Sunday was Mary's 60th birthday, February 14. Maija, Brad and Scott came up to celebrate it with her and Maija's and Brad's present for her was to tell her that Maija is pregnant! WOW!
Both Mary and I had given up hope of ever becoming grand parents. Every time the subject would come up with the kids they would indicate they weren't planning on having any children. They told us that around Maija's birthday last November they changed their minds and decided to have a baby and now she is expecting on September 20th of this year. Both Mary and I are sooooo excited!
Now some bad news.
A few days before Mary's birthday she was coming down to go to bed and tripped on the second to the last step going downstairs, fell and broke her ankle really bad. We had to call 911 for an ambulance because I couldn't move her. I had always worried that the ambulance wouldn't be able to find us when called so this was a chance to see if they could find our house. They got to the cell phone tower in front of our house and I then directed them in. It only took them a half hour to get here from Big Lake. She was transported to the new hospital in Palmer where they x-rayed her ankle and found it broken in 3 places. The doctor said she had basically broken her foot off the bottom of her leg. You could see the big leg bone, the tibia, under the skin about midway down her foot. The doctor tried to set it with me holding Mary but it kept dislocating so he called a specialist in. Dr. Benadety(sp?) operated on her to install external pins and wires to keep her foot in place until the swelling went down enough for him to open her leg up and install permanent pins and metal plates. We got the internal fix done last Thursday and things seem to be progressing normally. Luckily our big bedroom that we normally sleep in was built to be used as a bed and breakfast room so it was built with handy cap access. Mary has only had to spend one night in the hospital so far. She is able to get around a little with the aid of a walker. I still have to help her with some things that I wont describe but having everything available on the ground floor and no steps at all to negotiate is a real blessing. We are trying to build her upper body strength so she can get around on crutches.
More bad news came earlier in the same day of Mary;s accident. Pike, Mary's sister, emailed her that their brother Vesa was close to death from cancer. Vesa is a real loner and has communicated very little with any of his siblings so this was the first that anyone knew that he was even sick. Pike said the doctors told her Vesa had only days to live but it has been almost 2 weeks now.
February 2010 has been a pretty shitty month except for the fact that I'M GONNA BE A GRANDPA!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
2010
I know I said I would be making more entries but it just didn't work out that way.
Since September I have first been getting ready for winter by installing a new wood stove, blowing in another 10 inches of insulation in the attic, some miscellaneous weather stripping and other stuff associated with winter up here.
Then it was time to start getting ready for Christmas and New Years. And then things started falling apart so I've been kept busy putting them back together. Actually the getting ready for the holidays was not all that big of a deal.
For Thanksgiving it was just Scott and Mary and me but we did cook a real turkey and made our own cranberry sauce from wild cranberries picked out back. This may not have been a first but it was not how we usually spend Thanksgiving so it was special. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Mary and I both did quite a bit of baking making cookies and pies and even a cake kind of thing.
For Christmas all the kids, Maija, Scott and Brad, came up here for Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchanging. Then Maija and Brad went on up to the cabin near Talkeetna for the night. Scott hung around until Christmas afternoon and that was it. New Years eve was a perfect day/night. The sky was clear the moon was full and it wasn't too cold. Lots of fireworks were shot off around Nancy Lake so we had a pretty good show until the wee hours of January 1. It's been a rather slow year so far. There hasn't been a lot of snow so far so snowmobiling isn't all that great. This would have been a good year for me to turn the pond into a skating rink since there has only been about a foot of snow, but I'm lazy.
Recently I found that my network router and webserver had been hacked and we were loosing band width. I replaced the router with another one I had laying around and it forced me to take the web site off line. Then I found out that even though it recognized attacks from outside it didn't block them it only logged them so I had to upgrade again. I was able to put the web site back online but I noticed an awful lot of activity on the computer when nothing should have been going on so after some searching I found that a rootkit virus had been installed on the computer and someone other then me could actually take control of it at anytime and do what ever they wanted to do with it. I'm in the process of making a permanent fix for this problem but until then I only have the webserver online when I'm around.
