Running Bear's September 2022 Coffee Shop

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Patrick said:
Well,

Got the yard mowed, but had the weed eater break. Somehow lost one of the 2 screws that holds the fuel tank in place. So located a new one and went to Ace hardware and got one, along with a couple of other parts. 15 bucks and it should last a bit longer. I got tired of the top and go type always tangling, so this one uses 9" .95 string pieces. When they break, you slide them out from the center of the head, and push the new ones in. Darn thing is about 20 years old, just hard to think about getting a new one. Still have to fix it, but it got hot.
Peaches are done. Still found about dozen way high up, but they are small. Got about a half bushel today, which puts me at 3 bushels from the 2 trees this year. Managed to limit falls to about 1/3 of a bushel, which I also got cleaned up. Some of these final ones are about apricot size, but still tasty!!!

Also cut the broken branches and have them stacked, ready to haul to the city limb yard tomorrow. It just got too hot to continue and the pest control guy was scheduled this afternoon as well. Grandkids will be here soon as well. Busy afternoon...
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I always had problems with the tap and go myself, I ended wasting a lot of line with my old Stihl weed eater.

We have 82°, probably the high for today, tomorrow it is only supposed to get up to 67. Wow.
 
Alcomotive said:
Hey guys.....


I will be out for few days....

My family and I suffered a major loss.

My baby sister was killed in a tragic car accident Tuesday afternoon. She was 51 and left behind 3 boys. I have a lot on my plate. Until things are dealt with funeral etc family ordeals. I am a bit numb and well I am in disbelief.

So I will be back at some point just may pop in to ease my mind etc.

Just heart broken....gotta stay strong for the family. We have an expectation to have up to 1200 people coming. I will be overwhelmed and exhausted but happy to celebrate her life.

Peace
James
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James that terrible news. Sorry to hear this. The 3 boys will need some of those 1200 people.
George
 


Now the pain of selling my 2019 Ford F150. Dealers make it sound like I kept it in a swamp somewhere and few people would be interested in it.
Very minor stone dings on the front bumper are about the same as frame damage from a high speed head on crash.
 
Welp... ankle still hurts. Did pretty good for a while, then I put the Bend the toes sock/brace on... bad for the achilles... going to have to go without tonight. Good thing the Plantar was mostly healed up.

Put the NSAID cream on, then retaped the foot and ankle. I'll take some advil right before bet.

In other news, I worked on the gaming table today. Probably about half finished, but if I put in the angle braces on the legs, I can secure the top and actually play a game on it.

Screen Shot 2022-09-02 at 8.41.49 PM.png

still need to add cross bracing on the lower deck. That will be storage for gaming terrain boxes.

And I'll be adding a 1x6" fascia all around the play surface to give it a one-inch lip. Helps keep the cat from testing gravity with all the little toy soldiers. I'll put a coat of green paint on the play surface, but still trying to figure out what color to paint the frame? Go with the same dark brown I want to use for the train layout and fascia, or should I go for a semi-gloss black? Hmmmm....
 


Good morning Crew from the 97% humidity on the north deck in So. Central Wisconsin. 69f degrees now, the dew point is 71 degrees and it’s only going to 74 with the T-storms arriving about 10AM and the grandkids at 2. The daughter and SIL have season tickets and they are heading out at 2 for the 7PM football game on campus at the University of Wisconsin.

We were on campus last night for the ceremony of the 2021 NCAA volleyball champs the Badger Women. Then they played Marquette and won 3 games to 1 with the games close. Our season tickets suck and I will head to the box office Tuesday to see if I can improve them. They are just a few feet north of the net on the court and provide a great view. They are however 8 rows from the roof and there is no elevator. But, it still feels you could reach out and touch the ball. It’s the elevator and the fact when Terry sits normally her feet do not touch the floor. It’s the Fieldhouse built in like 1930 holding 8000 in of course the old style, the seats up top are not any more distance away from the court then any seat on the floor level, just higher! It is on the National Historical Register and is very nice arena

The grandson is grounded from any screens for all of September. Seems he purchased $10, $30 and then $50 worth of credits in a online game. 2nd time this Summer and his dad was furious. So the grandson calls me yesterday, poppa are the trains working? yes! Do you have board games? yes some! Can you show me how to put together a model? oh hell yeah. Finally what temperature is the pool because you know mom and dad took my screens away and I need something to do! As a kid I never cared about the pool water temperature. But happy he’s coming.

