Eubanks Kindred

No news

john — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:26:46 +0000

No news is good news right? Or is it just a boring existance?

There’s been a lot of things going on but no time or desire to blog about everything.

Setup twitter on my balckberry…

admin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:52:57 +0000

Setup twitter on my balckberry… Now the fun begins!

Out of the dark ages!

john — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:45:28 +0000

I can say now that we are officially out of the dark ages. Last night AT&T turned on 3G in the area.

This is great news for us because the laptop connect card is our method of internet access. It was better than dial-up but not much better. It would peak at about 100K for downloads which isn’t that great. Now with the joy of 3G I’ve been averaging about 1.2M down and 600K up.

Times are good!

Progress and Summertime Fun

erin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:30:29 +0000

So, our garden has finally become a source of happiness instead of worry and disappointment. We have more straightneck and zucchini squash than we know what to do with and tons of green beans, too. We’ve also got pumpkins starting to turn orange, four different kinds of tomatoes, jalapenos, green onions, red onions, okra, watermelons, cataloupe, two different kinds of cucumbers and some lettuce that has survived the hot weather. Soon, I’ll be planting broccoli, cabbage, more radishes, carrots, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. Our corn was completely decimated by the sqirrels, so we’ll try that again next year. I don’t know what they did with the corn. There weren’t any ears yet, but they gnawed the corn stalks off about two inches off the ground. We started out with forty-five plants and ended up with four. I finally tried red pepper on the corn that was left, as I heard it might work. C said he said saw one of the squirrels running away from the corn squeaking and jumping in the air. We haven’t seen any squirrels in the garden since, so I guess it worked. We actually got a permit to shoot them from DNR, but they disappeared for the entire month that the permit was good for. A few days after it expired, they came and killed it all. Now, I’ve never shot an animal and I’m not sure I ever could, but I was so angry about the corn that I thought I might be able to. Even A, who wants to save all the animals in the world, was using a slingshot, trying to whack the squirrel that we had chased up a tree. I think we might have better luck next year. We just got a beautiful black lab puppy named Diesel. I don’t think he’ll mind chasing squirrels for us. Also, we need a fence next year. I had to replant green beans because the deer seem to find them irresistible and ate them down to nubby stems.

The kids are having a great summer, swimming at friends houses and playing manhunt (a nighttime version of hide and seek) almost every night. I feel bad for R. There aren’t any kids in the neighborhood that are even close to her age.

In chicken news, we have finished the coop, at least until we have to insulate it this fall. The chickens should be laying their first eggs around the beginning of August. I can’t wait!

That’s all for now!

Setting up twitter

admin — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:29:01 +0000

Setting up twitter

Daring Hill Adventures

john — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:47:31 +0000

After puttering around the driveway and the street outside I was ready to take the bike down the hill and toward a real road.

Background:
I live on Daring Hill Ln. It’s called Daring Hill rightly so. It’s a significantly steep dirt/gravel hill up to the road that levels out and then round the corner to my house. So going down and then back up the hill was giving me a little concern.

The experience going down the hill was perfect yesterday. I turned the bike around and plowed back up the hill with no problems at all. It was a very happy moment that I didn’t have any problems going down or up the hill. I feel somewhat silly for being concerned but for not being on a street bike in almost 14 years it can pass it off for that. If it was a dirt bike I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

Anyways today I got home from work changed pants and grabbed my gear and pulled the bike out of the garage to go for a ride. This was my first on street adventure with the new bike. So I went down the hill and down the road to a real paved road. By the way, we live a little over a mile off of a paved real road.

When I got to the end of dirt and to the beginning of pavement another biker was coming from my left. I was waiting and as normal I got the friendly wave. I waved back as he passed and started out onto the paved road. As I did so I stalled the bike! Yes I stalled it on my first outing to the pavement. I’m still getting used to the clutch and the “friction zone” so in time and practice I won’t do that. I can drive a stick-shift car/truck second nature now but I remember back when I first started and how many times I did the herky-jerky and stalled it out.

I take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation Beginner Riders Course on Wed/Thur/Sat/Sun and hopefully I’ll do well with that and get my full motorcycle endorsement. Right now I’m riding on a permit which allows sunrise to sunset which is actually really cool.

Happy birthday to me!

john — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:10:20 +0000

Well June 16th was my 29th birthday. Yes still young but I still feel very old.

I got a lot of great presents from the kids and Erin gave me the best of all. In fact I have a picture of it….. No, not that. We talked and agreed that I could get a motorcycle. It’s been years… over 10 to be exact since I’ve ridden a street motorcycle. I’ve been on dirt bikes since but not a street bike. So before and during and after my birthday I was shopping and looking and sitting and thinking and looking and sitting and thinking… You get the point.