Monday we had a bit of a scare when I built a fire in the new wood stove. It was just getting going when a bit of a north wind came up which increased the draft in the stove. I was in the back room working on fixing the webserver when the smoke detector started going off. I knew immediately when I walked into the living room that I had a chimney fire going. With the old stove a chimney fire was no big deal. I would let it burn for a bit to clean the creosote out of the chimney then close down the air to the stove and it would go out after a bit.
This stove doesn't work the same way, I found. It is not an air tight stove design so even when it is all closed down air still gets in. Not knowing this at the time I closed the stove down and waited. The fire in the chimney kept getting hotter and stronger. The roar from the stove pipe was really scary and when I went out and looked at the chimney top it was cherry red and sparks were flying all over. I decided I had to do something before it burned through the chimney and started the house on fire. The information that came with the stove said to never throw water in the stove to put out a chimney fire but that is how I had learned to put them out when I was in the fire department so that's what I did. I really doesn't take much because the object is to make just enough steam to travel up the pipe and put the fire out. The stove is made of soap stone so care must be taken not to get water on the stone or they will crack. So I threw about a cup of water on the burning wood and closed the stove and waited. The fire went down for a while but then started roaring again so I threw another cup. I could see moisture dripping from the chimney rain cap so I knew the steam was getting to the fire. Once the chimney fire was out I got the embers out of the stove and let the whole thing cool for the night.
Next day I took the stovepipe down to inspect for damage and to see if there was anything more to clean out. The chimney and stovepipe were clean but the stove above the baffle was full of creosote. I went down the the guy I bought the stove from to ask him if he had any suggestions on how to put a chimney fire out in that stove and he said to just let it burn out as long as the chimney was installed correctly, it should take it. Then he said I need to clean the chimney at least once a month during heating season so there wont be fires in the first place. I was just so surprised because my routine with the old stove really kept the chimney pretty clean and I never had an unintentional chimney fire. But with that stove and the stove at the cabin I was able to burn the chemical cleaning logs once a month and when I did get the chimney going I could put it out by just sealing the stove because they were air tight.
Well this has taken over 6 hours to get this far so I'd better move on to the next project.
Since September I have first been getting ready for winter by installing a new wood stove, blowing in another 10 inches of insulation in the attic, some miscellaneous weather stripping and other stuff associated with winter up here.
Then it was time to start getting ready for Christmas and New Years. And then things started falling apart so I've been kept busy putting them back together. Actually the getting ready for the holidays was not all that big of a deal.
For Thanksgiving it was just Scott and Mary and me but we did cook a real turkey and made our own cranberry sauce from wild cranberries picked out back. This may not have been a first but it was not how we usually spend Thanksgiving so it was special. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Mary and I both did quite a bit of baking making cookies and pies and even a cake kind of thing.
For Christmas all the kids, Maija, Scott and Brad, came up here for Christmas Eve dinner and gift exchanging. Then Maija and Brad went on up to the cabin near Talkeetna for the night. Scott hung around until Christmas afternoon and that was it. New Years eve was a perfect day/night. The sky was clear the moon was full and it wasn't too cold. Lots of fireworks were shot off around Nancy Lake so we had a pretty good show until the wee hours of January 1. It's been a rather slow year so far. There hasn't been a lot of snow so far so snowmobiling isn't all that great. This would have been a good year for me to turn the pond into a skating rink since there has only been about a foot of snow, but I'm lazy.
Recently I found that my network router and webserver had been hacked and we were loosing band width. I replaced the router with another one I had laying around and it forced me to take the web site off line. Then I found out that even though it recognized attacks from outside it didn't block them it only logged them so I had to upgrade again. I was able to put the web site back online but I noticed an awful lot of activity on the computer when nothing should have been going on so after some searching I found that a rootkit virus had been installed on the computer and someone other then me could actually take control of it at anytime and do what ever they wanted to do with it. I'm in the process of making a permanent fix for this problem but until then I only have the webserver online when I'm around.
