The Fantastica Chronicles (Day 106-112)

jacobpeacock (66)in #homesteading • 5 years ago (edited)

Day 106. (TFC Prepping For A Cold Snap, Working On Bots In The Botcave & Coping With A Fever)

The day started off rainy and the ground everywhere around the shelter got mucky (and slick to walk on) rather rapidly which is probably because the ground was already saturated with all the recent precipitation. The sun has not even been all that bright of late to dry things up between periods of rain and snow because of how cloudy it has been staying. I have definitely been taking my time while walking around and have yet to fall again since that day a few weeks ago when I busted my ass at the bottom of the ramp.

Although I mainly stayed cooped up indoors with a raging fever I once again managed to stay productive doing more online bot building. Although it is just a trivial process to do what I have been doing (because there is no coding involved) it is still rather time consuming and requires a good bit of attention to detail to make the bot (online automation) work as intended.

Anyway the fever pretty much sucked and has yet to abate and there was only one time that it seemed to get the best of me and I experienced a rather unpleasant episode of vomiting. Thankfully I was near the shelter door when that happened and was able to get outside in time but damn I barely got outside fast enough! Fortunately it didn't last long but I felt incredibly hungry afterwards and although my stomach felt rather upset I still managed to eat a bunch of food which definitely helped 'settle' my stomach.

Just after dark the temperature took a drastic dive and it started snowing. The weather forecasters didn't even accurately predict that happening but it happened nonetheless! It's kind of funny because one of my dog's (the one that survived a few snake bites as a puppy) started acting oddly about three days before the snowstorm arrived and the whole time I kept telling her 'Yup. I know it is coming.' and after how many times she has accurately sensed approaching storms over the years I should just stop checking the weather forecast altogether and rely on her instincts.

Well that is about it for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

I like the contrast of trees with leaves and without leaves this time of year.

Day 107. (TFC Waking Up To A Chilly Snow Day, Burning A Fever, Pursuing The Internet For Useful Automation Software & More Or Less Just Wanting This Lingering Illness To Pass

The overnight snowstorm did not dump all that much snow (in the not-so-grand scheme of things) but it did accumulate into a few inches by early morning and did not melt away throughout the course of the day.

Everything outside in the dog yard was rather slippery so I was extra careful while walking around. The shelter's entryway ramp itself got iced over (because I failed to keep the snow swept off of it) and although I managed not to slip on it my boy dog took quite the tumble when his feet went out from under him all at once and he fell off the ramp in an ungraceful sprawl. Thankfully he did not get hurt (nor land on the big rock near the ramp) and he seemed to be a bit confused as to what the fuck had happened because it all occurred so fast.

I spent much of the day (all of it actually) pursuing the internet looking for workflow automation software for a project I have been thinking about. Having a raging fever during the process probably did not help because I kept finding myself going from one possible solution to the next and not really staying focused on the task at hand.

Mainly I got quagmired in looking at Linux server software and Android software to fulfill my automation needs. The server stuff is pretty much a 'no brainer' as far as a means to an ends goes but I cannot quite justify the power consumption versus the 'rewards' and while the Android approach assuredly ensures a low-cost energy solution it is a hell of a lot more tricky to get a non-rooted device to do the stuff that I want it to do.

By the day's end I decided that I should revisit my initial ideas for the server project once this illness is fully gone and I can think (focus) a bit more clearly because as things are I am sort of just muddling around without any clearly defined objectives and very little in the way of attention span.

Anyway all that jazz aside I did manage to walk around some and get a few snow pictures and during the hiking I realized just how much 'cooler' everything looks with snow on it. Although I thought about hiking down to the creek to get some pictures of it I didn't trust my feverish body to not slip and fall so I avoided doing it altogether. Perhaps the next time it snows I will be able to get some good pictures along the creek and also of the woods that border it.

Well that is about it for now. Hopefully I will get to feeling better soon and will not feel like every time that I sit down to write these posts I am floundering along and trying to piece things together through a fog of illness. I hope everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

The sun shining through the woods on a snowy day.

Day 108. (TFC Finally Burning Off The Remnants Of That Fever, Staying Indoors On A Chilly Day & Pretty Much Being Unproductive)

With much of the snow having not quite melted and the low temperatures everything outside got quite the layer of ice on it. I always call it 'crunchy' when it is like that because of all the crunching sounds that I make when walking around outside in such conditions.

Although that fever subsided a good bit it still persisted throughout the day. Thankfully it was much more tolerable than the day before and I did not feel quite so muddled and well (for lack of a better word) feverish.

Overall the day was super unproductive and I spent almost all of it sleeping which probably helped because when I woke up I was at least feeling better.

