Breaking things.

This was Friday.  I worked from home.  I didn't take an exact measurement, but it was somewhere between 6 and 8 inches.  

Saturday was cleanup day.  I started it off by breaking my snowblower.  This one is not as easy to fix/workaround.  What it looks like happened was the shear pin broke, but instead of falling out, it got wedged in between the inner shaft and the auger.  The end result is that part of the shear pin is still in there, but I can't move the auger to get it out.  I am not sure how to fix this without disassembling the whole front end of the snowblower and beating on it.  

I ended up using the tractor for the whole driveway.  It is kind of a pain to do, but I have at least done it before.  The tractor isn't heavy enough to push it the whole length of the driveway, so I have to do 10 feet at a time, and the driveway is three to four passes wide, push that down to the apron (with the bucket, not the blade, the blade will destroy the driveway), and then push it off to the side afterwards.  I did the bottom thirty or so feet and then decided that my truck can drive over it so I didn't care enough to do the rest.

Things were melting surprisingly quick on Saturday.  The carport was already starting to shed the snow by the afternoon when I finished clearing.  I am mildly curious why the front slides so much faster than the back; the back should get more sun.  

Sunday I did get up to the shed and out for a bit.  I pulled out the stuff I am bringing to KY.  

I also took a peek at the coverings I installed.  they didn't blow away which is good.  I will leave them there until the snow slides off the roof.  

I contemplated moving them and working on the shed floor, but I didn't get motivated enough.  I also had a drive in my Drobo die since things always break in bunches.  Ugh.  So I spent a good chunk of Sunday ordering new drives and sorting through the stuff on the NAS I bought from Mike, since it didn't have enough free space to blanket copy everything over from the Drobo.  He has a bunch of movies and stuff on there that I don't have, so I am poaching some of the data before I wipe it.

I also pulled out the new toys that I got a while ago.  I got a grinder and a cheese grater attachment.  They are cheap knock offs, but appeared to work.  The meat grinder doesn't fit well on the mixer and wobbles a bit, but it worked fine.  There is a little bit of waste (meat that doesn't get ground), but not nearly as bad as the reviews made it it sound like.

The cheese grater has a pretty significant flaw.  You can't actually put a block of cheese in it, I had to chop it in half.  

That turned out to be a good thing since I was running the machine at full speed.  It grated the half block of cheese in seconds before I could slow it down.  So the burgers were very cheesy.  It is also worth noting that at full speed the cheese gets sprayed out everywhere.  The grater actually had more waste than the grinder, which was a bit disappointing, but might be because of going crazy at the beginning.  I ran them through the dishwasher (no attachments I found are actually dishwasher safe) and nothing bad happened which is also a plus.

One of the other things I did on Sunday while I was waiting for files to move around was I took the GoPro out for a ride to see if it would handle being on top of the truck.  I added a wire looped around the mounting just in case bad things happened.  The magnet I am using has a 90lb pull strength (for a < 5lb camera), but that doesn't necessarily translate to torque strength from air drag at 70mph.  It also doesn't mean that the molded plastic mounting hardware could take it.  

The extra wire was unnecessary.  Everything worked as hoped; it didn't move and is still pointed correctly.  I may or may not have been going 80 on route 10, and there was swirling winds, so it should handle the slower speeds I travel with the camper with aplomb.  Now I just need to learn how to use the GoPro.

As you might expect, snow coverage is back up to 100%.  Tomorrow is March, so I can get the ball rolling on getting my new tires and registration and all my birthday tax from the state.

House is about to get a lot colder.

UPDATE - See bottom

Yesterday was definitely an interesting day.  I got my national park pass.  Almost everything for the trip is set up at this point.

I also got the GoPro mount redone with actual bolts.  It is reasonably stiff now, so it is ready to get stuck on the truck and tested, see if that 90lb pull magnet is strong enough pull to withstand the lateral torque of wind resistance.  