Monday we had a bit of a scare when I built a fire in the new wood stove. It was just getting going when a bit of a north wind came up which increased the draft in the stove. I was in the back room working on fixing the webserver when the smoke detector started going off. I knew immediately when I walked into the living room that I had a chimney fire going. With the old stove a chimney fire was no big deal. I would let it burn for a bit to clean the creosote out of the chimney then close down the air to the stove and it would go out after a bit.
This stove doesn't work the same way, I found. It is not an air tight stove design so even when it is all closed down air still gets in. Not knowing this at the time I closed the stove down and waited. The fire in the chimney kept getting hotter and stronger. The roar from the stove pipe was really scary and when I went out and looked at the chimney top it was cherry red and sparks were flying all over. I decided I had to do something before it burned through the chimney and started the house on fire. The information that came with the stove said to never throw water in the stove to put out a chimney fire but that is how I had learned to put them out when I was in the fire department so that's what I did. I really doesn't take much because the object is to make just enough steam to travel up the pipe and put the fire out. The stove is made of soap stone so care must be taken not to get water on the stone or they will crack. So I threw about a cup of water on the burning wood and closed the stove and waited. The fire went down for a while but then started roaring again so I threw another cup. I could see moisture dripping from the chimney rain cap so I knew the steam was getting to the fire. Once the chimney fire was out I got the embers out of the stove and let the whole thing cool for the night.
Next day I took the stovepipe down to inspect for damage and to see if there was anything more to clean out. The chimney and stovepipe were clean but the stove above the baffle was full of creosote. I went down the the guy I bought the stove from to ask him if he had any suggestions on how to put a chimney fire out in that stove and he said to just let it burn out as long as the chimney was installed correctly, it should take it. Then he said I need to clean the chimney at least once a month during heating season so there wont be fires in the first place. I was just so surprised because my routine with the old stove really kept the chimney pretty clean and I never had an unintentional chimney fire. But with that stove and the stove at the cabin I was able to burn the chemical cleaning logs once a month and when I did get the chimney going I could put it out by just sealing the stove because they were air tight.
Well this has taken over 6 hours to get this far so I'd better move on to the next project.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Summer's over
Time really flies. I can't remember what I was talking about in April in my last posting so I'll just start fresh.
We had a really busy summer this year. First Mary's sister Pike (pronounced Pee-Kay) and her 2 adult children, 2 grand children and daughter inlaw came for a 3 week visit from Finland around the 4th of July. We spent a lot of time getting ready for them and it was all over way to fast. Their visit started out cool and drizzly to the point that we had to turn the furnace back on for them. Weather improved for the last 2 weeks so it actually ended up being a very nice trip. Mary and Pike didn't get to spend as much sister time as they wanted since they had to take care of the grand kids most of the time. I expect Pike will be coming back on her own so the 2 of them can spend more time together doing old lady stuff.
At the same time we were getting ready for our guests Mary and I were helping get Willow's first Farmer's Market organized. Actually I only prepared the web site, http://marketday.willowhealth.net, and then helped with the setup and tare down of the shelters. I also helped with the Info booth since I am a member of Willow Health Org. The market has been a huge success and looks like it will be held again next year although I think they are going to have to find a new manager because Dean really doesn't want to do it again.
I haven't done much around the place this year. After last summer's house painting and deck building I only cleaned up a few of the things I hadn't quite finished last year like putting a railing on the deck. We had an energy audit and got qualified for assistance in upgrading some of our stuff like getting a new furnace and replacing some of our windows. I haven't gotten much done though except researching a replacement for our wood stove.
Earlier this spring I had lunch with a couple guys I worked with at the FSDPS. Earl Shenneman came up for a cruise with his wife so he and Ross Flavel and I had lunch and got caught up on what has been happening since we retired. Ed Wilson was supposed to join us but he got called away on something to do with the new automation system for Alaska FSS. The plan has completely changed since I retired. Instead of the Alaska Region developing it's own system it looks like they will contract with someone who already has one developed. Makes sense to me. Why spend money re-inventing something someone else has already done? I had had coffee with Ed in May and he had told me a little about the new system.
So I am hoping to update this a little more often, but don't hold your breath. I really have to give credit to those real bloggers that post every day. It takes a lot of work to update something that often.
