horst

I cant believe how many people I know that cant cook for anything.Some of them live off fast food and microwave meals it seems like.It should be mandatory they learn how to cook before being allowed to move out of thier parents house:D On a side note my 12 year old wanted a hot dog last night, I told him to get off his butt and make one, he looked at me like i was nuts:o

You know its funny, Ive been in construction my entire life and never been bothered by hieghts.Ive worked from crane baskets, worked on top of grain elevators, and done things from ladders that probably shouldnt have ever been even tried.Never thought anything of it, Id climb anything without a second thought. Yet somehow the idea of going to the top of one of these has me a little freaked out:rolleyes:Must be getting old or something but Im sure once I start itll become second nature to climb them:D

I posted a couple weeks ago I was trying to get a job with a wind turbine company based in Ontario to do work for them locally here in Iowa and other parts of the country.Got the employment contract yesterday and next Sunday Im off to Canada to begin training:cool: It pays better than I expected, has benefits package, paid travel, vacation, and 401K plan. I almost decided to try to get on full time in the factory Ive been working in for the last month but the place is a joke.They wont hire anyone full time unless you work there as a temp for 1 to 2 years, they fire people at the drop of a hat and let other people screw things up badly on a daily basis without even a warning.The do absolutely no maintainence on anything and get quite upset when the 35 yr old equipment constantly breaks down, then its the operators fault.:rolleyes:The worst part is since the machines are always down they got guys that are working 7 days a week and have been for months at a time without a day off, Im in one of those depts and frankly its not worh what they pay.Im outta there the middle of next week and hopefully this new job pans out for me:)

I posted a few days ago I had started a new job.My dept makes end covers for hydrolic pumps and they have some pretty strict tolerances on them.Its been going well, I get along with the other 2 guys, caught on pretty quick to most of it and havent had any real problems untill 2 days ago.The guy I usually work with had to leave early, my supervisor put e back with the other guy.He showed me how to run the mills and CNC machine in his cell and I ran them the rest of the day. Came to work the next day and our machine was broke down.I again went back to running the mill, when I got done the guy I usually work with would run them through the CNC and stack and gauge them for tolerance.By noon our machine was back up so we went back to it.I left 4 parts in the mill and the guy that runs it finished them for me no problem. Then at 1:00 another guy comes in, the day before he got his last warning, he has continously broken machines, made bad parts, and made no attempt to even try to do things properly.One more time hes fired.He ran parts on the mill I was using the rest of the day, from 1:00 in the afternoon till midnight. Came in the next day and we started running a tub of parts on our machine, they were milled wrong, the finish was terrible on them.We stopped running them, took them back and showed them to the guy that taught me how to run the mill.He traced the numbers back for the previous day thinking that the idiot had ran them.He found the numbers and told me they were the parts Id run the day before:eek: Something didnt seem right but I didnt want to look like I was trying to get away with something so I told him to go ahead and report them to the office that way as I had made them.There was way more pars screwed up then they will allow so I figured Id be getting called up front if not fired. We went back to our machine, everyone was kinda in a bad mood and we didnt talk much, I thought they were mad at me for most of the morning.Finally the guy I work with looked at me and told me "Those werent your parts, I ran them through CNC and the ones you ran were fine". Since he brought it up I took the chance and told him what had been bugging me all morning " Mark runs that mill everyday, he knows what hes looking for, dont mention it to him but he ran my last 4 parts, if they were bad he would have easily caught them". I felt a little better then but was still waiting to get called up for them.After we had dinner Mark, the guy that runs the mill came back over."Chris, I know those werent your parts, I just realized I finished running yours and they were all good, what causes that is the grinding wheels in the mill go bad, you couldnt have left 4 good parts in the mill and put out an entire tub of bad ones before that without changing mills." Me "So how did my name get on them" "That kid from 3rd shift switched paperwork on the tubs, Its easy to do and he works alone at night, and if he has any more screw ups hes gone, he couldnt afford to claim these." "I kinda thought something like that but you cant prove it". Long story short the kid tried to screw me over, the office and my supervisor know he made them now, Mark went up and raised a big stink about it.Nobody could prove it however so their still on my record over thereThe kids still got a job, Im one step closer to my first warning, and the two guys I work with raised such a fuss they closed the line for 2 hours that afternoon and called them up to the office for a meeting, they havent said so yet but I think they got wrote up for not watching me as Im still a trainee. I realy dont like this kid, but I have to work with him everyday.He tried getting me fired for his problems, now he acts like nothing happened.I told him yesterday if he talked to me again I was going to hurt him and worry about losing my job later.He hasnt spoken to me for 2 days, its probably a good thing.

I have the baby brickhouse and had to get new poles for mine, if you havent got it up yet double check the poles, theres actually 2 different length poles in them, I got one in the wrong slot to start with and had a lotta problems. Mines really hard to get started, once I get the top pulled out it gets a lot easier to do the sides.