Right before I went to bed last night, my heat pump decided it has had enough.  I can still hear the relays clicking on and all that, but the fan never starts.  It is possible that the fan is just frozen in; this unit historically has had exceptionally poor drainage and we went from 50 and raining to below freezing in less than 12 hours.  I did hear the fan blades scraping on ice which is the loud noise it makes in the winter before it stopped completely, so it might have just finally cooked the fan motor.  Unfortunately, we have run out of warm weather for a little bit, so if it is frozen in, it will stay that way for a while.  

The good news is that we are close enough to spring I can just heat the place with space heaters.  I have two.  I set one up this morning, since it was very chilly in the house this morning.  I also still have a window unit AC in the shed that I can put in for the summer.  

That heat pump was really expensive (I paid $700 for it) and they are $1100 now, which I won't pay to replace it for at most a year.  Unfortunately since wall units aren't standardized for size, I can't just pick up a cheap LG unit or anything, they won't fit.  Most of the small heat pump market has gone to mini-splits, wall mounted units are largely a thing of the past at this point, so my odds of finding a replacement are slim.  I will just have a higher heating bill next winter if I am not in the new house by then.

Today's snow coverage: down to 10%.  I haven't gone up to check if the side of the shed has melted off, but it almost assuredly has.  I am going to be running around at lunch, I might stop up and check and get it covered.

UPDATE - I went up at lunch and saw the Fedex guy.  The tires for my truck have arrived.  

One of the reasons I went up at lunch was to cover the side of the shed.  The first major chunk is covered.  The snow moves in tonight.  I have seen everywhere from 6-8" to 12-16".  It is unfortunate that I never fixed my snowblower, it will get at least one more workout this season.

The other reason I went up is that since the space heaters have an analog temperature setting, I didn't know what they were set for when I set them up this morning.  Turns out they were set for about 45ish.  That is a bit too chilly even for me, so I cranked them up a bit. It was up in the 50s when I went back to work.  

Shed blocked. Weekend not as nice as advertised.

I ended up not getting much done on Saturday since it was a white-out most of the day.  I brought the stuff up to the shed and snow kept blowing in and smashing the doors against the siding, so I didn't do much else. Sunday was nicer, but was a lot colder than expected.  I still managed to get up to the shed and the jack worked fine.  The handle they give you sucked, but I was able to raise it with a screwdriver without issue.  I got the first joist raised up.

Then I noticed this.  

That will need to be pounded back in from the outside.  There is only one problem: I can't get to the joists from the outside right now.  This really put a damper (as in stopped dead) the progress on the shed.  Kind of a shame too since I had Monday off too and probably could have finished it.  

So instead I went for a walk around the property.  One of my longer term goals was to put walking trails in.  I walked one of the proposed routes.  I happened to notice this though.  I really have no idea what it is for.  Girdling a tree like that is a common way to kill it, but I don't understand why the tree wasn't just cut down.  It was kind of high (this is about 5' off the ground) on the tree to be an anchor for something.  That was beefy 3/4" metal cabling too, so they meant business.  

This was the other end as far as I could tell.  It didn't appear to go anywhere, but I didn't find the actual end of the cable, that will likely have to wait for spring.

I was supposed to get the remaining parts for the GoPro on Saturday.  They claim delivery was attempted, but other than at most a drive by no attempt was made.  Not a single print in my driveway from a car or person, just raccoons who I am pretty sure don't work for the USPS.

I went and collected the driveway markers that fell down.  They are no longer frozen into the driveway, and I don't want to hit them with the snowblower.

I didn't really want to go back inside, so I went and shoveled off the slab.  It took a while doing it by hand, but that was fine with me, I have been feeling a little cooped up inside of late.  And with how nice Monday was, it worked out good.

I also went and redid the wiring for the new laptop.  Those plastic clips were clearly not doing their job.  The were adhered to the bottom when they were installed.

The wires are all zip-tied in place now.  