We had a really busy summer this year. First Mary's sister Pike (pronounced Pee-Kay) and her 2 adult children, 2 grand children and daughter inlaw came for a 3 week visit from Finland around the 4th of July. We spent a lot of time getting ready for them and it was all over way to fast. Their visit started out cool and drizzly to the point that we had to turn the furnace back on for them. Weather improved for the last 2 weeks so it actually ended up being a very nice trip. Mary and Pike didn't get to spend as much sister time as they wanted since they had to take care of the grand kids most of the time. I expect Pike will be coming back on her own so the 2 of them can spend more time together doing old lady stuff.
At the same time we were getting ready for our guests Mary and I were helping get Willow's first Farmer's Market organized. Actually I only prepared the web site, http://marketday.willowhealth.net, and then helped with the setup and tare down of the shelters. I also helped with the Info booth since I am a member of Willow Health Org. The market has been a huge success and looks like it will be held again next year although I think they are going to have to find a new manager because Dean really doesn't want to do it again.
I haven't done much around the place this year. After last summer's house painting and deck building I only cleaned up a few of the things I hadn't quite finished last year like putting a railing on the deck. We had an energy audit and got qualified for assistance in upgrading some of our stuff like getting a new furnace and replacing some of our windows. I haven't gotten much done though except researching a replacement for our wood stove.
Earlier this spring I had lunch with a couple guys I worked with at the FSDPS. Earl Shenneman came up for a cruise with his wife so he and Ross Flavel and I had lunch and got caught up on what has been happening since we retired. Ed Wilson was supposed to join us but he got called away on something to do with the new automation system for Alaska FSS. The plan has completely changed since I retired. Instead of the Alaska Region developing it's own system it looks like they will contract with someone who already has one developed. Makes sense to me. Why spend money re-inventing something someone else has already done? I had had coffee with Ed in May and he had told me a little about the new system.
So I am hoping to update this a little more often, but don't hold your breath. I really have to give credit to those real bloggers that post every day. It takes a lot of work to update something that often.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Redoubt
Well, we finally got some ash from the volcano that has been harassing South central Alaska since last Thanksgiving. Sunday night around 10PM a very light ash started falling. Looking out the window into the yard light I thought it was just snowing again but when I went to get the dog pads off the deck I realized it was ash and not snow. It fell for about a half hour to a depth of just less then a dime. When we lived in Eagle River we had ash fall a few times and it was much stinkier. I had a strong sulfur smell even when the ash wasn't actually hitting the ground. This ash fall had a slight sulfur smell but it smelled more like dust then anything. Hopefully this will be all over by this summer when Mary's family comes over from Finland. If Redoubt is still belching this summer it could limit our travel to the Kenai Peninsula because they tend to get hit the most. Ash fall is really hard on cars and having to wear dust masks makes breathing a real chore if you want to go hiking or anything like that.
The back room that I have been fixing up for my media room is almost done. I painted the walls and ceiling and fixed the base board and trim. Installed new light fixture and wall outlets so the only thing left to do is put the TV and sofa in there. Mary kind of teased me along by promising a new recliner chair and flat screen TV if I finished it by this summer so I got it done. I went out the other day and shopped for a recliner and found a really nice love seat size sofa that is a glider and a recliner and has a console in the middle for the remotes. I almost had a new TV too, but when I went to check out my debit card wouldn't work so I had to leave it at the store.
It is still winter in the land of the north. Overnight temps still get down to the single digits and it is snowing outside right now. I measured the snow on the ground this morning and it is down to 26 inches which is down from 39 inches about a month ago. With the coating of ash the snow does seem to be melting faster but I would be surprised if we have snow free ground by May 1.
I started a new website on willowhealth.net and have been working quite a bit on getting it up to speed. Interest in Willow Health Org seems to go up and down quite a bit depending on what is going on. We have our health fair coming this month and hopefully we will be starting a local market place next month.
Time to go. More later.
