One of the many things that currently occupies my time once everyone has gone to bed is online surveys. I've gotten myself hooked up with a company called Opinion Outpost. It didn't take all that long to get my account set up and start receiving surveys. It did take a little while to (and I'm still not done) set up my profile responses. These are essentially dozens of questions in different categories (Personal Health, Vehicles, Shopping, Travel, etc. The theory is that the more information you provide here - the more likely you are to receive surveys that you'll qualify for. If I were to guess I'd say that I qualify for maybe 50% of the surveys at most. I just qualified for a video survey Saturday but I didn't have the time to complete it. It was to watch a 15 minute video segment (I think from a movie) and then I was going to be asked questions about it. It was for 60 points. Points on this site can be turned into cash anytime you accumulate 50. 10 points equals $1.00. The image here is of the first check I received and I just hit 55 points again and requested another check. I requested the first one on 2/14/2009. They sent it on 3/5/2009 and I just received it today, 3/9/2009. Also, I must say that many times I don't respond to the survey in time and it has already been closed. So I could potentially be making more $$$.

Well, I made my third attempt at making maple syrup yesterday. The weather was decent.....the kids were sick (we had planned to go skiing at Jack Frost)....I had the ambition. I was able to coax JT outside to go up to the campsite with me. I knew I had some cinderblock up there so we hopped on the 4-wheeler with some rope and headed up. We found 5 blocks so we made two trips. The winter wheat is starting to turn green so I didn't want to do too much damage (too much weight might cause the wheels to dig in more than normal?). We decided to set up by the wood piles so that while it was boiling I could so some splitting. As we started laying it out on the ground we realized we were going to need some more blocks. A quick phone call to Bubba and we had a few more and were in good shape! The following pic was taken at around 1:30pm and shows what we came up with.



As I was standing there, taking in the scenery, I decided to take the following shot which shows the make-shift fire pit, the 4-wheeler, the remaining sap and in the distance, my truck full of wood.



Here's how much sap we started with (plus what was in the pot). I actually had another bucket full that I had to dump out because I never got to boiling it. What a shame!



So I kept myself busy by splitting wood and feeding the fire.....splitting wood and feeding the fire. JT, Dylan and Malcolm came over at one point and wanted to go for a ride on the 4-wheeler and of course I oblidged. Time passed and before you knew it - it was time to go to Nana and PopPops house. It was actually perfect timing because the rain started moving in. It was just a very fine drizzle but I started shutting down the operation. I actually had about 9 quarts of raw sap left in the bucket at the time but since it was a week old I decided to dump it. I carried the pot in the house and set it on the stove. I'd get back to it after our visit.

So once we got home and got the kids in bed, I resumed the operation. The shot below was taken just before 10pm. This is what was left of just about 11 quarts of sap.

The thermometer I bought seems like a nice one (lots of labels at various temps) but when I get down to as little syrup as I have it doesn't register correctly.  It's because there is a mark part way up the stem which is where it registers the temp.  I dipped a spoon in when I thought it was getting close and when it started to kind of stick on the spoon I figured it was ready.  

I initially filtered it using coffee filters as can be seen below -- taken at around 11:10pm.

With Christl's help I had it all done except what was left in the last filter.  I tried squeezing what was left with a spoon as you'd do to a tea bag.  Well I pushed a little too hard and GUSH!  The filter ripped and a bunch of gunk dropped into the jar.

So I dumped the syrup back into the pan, warmed it up again and this time I just used cheese cloth.  The finished result - as seen below @ 11:47pm.

Michael Phelps - you know what I find kind of disturbing about all this........even Bill OReilly missed to boat on this one.  I watched a replay of one of his shows from late last week in which he had guests on discussing whether or not Kellogg's made a FINANCIAL mistake by firing Phelps.  

It's sad that it's all about money anymore.  No one is questioning the negative impact this is having on kids that look up to the guy as a role model/hero/whatever.  That's the kind of standard these guys should be held to - act like a role model for the future generations.  Instead of talking about that, everyone wants to know if sponsors will be hurt financially.