Just checking the weather radar app. I think rain at 9:30 but thankfully all outdoor chores are done. Terry has 30+ tomato plants going strong. She has re-planted some different lettuces, beans and something else. She was planning before the rains todays to harvest the last of her zucchini and yellow squash. She is not back yet from the 6AM community ride and should be back as the rain starts to fall per my revised guessing.

No production work on the trains today with the kids coming over.

enjoy the day
6168F2BA-A018-4E1D-BDC7-2155D5E48E80.jpeg
 
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TLOC said:
The grandson is grounded from any screens for all of September. Seems he purchased $10, $30 and then $50 worth of credits in a online game. 2nd time this Summer and his dad was furious. So the grandson calls me yesterday, poppa are the trains working? yes! Do you have board games? yes some! Can you show me how to put together a model? oh hell yeah. Finally what temperature is the pool because you know mom and dad took my screens away and I need something to do! As a kid I never cared about the pool water temperature. But happy he’s coming.
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How to turn them into modelers, railroaders, gamers, etc... Good luck hatching an interest with the soon-to-be Jr. Engineer.
 
Well howdy there internet MRR people, those about to tape up their plantar fascia like me

It's Troy again...

As noted the game table is getting into shape. I need to finish my Knights and move onto the next wave. Not sure if I want to swing back to the American civil war and pump out a few sprues of regiments, or stay in the Crusades, and work on the Arab Mutatawii'a.... I dunno, those camels look pretty enticing to put on the tabletop.

Today, wife and I are heading out to Logan's Roadhouse for lunch. The restaurant chain put a $10 off if we spend at least $40. That means adding a desert to what we normally get. Hmmm.... twist my arm to go to a steak place and get ice cream. ;)

Weather the next week looks rather dribbly. It's been humid, and I need to get outside and dullcoat some of these tiny soldiers. Ah, the joy of midwest weather.

Screen Shot 2022-09-03 at 9.07.53 AM.png


Foot feels surprisingly good today. I could not use the night brace sock due to stressing the Achilles I injured. So I taped it up, and made sure to stretch before I got out of bed. Applied the NSAID cream after shower, and getting ready to tape it up again.

Not sure if I'm writing today or working on the game table. Maybe both. who knows?

Wife and sister are taking their mother out for the cemetery tour this afternoon. It's not goulish. They need to pull the plastic grave decorations from the urns. And, since this is the area where their mother grew up (a lot of the roads on this edge of the county are named after her relatives) they want to hear more stories about growing up on the poor end of the extended farm family, going to a one-room schoolhouse, etc.

As for me, I'll be in the basement. Doing hobby stuff. (No grandkids to worry about, so just me.)
 
Morning,

Coffee, ham and cheese omelets and cinnamon raisin toast, thanks Francine.

Well, got up a little later than normal, pop up thunderstorm dropped all of a trace of rain, but a ton of noise. Wanted to let us know it was a thunderstorm too. Got to take care of the kids dogs this weekend, the 3 locals ( son, daughter and son-in-law) took the grandkids to see Mount Rushmore. Kind of a quick trip, but something the wife and I wanted to do but never could afford to do when the kids were younger.

Got branches I need to haul, a weed eater to fix and a Sam's order to pick up. Oh yeah and dogs to go out before then. Ain't gonna get it done sitting on my butt.

