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Dilly's Adventures | Because Life is an Adventure! | Page 21
Around The House, Life, Money

March 30, 2014 A dog’s purpose?

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Chug enjoying a day out on a walk
Chug enjoying a day out on a walk

Yep, the side thought is the main subject this week. Reason being, this Last week was one with a very time consuming schedule.  On top of a 60 hr work week not much was able to be completed.

So, for my thought provoking intro. Do dogs have a purpose? I cannot say for sure one way or another but I can tell you this.. As I had mentioned last week, we got our first dog in a long time last Sunday and after a week of acquainting ourselves with the ‘ol Girl and spending a fair amount of change on vet checkups, shots, food and supplies, it makes you question, why have a dog? Don’t get me wrong I am not saying it is a bad thing, in fact I am saying just the opposite. Dogs are a great animal to have around.. So far in just the first week she has already started defending the family. She is not aggressive but she will give out a single solid bark when someone knocks on the door. She checks on everyone regularly and makes her rounds at night when everyone else is sleeping.. I will say, she is more “Friendly” than we thought initially. Over the past week she is more willing to lick, jump, run and play.. That said, she is still super mild and stays in “her place” which is so awesome. I will give one big tip to getting a dog (just in case you are looking) Look for a free dog. I don’t say that to be cheap I say that because someone willing to give away a family pet is in one of 2 circumstances: 1- the dog is completely out of control or 2- they truly cannot keep them due to some other circumstance.. 2 being the one you want to look for.. a well loved dog that would otherwise go to the pound or be put down due to crappy family circumstances. That is where I feel “Chug” came from.. she seems like she was a super good dog in a bad situation (not abusive but not feeling at home)  and now she is just happy.. (I am thinking I need to give more thought on how to express this)  there will be more on this subject later….

As for the project updates.. we are still waiting on the Concrete work to get done. Our City/Town is horrible at getting paper work done but as soon as it is.. a driveway to the shop as well as the front sidewalk will go in and make life really nice, and projects so much easier. On the inside of the shop, one quarter was cleared, sealed and permanent fixtures moved into place and the second quarter is starting to be cleared. Here are a few pics to show what has been done.

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Granted there is still a lot to do in the first area but the finishing details will not be done until the whole shop is sealed and starting to go together but, this will make space to start getting more done.

Around The House, Life

March 23, 2014 A New project underway and a new family member!

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This may have to be a shorter post this week.. I decided to decapitate my knuckle and it is now difficult to type.. just to give you an image, it took off about a nickle size area and removed all of the skin so you could see the main veins and goodies that make a finger work. For your sake this is all that I will show.2014-03-23 17.24.09

I believe in my last post it was declared that the bedroom project was complete but at the time I did not have any pictures but, I do now.  so this is the room already broke in.2014-03-23 17.21.23alright, that is not what the purpose of this post is.  The Garage is the new project and we did make some progress.. the shelving that I started last week is now complete and I started loading it up.. 2014-03-22 15.40.53

I am thinking I will have to add one more chain support and distribute the weight across 3 supports because the on side where I put all of the spare tiles and shingles from the house, it seems to be sagging a bit..

here are the pics of that progress

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ok so now that the shelf is up we are working on the shop space its self.. clearing 1/4 at a time, sealing the floor and then moving stuff back in an organized way.. it is really nice to see open space instead of the mess

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I did get to see something beautiful while I was at it that had been buried for some time2014-03-22 17.02.04

I have not actually sealed the floor yet as I have been working to clean the concrete first..

As for other big news, we just had an addition to the family as of today.. I wanted to introduce you to “Chug” she is a 7 year old Shar Pei Mix.. very calm.. loves the kids already and doesn’t even lick.. she does have a funny arm pit fetish but I guess that is better than the typical Crotch one..

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Well that is it for now.. looking forward to getting more news as the work goes on!

 

Tech

March 16, 2014 Its nice to be home

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It is defiantly a nice thing to be “Home” now you might wonder where I have been.. Right? I have been home the entire time but with the construction it everything has felt like we were in limbo. I am not sure if I mentioned this but, when we moved here about a year ago it was only suppose to be temporary. I had just lost my job and went right to work with my father-in-law until something came along. It was July when the job I have now came along and by then all of our savings had been depleted so we decided to hang out a while so we would feel more stable. In November we decided that we would rent a home in Provo/Orem near my work. Lots of looking trying to find a house that would fit our needs (bit garage!) and all at once we found what we wanted and felt comfortable that we could talk them down to the price we could afford. The day we were scheduled to see it and sign papers, was the day that my Father-in-laws health took a horrific dive and we found out he had a Brain tumor. At that point we decided buying there house was what we were suppose to do. From that moment on we were retrofitting the house to fit us on a more permanent basis. Its still not perfect but it is beginning to feel like home..