Like it or not - it's against the law what he did.  So you can argue whether or not the law is just but IT'S THE LAW.  You cannot have a society that chooses which laws to follow and which ones to ignore.  

Sad.

Feb 1, 2009 - It goes without saying - this was a blast! I just wish someone else knew how to drive so I could have gone for a ride!

JT doing what JT always does....pushing the envelope.  Wonder where he gets it?

Feb 1, 2009 - I almost forgot to post this one. This is just a quick shot of Dylan helping me cook breakfast on the wood stove. That day we had panacakes and bacon.....all cooked on the stove. Gotta love it. Also, can you believe how big Dylan is getting?

Feb 1, 2009 - Christl helped me bring in a load of wood again.
This time I tried stacking it differently so that we could fit more and it
seems to have worked nicely. Admittedly I didn't take my time stacking
the "lincoln logs", as Dylan referred to them but they did the trick nonetheless. As of today, they're still standing...although the front one is only about two or three levels high at this point. And while on the subject of wood - NO - the heat has still not run. This is an amazing streak without the heat running......dating back about an entire calendar year. The recent warm weather is really making me want to get out and bring some more wood down. Next order of business - I NEED TO FIND A TRUCK!

January 25, 2009. The pond has been frozen for a couple weeks in a row and the skating has been great. JT was rippin' around as usual. Dylan was a pleasant surprise - not only asking to join us but doing a great job of joining in the games. Normally he has a tendency to shy away from the games but to his credit he hung in there.....sometimes playing goal, sometimes 'D' and sometimes up front. We had a near record turnout today despite not having the changing hut from two years ago.

OK - I just got done venting to Christl about this but decided it wasn't enough so I decided to post this........

http://uk.reuters.com/article/autoNews/idUKTRE5136YP20090204

I'm sure you've heard about this program - analog tv is going away.  What is analog tv you may ask?  Well, I don't even think Granny had analog tv there at the end.  If you don't have cable and/or a box on your tv used for changing the channels, you probably have an analog signal.  Yeah, not many people.

So for whatever reason, the government decides to get involved in this (this started under Bush) and try to "help out people" by issuing $40 coupons to help people buy digital sets.  Ok, I don't agree 100% but I'll deal with it...ignoring how much money has been spent on advertising and printing and mailing those coupons.

But now.....NOW.....they're delaying the cut over.  Why?  WHY?  Because "about 13 million" people are holding expired coupons AND the government has run out of these coupons and millions of people are waiting for coupons.

Now the silver lining to this story is that the government was somehow able to raise something like 19 BILLION - BILLION with a 'B' dollars by selling off the old analog airwaves.  But - how much has been and will be spent on this whole freakin' program?

I'm sorry - this is not food or clothing or even child care or something essential.....this is T.V. we're talking about.  And I don't want to hear any arguments about not understanding the program or not knowing about it.  If the tv is so important then they've most likely been watching tv.  And if they've been watching they've seen the commercials.  No TiVo's involved so they can't be skipping over commercials.  The deal is simple.- you go to the website - https://www.dtv2009.gov - fill out a form which consists of your name/address, how many coupons do you want (you can actually request TWO) and that's it.  You then have 90 days to use the coupon(s).  Oh, and for those without internet access......1-888-DTV-2009.  And I'd like to see a report of the number of coupons that were requested via the online order form.  The people can pay $20 a month for internet access but can't afford a one time $40 converter box?

Ok, I'm kind of calmed down now.  Comments welcomed.

 Christmas as a parent -- this is what it's all about!  This afternoon when I arrived home from work I was handed a little orange piece of paper by Dylan.  It kind of showed up out of nowhere - he didn't say anything; just handed it to me and said not to "let anyone else see it until they've read theirs."  So I began to read it and it's something I'll never forget.  As small as it may be, as insignificant it may seem in the grand scheme of the universe, reading this at that moment meant everything to me.  We all get those emails that remind us that while we may be tired from a long day at work, mad at something or someone, we need to remember that our actions have an impact on the little ones around us.  Well this is proof right here.  So I know for sure that when my kids ask me to read a story to them once in awhile because I "read them different than mommy does", it really means something to them.  And this note is the way an 8-yr old says that.