The back room that I have been fixing up for my media room is almost done. I painted the walls and ceiling and fixed the base board and trim. Installed new light fixture and wall outlets so the only thing left to do is put the TV and sofa in there. Mary kind of teased me along by promising a new recliner chair and flat screen TV if I finished it by this summer so I got it done. I went out the other day and shopped for a recliner and found a really nice love seat size sofa that is a glider and a recliner and has a console in the middle for the remotes. I almost had a new TV too, but when I went to check out my debit card wouldn't work so I had to leave it at the store.
It is still winter in the land of the north. Overnight temps still get down to the single digits and it is snowing outside right now. I measured the snow on the ground this morning and it is down to 26 inches which is down from 39 inches about a month ago. With the coating of ash the snow does seem to be melting faster but I would be surprised if we have snow free ground by May 1.
I started a new website on willowhealth.net and have been working quite a bit on getting it up to speed. Interest in Willow Health Org seems to go up and down quite a bit depending on what is going on. We have our health fair coming this month and hopefully we will be starting a local market place next month.
Time to go. More later.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
St.. Paddy's day....almost
Faith and begorra, the little people are about to have their day!
As a youngster St. Patrick's Day was a big day in the Rhode household. My mother was half Irish and half Scottish so Gaelic traditions were big for us. On March 17th we would wake up to a breakfast of green cereal with green milk and green sugar. We wore uniforms to school so we had to wear green underwear and use a shamrock tie clip to keep the tie in place. For dinner we would have corned beef and cabbage and if we were lucky and one of my great aunts was coming over we would have black pudding which is a kind of hard pudding made with Irish oatmeal and blood. Ma always made a big deal about her Irish ancestry and the Irish holiday traditions but barely mentioned anything of the German side of me so I didn't even know about Fasching, which is the German equivalent of Mardi Gras, until I lived in Germany for a year while in the Army. Boy! did we miss out on a lot. When I started my own family I tried to carry on some of the green theme of my youth but my kids were too smart. NO WAY would they eat or drink anything that wasn't supposed to be green.
I started work on a new website last week. I volunteered to maintain the Willow Health Organization web page but some of the stuff the President, Nina, and Treasurer, Mary, wanted were not available to us on that site. First I created a new site on my web server at home which was OK for some things but the way it is done hides it from search engines so it was not a perfect solution. I then looked into registering our own domain and starting a whole new website. This actually works out much better and really isn't that expensive. We now even have our own email domain so that makes it kind of neat. It also has a wizard for web creation so the new site looks much more professional then what I was doing on either of the old sites.
The new car I helped Scott with a few weeks ago ended up being one that had been in an accident at some point in it's life. I noticed when I drove it home for Scott that the airbag light didn't go out. He finally had a chance to have a mechanic check it out and found the airbag had been replaced with one from the junk yard and really didn't work. The wiring harness for the heater was also shredded so his heater didn't work right. Otherwise, the car seems to be great. He even appologized on his blog for driving the Civic for the last few years without studs and holding everyone up during the winter.
Mary is getting ready to give a class on making a quilted backpack to women in the Willow area. It is a back pack she made from plans that her sister Pike sent her. She completed her's around Christmas and has had many compliments on it.
Today is animal food day. I have to go into Wasilla to pick up animal supplies which is kind of a big deal since I almost never go even that far anymore. I've got a whole list of stuff that I have to do so I had better get a move on it.
As a youngster St. Patrick's Day was a big day in the Rhode household. My mother was half Irish and half Scottish so Gaelic traditions were big for us. On March 17th we would wake up to a breakfast of green cereal with green milk and green sugar. We wore uniforms to school so we had to wear green underwear and use a shamrock tie clip to keep the tie in place. For dinner we would have corned beef and cabbage and if we were lucky and one of my great aunts was coming over we would have black pudding which is a kind of hard pudding made with Irish oatmeal and blood. Ma always made a big deal about her Irish ancestry and the Irish holiday traditions but barely mentioned anything of the German side of me so I didn't even know about Fasching, which is the German equivalent of Mardi Gras, until I lived in Germany for a year while in the Army. Boy! did we miss out on a lot. When I started my own family I tried to carry on some of the green theme of my youth but my kids were too smart. NO WAY would they eat or drink anything that wasn't supposed to be green.