BBL
 
Patrick said:
Well,

Got the yard mowed, but had the weed eater break. Somehow lost one of the 2 screws that holds the fuel tank in place. So located a new one and went to Ace hardware and got one, along with a couple of other parts. 15 bucks and it should last a bit longer. I got tired of the top and go type always tangling, so this one uses 9" .95 string pieces. When they break, you slide them out from the center of the head, and push the new ones in. Darn thing is about 20 years old, just hard to think about getting a new one. Still have to fix it, but it got hot.
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Lots of that going around. Last year the drive belt of my Toro Personal Pace mower slipped off the pulley. I've had Toros for probably 40 plus years. Two of them. Had to replace the first one when parts were no longer made. The replacement had this belt drive system where the belt runs under guards from motor drive shaft to the rear axle. After the mower got 5 years old pop went the belt. It didn't break, just slipped off the pulley. Replacing it is a trip to the repair shop. So new belt, a nice bill and a year later (last week) the drive cable lets go. Easy fix, new cable from Amazon. twelve bucks. This week the belt lets go again. The nature of the drive makes it very tough to push manually, think steering your power steering equipped car without the power. It's like 4PM, the repair shop will not be able to get to it for a couple of weeks, and its gonna rain all day tomorrow. I try and put the belt back on myself which means taking the rear axle off, as well as a couple guards, etc. and I get stopped by the need for a special tool for the screws that keep the belt guard in place. As you may have surmised by now, I'm thoroughly pissed at both Toro and the world in general, tossing enough F bombs around that all the neighbors go inside! So off we go on a shopping trip. Took the wife with me to keep me calm, because when I'm this frustrated, I tend to spend money. Lots of it. It's not the best time of year to buy a mower, and it took a couple of stops but I finally found a suitable replacement. Unfortunately, I also found that the difference between the cheapies and the good stuff is only about $150.00. When it comes to tools, especially the power variety, I'm a firm believer in "It's better to buy a good one once than a cheap one three times." So like six bills later I drag home a nice Snapper mower and cut my grass at like 6 at night. It's a very nice machine, but the controls layout is different and will take some getting used to. Fate knows when you have a few extra bucks! She then arranges for you to dispose of them quickly. :mad: When I calm the rest of the way down, I suppose I'll put the Toro back together and cart it off to the repair shop and have it fixed so I'll have a spare, or maybe give it to the kid and make his life interesting. So that's how my Friday went. Fortunately, Thursday went a little better. I took those new Rapido PA's to the club, ran them in a bit, then assembled my Lark train to see how they did with it. Their pulling power is quite good, probably on par with the original Life like PA's. Those would pull the plaster off the wall. I also found out that trains are like sports cars. You put them away for a couple of years and when you bring them back out, they need all kinds of work. I have a ton of coupler height adjustments and a few other tweaks to make. Looks like the gremlins got in the box while it was put away. Still, it ran well and looks good if I do say so myself! For your viewing pleasure: 😁

 
Good Morning All!
47F in Libby and sunny.
84F in Olive Branch with partly.

Thought that I might share. Have been using XtrackCad for *years* and just found out yesterday that you can 'nest' layers in the new version. Upgraded to 5.2.2 and am now giving it a go. Some you probably already know, those who don't can play.

It seems that drawings of our Railroads get more and more cluttered with needed stuff. Layers give you the ability to turn some of that off when not needed or turn it back on when you do. I currently have multiple layers to deal with stuff - Room, Lower, Transition, Upper and Helix to name the ones I usually play with. Problem is that you could also have too much stuff in any one layer; say you are working on the Lower layer and the other Main layers are turned off. In the Lower layer, I could have benchwork, track, control devices, electrical, scenery and maybe some text blobs where each one of those has a layer button ... somewhere. I would have to go and find those buttons to turn off stuff that was not needed before I could accomplish my burning desire. With all those layer buttons, it becomes a PITA to figure out which one you want. Layer buttons are not text based, but numbers; [Layer]1,2,3...99 so you also need to keep a cheat sheet nearby. Xtrak can do 99 layers and I have not run out yet.

With the new nested layers, say you were working in the Lower layer and want to do something in another layer. You first switch to the wanted layer ( You can not turn off current layer ) then turn off the main Lower Button which also turns off Lower's benchwork, track, control devices, electrical, scenery and text blurbs. Done in one fell swoop instead of multiple buttons.

Maybe I'm anal trying to keep stuff separated. Maybe not, as I do print pieces and parts of the layout to help with my concept of it. When I print, I only want to see what I want to see, not all of that clutter.

