Running Bear's May 2025 Coffee Shop

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Yup, when we moved to Arkansas my wife decided to put out flowers at our new home. The deer love them and she has reached the point of going out and yelling at them [she grew up in the city]. Gonna tell her about those plants so hopefully she can have them out, otherwise she will probably take up poaching. [Hmmm, might be a good excuse to get that suppressor I have been thing about...]
 
Mount Rushmore this morning before the crowds came. Nice not having to deal with allot of people.

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Markets are mixed. My DIY accounts gained close to 1/2%. My options trading, which is basically nil as I closed out most of it, had an action alert yesterday right before the market close. So first action I've had in months but I put it in and it traded this morning. Sold a covered CALL against a CALL I own. It's a profit of $650. If in August the price of the stock is over $180 then both of mine will exercise and I'll get all the profit from the original CALL but lose it so any rise of $180 won't benefit me. If however in August the price is less than $180 on that stock then I'll still have my original CALL and the one I sold will expire worthless (which is good) and I'll get to keep that $650 anyway.

Got colder. Earlier when I went for a walk it was upper-low to mid 50s (53-55). It's dropped to upper 40s (47-48) and started to rain...

Today's power generation from solar is not great... Luckily the house temperature has been steady. Cooling is set to 73 so yesterday it came down to 73. Overnight it dropped to 71 inside the house and is currently 72. Kind of just been hovering there. So no real energy usage.

First pic shows a normal sunny day ( a few days ago) for the solar generation. Second pic shows today. During the summer we peak a little higher between 6000 and 7000. Still Spring we don't peak quite so high.

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Good afternoon.

Running trains is fun, operating on a layout for me is even more enjoyable. But running sessions on my own layout is priceless! We did run 2 sessions. The plan was 90 minutes for each. Used 2 different switch lists and during the 1st session it took about 100 minutes but the 2nd session was not even an hour even with some track issues. The guys who were here had some ideas that I need to unravel from our after session talk regarding the switch lists. 3 of the guys prefer car cards but I prefer switch lists. My layout is small. Just 61' of mainline but with 2 separate staging yards each 2 tracked and 30'. Plenty of spots to switch.

The 1st session we had some couplers get hung up on a couple crossings. I need to clip all those Kadee couplers and now repair both crossings. I use Kadee #148's and whatever the shelf coupler number is. But that was minor. We did have some switch issues in the 2nd session. 3 ME switches basically failed. 1 the cross tie that moves the points became loose and I think I'll change it out to printed circuit ties and solder the points to it. The other 2 I will look closer at tonight. Both seem like the frog just rose up to form a hump. The cold storage warehouse track is 8' long and has 2 feeders on it. The 1st 4' after the switch was dead. It worked great last night and the 1st session. The 2nd session it was dead and confirmed by the multimeter! Each section does have power on/off switches. I am not a big fan of sound in the reefer cars but I do have some that rumble at a low volume. I want to easily turn off the sound without touching the car. The grandson has no practice tonight and said he'd help me. I know we will end up at the ice cream shop unless he wants a concrete mixer from Culver's (I can Hope)

Overall I'm thrilled. I knew there'd be some issues but I think the ones we have are minor.

A quiet night tonight. The daughter and hubby have gone to dinner and then to see a play. Clue! I thought it was a musical but it's not, just a play. Terry and I go Thursday night to see it. The 13yr old granddaughter is with 2 friends, the 19 year old twins from the old neighborhood. They have played with and watched Harper since she was born. The twins parents have sold their house. The twins are going to spend a final sleep over tonight with Harper at their old house where H has slept many nights. So it's Terry, the grandson and me for dinner here. After dinner Terry is visiting a friend. One of the guys will be back tonight to work with the grandson and me and has a set of F7's he wants to test run

Enjoy the evening

TomO
 
chadbag said:
Markets are mixed. My DIY accounts gained close to 1/2%. My options trading, which is basically nil as I closed out most of it, had an action alert yesterday right before the market close. So first action I've had in months but I put it in and it traded this morning. Sold a covered CALL against a CALL I own. It's a profit of $650. If in August the price of the stock is over $180 then both of mine will exercise and I'll get all the profit from the original CALL but lose it so any rise of $180 won't benefit me. If however in August the price is less than $180 on that stock then I'll still have my original CALL and the one I sold will expire worthless (which is good) and I'll get to keep that $650 anyway.

Got colder. Earlier when I went for a walk it was upper-low to mid 50s (53-55). It's dropped to upper 40s (47-48) and started to rain...

Today's power generation from solar is not great... Luckily the house temperature has been steady. Cooling is set to 73 so yesterday it came down to 73. Overnight it dropped to 71 inside the house and is currently 72. Kind of just been hovering there. So no real energy usage.

First pic shows a normal sunny day ( a few days ago) for the solar generation. Second pic shows today. During the summer we peak a little higher between 6000 and 7000. Still Spring we don't peak quite so high.

