06.27.07
Posted in Generic at 8:15 am by Randy
JD 450C crawler, right side
Originally uploaded by randy_hall
Oh man, what a sweet ride.
Or at least, what a hunk of heavy machinery. 14,000 pounds of steel, oil, diesel and hydraulic fluid.
The hydraulics leak like a sieve, the bushings at just about every pivot point are shot, the seat is completely ruined, the hour meter has never worked (at least that’s what the neighbor said when I asked him about it), and the front loader bucket is bent in the middle.
Isn’t it purdy though?
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06.26.07
Posted in Broadband, Geek, Rural at 4:41 pm by Randy
As I sit patiently and wait for my evening Summer class at Napa Valley College (Current Topics In Winemaking — cruel irony is that the “current topic” is “Historic Wineries”), I look out at miles and miles of hillsides in Napa Valley, covered in bright green canopies of grapes. Some Chardonnay, some Cabernet, some Syrah, not much Pinot; a wide expanse of agriculture, all wrapped up in the pretense of wine as some exclusive drink made for stodgy old men with seven-figure incomes. Trust me, nobody ever became truly wealthy by growing grapes.
However, I digress.
Subchapter Two, Continued:
We needed to dig a trench right down the middle of (part of) the road to the vineyard. It wasn’t going to be pretty, either. Just walking the road, you could see the surface of boulders and rocks, almost as if the road had been paved with cobblestones, albeit gigantic ones of all shapes and sizes. Nevertheless, our Solar God thus proclaimed, “get thee a ride-on trencher, and all will come to pass as I have foretold.” Apparently, the kung pao of the walk-behind trencher that Mr. Handy had been using was clearly not spicy enough for the task. So, after much delay (and at least two breakdowns of Mr. Handy’s truck), we had the ride-on trencher delivered.
It took a day for it to break.
The rocks were so big and so tough that even the ride-on trencher was denied. It was so bad, the chain on the trencher came off, shearing two bolts on the arm that holds the chain in place. So, we were left with one option: backhoe. That’s right, time to bring in the heavy artillery. Unfortunately, as Mr. Handy frequently mentioned, using the backhoe meant that we would almost certainly be tearing out a lot of road, because any rocks or boulders that the backhoe lifts out would in most case be wider than the twelve-inch bucket that was on the backhoe.
In truth, I’m glad Mr. Handy was so up front about it. Honestly, I am. Because what my eyes beheld once the trench was dug down the road was nothing short of horrific. I actually thought to myself, however briefly, “oh crap, what have I gotten us into?”
It almost didn’t look like a road, there was so many rocks strewn about on either side of the trench. The trench itself averaged probably 15 inches wide, and it was deep enough that I was down past my knees when I walked in it. Yes, I walked inside the trench.
Happily, the chapter ends on an up note: the pipes and wires were laid into the trench, covered in sand then layered with rocks and road base as backfill. Then we were able to bring in additional road base to help level out the road a bit. In the end, the scar left behind from the trench was analogous to a scar you might see on someone who had been through open heart surgery. Yes, it looked ugly at first sight, but you quickly realize that it had looked much, much worse.
And the work is not done, not nearly. There is still getting all the fittings on the various pipes to join them together. There is ordering and having the fiber optic pulled from the vineyard gate down to the house. There’s burying the rest of the trench. There’s hooking up the electrical and fiber optic at both ends. Only then might we realize the glory of real broadband. I am now absolutely certain that it won’t be real for me until at least a week after the project is fully finished.
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Posted in Props, Wine, Rant at 8:56 am by Randy
I’m not usually given over to spending any time promoting other blogs and/or podcasts I like. Part of that is in my personality, a flaw I will likely carry to the grave. Also, I don’t particularly care for blogs and people who do spend tons of time promoting other sites. I usually get my fix from Digg [digg.com] and Del.icio.us [del.icio.us] (though less so of late because of the “popularity contest” that these sites end up being), but recently I’ve been using StumbleUpon (courtesy of Tech.Chick.Blog) to find interesting and innovative sites.
But this post is not about any of those sites up there, oh no. This post is about a man. A “shockingly handsome” man. A man who is dedicated to altering the reality of a very stodgy and calcified institution: the wine industry. This post is about Gary Vaynerchuk and his video podcast called Wine Library TV.
I first encountered WLTV some months ago (and I’m sure Gary will gripe that I haven’t given him the love he so richly deserves) while perusing several of the wine blogs I now frequent on an on-again, off-again basis. Originally, I thought that watching wine reviews was not something I was particularly interested in. After all, I’m keen on the growing of grapes (which The Boss and TBB are basically in the business of doing) and the making of wine, but not particularly in the tasting and reviewing aspect. At least, that’s how I used to feel.