I started work on a new website last week. I volunteered to maintain the Willow Health Organization web page but some of the stuff the President, Nina, and Treasurer, Mary, wanted were not available to us on that site. First I created a new site on my web server at home which was OK for some things but the way it is done hides it from search engines so it was not a perfect solution. I then looked into registering our own domain and starting a whole new website. This actually works out much better and really isn't that expensive. We now even have our own email domain so that makes it kind of neat. It also has a wizard for web creation so the new site looks much more professional then what I was doing on either of the old sites.
The new car I helped Scott with a few weeks ago ended up being one that had been in an accident at some point in it's life. I noticed when I drove it home for Scott that the airbag light didn't go out. He finally had a chance to have a mechanic check it out and found the airbag had been replaced with one from the junk yard and really didn't work. The wiring harness for the heater was also shredded so his heater didn't work right. Otherwise, the car seems to be great. He even appologized on his blog for driving the Civic for the last few years without studs and holding everyone up during the winter.
Mary is getting ready to give a class on making a quilted backpack to women in the Willow area. It is a back pack she made from plans that her sister Pike sent her. She completed her's around Christmas and has had many compliments on it.
Today is animal food day. I have to go into Wasilla to pick up animal supplies which is kind of a big deal since I almost never go even that far anymore. I've got a whole list of stuff that I have to do so I had better get a move on it.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Holy Crap Bat Man! It's been over a month
I can hardly believe it has been over a month since my last posting. I think about making an entry quite often, I just never seem to get around to doing it.
Winter has become more normal now. Low temps just below zero F and high temps around 10. We seem to get measurable snow about once a week so we now have about 36 inches on the ground. Last Saturday we got a dump of over 13 inches and it could not have come at a worse time. I had agreed to help Scott pick up a new car in Wasilla so I had to drive all the way to Anchorage in a really bad snow storm. Good thing was that since the weather was so bad Scott thought it best if he drove his old car back to Anchorage which ment I got to drive the new car. The new car is a 2004 Pontiac Vibe with all wheel drive. Scott had mentioned once when he was having trouble with the old Civic that that was what he would like to replace the Civic with. I kept an eye out and found one for sale and let him know so now he's got a new car. After helping Scott with the car I had to start cleaning up the snow around our place. It's getting hard to find room to push the snow into. The burms around our parking area are over 6 feet high so I have to use our snow blower for a lot of the snow removal. In the next 24 hours we are supposed to get another 15 or so inches and it is going to be the heavy wet kind since it is suppose to warm up and maybe even rain a little. I hope it gets over in time for this weekend because this is Iditarod weekend and Mary and I are going to an Iditarod party on Crystal Lake. I'm suppose to help drag wood down for a bonfire so I hope the snow isn't too deep. The weekend before last I helped the Willow Dog mushers build a mushers cabin about 25 miles up the Yentna River. We got to stay in a nice cabin and got the mushers cabin to usable state. My little Skandic snowmobile ended up hauling the heaviest load because one of the other snowmobiles broke down. It made for a long trip because we had to keep the speed down plus the guys I was with are dog mushers and don't really like riding snowmobiles that much.
I've started maintaining the web pages for Willow Health Organization at www.waco-ak.org. Our friend Nina is President of WHO and wanted some new features added to the web site. The main website is run by WACO and they control what can be done quite closely, for good reason. We wanted to have emailable forms and be able to keep track of how many people visit the site and WACO didn't have the capabilities to do that. I offered some space on the server that I maintain for Bleatinghearts.homelinux.com and registered a new site with dyndns.org so we can have our own server that runs scripts that I can write. We also have capabilities to maintain an online database using MYSQL so as long as I am able to the health organization will have a pretty nice site.