Here is the update on the projects:
Kids Bedroom: DONE!!! yes, that is correct it is done, kids are moved in, and off my agenda! Now I did have to do a really crazy trick to get the tack strip to stay down (if you want to know what the trick is, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and I will put together a vid showing how to do it) but here are the pictures of how it turned out:

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Now I know that the Trim around the door is not done, there is a reason for that. (none of the house has any) and we have not decided how we want. As soon as that decision is made it will happen. we still have cabinets we want to put up in the hall and some other minor touches but it is to where we can use it and move on..

Garage: Yes! I did say garage. This one has been hanging over us for some time because doing projects where there is not a good accessible way to get to tools in there has caused a nightmare of all nightmares! That and missing the Moab meetup on the dirt bike because of the Un-running bike, I need room to start working on it and need space for that..

here is the list of to do’s
1- build shelf for long term storage – (in progress)
2- Move stuff to shelf
3- seal floor
4- rearrange shop for maximum space usage
5- electrical (lighting and plugs ect…
6- (really have not planned in detail this far ahead)

here is what we got so far:

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More to come.. stay tuned
(if you haven’t already – be sure to subscribe on the right side to be sure not to miss the latest post)

Around The House, Life, Money

March 3,2014 boy does time fly

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Wow, I cannot believe that I have missed 2 Sundays worth of posts.. how on earth did any of you let me do that.. I guess I better get caught up on the happenings around here.

In the past 2 weeks we have made tons of progress on the room, In fact we are doing floor patch today and carpet tomorrow! but enough teaser. lets start from where we left off!

The garage was left off with one light and one receptacle and one light.. not much has happened more there but we did get 2 more lights up and started plans for how it will be laid out. The goal is to get a lift and be able to “lift” a full size vehicle for under side and major repairs.. First things first.. on the Bottom (south) of the garage there will be a 4′ shelf for long term storage mounted about 6’6″ high.. once that is up we will be able to start some serious cleaning and preping.

preliminary ideas on how to lay out the garage
preliminary ideas on how to lay out the garage

Wow the house on the other hand has made much progress.  Final preperations were made for the tile including and entire day chipping away old flooring and adding new mesh and sandmix

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Then the fun began.. Laying the tile. It seemed easy at first until we realized that this house was just as un-square on the floor as it was on the walls..  but in the end I believe it turned out fine.. the only BooBoo’s there are will only likely be noticed by those who put them in .

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As I mentioned.. we are down to patching the floor in the bed room.. this was an interesting thing to see….2014-03-11 11.17.10we are not sure what this was for, we are suspecting it was some kind of septic tank  so we filled it with rocks from the vast supply our yard offers us and have filled the remainder with concrete.. Then we will be using sand mix to do the final touches.

OK so, on a fun note. This last weekend I went and was helping a neighbor tear down an old chicken coop with a group of fellow neighbors. When we saw how horribly wobbly it was we figured hooking a cable to it and pulling it down would surly disintegrate the structure and make clean up go faster but to our surprise. it was a lot more strong than we though.. here is what happened.

Around The House, Autos, Life, Money

Feb 23, 2014 So close and yet so far!

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Well, I suppose I could say that this was a productive week. After a very trying weekend dealing with millions of rocks, it was hard to be motivated but we did it anyway.. Through out the week we completed the conduit to the garage (wires and all) and just yesterday we wired up the Garage breaker box with 1 receptacle and 1 light. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot but that is a real milestone with this garage. Now we have the ability to work in the garage (Limited but still) with light.. Also if we need any sort of power we can use a short extension cord and go at it rather than dragging a 50′ cord from the house. The next step on the garage is to CLEAN IT OUT! There is soo much stuff that has accumulated in there because of the lack of lighting. Everyone was literally opening the door and setting stuff just inside because you could not see the proper location or even a safe path to it.. The garage started its life full with half full of my father-in-laws wood working tools and the other half crammed with my Mechanical tools and motorcycles, then when my Father-In-Law was diagnosed with Cancer, more stuff was put there in an attempt to remove “past life thoughts” such as his hunting gear and all the other what not’s.  That plus, we liquidated the Flooring company and the person that was buying most of the supplies and tools left what he did not want/ could not afford.. Needless to say it is extremely full and even more un-organised.

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I did get to pull “Zuki” out into the light, more to get it out of the way but it was nice to see it in the sun light.. kinda helped to get motivated to get it going more.

