Getting back on track.. in Everyday Rants...

Well, with the yard work, at least.

I spent the majority of my waking hours of my 3-day weekend on yard work. I have a bad habit of not doing crap in the yard over the winter, then when the weather finally cooperates enough to get the mower out, the grass (and weeds) is a complete fuster cluck to try and get back into some reasonable condition. Most of it had gotten over a foot tall, if not taller. My 80 volt battery mower can handle quite a bit, but when it gets like that, I burn through all 3 batteries pretty quickly, so end up having to wait to get all 3 batteries charged up, then get back to it. Sadly, I only have one battery for the string trimmer, so when I drain it, I’m hosed for a few hours. I need to just get another battery for it. So, it took multiple passes cut it down to manageable height, then another to get it to the normal height I keep it cut to, and finally got Weed-B-Gone on it now. The weeds are just absolutely trying to run amok this year. They were a bit wild last year, but not like this. I may have to do a second dose, but eh. Also, I need to get Moss Out on it this year.

If you don’t live in a climate like Seattle, then you probably don’t have lawn moss. It grows right on the ground, at the base of the grass. It’s because it’s so wet here so much of the year, and we have at least 6 months of year where we don’t get much sun, so the grass suffers and the moss goes nuts. We also have issues with moss growing on sidewalks, driveway edges, and our roofs, especially on asphalt or cedar shingles. I get it on the back side of the garage roof, because my nextdoor neighbor’s tree hangs over the garage. You get it a lot more out in the woods, due to lack of sunlight. I don’t worry about it too much on the garage, I just make a point to get up on the roof and knock it off. If it gets too bad, it can actually get under the shingles and start rotting the roof out. I never knew this shit existed until I moved here. We don’t have things like this where I’m from in Texas.

I’m not going to complain too much. Getting out and getting that much done was a nice kick into gear. I’m hoping that means I can start getting some other projects done, like organizing the garage and shed. Oh, and I really need to paint the house. On the plus side, I think I have the internet fixed. It went out again, even after I had the provider out and they declared it fixed. Everything that had been done prior led me to believe it was the cable from the light pole to my house. This time they sent out and advanced tech. It caught me off guard that they scheduled for an 8a-10a appointment on a Sunday. I woke up at 7, got dressed, then laid down on the couch, expecting to fall back asleep until the likely eta of 9:30a. Or so I thought. The gate bell rang right at 8am. She was kick ass. She did all the same tests the last tech did, but this time she came to the same conclusion, so pulled her van into the alley and climbed the pole. Only took her a few seconds to discover the cable was on its way out.

So where I live in the Seattle suburbs, I get a pretty decent wind a few times a year. It caused more problems when I was in fiber, because as that fiber optic cable flopped around in mid air, it screwed with the light in the fiber, which would make my internet glitch out. So I shouldn’t have that issue now. So she finished replacing the drop, comes in, and no joy. I had about half my download speed, but 0.5Mbps to 0 upload speed. She had another appointment to get to, so the rest of it was troubleshooting issues behind my modem. “I’ve had it be as simple as a bad ethernet cable.” So I tore apart all the ethernet wiring. I ended up taking 10 cables off the switch that didn’t go to anything at all. I’d just left them there after various changes of equipment. So it turns out, I really don’t need a server size PoE switch. Given this one is only 10/100, and everything else on my wired network is Gigabit, it’s just slowing me down. I can get something smaller, equally as powerful, and faster. Oh, and quieter. The fans in this switch just drone loudly, which I could do without. One less thing to make my ears ring. I’ll be ordering a new switch soon.

Yeah, I know, I’m not the most exciting read. I’d imagine the dreams are more entertaining. Don’t worry, I’ll blog the next one I can remember when I wake up. Time to veg a bit more before I have to deal with a late Monday. I do at least feel a little more accomplished.