Thursday, July 17, 2025

Ughh, I don't want to do all these adult things

 FB finally activated my room share ad.   They show it as active since April 10.  I haven't renewed it yet, someone messaged me about it.   Looking for place for himself, wife and 5 month old baby and wanting to know if it would work.   How would I know what is needed for an infant?  I messaged that it probably would work, but no bathtub,  I think it is nice to have a tub for baby baths, but when they are tiny you can probably just use a basinet or whatever.   

American National sent a notice on raising insurance.  50% rate hike from what I thought was too much last year.   So I went looking for average costs and ended up filling out a form to get quotes and pushy agents are trying to call me now.   NO, leave a tex message or email me as I requested.    Progressive immediately put me into their own site, collected a bunch of data and gave me a quote.  It's not much liability but was about 5K,  around what I paid American National last year.    I will have to call Liberty Mutual and see if they can give me a quote.   I'd rather just sell and move, but walking away from the job just to save 4-7K a year on home insurance doesn't make sense.   But I when I retire or the job goes away I need to sell and move.  Average insurance in WY or NV is 1500.  It's over 3K in ND, but they do get some serious hail sometimes there, and ND probably has some rather socialist regulations for insurance too.  I'm sure the commie, or fascist BS is a big part of what is making CO insurance so stupidly expensive.  

Part of me thinks I could just not have home owners insurance at all.  I suppose that is not the wisest choice, but there is no mortgage and if the house was destroyed  I would sell the land and move, or at most put in a modest size modular house.   I feel like I'm being bullied by the liberal wine moms in the state that have voted in all kinds of "build the house back even if the owner didn't adjust their valuation on their policy to cover current building costs,  always err on the side of the bum that is suing because they tripped on the *rich* person's sidewalk etc etc and have made everything so expensive here.  

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

I am NOT a data engineer

Or whatever the correct term is.   But of course I end up playing that role because I AM kind of OCD, wanting to understand why something failed and prevent a repeat failure and the rest of the team is either stretched way too thin, or makes it their policy to never ever take on any damn task that is not specifically assigned to them by the boss.   I hate that mindset; but the big boss is a great one for keeping the group understaffed; and not really appreciating it when people go above and beyond their spelled out duties, which of course tends to increase the lazy mindset. 

And then we get the other part of the overall group that just installs shit willy nilly instead of going through our software process and team and end up breaking things.   We need to find a way to force them to only install in their own areas instead of messing up our /ops/tools areas.

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Frosty the mini horse had a bad colic and had to be euthanized Monday

My farrier is all about "just use a bullet instead of the poison to euthanize" and when Frosty was colicky Monday morning I thought "I will give him a dose of banamine and if that doesn't work I will just put him down myself.   But when the banamine was wearing off and Frosty was wanting to roll again that afternoon I waffled and just called my vet.   Being a mini, he could not do a rectal and confirm that the colon was displaced.    Could have tried tubing in warm water after giving Frosty more drugs but the odds of that working are very low so the call was just put Frosty down while Dr Mike was here instead of trying the Hail Mary and having to have him come back out in a few hours; and Frosty being not comfortable even with some drugs in his system for most of that time period.  

Sunday I did the fun ride at HJ and then drove home.   Tuesday I had hay delivered.  The neighbor that I had hired to haul and stack it in the hay barn with his loader just brought the loader over Monday and dug the grave for me.   He didn't ask for extra money over his hay delivery fee and his wife had done chores for me and was all "oh you don't have to pay me" as well.   I gave him an extra $250 over his hauling quote.   That was probably more than I needed to give him, but it's not free to run a big loader like his; and I wanted to give them some for the time doing chores while I was gone. 

The horses like the new hay pretty well, thankfully.   I normally would have wanted to buy a test bale before committing to a years worth of hay but I was feeling too short on time so I just trusted it would be fine based on good reviews on FB marketplace.  

I don't "want" to do the work but I want to get my weeds sprayed and should mow the horse pasture, all the rye grass is dried out now.  

Friday, June 20, 2025

I am buying 54 3x3-8 bales of hay sight unseen.

 I was on the fence on getting hay from my, and formally dad's regular grower this year and was very wishy washy in my emails to him.  I thought I had said in the end that I would take up to 4 stacks if he had that many for sale and he thought I had passed on buying from him this year.     I was so wishy washy because even his last years hay with excellent rain timing had some stalky bales and 2 years ago when it kept raining in June and he had to bale very late the hay was very stalky and I ended up with a messy paddock when the horses used the stalky bits as bedding instead of food.  