Merry Christmas everyone!

 
Well, we noticed the first ice on the pond this morning. I took these shots with the stream at my back, looking north towards the house. What a beautiful day....brisk but beautiful! Today we made Kraft Mac&Cheese on the wood stove! I believe the list right now is: Eggs, bacon, pancakes, jiffy pop popcorn, hot dogs and now mac & cheese. Awesome. Oh yeah, we slept in a little this morning so when Christl went down to check on the fire it was 'almost' out. It was two hours later than she normally would have been down....about 8:30am The temp in the living room was 63 but by noon I had it up to 69.

Here's a picture of us at the dam at the southern end of Peck's Pond taken April 18, 2008. I'm looking sort of ENE at this point....standing on top of the dam. This has become tradition now - once we leave the dock we head down here to putz around a little. We usually see snakes under the rocks next to the damn wall. There are also wild grapes growing all over the place. Peck's Pond has given me hours or relaxation and entertainment over my lifetime. My dad took me when I was younger and now I'm taking my boys. It's such a relaxing trip (for the most part) and just great to get out and enjoy the ourdoors.


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A lot has happened since my last post. One thing recently is that I participated in the 1st Annual Hockey Fights MS hockey tournament in Burlington VT. That was July 25-27, 2008. I didn't take a camera but hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures from someone that was up there. We lost all 4 games but I had a great time playing and met some really nice people.

Tonight Malcolm came over to watch Star Wars Ep VI. The kids have all been watching the entire saga from Ep 1 over the last couple weeks. I watched about the last 15 minutes with them....that stuff never gets old for me!

My 4-wheeler is down at Blackman's getting looked at. I'm hoping to once again get it running. I tried cleaning the carb several times and finally got frustrated.

I also started a woodpile outside behind the shed this weekend. The theory goes that wood kept out in the sun and wind will dry much faster than if kept inside. We'll see. I have a pile 3 feet high - about 20 inches wide - and 24 feet long. By my calculations that's about 126 cubic feet. A standard cord of wood is 128 cubic feet. My camera is in NJ getting fixed - hopefully I'll get it back soon and I'll be able to take some pictures of the new pile. I bought 4 galvanized 3/4" pipes and mounted them on boards that were left over from David and Chrissy's pool landscaping. It looks pretty cool.

Also, in the time since my last post I've created accounts on Facebook.com and MySpace.com

Did a little bit of cleanup tonight in the computer room ..... among other things I got my one pc back to it's original identity as a WinXP machine after it had been transformed into a linux boot device. I was trying to salvage recordings from out bedroom TiVo which ran into a little bit of a hard drive problem. Long story short - I was only half successful - I have the TiVo working again but I wasn't able to salvage any of the recordings for Christl. Going through all of this - first time unplanned - third time overall (previously upgraded capacities for my other TiVo from 80hr to 250hr and upgraded my dad's from 40hr to 250hr) prompted me to better document the chicken scratches I had accumulated from a myriad of websites. So I thought why not blog my notes. Someone else may stumble upon them and find them useful. I may lose my hardcopy and need to refer back to this. Who knows. Before I dump all that into this post I just wanted to mention that the kids had their last soccer practice of the spring session tonight. It was mostly just scrimmages against two other teams and it just didn't seem like any of the kids were really into it. Me and the boys stopped at Pieschler's - or I think now it's called Parkland Drive-In - Dyl got a vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles, J got a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles and I got a banana split. Tomorrow night we're planning to head up to the basketball courts and play a little hockey. They have two soccer games Saturday - not sure what else we're doing but then Monday night we head down to Florida! Should be a great time. christl is doing 99% of the planning without me even knowing a thing. So it'll be interesting to see what she has in store for us. Ok, so as promised, here are my TiVo upgrade notes:

TiVo Notes

Weaknees Interactive Upgrade Instructions can be found at http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

My summary:

REPLACE WORKING TIVO DRIVE WITH ANOTHER, PRESUMABLY LARGER DRIVE (INCREASED CAPACITY)
Create FAT32 partition for temporary storage of old TiVo drive image
* Mount NEW TiVo drive on /dev/hdb (primary slave)

* Boot into Windows and assign a drive letter

* Format with a FAT32 partition (Type 'C' in linux - WIN95 FAT32 LBA)
On P4FRITSCH in the root of C is a program to do this once a drive letter is assigned

Backup current TiVo image onto new Tivo drive in FAT32 partition
* Mount OLD TiVo drive as /dev/hdc (secondary master).....NEW TiVo drive should still be on /dev/hdb

* Insert and Boot from Weaknees MFSTool 2.0 Large Kernel Support Boot CD

* # mkdir /newtivo

* # mount /dev/hdb1 /newtivo (might get 'modprobe' errors - seems ok)

* mfsbackup -f 9999 -1s0 /newtivo/tivo_image_name.bak /dev/hdc (I try to include hardware model of TiVo and size in name)

* ctrl+alt+del then power off

* Remove OLD TiVo drive (/dev/hdc)

* Remove boot cd and boot into Windows

* Copy TiVo imgae file created above from NEW TiVo drive to C:\

* Shutdown

* Mount OLD TiVo drive (/dev/hdc)

* Insert and Boot from Weaknees MFSTool 2.0 Large Kernel Support Boot CD

Then go to #1 to Restore the image only (no recordings) or #2 to copy everything including recordings


#1 - RESTORE IMAGE ONLY

* # mkdir /tivo_image_drive

* # mount /dev/hda1 /tivo_image_drive

* # mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -zxpi /tivo_image_drive/tivo_image_name.bak /dev/hdb

Go To #3


#2 - COPY ALL DATA INCLUDING RECORDINGS

* # mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hdc mfsrestore -r 4 -s 127 -xzpi - /dev/hdb


#3 - INSTALL AND TEST

* Install NEW drive in TiVo remembering to jumper as Master

* Power on TiVo

* If you copied from a different physical TiVo you'll most likely get a message stating that you may not be able to record anything. Go into Messages & Settings and choose Delete Everything.

NOTE: This took about 1hr on a 250GB drive which was upgraded from an 80GB drive.

* Rerun Guided Setup and you're done!

Alternate method - just copy - no image backup

* Install OLD TiVo drive as /dev/hdc (secondary slave)

* Install NEW TiVo drive as /dev/hdb (primary slave)

* Insert and Boot from Weaknees MFSTool 2.0 Large Kernel Support Boot CD

* # dd conv=noerror,sync if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdb


Also found references to this:

Insert the MFS tools 2.0 boot cd and turn on power. At the very first 'hit enter to boot', type in vmlnodma hdc=bswap then hit enter. After it boots, type in pdisk -l /dev/hdc hit enter. It should show 11 or 13 partitions, make a brief note of the number of partitions and the size of each - nothing too detailed, you just want to know if the second drive has approximately the same setup.

here: http://dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44575



As of 5/2008 I don't know how to extract just the recordings and that's bugging me. The bedroom TiVo encountered errors which caused it to not boot. Upon running the above procedure I was unable to get as working copy of the O/S. I needed to purchase Instantcake for the SD-H400 as a means to get a working O/S image on the drive. I had hoped to then copy over the partitions from the bad drive which contain the recordings but according to the responses to my question about this it looks like the technology does not yet exist. I haven't scrapped the old drive yet though.

Memorial Day Weekend.

Yesterday was our family picnic at Bonnie and Joe's house. We had a beautiful day especially compared to last year when we had a freak hail storm. Most everyone showed up and there were only ver minor incidents - one or two kids got knocked over when they walked too close to the swingset, etc. The food was awesome....Joe made Turkey barbecue, Bonnie (Gary) made some fantastic (I think I kept calling it fabulous) potato salad. There was plenty of beer too. JT and Dylan spent a lot of time on the swingset and towards the end JT and I were throwing a ball and catching it with those little circular velcro catcher thingies.