Might sound like a bad idea but if your in a heavily hunted area consider getting out of your stand and hunting from the ground.Around here everyone and thier granmas use treestands to hunt from, the big bucks have lived through a lotta seasons and know this, they avoid trees like the plauge when they can. I started hunting from the ground probably 7 years ago occasionaly, now I very seldom climb a tree. I see more good bucks in a year than most guys around here and have killed more in the last 7 yrs than in the previous 15 years.

Heres what you need

Ill shoot a doe anytime I have a tag for one, that may change unless the deer numbers come back up soon though. Early just means they wont get bred at all, its the same number less deer the following year weather you shoot em early or late.

Just realized Ill be running the machine today, I hope it doesnt rip my arm off:D

Your not crazy, Im in Iowa and it wasnt great {in my area}It started off good and things warmed up, the rut slowed down.It gets hot out the deer are biologically still in rut, but physically they wont move much untill dark.Ive actually seen warm years here when there was better rutting activity in early jan then weve had during the actual rut.

Havent actualy ran the machine yet, that starts tommorrow and the thing actually scares me a little bit.Last week I was mainly cleaning the parts off with an air gun, blowing the coolant and metal shavings out, then stacking them in a tub. While it sounds easy the parts wiegh between 25 and 35 lbs a pice and they come off the machine steadily, he puts em in one booth I clean them, then i turn and put them in another booth and gauge the holes to make sure theyre the right size.Then I pick em up once again and stack them in the tub.The whole time youre doing this you have two people standing on a platform thats raised off the florr about 6 inches and is just a little bigger than your average coffee table.We run about 130-140 parts a day this way.Theyre not real heavy but after a few hours it starts catching up to you. I like the guy Im working with but hes got me at a disadvantage, hes about 5 ft 3 tall but hes got arms about 4 times the size of mine, he flings em around like paper clips LOL. I showed up Thursday and one of the guys that runs the forklift stopped, he told me I had the plant record for anyone from the temp office staying on that job, apparently they were taking bets:D

The way things turned out the deer never even left the private ground before dark.The public ground after it snowed got pretty deep and the pasture in the private ground blew open, the deer stayed in the pasture area.The guy wasnt seeing deer simply because he was hunting an old trail, same as we were. Biggest difference was after a couple days we realized they werent coming out, that idiot sat there forthe rest ofd the season and never got a shot:cool:I liketo think of it as karma LOL:D

In reality you wont be any good at it at all:D, thats the fun part, youll get better at it over time, its like starting over.You learn something everytime you go out, you scare deer away, you learn what works and what doesnt, youll get frustrated, and one day youll stick a deer from just a few yards away and forget all about the frustration from before.Most of all it just keeps your mind busy, it dont see likework if you dont have time to think about it;)

Get out of your tree stand.I was sick of sitting in them to at one time, so I started hunting from the ground, puts a whole new twist on things and its like starting over, you have to relearn what works and what doesnt, it opens up a lot of different options, stalking, sitting, still hunting, trying to out manuver them.Plus when it works out its the ost exciting thing youll experience.

Congrats on the anniversary, Thats not Taco Bell you took her to is it?

Its been a bizzare week here.Constructions just about dried up around here for the winter and my bills were getting seriously behind.I posted earlier about a job possibility working on wind turbines that was coming up, we will get to that in a minute. First I started just looking for something temporary to get by untill spring.Nothing in the papers looked to promising so I sent my resume in to a temp agency, they replied the same day they may have something.Its working for a company that makes hydrolic motors, the pay was decent and it looked like it could last untill spring anyway.So I took it. My first day was Monday, they took me back to the most bizzare looking machine I have ever seen, its about half the size of the downstairs in my house, really noisy and spraysmassive amounts of coolant everywhere.Its actual purpose is to grind, drill, and tap all the end covers for the motors. I found out a few things that day, the job really sucked, there was almost unlimited overtime available to work, and nobody could/would do that particuliar job.Its got the highest employee turnover rate in the entire plant, the last year nobodies worked it more than a couple days without quitting.And it was to late to apply for a full time job out there as they had quit taking applications for them from temps at the end of the year. 3 days went by, on Wed I was still there, hadnt complained much, and people quit looking at me like i was going to walk off the job.That morning the supervisor came around asking if me and the other guy wanted to work Saturday, we both agreed.Throughout the morning he kept coming back and pulling the guy aside I was training under, I didnt think much of it except they kept watching me. That afternoon he pulled me aside, I figured I was done, theyget rid of temps all the time.Instead he handed me a letter from the head office, it seemed while they werent excepting applications any more they were willingto make an exception in my case, if I filled one outand dropped it off Id be eligible to possibly go full time after the 13 week training period, benifits, big pay increase, etc...:DThey must have decided I wasnt quitting after all. I got home that night and about 7:30 my phone rings, its the lady from the wind turbine company.She is really hoping Im still interested in that job, they want to interview me the 14th of this month, she doesnt offer me the job but tells me to double check my criminal background to make sure Ill have no trouble getting into Canada for the training session.She also mentions if im interested in traveling they have a lot of sites all over the US, if I get the job and am willing to travel they will fly me around when the weathers to bad to work here to work on other job sites as well:cool: I went from being broke with no prospects to having two pretty good offers in the same day, things are looking better all the time:)