So I bought 8 bales of hay yesterday on our Juneteenth holiday from one guy.  His hay was not tarped or anything.   I wasn't sure the horses would like it, they did, but it would have been tough to find time to go get more today and then he has more still to bale but I was thinking that what is not baled yet will be stalky.   I am going to an endurance ride this weekend with B's horse Taj and will do the 10 mile fun ride on Sunday. 

I was thinking I need a semi load of hay and the neighborhood gal who volunteered to do my chores came with her DH this morning and I remembered he hauls livestock and asked if he also hauls hay.  He does, and there is an ad for nice horse hay in Wiggins that is just a small percentage of alfalfa.   So I made the deal to get that hay w/o even looking at it and set up for him to deliver and stack it for me too.  

If the horses don't like it I guess my pasture will get some mulch, maybe with some grass seed and I'll just be buying some extra pellets and beet pulp this year for the harder keepers. 

P.S. it was over 100 today.  But I got the BAT hooked up so I can get an early start tomorrow.   I still need to load Taj's saddle, get hay for him for the short camping bit, etc but I am inching towards being ready.  I *can* do this and I need to get away from this place for bit, maybe I can find somebody to ride with a couple times a month.  

P.P.S.  the potential house mate ghosted me.  I guess that is the term.  I thought we had a handshake agreement that he was moving in on Father's Day weekend and when he was here I did say he could borrow one of my vehicles if his truck was still in probate limbo.   (I had initially told him he needed a personal vehicle).   But he never got back to me.  I texted him Friday or Saturday that weekend and asked him to let me know if he had found a better fit for his needs but he didn't reply to that text.    

Thursday, June 12, 2025

My BAT is in the shop

Getting the bumper fixed where the bolts had failed and the metal piece was bending and making a gap.
This local guy will also pull the wheels and repack the bearing and fix some of the fender and running board pieces where they had failed.   

I'm an idiot.  The guy that fixed my pickup trailer plugs did not have the in box connection right.  I must have noticed no brake lights with that plug last fall and just plugged the trailer into the bumper plug.  But I forgot that and the mis-wiring was such that the brakes were engaging when I was backing up.  I didn't think about it being the brakes when I went to take the trailer to the shop and just put in 4WD low and forced it back.   Hope I didn't damage too much.   He caught it right away when I went to back it up at his place.    

Now I can at least haul the horse and camp.   I should find someone to fix the LQ, it has a leaking water hose and the floor boards rotted because I didn't catch the leak. but I can rough it with the plywood over the soft spot and not using the water tank.   

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Hopefully the mower will start this morning

 It started right up for me yesterday but the gas tank has a tiny leak, probably a hose connection is not tight.  Since I know gas will leak out I only put enough gas in it for one mowing session and last night it ran out.  It's on a slope and the bit of gas I put in it was not enough for it to fire up and get off of the slope, and then the battery was done cranking.    Could save myself frustration if I fixed the leak but I'm not positive that it's only a hose clamp and my to do list is always a yard long. 

I rode Tanza yesterday because he came up when I was trying to catch fat Sadie.   He was tender on the road, his feet are soft from all the rain we had so I couldn't tell if his hind fetlock was bothering, I think it was a bit.  I hope it will continue to heal and get to a point where I can take him trail riding.  Right now I feel like up and down hilly trails might be a bit much even just riding at a walk.  

I should ride Taj today,  I rode him 8 days ago and he was a good boy but he is getting out of shape.  I should have run to town and bought a wheelbarrow, and dropped off my old cart and some other scrap metal at the recycling place but it didn't happen. 

Saturday, June 7, 2025

Working 9 to 5

 9 to 5

Big boss had a meeting about the big reprocessing effort we will do and vetting of an update to a major program.   They didn't invite me, but they needed information from me so my supervisor was asking me questions on slack.   I offered to hop on the meeting but big boss was "not necessary."  Sometimes seems like that punk is scared of me.  I have got to a point where I speak my mind cuz I don't care if he takes offense and fires me.   I'm wired to try to be basically polite so I don't think I'm too out of control, but he's a wimp.   It suckec because I couldn't do something else cuz of having to have the typing only slack conversation and I think I still missed some information because big boss declined to have me just join the stinking meeting. 

Anyway "Big boss doesn't want to overburden you so we are having H do these tasks".   Riiiggghht, pull my other finger.   I have to write up exactly how she should do things in the ticket system cuz she will not figure things out on her own, ever; I could just have done it myself, would have taken just a tiny bit more of my time.   They must want to give H a promotion and need to pad her list of accomplishments is my guess of what is really going on, cuz I AM teaching the new hire how to do processing, I'm good with that,  new hire learns and figures some things out on her own and then writes up notes that checklist Charlie types like H can use.