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As for the house project… we finished the last of the interior electrical as well as the remainder of the Sheetrock.. Some of the mudding still needs some attention where the ceiling transitions into the older part of the house. The bedroom ceiling is primed and completely painted. and all of the rest of the Sheetrock is primed just not painted.. I am sure with the girls impatience, they will be all over that tomorrow in a push to get it done.. we are really hoping to at least start on the flooring side of things before the end of the week.

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With so many projects getting so close to completion, we can feel the strain of the push catching up to us.. now it is all we can do to get the house done, wrap up the underground electrical line, cleaning the garage and getting the Zuki going..

Life, Money

Captive Audience

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I have been thinking a lot about this recently with time being a rare resource and still having a desire to be well entertained.. Let me start out by asking one question. Are you a captive audience? Really? If you are one that likes to be entertained by Movies or a good TV series I would have to say that I doubt that you are anything but.. This initially came to my attention recently when I saw a commercial on YouTube for a TV carrier. The main character in the ad indicated that they were paying so much to see their movies and that by switching to this specific carrier they were saving so much and were able to watch so many more movies indicating that they had watched as many as 50 movies that month alone! Now I want to give you a little real information based on what I know about local viewing carriers.. I will not mention any names but I will tell you that this commercial was from a carrier (ComC****) that does have commercials in most of their programs. Most of the commercials last any where from 1-5 min each time with an average of a commercial break every 5-10 min, that would mean that you are watching upward of 600-3000 min of commercials in a month or 20-30 min of commercials in a single movie. Not that much right? Wrong! That would mean that in that month you are watching 6300-9000 min of TV a month.. yea, that sounds like a lot but lets apply it to numbers that mean something. That would be  3.5-5 Hours of of TV a day, 24.5-35 hours a week (yes, that is a full day of TV every week or more!)

Now I am not saying that this is something that everyone does but how much do you really do in a day, week, or month?  I know for me I was “hooked” on several shows on Hul*.. and I was finding that I was sacrificing much of my “free” time trying to follow a series. With this specific carrier, shows expire and I would miss an episode and loose the story if I did not keep up with THEIR time line, and yes, they had commercials..

I  found that Youtube as well has commercials, not the ones that pop up at the bottom of the video or the ones before it will let you watch the 0:30 video, that is not what I am talking about, that is normal, but rather, on the side. Now I am sure you are saying “what is the big deal, just ignore it”.. They are making it impossible to, they are a video themselves and one that you cannot Mute, pause, click away from, NOTHING will get it to stop until it is done. EVEN if there is no relevance, un-audience friendly, or offensive material.. The only way to SHUT IT UP without watching is it to leave the page altogether! Does the producer of that video know that their audience is being chased away by the very provider they are relying on to show their material? Probably NOT! I will also say that I have seen these same type of adds on other sites as well, Youtube is not the only one.. Most of them I do ignore by simply muting the audio on my computer but, that would really defeat the purpose of watching a video with it muted so you don’t hear another add in the background would it?

Even with the great changes in Technology with DVR’s, Netflix, Hulu, Comcast, and all the others, we are paying more for what we want and often (not always) being bombarded by adds and timelines that are designed to “addict” us to keep watching on their time line not yours, stopping you from doing other things that would be more beneficial to your psychology and spirit and body!

So I ask once again, Are we a captive audience? very much so. Are there things that we can do to fight back? not really, but we can at least limit it. Be aware of how much time we are spending allowing ourselves to be held captive. There are a great many things that we can do that are more entertaining and more productive in other ways..

Tech

Feb 16, 2014 Rocks and more Rocks

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What a week it has been. Valentines Day, Slow at work and a lot to do at home. because of this, we have done all that we can to make this project keep moving along and it has done just that! Fortunately for me the Girls have agreed to do the mudding, sanding and painting on this project allowing me some well needed down time.. Although I was not full fledged sick this last week, it is apparent I have been fighting something off..  with a constant headache and a cough, it is just enough to make a person tired and cranky (not that I would ever be cranky)

That rest did not last long though, and that is just fine with me.. Friday evening I got a call that I was looking forward to.. My wonderful neighbor has been able to secure the “ditch witch”.  I was excited to “hurry” and get the wire in the ground. To my surprise, **wink wink* this was not a “hurry process” since there was in the ground to be dug, a whopping 75% rock and less than 25% dirt.. it took several hours and much work to get the trench dug..  toward the end of the show we had to rotate the machine around and dig back to meet the existing trench. That was yet another failure as the one and only place that was sandy decided to give way and allow the ditch witch to inspect its own depth that it dug. I will also admit that there were a few more hiccups in the process which I will share later.. Just keep your eyes peeled for that later on..

