Champagne taste beer budget

Welcome back Andy, and thank you for all you have done for your fellow country men and women. It sounds like you came out of the experience a lucky and happy man with a clear plan for the future. I hope everything falls easily into place for you, you deserve it.

LOL.. Very nice, I can relate to each and every one.

Welcome back to the "How Should I Fix Up My Yard?" thread... [] To the rebar/underground boring system: Go to your mechanic (I assume you have one you use regularly and don't hit every Tom, Dick and Harry as need be) and ask him/her if they have an old torsion bar from a Chevy pick-up or Astro van. The Astro/Safari lines had a lot of problems with torsion bars and there are a lot floating around. They are roughly 4 1/2 ft long with an enlarged hex head on one end, overall diamater is maybe 1 1/4 inch and the hex end is like 2 inch. It's a quick cone taper to the hex, would take to a welded washer or two nicely. I'll probably make one when the time comes to run wires. Every garage I've been in has a couple around to use for pry bars. Your's should too. If not, call the local salvage yard, they'll know what you're talking about. Next up, trying to keep the critters out of the garden, my wife (bless her heart) walks up to me tonight out of the blue with "Here's the stuff we're going to use on the flowers in the beds, and we'll just put up a fence around the veggie garden." Hands me a box of "Plantskydd" repellant, 99.84% dried porcupine and/or bovine blood and .16% vegetable oil. Any thoughts? (And I like the fence thing, surefire way to stop critter abuse.) www.plantskydd.com (I haven't looked at the site yet.) Lastly, but not least... We have a 220 volt, 1 3/4 HP, 67 GMP max output lake pump we've been using to water the yard and flower beds. I intend on installing an inground, pop-up, timer'd system at some point, but back to the money thing. So I am using a manifold I made for $30 that has 5 outlets, all switched manually, that feeds different sized hoses that I haul around the yard. Great fun. I had a couple problems with sand getting into the system and causing the "chut chut chut" rotating sprinkler heads to stop spinning and am looking for an inlet filter. It has a coarse filter on the foot valve, but need something better. I saw a screen'd system built around a wire cage at the hardware store, but they wanted $70 for $6 worth of material. It was also like 12" in diameter, and with the low water levels we are experiencing, by the time I got it up 6" off the bottom it would be sucking air anyway. I had a thought... which is usually my downfall... How about using a 6' section of 8" PVC, capped on both ends, fastened to a couple planks so it can't roll. Insert a 4" section on the inside, centered, with an outlet to the pump intake hose. Fill the void between the two with filter material of some sort, yet to be determined, and drill 100 holes in each pipe. How do I calculate the amount of flow through various size holes in aggregate? If I put 100 1/4 inch holes in the outside tube, the 200 1/8 holes on the inside tube, will that flow 67 GPM? I'm sure there's an answer, but I never took hydrophysics, so I defer to those that also may not have, but know the numbers due to experiencde. Always the best teacher, if you ask me. Thanks for the help.

Or more likely that he was with The Mothers Of Invention? Depending on what type music you prefer, you'd probably recogonize the line "Frank Zappa And The Mothers, were at the best place in town." from the song Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple.

I've been meaning to ask this for a while, but since there's a current picture loading thread, I'll just add to it. I haven't had a problem posting a picture. What baffles me is how to post more than one picture in one post, and to have verbage in between pictures. I know it can be done, I've seen it happen, but all of my attempts so far have failed. What I usually do is upload/save one image, then browse again for a second image, but when I upload that one, it replaces the first one and I still have just one image. Would someone shed some light on that procedure? Thanks.

Great timing, I just logged on to see if anyone else had been out. We spent 12 hrs straight in a 21' Alumacraft w/a 200 horse Johnson, ran around Mille Lacs 15 or so miles. Had lotsa fish out of the slot, 22-28 inchers that we had to release, kept 9 eyes out of the four of us and two jumbo perch, both over 12". Took over an hour to get the boat on the trailer at the Myr Mar access even at 11;30 Sat night, two of us got dropped at the dock and got the truck in line, called on the cell when we were next up in line, no lights at the public access and 20+ boats waiting to get out of the water. Wind picked up late in the day, was cold by sunset, was 45 outside with 20mph winds when we got home at 12:45, my buddies son didn't have enough clothes along and got pretty chilly. He's 17 and has done this before, he doesn't need his dad to dress him. Overall fishing was great, havest was marginal, but mostly due to the slot, it would be interesting to walk along the windward side of Mille Lacs today and see how many 20-30 inch fish washed up dead after being released. We only had two that weren't hooked in the top of the mouth and cut the line on both of those. Well, now I'm heading out on our lake to see what I can put together, my wife and daughter are down in MPLS for the weekend doing the Kohlman Walk/Run For The Cure and not coming home till tomorrow, so I had one night with the boys, then one night batching it. I foresee loud music in my future once I come in off the lake. []

My wife, and I'm sure a high percentage of the people I mention this forum to, think we just talk about "stereos" and "record players". Thanks to both of you for such detailed and informative posts. And to think a guy just wanted to feep his dogs' coats fluffy!!!

Heading out from work early to get ready for the holiday weekend. Those of you that know of which I speak, best of luck, those that know not, I couldn't explain it. It's a Minnesota thing.