Xtrak when I first started with it was ...um... pretty rough. You almost had to get into the coders mindset to figure out how to do stuff. I probably use 40% of what is available as that does what I want. Every once-in-awhile I run into having to do something different and learn a new way. Xtrak usually comes through, which usually brings up the 'why didn't I do that before' statement. Yes, there is still a learning curve and the program seems way to busy and complicated when you first start. I suspect that the learning curve is pretty much the same as any CAD railroad design program, but I got through it and still have most of my sanity!

Later
 
Good Morning All. Clear, calm and 70° this morning. Headed for 94° today with lots of sunshine. Pool temperature this morning had dipped to 83°, but with a full day of sunshine it will rise back to 85°. 82° is still comfortable for me, but my wife likes 84° or higher. I am concerned about these lower nighttime temperatures and the effect they will have on my onions that are stored out in the shed. They will begin to sprout if it gets too cool for any extended time. I will have to be vigilant and remove them as soon as they do, and then chop and freeze them.
Pop-up thunderstorm came within a few miles while I was in the pool yesterday afternoon, but never got closer than 5 miles away.

I was able to mow again yesterday in the early afternoon, did the backyard around the pool and the firewood stacks. I'll resume today after the dew dries, this time on the major acreage called the front yard. Meanwhile with the well timed rains recently, my hayfield is looking very nice. Should get a very good and profitable second cutting.
I'm getting the smoker ready for smoking a brisket flat today. I'll be using pecan wood today just because I haven't tried that wood before. I have a supply of pecan, oak, maple and peach from trees in the yard. I use the maple and peach on pork and poultry, and the oak and now pecan on beef. If you can't make it by, I'll report back in the morning.

Thanks for the likes and comments regarding the MR I pictures yesterday; Sherrel, Smudge, Dave B, Guy, Hughie, Troy, Louis, Patrick, Gary, Rick, Tom, Chad, Joe, Tom O.

I got started on a new project out in the train shed yesterday. I have been wanting to build another structure after a long hiatus. So I started this one.
IMG_1589.JPG

The intent is to put it in this area which is my next project area, now that the extension to downtown Ft Wish is essentially completed.
IMG_1588.JPG

I intend to put it on the left next to the Ramones Storage where the gray structure is. All of the structures to the right of Ramones are just being stored there. City Hall and 7-11 will probably end up in this scene when done.
IMG_1587.JPG

Since Pikestuff used parts from another kit and just cast them in a different color, I had to cut out a notch in each long wall. Then I added doors and windows
IMG_1590.JPG

I thought that I had taken pictures of before and after, but apparently not.

Dave B - I also have a cane on standby that I haven't used yet. It's a traditional one over 80 years old that belonged to my Grandfather. I replaced the rubber tip in 2018 so my wife could use it after her knee replacement surgeries. She uses it now to activate the I-Robot vacuum cleaner so she doesn't have to bend over!
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Sherrel - I don't know about adding Freon yourself, but locally Auto Zone will add it for you if you purchase it from them. Cost is the same.
Guy - Wow! 100° in Alberta! You probably don't get that often.
I think that we all have torn up track at one time or another. It's the main reason that I don't ballast for 6-8 months after I first attach it and test run everything for a while. I'm with Dave on the DC only.
Tom O - My son was banned from screens back in the late 90's for a month. I don't remember what the reason, but it had nothing to do with spending money or porn. I think that he cursed at his mother. The results were amazing, we never had a recurrence of whatever it was.

I am probably jinxed now after reading about everyone's mower problems.
Today is National Skyscraper Day. Around here they are known as grain elevators.
Everybody have a safe and awesome Labor Day weekend.
 


Errands won out...dogs done until this afternoon, wife wanted a haircut, so we are at the haircut place. Getting the Sam's order soon and then going to the Longhorn steakhouse for lunch. Have about 60 bucks in gift cards, so we're still ok money wise. I did spend a bit more for the weed eater than I needed to, but if I can do a little preventive maintenance as well, I'm actually money ahead. I am getting some train time this weekend, even if it kills me...🤣
 
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