If you cant get the gun to group well pellets wont neccasarily fix the problem.As William said you may need to try out different bullet/powder combinations untill you find one that shoots well out of your gun. Pellets are more convienent but youre pretty limited on the choices for what loads you can use, Pyrodex pellets in my gun burned a lot dirtier then loose powder does as well, the fouling was terrible.Im now shooting about 80 grains of 777 with great results. Another rather funny thing was I bought my Knight in a kit, the Knight bullets that came with my gun however shot all over the place regardless of the amount of powder I used, it actually tookme abou 2 years and 4 brands of bullets to find that 250 grain Shockwaves were the perfect bullet for that gun. Play around with it and see what works;)

It looks a lot like the stuff we put on commercially actually, the biggest difference I can see is actually in the accesories, the comercial stuff had a lot more stuff you had to put on, of course thats been 12 years since I did one of them and I sure things have changed a lot in that time.This also calls for a solid underlayment where the stuff we used was put on over steel framing.

:DIn other words its not the fall that kills you, its the sudden stop:D

The other night I was trying to figure out a new way to cook deer since the kidsare whining its all I ever feed them:DI looked in the fridge and found some browned up Jimmy Dean hot sausage mixed in with mushrooms and onions I had left over from the night before.Heres what I wound up doing. I sprinkled the backstrap with pepper, salt, and garlic powder on one side and Italian Seasoning on the other.Wrapped it tightly in cling wrap and left overnight in fridge. I then filleted the backstrap lengthways, kinda turned the whole thing into a butterfly cut.Inside I stuffed it with sausage,mushroom, and onion mixture I had left over.This whole thing went into a slow cooker with about 1/2 of water in it and cooked on low for most of the day.Turned out pretty well for a bunch of left overs:cool:

If I catch my wife reaching for the stove I have to slap her hands with a rolled up newspaper and say "NO" in a strict tone. I do 99.9% of our cooking, did let her put bagels in the toaster yesterday though:eek:

Never put that brand on before but it looks good, no exposed fasteners is definately the way to go.The stuff I used to put on was quite similiar but was Butler steel, same concept but you ran a seaming machine down the laps and actually rolled the two pieces together, never had one leak but it was pricey. That stuff actually looks like it would go down pretty easy if you make sure the lapping edges get locked together and its a straight run as you say.

Get the material, I bet we can work something out;) BTW, what kind you considering putting on?

Dont worry about it Texan, I knew what you meant.And youre right, theyre not terribly efficient, from everything Ive read they can only convert about 50% of the winds power to electricity under ideal conditions.And theyre big, they take up a lot of land wherever they put them. But theyre here, and I need a job and this one looks challenging enough to hold my attention:D In the job description on thier websight it appears they dont use cranes to inspect the blades, everythings done from hanging scaffolds which Ive seen them use around here on several, you have to raise and lower yourself.And as you said, theyre high, several hundred feet in the air at least.Im not going to be pysically able to do things like this for to any more years in reality, might as well do it now while I can, then I wont have anything to regret later:cool: Unless I fall, that would suck!!!

Some of you know Ive been in the construction business for a lot of years now, I started shingling when I was about 12 years old and kinda branched out into other fields, finally I was running my own business and doing all sorts of work in just about every aspect of residential construction and some commercial work. Im 35 now and honestly Im getting burned out, I still enjoy the work but am tired of all the crap that goes along with it, customers that cant make up thier minds, trying to collect from people after jobs, companies losing my material orders, every thing seems to annoy me these days. Last summer they started putting some wind turbines up outside of town here and I was honestly kinda facinated with the process.I half jokingly told my wife I wanted to go back to school and learn how to build them, eventually I even started looking into the classes.But with 3 kids and needing 2 incomes it never went any further, it just wasnt a good time to try it. Last week I ran acrossed an ad in the local paper that caught my eye.A company in Ontario Canada that makes the blades for these things was looking for someone in my area to train as a technician to moniter and service the blades they use on the turbines in this area. After debating with myself all weekend about it decided I would send a resume in yesterday and see what happened.Today i got an email back from the company, the lady that does the hiring will be in Iowa the 2nd week of next month and would like to meet with me and discuss the position.If things work out Ill be going to Ontario for a 6 week training course in how to work on them then starting a new job with the company.Im really hoping this works out, Im ready for a change of pace and working a couple hundred feet in the air everyday would definately be different:D