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As for Valentines day. That is its own subject.. it is just another day. I still had to work nothing was really changed from any other day so.. nothing to report special..

Tech

Computer Questions

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This is just a quick post asking for any additional information and assistance.. I am preparing to build a computer for doing videos and design.. If you are a Techie please look this over and let me know if there is anything better/cheaper/ect.. thanks!

PART DISC COST
HARD DRIVE 1  Seagate Barracuda 2 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DM001 86.49
HARD DRIVE 2  Seagate Barracuda 2 TB HDD SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DM001 86.49
HARD DRIVE 3
SOLID STATE Kingston Digital 240GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3 2.5 (7mm height) with Adapter Solid State Drive SV300S37A/240G sata 6 148.7
PROCESSOR Intel Core i7-4770K Quad-Core Desktop Processor 3.5 GHZ 8 MB Cache BX80646I74770K 319.99
RAM G.skill Ripjaws X Series 16gb (4 X 4gb) 240-pin Ddr3 Sdram Ddr3 1600 (Pc3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800cl9q… 174.99
VIDEO CARD ASUS Graphic Cards GTX660-DC2O-2GD5 199.99
MOTHER BOARD Gigabyte Intel Z77 Dual Thunderbolt ATX Motherboard (GA-Z77X-UP4-TH) 189.99
COOLING Cooler Master Hyper N520 – CPU Cooler with Copper Base and 5 Heat Pipes (RR-920-N520-GP) 33.99
TOWER Silverstone Tek ATX, Micro-ATX Computer Mid Tower Case Black, (RL01B-USB 3.0) 44.99
POWER SUPPILY Corsair RM Series 650 Watt ATX/EPS 80PLUS Gold-Certified Power Supply – CP-9020054-NA RM650 109.98
TOTAL 1395.6

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Around The House, Life, Updates

Feb 9, 2014 Life Balance

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Welcome back! This has been a great week with the Room project moving along quickly and what not. we have finally reached a part of the project that does not require me to be actively involved. They (the girls) started Perfa taping and mudding, and have gotten a lot of it done as of this point,(in the room) as for the hall way well, we hit another snag. The door way from said hall into the bedroom that we are currently staying in is not only the wrong size but has not been framed in correctly at all.. Now we are going to have to tear it out and Frame it in to the correct size, which will mean that we will have no door for a while, while it is being patched in and replaced.

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I would have to admit though, one of the biggest accomplishments this week was BALANCE.. last week end my wife and I talked a lot about our lives being out of balance. It was to the point that every moment of every day was consumed by work, sleep, work on the room, or eating. No time was being left for personal growth, family time, or really anything else. We made the decision last week end to set aside time for other things.. Part of the problem it that I have been working Nights (2PM-11PM) so any of the routine activities that we would do in the evening were canceled. (Family Night, Date Night, Scouting, Everything) So we decided to re-structure our mornings to have Monday as a “Family Morning” and “Date Night” is moved to Saturday evenings. and Thursday and Saturday Mornings are for personal projects (if I don’t work Saturday). Sunday has never been a day of work for our family so that was not a problem. I cannot say I have never “tinkered” on Sunday but just no work..

As for the weather cooperating with projects, the Jury is still out. It has been raining a lot which has caused almost all of the snow to melt (YEA!!!!!!) but in the place of snow is now a tun of MUD…. (DOH!) Saturday I pulled the Zuki out to take it to a friends to be worked on and I felt like I needed to get my Muckin boots on just to get to the garage. Hopefully there will not be any more snow and we will get some sun soon to dry things out.

Oh and since I mentioned it. I did get to hear Zuki run but we have not entirely solved the problem.. it appears that there was a few problems with the carburetor. and the remaining problems appears to be something electrical. The problem is that it is a inconsistent problem so, Diagnostics will be difficult. but we will get there!

Sorry one more… Nah two more good things to note.. it has been decided that we are getting a dog at the end of this month. YIPPEE! ( I have wanted to get another dog for some time)  and as soon as taxes are done my wife said that I can buy and build a good computer for doing vids..  that will come soon enough trust me..

Thanks again.. be sure to sub to get email update on this page.

 

Around The House, Life, Tech

Feb 2, 2014 Computer Problems but still progress

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So this week, we had tons of progress on the room and hallway. I was hoping to get a vid up this week and have been fighting with my computer that is just not strong enough to do the vids I wanted to do. I guess a new computer is on the agenda.. because of the problems with the computer however, I have run out of time to get a good post put together for you on the progress. I will have to get more up later.

Because Life is an Adventure!