesterday and today. Big story is the fierce winds that are supposed to kick in after lunch. Temps will begin to steadily fall into the low 20s.

Have a crew in the house today replacing all the kitchen appliances. We had the kitchen remodeled 8yrs ago and all the appliances were replaced at that time. We opted for LG appliances and have nothing but trouble with them since new. I cant count how many times they have been repaired, We are just done with LG. Hopefully GE will be better luck for us. Sad that these are not that old and were total junk from the very beginning. LG has not been much help resolving our issues. We finally gave up and ordered all new last week.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
NYC_George said:
I now see that overseas chip manufactures are developing plants here in the US. Only 20 miles from where I live in Fishkill, NY IBM had a huge chip manufacturing plant back in the early 90's. The photo below is only a small portion of the complex. It's like a mile long. Why didn't they just keep that going. A lot of my friends worked there but no more.
Swal

View attachment 213370
Click to expand...
Probably my because business in New York is expensive.
 
Good mornin' y'all from a mostly cloudy Cheyenne. It's 38 headed for a high of 49 with a forecast low tonight of 27, Winds are WNW @ 20 gusting to 30mph. One to 3" of snow is expected tomorrow afternoon through Friday morning.
Probably spend most of the day sorting through moving boxes, unpacking etc.
Y'all have a good day and take care.
 
Good almost afternoon gang!

Rainy, windy and temps in the 50s here! Supposed to get crazier here later.

Wifey is sad. Daughter got a huge promotion and is moving her family to Raleigh N.C. in July, so the Gkids wont be 2 miles away anymore. Now she is making noises about moving south in a few years once I retire. She has already looked at the county school system there and has found her same job there. Me I will become a hausfrau. (the perks of marry a younger woman)
Looks like the layout will have to chopped up in a few years so for now I will get trains running (the tracks are already down) and any scenery done will be built so that it can be removed, boxed, and shipped. I see a PODS container in my future. The rest of the kids are good with the idea, in fact #3 son already is working toward moving to N.C. himself.

Oh so much to ponder!
 


NYC George wrote
"I now see that overseas chip manufactures are developing plants here in the US. Only 20 miles from where I live in Fishkill, NY IBM had a huge chip manufacturing plant back in the early 90's. The photo below is only a small portion of the complex. It's like a mile long."

That IBM plant had a siding served by the railroad, Conrail's Beacon Branch, which later was made part of the Maybrook line after the Poughkeepsie bridge fire.

It was VERY long for an "industrial siding" -- it extended about a mile, then crossed the highway, and into the plant.

In later years it was serviced by the Poughkeepsie switcher. I never owned that job, but I would often get sent to work it on a week-long "hold-down" assignment while the regular engineer was on vacation.

A story was told to me once that there were only one or two cars that would come in and go out -- and they went over to the IBM facility on the River Line across the Hudson in Kingston. Kind of like IBM's "use it or lose it" claim on keeping the sidings active at both locations.

Eventually the Fishkill siding was taken out, I think it's a nature trail now.

The days of freight on the Maybrook are long gone...
 
Willie said........John - I only visit Discount Model Trains 4-5 times a year, but I generally make it worth their while when I am there. Did you ever get an opportunity to visit back in the 90's when Bob and Barb Wilson owned it, and the entrance was in the garage of the car refurbishing place behind it?

Yes I did visit back in the day.
I can vaguely remember way back when going to Discount Model Trains was "way out in the sticks". On my first visit, there were three folks stocking shelves with a lot of stuff that I believe came from other hobby shops. They had a lot of "new old stock" and some brand new items. At that time they were open but still organizing and stocking the store.