I had Monday off for some reason (Two years ago they started giving us Presidents day off and took away one of our floating holidays which I preferred), and it was as nice as advertised.  It was so nice outside that I went out without my coat on and even used my clothesline for the first time this year.  

While they didn't even try on Saturday, they did deliver the package on Monday.  I got the magnetic truck mount installed, but I don't think it is going to work.  I can't get the various mounts tight enough to the point where it is rigid to my finger.  If it can't stand up to that, there is no chance it will survive being on top of the truck going 70mph.  I am going to try to replace their screws today with actual bolts and see if that helps, but otherwise, I might just take the center piece (it is a giant battery) out and use a windshield suction cup mount.  I wanted it on top of the truck to get it over top of the traffic and so that the picture quality wasn't dependent on the cleanliness of my windshield, but oh well.  

Since most people had to work on Monday, I went for a hike as well.  Despite this only being 2 miles from my house, I have never been here (except once for a work party which stayed up near the gate).  Mostly that is because typically when I drive by the parking lot is overflowing.

Given how little snow is left in Sullivan, I expected this to be clear.  It started off that way.  It didn't stay that way for long.

Fortunately I keep rubber creepers in my truck.  This is mostly a holdover from the Nissan when it would fail to get up the driveway, but I was happy to have them today.  Wearing bald shoes on wet ice isn't fun.

Some pictures of the area.  Google has finally (after literally years) fixed the sizing issues, so you should be able to blow them up and see them bigger again.

One of the trails looks like it flooded then froze.  I don't know the trail well enough to know if there were dips in it, and I didn't really trust the ice.  Not with the loads of warm weather the last couple of weeks, so I didn't chance it. I just went the other way.

Other people have apparently though.  

More pictures of another trail that got flooded and froze.  I am kind of curious what this place looks like when the water levels are normal.  I bet it is a lot different.

I don't know the history of the trail, but there were definitely some oddities, like this bridge, right next to the bridge I was standing on, that went nowhere.

There was also some cool looking ice on one of the hills.  That windswept snow pattern is frozen inside the ice, not on top.

Since the shed is now waiting on snow, todays snow coverage: ~75% but declining rapidly.  

Despite it feeling like spring the last two weeks, there is another significant snow storm currently slated for the end of the week.  If the side of the shed melts off, I might see if I can find some T1-11 scraps and protect where I need to hammer.  The scraps I cut out from when I installed the window are still sitting up there, since I never lit the burn barrel before winter.  I think it will melt off, there is rain tonight, and 50s tomorrow.

As much as I hate sinking money into a truck that I am trading in when I get back from the Grand Canyon, I ordered new tires for it today.  $600 of rubber was the cheapest I could find that I would trust (they are Yokohama Geolanders).  My current tires won't pass inspection, and I don't really want to make a 5000 mile trip towing a camper with the truck on tires that are already bald.  

Winter Projects:

• Install chains and anti-gel in tractor.
• Get power center out of truck.
• Fix shed floor.
• Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
• Put up more shelving/hooks in the carport

Parts are inbound. Snow is melting.

I have been accumulating parts and stuff during the week.  I went out the other night and picked up a cheap scissor jack.  I also picked up some epoxy and some flat stock so I can fix the latches to the cap.  My new bumper also came in this week.  Nothing like delivering a box in the rain outside so it can get saturated.  Fortunately the bumper better by unhurt by it.

The weather has been really warm the last couple of days, and we got some rain last night.  My driveway is finally melted off, no more ice, at least for now.  It is still February, so I expect more will come.

The path up the shed isn't melted off yet, but I am hopeful it will melt off this weekend.  

It is supposed to be really nice this weekend, and I think I have everything that I need to make good progress on the shed this weekend.

Winter Projects:

• Install chains and anti-gel in tractor.
• Get power center out of truck.
• Fix shed floor.
• Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
• Put up more shelving/hooks in the carport