I'll take a stab at it... A Casio D-20M. (The calculator, that is)

Well.. ummmm... technically, hot water will, under the right conditions, freeze faster than cold. It has something to do with the energy loss due to evaporation, or some such thing. Do a web search, I'm sure it's out there. As a side note, when it's really cold outside here, like 25 below F not including wind chill, if you take a cup of boiling water outside and throw it in the air it will flash freeze and hit the ground as little ice chunks. It's pretty dang cool the first couple times you see it. Cold water won't freeze fast enough for the same effect.

Very nice, congrats on the set, they look great and I'll bet they sound even better. Envious.

Yeah, I was thinking about starting out with 1" then going up to maybe 4 or 6 in some places to get both the wiring and irrigation pipe through. Kinda like drilling a 1/8' inch hole before you tried to drill a 1/2 hole into metal, just something to guide the way. I need to find our old house footprint scale drawings so I can see just what and where I need to light as time goes on. Might as well plan now before it gets tougher to do. Thanks again for the advice, I'll make sure and show some "after" pics once we get done, though I can't promise how soon that will be. Money is not only the root of all evil, it's also the bane of this homeowners existance. We get one project done at a time and move forward as money allows.

BTW..Thank You,... great link... listening to it now. Might have to do some of the others listed around that time at the office tomorrow.

This old thread popped up in a search for Ruben Wilson. Yes, sometimes, it's good to be us. Especially when we have friends that are more connected to the live music venues than most of us are. Allan, if you ever come to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area to hear someone, I want to be your sidekick. It's a little drive for me, but I am sure well worth the effort. I know a couple a places with great food and would love to meet you and discuss all things electrophonic. Consider it a standing invite if you ever want to see the Twin Cities.

Oh yeah.. Without buying a "Lighting Set", I believe the biggest transformer they had was 900 watts. I just assumed off the bat that that was the one I wanted. More Power.. Argh Argh Argh and all that. (Actually, I just figured that would cover by butt down the road if I wanted to add more lights, and with the wrap-around deck and paver patio set for next year, I'll likely end up with another one or two transformers just to make everything beautiful.)

Attempt #2.... grrrrr...... Thanks to everyone for the advice and compliments, knowing the group they come from they mean a lot. I'll try the PVC deal, lord knows I have enough of it lying around. Does it help to start with a smaller diameter then do a bigger hole, or just start with a big one and get on with it? We'd heard about the pepper deal, but there is no place close like Sams. I'll check the price at the local places, but might be high. If so, not looking forward to frequent applications of high priced product, may search for a better plan, if there is such a thing. I didn't see any LED lighting at HD, but I'm sure it's coming. In the business you (Michael) and I are in, Lord knows every week a new tool supplier has a new LED light to sell you for $89.95. The icing really isn't an issue, but then the stairs have only been here one winter. We don't use them in the winter, we go out the walkout to get to the lower yard, and with the predominant NW winds and our SE exposure, once it starts to blow and snow the snow swirls around the house and makes the stairs smooth and a foot or more deep in snow. A good launch ramp for a sled heading to the lake, if you steer clear of the trees. [] This better post or I'll be pi ssed.

Well doesn't that just bite? I spent 30 minutes trying to respond to everyone in one post, and lo, there was an error processing my request. I'll try again, albeit limited. [:@]

By the way, the power pole goes away this year so we have full underground electrical service, as does the downspout extension you can see sticking out, maybe get the sprinkler system installed. Next year, the wraparound deck and paver deck by the screen doors on the one side of the house. The year after that we put down the driveway/parking areas. The year after THAT... maybe I can look at new speaks.

Looking up from the bottom.

GRRRrrrrrr... I ate my own post as I tried to edit it. Here's some pics of our retaining wall/stairway from the parking level to lake level. We just took out some solar lighting we'd received for Christmas, they've been up a couple weeks and just weren't bright enough. The big box store (HD) we returned them to carries Malibu lighting for their wired lights. Wondering if there are better quality systems out there or better locations to shop at. We now have a store credit of $130, but can always use that toward something else if there's a better source for lights. Also, what are the tricks for running the wire under cement/pavers/stairs? I'm going to try (again) to throw in a couple pics so you see what I'm working with. Also, in the background you can see our raised garden. Not huge, 24 x 8, but a lot bigger than what we had before. What products do/don't work for trying to keep deer/rabbits from eating up the garden, or are there better working home brew recipies you'd recommend? I know a fence wuold work great, but might not look the greatest down by the lakeshore. Any advice is appreciated.

This has essentially zero lag, maybe .2 seconds. But thanks for weighing in after I've bought the camera??[:^)] Good that you highlighted the importance for anyone that missed it initially, it is a very big factor.

I have to agree, the image quality of film still strikes me as superior, even when you're not talking about blowing up images. The one thing I am quickly learning to adore about digital is that I can go out in the evening, shoot 100 pics, and if they're all crap, I know it as soon as they hit the monitor, I didn't have to pay for developing film to see I have one good pic out of 24. (Granted, that may be showing my lack of skills, but nonetheless, it counts for something). I'm hoping the ability to shoot whily niley will improve my skills, as limited as they are to begin with.

Fine, so this will be all discombobulated... at least I'm getting the pics up someplace.[:@]

Trying another pic, just to show the range... I'm overall very happy with the camera, I wish the advanced manual was a little more detailed, but as I work through it I'm happy with the results, especially the 12X optical zoom. OK, I can't figure out how to do two images in one post, yet... Yes, our daughter and her friend couldn't wait to get into the water once the ice started to come off. It was only a couple days after this that the dock and boat went in. We even had the first campfire that night.