You might be wondering what I have been doing with my life, and why I am not chasing contracts hard.
In general, I have been making progress on my house, my cars, and my computers. I haven't been chasing contracts as much as I should but I try to keep people knowing that I'm available. My preference would be to find something here in Ohio, or at least with people we know.
It's been about 15 years, since I really spent any significant time at my house and it shows. There is a possibility, I will be back at L3, either Florida or Utah, and it may be years again before I get another chunk of time to work on some of this.
The outside is improving, where I have spent most of my time. Adam Katter who does my lawn, is good at showing up and cutting the lawn when it needs to be cut. But his crew only cuts where they think its safe to cut. The area that they will cut has been shrinking for the last 15 years and I really wanted to get back to them mowing most of the lawn. With about three days work, I resurrected one of my two riding lawn mowers and savagely cut down lots of areas they would not mow. At the very end, the secondary deck belt snapped, but on Monday Katter's crew showed up and cut all of the area I mowed down. A victory and the lawn looks better.
Today was replacing the deck belt and un-doing some more of the jury-rigging someone had done to the deck. I couldn't find the right belt, but found one that was close. On my free John Deere, there is a relationship between the tension on the primary deck belt and the secondary deck belt. You need both belts to be the correct size in order for the tension to be good on both belts. I fashioned an offset plate for tensioning the primary deck belt until Amazon can bring me the correct belt.
I wanted to get the mower going to mow the spot where the old RV was sitting. The hoses and wires for the old RV were trapped under a collection of trash cans that Uncle had retried when they developed cracks or holes. With a sawsall, I was able to cut up the trash cans and make them and their contents fit in the newer trash can. Then I was able to disconnect the hoses and electricity to the RV, get it started and get it out of its hole. And then savagely cut down what was growing around it. Another victory..
I'm not sure what I want to do with the old RV, but I will at least replace the fan controller, pressure wash it with the recently repaired pressure washer, and probaby put a new exhaust on it.
Next big problem is I have a brush pile that is almost a story high. I got the Dodge Cummin's pickup running last weekend and plan to bring my cousin's chipper over and spend a day turning the brush pile into a smaller pile. I will put new wood on my trailer bed in order to do this.
Twice this winter, the van needed a bit of freon. I got under it today and it appears to be the seam where the two compressor halves come together. This means I will need to order another compressor.
My computers have been suffering without a real internet connection. It has been impractical to do many updates with metered cell phone hotspots. Now that I have Starlink, I have been going through and updating them. I have another laptop to backup and update tonight. I have another Qubes NUC that is not taking updates and will probably need to be backed up and re-installed. I think its just too far out of date.
Now onto the laptop...