That’s the power of Gary and his podcast. He is so charismatic and approachable that you find yourself wanting to believe in what he offers: that wine is fun and easy and uncomplicated. After having watched him for a few months, I have broken out of my red-wine rut and bought wines I would’ve scoffed at six months ago. Pink wines, white wines from all over, French wines, you name it. I’ve bought $20 wines that sucked (at which I shrugged my shoulders, told myself, “well, at least I know I don’t like that,” and moved on), and I’ve bought $11 bottles of wine that blew me away. Most important of all, it has led me to this epiphany:
I now have no fear of wine. It is not daunting to me, and I have Gary to thank for that.
So, thank you Gary, you have opened up a new realm of experience for me, and I will always appreciate that, and I will always appreciate you.
Go to Wine Library TV and get to know Gary yourself.
Some classic episodes of Gary’s that are not to be missed:
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06.23.07
Posted in Broadband, Rural Tech, Geek, Rural at 8:52 pm by Randy
“Let me explain… No, there is too much, let me sum up.” - Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride
I try my best not to go all meta-blog around here, presenting my excuses for how I’m too busy or that I’m just too damn lazy to update this site. But I leave you with the following thought: A man’s gotta have his priorities. Moving on.
Much has transpired in the intervening months, albeit the goal is still tantalizingly out of reach. Dear reader, allow me to catch you up.
- We own a construction crawler, vintage 1985. Hey, it’s got a backhoe, what can I say?
- A trench was dug from the antenna site to the house.
- Part of that trench was dug along the straight section of the road to the vineyard, effectively destroying it.
- The Solar God smiled upon us and did grace us with a divine visitation to bury electrical cables and conduits along said road section.
- We still do not have the wires connected to the power panel in the garage, nor do we have the electrical boxes installed up at the antenna site.
- The fiber optic that will pump those lovely ones and zeros isn’t even ordered.
- We expect that we won’t be up and running until the end of July at the earliest.
Subchapter One: The Crawler Of DOOM
The crawler has an interesting story. Our next-door (meaning about a mile downhill from us) neighbor (a uniquely crusty old Brit, who made his fortune through logging in Northern California) moved to a Central American country last month. As part of his departure, Crusty was selling his old John Deere 450C loader crawler. A crawler, as opposed to a backhoe) uses tracks instead of tires, making it better suited for the ranch and its hilly terrain. Even though it was seriously old and long in the tooth, he wanted ten large. In an uncharacteristic turn, I haggled him down to eight. Of course, I’m still wondering who got the better deal.
Crusty spent a fair bit of time describing all that was wrong with the machine: hour meter broken, seats basically destroyed by the elements, lights not working, switches missing, hydraulic seals leaking like sieves, bushings completely gone on just about every pivot point, yada yada yada. So, as long as we used it in the daytime, didn’t lift hugely heavy items using the front loader, and we kept 20 gallons of hydraulic fluid on hand to keep the reservoir filled, the sucker would do work for us. Never mind that your ass would be sitting on bare metal and we literally have no idea how long that the crawler has actually been used over the years, those really are just subordinate issues. The crawler has a backhoe and it was shown to me that it could dig.
Of course, The Boss and I salivated mightily. We still recognized that we will need to have an agricultural tractor, so this crawler wouldn’t be able to do every little thing that we need around the ranch and vineyard. But the siren song of the backhoe could not be denied, even The Boss was taken in by it.
Subchapter Two: The Trench of DOOM (drink)
The trench presented several significant challenges. Originally, the Wunderkind was going to dig along the uphill side of the road to the vineyard, through all the twisty turns and across several culverts to go down, down to the house. But Mr. Handy (who, bless his heart, should be called Mr. Overtime, since he never knows when to frigging quit working) and I walked an alternate and slightly more direct route, which would avoid most (if not all) of the culverts, and stay off the road almost completely, so that we wouldn’t need to be concerned with vineyard traffic (which, at this time of year is basically about every ten days so they can spray sulphur on the vines). It also shaved about 100 feet off the distance that the Wunderkind originally estimated.
When the time came to dig the trench, Mr. Handy dropped everything and walked behind the big-ass trencher through hill and dale, suffering poison oak, bug bites, and sunburn to bring the trench down the hill, skipping across one of the seasonal gullies (because it was way too deep to dig under, and way too far to go around). We got to the final stretch before the meadow above the ranch house and realized that it was a rock garden. Correction, a boulder garden, and most of them were above ground, with no telling how much worse it would be underneath. No trencher known to man would cut through that, so we figured we would lay the conduit above ground and call it a day.
Of course, it wasn’t until the Solar God gazed upon our plan that He shone His holy wisdom down upon us: laying the pipes and conduit above ground would only work up until the first forest fire; the pipes and conduit would quickly melt and our glorious pipeline would be destroyed (and yes, I realize that if a forest fire blows through the ranch, we’ll be worried about more than whether our Internet connection is working, but stay with me on this). So, our hopes rested on the one thing we didn’t want to do: dig a trench down (part of) the road to the vineyard.
But there’s more, oh so much more. Stay tuned.
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