The weather outside remained pretty damn cold and there was the slightest breeze which assuredly added even more of a chill to it but I remained quite cozy and warm in the shelter. I did wind up using the propane heater a good bit more than usual because every time that I opened the door the breeze caused the temperature inside to drop rapidly.

I really need to get an enclosed porch built outside the door so that I can not only retain more heat inside but also so that I can have a kitchen area. My coffee cart is still serving as my outdoor kitchen and I am getting a bit tired of going outside (at all hours of the day and night) just to brew some espresso.

Anyway I do not have much else to write about at the moment so I am going to wrap this up and call it good enough. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

My boy dog being a ham for the camera.

Day 109. (TFC Staying Indoors On A Rainy Day & Finally Feeling Like That Illness Has Subsided)

Being ill for a long period of time is always a rather draining experience and I am glad that today I am finally feeling like I am on the mend. I think that what perhaps happened was that I first just caught a cold and then developed the flu just as I was getting over the cold.

All in all this whole illness spell has left me feeling foggy headed and as if I am in some kind of perpetual haze where I am just 'blah' about everything.

In some ways I guess that it has been nice because it ground me to a halt on physical activities and forced me to just take some time to relax and as we all know I have not had a heck of a lot of relaxation over the previous year.

I try not to get caught up in the hubris of 'the new year' but I am definitely looking forward to this year (and fucking decade) to just be over with. Perhaps the years/decade ahead will be better but honestly I am just glad it isn't the previous years/decade!

Anyway it was very rainy today and although the ground is extremely saturated the dog yard (and entrance area) has not gotten any muckier than it already was.

Well that is about it for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

One of my girl dogs sleeping like a baby.

Day 110. (TFC Being Completely Bummed Out That A PC That I Ordered Was Just An Empty Fucking Case, Turning Server RAID Hard Drives Into Internal Drives & Shoveling Dirt From My Outdoor 'Room' To Level The Floor)

The weather stayed dreary throughout the day and the sun only briefly made an appearance late in the afternoon to only be swallowed by clouds again after a few fleeting moments. Not that I was really planning on doing anything outdoors but I was hoping that a day of sun would dry up some of the muck in the dog yard.

I am unsure if I mentioned this before but last week I sold a bunch of Steem so that I could do some holiday shopping for myself and finally upgrade from using a laptop to an actual desktop computer. It has been somewhere around seven years that I have only been using laptops as my primary computer (even for gaming) and after months of consideration I decided to start watching for 'good' deals on a desktop computer as well as hard drives and a decent graphics card to go in it.

All my pursuing of online stores lead me to what I thought was an excellent deal on a desktop computer that although an older model would well meet my needs and would be incredibly more powerful than my best laptop. So I ordered the computer and have been quite excited to receive it and eliminate all the frustrations that I encounter by doing all the stuff I do on an old laptop.

Well today the computer came in the mail and I was thoroughly disappointed that it was only an empty case. No power supply, no motherboard, no anything except a Sata (hard drive) cable and an extra power cable for a hard drive which seemed like someone had forgotten them in there or something.

Basically I bought just a really nice computer case for a cheap price. The online description said it was a 'PC' and nowhere did it mention that it was just an empty case. I contacted the seller to try to resolve the issue but I doubt anything will be resolved other than me shipping the unit back which seems counter productive because at this point I have most of what I need to build a computer so I am thinking to just order the few more things that I need and keep moving forward and not waste my time and money returning it.

Anyway I also got two pre-owned one terabyte hard drives in the mail and once again the description was dodgy (they were also cheap) and when they arrived I discovered that they were in server housings and had previously been setup as RAID drives. There was a converter chip on the rear of the drive as well as a metal tray around the drive that I had to remove but after plugging them into a desktop computer (at the homestead proper) creating a partition table on them and formatting them with a Linux file system they worked just fine as internal hard drives.

On a different note I started the tedious task of shoveling dirt from the floor of my little outdoor rear 'room' that I mostly use as storage and a place to feed the dogs at outdoors out of the rain/snow.

Walking in and out of there every day has been a bit challenging because the dirt floor has a rather pronounced slope to it. So I finally started the task of shoveling it out and making it a little less treacherous to traverse and just like every where else here there sure are a bunch of rocks to contend with. It is going to take a heck of a lot of digging but I will eventually get it in better shape.

Well that is about it for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

This is where I started leveling the ground at for that outdoor room.

