Beaver

I can across a beaver pond today. It’s pretty amazing how cleanly a rodent can cut down a tree and drag it away into a pond. The only signs of the beaver’s activities are a few stumps, some shavings right around the stumps, and a remarkably small trail to the pond for the size of the trees it was dragging off.

I think this tree is going to be hauled off pretty soon. You can see the beaver already took another tree away in the background.

This was a BIG tree the beaver brought down. Looks to have been done a while ago, maybe a different beaver? The top of the tree had been cut afterwards with a chainsaw as the beaver had dropped this tree into the pond and was covering up a park path. I wonder how hard that fencepost was on the teeth?

The tree in the background is getting quite chewed up. Beavers eat the inner bark of the tree. I wonder if this one fell the wrong way, so it wasn’t dragged to the pond?

I went for a walk today

I went for a walk in a nearby park today. A lovely day for a walk! Mid 40s, slight wind. There where PILES of people out walking their dogs.

I came across this tree with a pipe through it. I wonder how long it took for the tree to grow around the pipe like that?

I like this time of year, with the milkweed plants opening up.

Milkweed puffs on the grass.

I kinda liked this tree.

Eye-Fi Share Video

Last night, I picked up an Eye-Fi Share Video SDHC memory card. I have a couple of ideas I am kicking around and this device is a large part of what would make it work.

Anyway, I went to test my card in my Cheap-as-they-get HD video camera. It works… kinda.
Both of the following photos where taken using the camera and the new memory card. The photos automagically showed up on my computer, and Picassa detected them almost immediately. So VERY cool!!!

  Brother, being Brother. This is how he lays in the living room on the floor.

 Tra-Shcan swimming around. The other two jumped the tank, so it’s just this one. I think he’s looking for his buddies.

The problem is with my ultra-cheap generic camera. It doesn’t have enough power to run both the camera and the new memory card. Every time I take a photo, the Eye-Fi connects to the network and uploads the photo. This causes the power to my camera to drop, and the camera reboots. Twice.

Other then that, it works fine. The memory card can still get the photos copied off. Video works too. The camera HATES that though, the screen goes all wonky, blacks out, fun stuff like that.

I was thinking of investing into a good video camera in the next 6 months anyhow, so compatibility with the Eye-Fi will be on the required feature list.

Helping a friend move and a challenging box-spring

Saturday, I was helping some friends move. I must say, this was the best ‘hard move’ I have ever helped with. There where stairs and hard corners at both locations. A lot of big, heavy, and fragile stuff. We filled a cattle trailer and several vehicles with stuff.

What made it so easy was that everything was already packed up, and we had a ton of people!

We did have a slight problem with the queen sized box spring though. It was too big. It wouldn’t go up the stairs. So after most people left, three of us declared war on this stubborn item, and pushed really hard. We got it up the stairs!

Moving using a cattle trailer works wellCVS is looking to start unpacking the cattle trailer we moved most of the stuff in. Actually, it’s a good moving trailer, I was quite surprised.
The Box Spring wouldn’t fit up the steps, so Scott started to take the trim off the walls to see if we could gain enough extra clearance to get it through. Nope.
With some modifications to the bed as well as the ceiling, we where able to get it to fit. We had to take a small chunk out. The trim covers the hole, so it will be invisible when done.
Here you can see the box spring. We unstapled the covering, rolled it back and attacked it with a pry bar and saws-all. We took the one side board right off, and cut all the cross members as close to the edge of the springs as we dared. We could hook the first and last boards around the ceiling, but needed to push hard to get the cut bits through our slot we cut.
We replaced the factory board with a much wider board that we screwed on so it presented the same bottom profile as the original. The extra width let us screw to the shorter cross members.
Tracing the ends so the round corners are the same, and using a wood rasp to make it so the cloth was easier to pull back over, we now have a solid bottom again.
All put back together, as good as new! Better even, because now it’s upstairs instead of stuck downstairs.

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