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What's your consumption like? Sounds like you have a high tech house - solar, geo, if you had a river near by, I'd imagine a turbine as well.
 


DeaconKC said:
We were there just a month before that dam breach! We were in a town that was swept away in that disaster.
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We were on vacation to Cancerfornia, and while we were away, we saw the news about Rapid City, then Hurricane Agnes wiped out nearly every town around ours a couple of weeks later.
I do have a photo of my mother and I having a snowball fight in Yellowstone on July 3, on our way back.
 
Kusojiji said:
What's your consumption like? Sounds like you have a high tech house - solar, geo, if you had a river near by, I'd imagine a turbine as well.
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Higher than it should be... But except for the snow melt system nothing is gas (the snow melt boiler can be used to heat the house as a backup but normally is not used for that).

Besides the. heat pump for heating and cooling, we have a hybrid electric hot water heater (has an air heat pump and normal electric elements -- keeps it hot with the heat pump but uses electric elements to re-heat water back to temp as the heat pump is too slow). Stove is induction. :pts of LED ceiling disk lights. We're still adjusting to things but here is the last month's usage plus the last week's plus a few days. Unfortunately solar we generate that is not immediately used we get some credit for but it's not 1-1... I'd like to double the panels we have. But we'll see in a year what the actual use is for a year. We've not been here that long through all seasons.

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Kusojiji said:
And you designed all this stuff? Have you considered storage vice selling back to the grid?
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I'd love to have a storage solution. $$$. No have $$$... Some day we'll add a storage solution. I don't care about selling back to the grid but that is what happens by default. Like I said I'd like to double my panels (and get storage) so that everything is basically run from the sun and when I am old and decrepit (retired) I don't have massive utility bills.

I did design everything conceptually. The house plan (which an architect then took and made real plus his engineer made plans), using ICF for highly insulated and air tight, to using geothermal (the actual system was engineered by the best geothermal engineer anywhere near here), to using the hybrid water heater, etc.
 
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Yeah, your systems are awesome! Wish I could have done something like that but it's pretty restricted here. I wanted to live in the boonies, but the wife wouldn't go for it.

ICF, man I've watched a few videos of ground up construction and then the plumbing and wiring. Neat stuff. Must be pretty sound proof too, eh? Can watch Star Wars at full volume and not blow out the neighbors!
 
To everyone who has issues with deer. I personally don't have any problems in my garden even though they are in the neighborhood. here's one between the train shed and my hayfield, maybe 30 yards from the garden on the near side of the train shed.
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Since I am an organic gardener, I don't use poisons. Those don't deter them anyway. I spread blood meal in the garden, which is an organic source of nitrogen fertilizer. Deer are vegetarians and the smell of blood turns them away. This works for rabbits as well. For my wife's flowers, I make make a "witches brew" of minced garlic, onion and very hot peppers, I use Habaneros or Serranos, preferably Habaneros. Run it in the blender, add some water and then strain the solids out. Then spray it on the flowering plants. Wear rubber gloves and don't get any on your skin. The smell usually gets them before they take a nasty bite. I use the same thing to deter garden pests from vulnerable veggies. Another method is to inter-plant Marigolds or Rosemary, which repel with their smell. Other things that startle them that I have not personally tried are wind chimes, motion activated floodlights, or an AM radio tuned to a talk station. Change the station to static or rock music every few days so they don't get used to it. Other things that are said to work are sachets made with dog hair, or animal urine spread around. Yes, it's available on Amazon, but don't ask me how they collect it. Some of these things must be replenished after a rainstorm, and of course protect the radio if you use it. You might not want to use some items close to the house. An outdoor dog is also good protection. I have also read that some folks string fishing line about 2' high in a perimeter a few feet out from their garden fence; it's recommended that two or more spaced about a foot apart are most effective. They can't see it and it trips them up. This may not work on a 200# buck running at the fence ready to jump! Fences will work, but they have to be quite tall. I've seen our neighborhood deer clear a 4' high fence from a standing start.
Good luck and I hope that you might be able to use some of these suggestions.
A couple more on the road that never saw me coming up on them.
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Kusojiji said:
Yeah, your systems are awesome! Wish I could have done something like that but it's pretty restricted here. I wanted to live in the boonies, but the wife wouldn't go for it.

ICF, man I've watched a few videos of ground up construction and then the plumbing and wiring. Neat stuff. Must be pretty sound proof too, eh? Can watch Star Wars at full volume and not blow out the neighbors!
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Yeah it's pretty sound resistant. No one will hear much of us and we don't hear much outside. If someone is mowing you might be able to tell something is going on but it's not like our old house.

With the roof you hear it rain and stuff like normal but you don't get a lot of the neighborhood sound in that way either. It's one of the advantages, though you do need to do some sort of sound insulation inside or you can get kind of boomy from the internal reflections of sound. When I am up in the office on the N side above the garage, I ca\n hear someone doing dishes in the kitchen on the main floor. (Granted that main room is vaulted so there is kind of a path up but the walls reflecting it make it more obvious).
 
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