Well, I decided on a Yamaha V-Star 650 Custom. I was thinking of getting the 1100 but I thought twice about it since it’s been a long time since I’ve been on a bike I didn’t want to be stupid and start off to big again and the 650 gets better gas mileage and that’s one of the big points. Park my big truck and start riding a motorcycle to work.

So, here’s some pictures of the birthday and some of the motorcycle.

Here is the picture of the half-eaten cake on my birthday. Notice there are candles in it but it’s already eaten??? Hahahaha well father’s day and my birthday are generally back to back. We didn’t have enough candles so there’s 20 candles and a big 9 from Conner’s birthday. There’s Rowan giggling in the picture

And here’s a picture of the bike with the kids posing… notice Conner’s “I’m cool” look and stance…. Yeah he’ll be a biker

The Great Society: Introduction

john — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:00:29 +0000

I’m going to begin a series outlining how great this society is and what we have become. However as I don’t have the time at the moment to write up a complete part 1 to the series I will post this brief introduction with the link of the day.

Technology has in many ways improved our lives and in many ways made our lives worse. It has made people more inteligent with free access to information, and it has made people stupid with the inability to operate basic machinery. So here is the link to the woman that couldn’t unlock her car door… FROM THE INSIDE OF THE CAR……

http://www.kutv.com/content/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=89d59491-3910-45c2-9643-3a2fd9347606

And we actually let these types of people DRIVE CARS…. I’m amazed really. She can operate a cell phone but not use a manual lever to unlock her car door. Simply amazing.

Slow Internet

john — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:29:17 +0000

Today I have to rant about how bad internet options are out where we live. Currently our internet connection is from an AT&T LaptopConnect card. Specifically it’s a Sierra Wireless 875U (USB wireless modem).

The connection from this card is so-so… The speed is better than a 56K dial up modem but not by much. A lot of the time I actually think the modem would be faster. The reliability of this card or AT&T service, not sure which stinks! It drops connections a lot and the speed goes from slow to worse all of the time.

Usability within different OS’s is interesting. Currently the card is connected to a Linux box acting as a DHCP server and Internet facing router for my home network. The card works fine under Linux using native kernel drivers. The configuration is as simple as any other modem and the ppp connection just works. The card works just as well under Windows XP which is what my work laptop runs. But the funny thing as with most things is that it doesn’t work at all under Windows Vista. Others have reported that it works but nothing I have done will get the card to work under Vista. The software installs, the drivers load everything looks like it should work. I hit the connect button and it says it’s connected but there’s absolutely NO data traffic. I sniff the connection and there isn’t anything come or going through the connection. Oh well the Linux box can continue running as a router for now.

I did buy a modem the other day but it wouldn’t even power on so I returned it. I may get another one and set it up as a backup just to have when AT&T decides not to work.

Everyone asks what about cable or DSL? Well it’s just not available out here yet. So I’ve looked into Satelite but that is so expensive just to get setup with the upfront purchase of the equipment and such. Plus they have Fair Access Policies (FAP) which means you only get a certain amount of bandwidth per day or with some per month. So for me it may or may not be useful since I do a lot on the internet. I know for sure I couldn’t actually download much of anything certainly not a Linux ISO that would blow the FAP immediately.

Yes, I’ve thought of getting a T1 to the house, but at $500 a month I can’t quite justify that. Not yet anyways and no my work won’t pay for it, I tried that as well

Sprint has their EV-DO service half a mile from my house… which really sucks! That would be great to have at this point. I’ve did sign up and buy an adapter to see if I could get it but the signal just didn’t reach me. I’ve thought about trying again and buying a booster and antenna to try and see if that works, but then again that’s several hundred dollars for a boost and antenna just to see if something works and if it doesn’t the hassle of returning everything if they will take it back.

So in the meantime I live in internet purgatory….

Time since updates…

john — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:52:45 +0000

It’s been a long time in between updates. Here’s somewhat of a status of what’s been going on.

Got tractor… it’s helped a lot in clearing out the soon to be garden area. The area is clear and mostly clean and we are beginning to plant.

Corn has been planted

Giant Pumpkins have been planted

The chickens have gotten larger and their house is 99% complete. I still need to add nesting boxes and put a hinged cover over one of the windows to get access to the nesting boxes. Will be done soon but the chickens aren’t yet laying and won’t for a few months.

On the same subject of the chickens Erin has decided to try the “free ranging” method and now for two days the chickens have been running free. They are enjoying it eating up the greens and the bugs.