On another note, I am having a lot of difficulty accessing my Yahoo mail.
I used FireFox as an ISP provider for many years but about 3 months ago I kept getting a "logged out" message from AT&T when I was logging into my e-mail. The message said "Somethings gone wrong", "Try again later". I then had to start using the "Private" or "Incognito " window. This worked for a while then the messages from AT&T started coming up there to the point where I could never log in. So I went to Chrome for an ISP. I could access my Yahoo account again up until 3 days ago, at which time I started getting the "logged out" message from AT&T again. It worked OK yesterday morning and last night. But today, I cannot get to my e-mails. Technical service ( talking to a real persons ) at AT&T is non-existent.
I did a search on the internet trying to find a number to AT&T for e-mail technical support to talk to a real person. I found a number to call but the person on the other end was from a foreign country and I could not understand everything he said. After a few minutes I just stopped the call. I believe this is a scam number as he wanted access into my computer via pressing control + the Windows key + the letter "Q". He sent a 6 digit security code (?????) to enter but once I typed it in it never connected to him for communications. At that time I told him I thought this was a scam and cut off the phone call and stopped the window which never connected .
I have tried everything suggested by websites to fix this issue and none works. I reset my password and that seemed to help for about 2 days.
At this point I think I will just have to switch all my e-mails to Google as I had had a Google mail account that I set up to use when the Yahoo decided not to work. Only thing is, I have over 100 folks and sites to visit to let them know I have a new e-mail address.
Sad that AT&T has no technical support for their Yahoo e-mail accounts. And the hits just keep coming. One would think as time progresses, that things would be less complicated and work better but it seems things just don't work as well as they should and is getting harder to get help to fix them.

Take care....John
 
westtexjohn said:
Willie said........John - I only visit Discount Model Trains 4-5 times a year, but I generally make it worth their while when I am there. Did you ever get an opportunity to visit back in the 90's when Bob and Barb Wilson owned it, and the entrance was in the garage of the car refurbishing place behind it?

Yes I did visit back in the day.
I can vaguely remember way back when going to Discount Model Trains was "way out in the sticks". On my first visit, there were three folks stocking shelves with a lot of stuff that I believe came from other hobby shops. They had a lot of "new old stock" and some brand new items. At that time they were open but still organizing and stocking the store.

On another note, I am having a lot of difficulty accessing my Yahoo mail.
I used FireFox as an ISP provider for many years but about 3 months ago I kept getting a "logged out" message from AT&T when I was logging into my e-mail. The message said "Somethings gone wrong", "Try again later". I then had to start using the "Private" or "Incognito " window. This worked for a while then the messages from AT&T started coming up there to the point where I could never log in. So I went to Chrome for an ISP. I could access my Yahoo account again up until 3 days ago, at which time I started getting the "logged out" message from AT&T again. It worked OK yesterday morning and last night. But today, I cannot get to my e-mails. Technical service ( talking to a real persons ) at AT&T is non-existent.
I did a search on the internet trying to find a number to AT&T for e-mail technical support to talk to a real person. I found a number to call but the person on the other end was from a foreign country and I could not understand everything he said. After a few minutes I just stopped the call. I believe this is a scam number as he wanted access into my computer via pressing control + the Windows key + the letter "Q". He sent a 6 digit security code (?????) to enter but once I typed it in it never connected to him for communications. At that time I told him I thought this was a scam and cut off the phone call and stopped the window which never connected .
I have tried everything suggested by websites to fix this issue and none works. I reset my password and that seemed to help for about 2 days.
At this point I think I will just have to switch all my e-mails to Google as I had had a Google mail account that I set up to use when the Yahoo decided not to work. Only thing is, I have over 100 folks and sites to visit to let them know I have a new e-mail address.
Sad that AT&T has no technical support for their Yahoo e-mail accounts. And the hits just keep coming. One would think as time progresses, that things would be less complicated and work better but it seems things just don't work as well as they should and is getting harder to get help to fix them.

Take care....John
Click to expand...
ISPs are Internet Service Providers. To my knowledge neither Firefox nor Yahoo provide internet service, only browsers and / or email service.
 
Bruette said:
Todd, what is a chicken/buck house? A city, boy, me wants to know.

I'm glad to hear Maria is taking diligent care of herself, I hope all goes well. My wife and I go in April
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Louis: Simple, she wants a combo 12x20' Chicken pen and Buck Pen. Will split up the 20' side into uneven 3's. Ends will be a little less than 1/3 of the 20' side; about 6' and 8' of the 12' side. People/hay/feed place in the middle. 4ft for walking in front of the pens. 8x6; for a Pygmy buck is probably overkill, but what the heck; but we can have 50+ chickens with room for egg boxes.

L8r
 
Good evening gentlemen. Weird day today with the weather, early on cloudy and warm, toward noon very high winds and partly sunny (scary to drive a curtain side trailer over some bridges on Jersey coastline. Right now rainy and this:
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Coming into Philly on "Surekill expressway" cought this "Keystone" coming in to 30th Street Station from Harrisburg:
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Later Gators 😉
 


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