That's it for this entry. I'll try to update more often. (Were have I heard that before)
Winter has become more normal now. Low temps just below zero F and high temps around 10. We seem to get measurable snow about once a week so we now have about 36 inches on the ground. Last Saturday we got a dump of over 13 inches and it could not have come at a worse time. I had agreed to help Scott pick up a new car in Wasilla so I had to drive all the way to Anchorage in a really bad snow storm. Good thing was that since the weather was so bad Scott thought it best if he drove his old car back to Anchorage which ment I got to drive the new car. The new car is a 2004 Pontiac Vibe with all wheel drive. Scott had mentioned once when he was having trouble with the old Civic that that was what he would like to replace the Civic with. I kept an eye out and found one for sale and let him know so now he's got a new car. After helping Scott with the car I had to start cleaning up the snow around our place. It's getting hard to find room to push the snow into. The burms around our parking area are over 6 feet high so I have to use our snow blower for a lot of the snow removal. In the next 24 hours we are supposed to get another 15 or so inches and it is going to be the heavy wet kind since it is suppose to warm up and maybe even rain a little. I hope it gets over in time for this weekend because this is Iditarod weekend and Mary and I are going to an Iditarod party on Crystal Lake. I'm suppose to help drag wood down for a bonfire so I hope the snow isn't too deep. The weekend before last I helped the Willow Dog mushers build a mushers cabin about 25 miles up the Yentna River. We got to stay in a nice cabin and got the mushers cabin to usable state. My little Skandic snowmobile ended up hauling the heaviest load because one of the other snowmobiles broke down. It made for a long trip because we had to keep the speed down plus the guys I was with are dog mushers and don't really like riding snowmobiles that much.
I've started maintaining the web pages for Willow Health Organization at www.waco-ak.org. Our friend Nina is President of WHO and wanted some new features added to the web site. The main website is run by WACO and they control what can be done quite closely, for good reason. We wanted to have emailable forms and be able to keep track of how many people visit the site and WACO didn't have the capabilities to do that. I offered some space on the server that I maintain for Bleatinghearts.homelinux.com and registered a new site with dyndns.org so we can have our own server that runs scripts that I can write. We also have capabilities to maintain an online database using MYSQL so as long as I am able to the health organization will have a pretty nice site.
That's it for this entry. I'll try to update more often. (Were have I heard that before)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
This winter SUCKS!
First off this winter started a little early. Fall events around Willow had to be canceled because of snow. Then we have a really snowy December followed by one of the longest sub-zero cold spells on record in January. Now we are setting record high temperatures during our normal January thaw. Anchorage has been flooding because of their rapid melt down. All of the schools that were able to stay open during 2 weeks of -20 to -30 temperatures had to close when the temperatures hit the mid to high 40s and even 50s in some areas. The snow run-off mixed with the rain that was falling coated the super cooled ground with solid ice. I put the studded tires from the Golf on the Prius and was able to get to Willow a couple times but the area between our house and the shop where we keep our cars is just like a skating rink. I tried replenishing our wood pile yesterday by cutting down a few trees that I knew were dead but after slipping and falling on the ice with the chainsaw I decided to go inside were I would be a little safer.
I finally got to drive the Prius when the temperature was above zero and it does make quite a difference in gas milage. Even with studded tires on I get 10mpg better on the short trip to the postoffice and Nina and Dean's house. The Prius with traction control really handles the ice pretty good. It is a little disconcerting when the computer kills the engine when the wheels spin as you try and pull out onto the highway. Normally both the gas and electric engine are used when accelerating on the highway. If the wheels spin the computer takes over the throttle and applies just enough power to get you going without spinning the wheels. I have learned to bet patient when pulling out and make sure there is no traffic coming.
Time to go out and try to collect some of the trees I cut down yesterday. A little snow mixed with rain fell last night so the parking lot isn't quite as slippery.
I finally got to drive the Prius when the temperature was above zero and it does make quite a difference in gas milage. Even with studded tires on I get 10mpg better on the short trip to the postoffice and Nina and Dean's house. The Prius with traction control really handles the ice pretty good. It is a little disconcerting when the computer kills the engine when the wheels spin as you try and pull out onto the highway. Normally both the gas and electric engine are used when accelerating on the highway. If the wheels spin the computer takes over the throttle and applies just enough power to get you going without spinning the wheels. I have learned to bet patient when pulling out and make sure there is no traffic coming.
Time to go out and try to collect some of the trees I cut down yesterday. A little snow mixed with rain fell last night so the parking lot isn't quite as slippery.
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