Afterwards me and Christl took up Steven's offer to come up to his place. I had never been there but not for lack of wanting to go. He's got a ton of 'stuff' all around his property. Given my recent tractor purchase his tractors were of particular interest. The three dogs were very anxious to meet their company. I tried a Michelob Pale Ale - never knew they made it but it was pretty good.

Today we're having an informal picnic with the Christman's, my parents and possibly Christl's mom. Christl didn't want to have a ton of people over I guess because of the extra work. People should be showing up soon - Christl is back from the store - I've got beer chilled and the grill is ready to go. The pool is a different story though - I'm going to need to get some clarifier. Christl has done a great job vacuuming but the water just isn't clearing up.

Oh yeah - the Phoenix lander successfully landed near Mars' northern pole yesterday around 8pm EDT. The solar panels have fully deployed so it should be able to proceed with it's mission of looking under the surface, via a backhoe-like arm, for traces of frozen water and possibly for traces of life. The picture to the right is one of the initial pictures beamed back showing one of the landing struts. There are other pictures and information available at The Phoenix Mars Mission website.

Well, my MTD Yard Machines tractor finally bit the dust. I had put so many hours into fixing the thing over the years....this time I wasn't going to be able to fix it - even with help from my dad. Christl was driving it and said she head a banging noise and it stalled. She tried starting it but it stalled again. The third time she tried it wouldn't turn over. I feared the worst and when I got home and looked at it - I came to realize it's short life as my tractor had come to a close. Something apparently broke inside the engine and now it was seized. There was also a puddle of oil on one of the pulleys below the engine. There was oil on the dipstick but apparently something had caused oil to leak out of the block somewhere. I bought the tractor new from Hechinger's back in 1999. It was part of the greatest spending frenzy of my life. I bought the house, the shed AND the tractor. In MTD's defense, I must say that I didn't take the best care of the tractor. It had been left outside on several occasions. Even when stored in the shed it came under attack from mice making nests in the nice warm engine. I did change the oil and plugs, etc occasionally but most often it was while I was fixing some problem with the tractor.

Sooo, I decided it was time to test the John Deere name. I spent, what I consider, a ton of $$$ of this thing Saturday at Lowe's in Bethlehem. It has a 54" deck and a fairly tight turning radius - 18-inches. It also has a 23-hp Briggs & Stratton engine it it that I hope will last under whatever strain I can throw at it. I don't even know if I can hook up a tiller attachment to it but that might be one thing I'd do and possibly add a snowblower. Other than that I'm just hoping it'll handle the light to medium hauling I do without too much stress. It barely fits in my shed. That's going to be kind of a pain because I didn't have much room in there to begin with.
The big question now is what do I do with the old tractor. I'd like to think it's worth something to somebody. Maybe the engine isn't totally shot and can be fixed relatively easily? I don't know. Right now I'm just enjoying the back end of the long Memorial Day weekend. I'll probably try to do a little more planting since Christl is anxious for me to get all that stuff out of the foyer. Plus I'm sure I'll have to fire the tractor up when we have my parents and neighbors over today. My fingers are crossed.....I'm planning to be a little more PM conscious and I'm hoping the John Deere name lives up to it's reputation. I've read some posts in which people say not to spend the money on the LA100 line (mine is the LA175) but rather to go to the X-line. It was a considerable price jump to go to the X line and still get a 54-inch deck. I'm sure they're built even better than the LA100 series but (knock on wood) the LA175 has got to last longer than my old MTD. By the way, for posterity's sake - the MTD was a 20-hp 46-inch cut. I didn't want to go any smaller deck-wise. With John Deere's LA100 line it was either 42, 48 or 54-inch. The LA175 is the top of that series. As I said, my fingers are crossed.

Happy Memorial Day.