Day 111. (TFC Getting Up Early, Being Productive On Steemit, Napping Entirely Too Long After A Big Breakfast & The Special Dog Predicting Severe Weather On The Way)

It turned out to be a pretty nice day outside weather-wise especially compared to just how overcast and dreary that it has been lately. It was rather nice to see some actual blue sky. All the muck in the dog yard even dried up a good bit.

I got up super early and got my weekly Fantastica Chronicles post compiled and posted long before I even finished my first cup of coffee.

On the days I do that post I like to immediately tackle doing it as soon as I wake up so that I do not have even the slightest opportunity to procrastinate doing it!

So far that approach is working rather well and I have found that the optimal time to wake up (and tackle the posting task) to be between three-thirty and five a.m. because that way I can be finished before the sun is truly up and over the eastern horizon and feel like I have accomplished a whole lot before the 'day' has truly started.

Late in the morning I got invited down to the homestead proper for some breakfast and whoa was it filling because not long afterwards I was slipping into a 'food coma' and fell fast asleep in the shelter whilst laying in bed looking at the blue sky through the window in the door and thinking just how damn cozy the place had become.

It was many long hours before I awoke from my nap and the only thing that really compelled me to finally rise was that it was after dark and the dogs were uncontent with me sleeping through their feeding time.

Thankfully they like waking me up by getting me to pet them in my sleep and their other tactics include gently patting (petting) me with one paw, rolling against me and/or laying on top of me. I could probably sleep through one dog doing it but three doing it is just enough to nudge me awake.

Considering that I generally feed them at the same time every day they know the exact time that they should be fed and although ten minutes of deviation is tolerable any more time than that and they make sure I know that feeding time is Now!

Anyway my weather sensitive dog was doing her thing again letting me know that a storm was on the way and even her brother was insistent to let me know as well. I have always wondered if he learned that from her or if he has his own sensitivities. He definitely does not do it as often as her but when he does do it the storm that comes is usually a big one.

After checking the weather later in the day I saw that yup there is bad weather on the way with lots of rain and then a plunge downward in temperature over the next few days. When the temperature does drop it is supposed to get into the high teens so I better do a little prep work around the homestead before that happens.

Anyway that is about it for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

It was such a pretty day!

Day 112. (TFC Helping Move A Large Piece Of Quartz, Making More Fence Posts, Retrieving A Dogwood Log & Enduring A Thunderstorm With The Dogs)

Today it was the nicest weather that we have had in quite some time but late in the day a thunderstorm rolled in and brought with it some pretty heavy winds that tossed some stuff in the yard around.

A few of the gusts even gave the coffee cart (my outdoor kitchen) quite the shake as it caught the large canvas umbrella attached to it. Thankfully the umbrella is none the worse for wear and the wind removed all the leaves that had accumulated on top of it which is good because I was concerned they might cause the fabric to rot but had failed to do anything about it.

During the early afternoon I noticed some of the fellow homesteaders digging up a big piece of quartz which was a three hundred and fifty to five hundred pound small boulder. I wound up giving them a hand getting it out of the ground (after they had done all the hard work of digging it up) and getting it onto a sled.

It was a tricky prospect but with lots of micro movements and a manual cable wench (commonly called a come-along) we got it positioned on the sled and only broke one wooden rail of the sled in the process which is not all that big of a deal because the rail is just a piece of two inch by four inch lumber that is easily replaceable.

While there was some helping hands in that area of the woods I conscripted some help and hauled one really long unknown type of tree (maybe a type of gum tree) out of the woods as well as a nice straight piece of dogwood that is about eight inches around and not rotten where it matters most which is along the main trunk of the tree.

The unknown tree (the possible gum tree) I cut into two meter pieces to be used as fence posts for my dog yard. Whatever type of wood it is does not look very stout (nor rot resistant) but it will work until I find some better material to make fence posts with.

My little chainsaw needs a good sharpening before I can easily cut the dense dogwood so I just set the log up off the ground so that it can start drying out a bit. I am going to have to cut the top and bottom of the log off soon and get it stored where it can dry out. I am thinking of using it as post material for when I build my front porch but I am not going to get too excited until I cut into it with the chainsaw and see if it has heart rot or not.

Late in the day when the thunderstorm rolled in the dogs of course got a good bit of anxiety from all the loud thunder but it sure was not as bad of a reaction as I have seen them endure in other shelters we have lived in.

The sound dampening quality of that blown cellulose insulation sure is pretty awesome especially since it can lower the level of stress the dogs have in response to such loud bangs and rumbles. All in all I am very pleased with how that has worked out!

Well that is about it for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.

We could not lift the quartz onto the sled so we tied it to it and then lowered the sled.

It worked!

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That Is All For Now!

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5 years ago in #homesteading by jacobpeacock (66)

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