Gang Aft Agley

I really need to keep up with these. They are all taken from the foot of our driveway, or at our mailbox.

We got the tractor started, new Battery and more gas was all it took. First lap around and I got it stuck in mud. Keigan and I stuffed wood under the back wheels and I tried to back out. No luck but you can send wood flying quite high from the tires. After about 10 minutes, I thought to use the frontloader to push backwards at the same time as I tried to move and that did it we were free and clear of the mud. Keigan hopped on my lap and we took the tractor up onto the railroad tracks and started mowing that strip. After a full pass down the tracks and back, Caden was asking for a turn, so Keigan took Mariposa back to the house and Caden hopped on. Halfway down I noticed that one side of the deck was elevated, and not cutting. Trying to get the deck back level, I noticed that a screw that held it was not engaged fully, and trying to turn it had no affect, it would go in just far enough to pop out again, so we lowered the side of the deck that was in the air, and cut the grass at an angle, opposite of the slope of the ground, so that looking at it, and assuming the grass was even heights you would assume we were in the valley instead of the peak. At the far end as I turned the tractor around, while backing up I managed to get the back corner of the mowing deck stuck in the ground. On the cinder bed of the tracks the tires quickly dug in and left us stuck. Caden went back to the house and Keigan came out to help me. First we needed to get the jack down to the end of the tracks. Teddy’s battery was run down so we had to jump it with the caravan, then we could load up teddy with tools and several boards to place under the tractor once we got it up in the air. Keigan is getting to be quite a pro at using the jack, we have been removing extraneous posts from around the yard. We jacked up the tractor, and slid two large boards under the rear wheels, and tried to back up. we managed to slide the tractor sideways a little, but were no closer to having it usable, we were now in smaller holes, I stopped the gas sooner this time. Jacking up the tractor and repeating several more times left us in the same situation, just a tad to the left of our starting position, and tempers were not quite even at this point. Several trips back to the barn in teddy and we had all the tools we needed to remove the mowing deck from the rear of the tractor, as this was the part that was sticking into the ground. The last two bolts holding the deck on were well rusted, though not threaded, just a cotter pin on the end. A liberal spraying of WD-40 and a rubber mallet seemed to be in order. The last thing Keigan remembers hearing is "Watch your feet!" and then I hit the tractor with the mallet and dropped the deck onto my toes. After a few minutes of hopping around and telling him my foot hurt we got back to work. Which included a trip into town for more gas for the tractor, it seems to have about a 7 gallon tank, and I had given it less than a gallon earlier, being all that we had on hand. After refuelling, S came down the tracks to check on our progress mowing the south meadow, We hadnt got that far yet, thought it was now dinnertime. She drove Teddy back down the tracks while Keigan and I drove the tractor, easily moved without the deck slowing us down. Tune in tomorrow for our next exciting adventure in which the schoolbus is moved and the tractor is reassembled.

Who knew Septic tanks were such a problem?
Certainly not I, growing up in the Chicago suburbs, but our new house has two tanks. One in the front yard, that is hooked up to the downstairs bathroom, including the washing machine. The second tank is in the back and it holds the kitchen and upstairs bathrooms waste. The problem first manifested ( to our Knowledge) about a week ago, when I had to plunge the toilet. Not an uncommon occurrence when you have small children, my mom loves to tell stories of the time I used the toilet to rinse my play tea set, and we had to call a plumber to remove it. After plunging the toilet I considered it done and started the wash, big mistake. When I came back in to the house a little while later, solid waste was floating across the floor. Shop vac and scrubbing with bleach water took care of that small problem, until later that evening, when I found that the bathtubs overflow drain was plugged up with more of the same. Luckily the tub was draining at that point, and I could clean it up easily. Off and on through the week I have had to use the plunger to get the system moving again, luckily no more overflows, but still not something you want to do on a daily basis. we have tried Liquid Plumber and others, even though they say not to use another brand. I was getting desparate. How does this tie into Septic Tanks, I had no clue, but I have since learned that they need to be pumped out every few years to keep functioning, and a full tank exhibits the same behavior as we were experiencing. Ok when was it last cleaned, last year, so that seems to rule that out, but a call to the landlord, gives us a clue, and forces him to get involved. The leach line ( explanation ) had been crushed at some point and he had repaired it, or so he thought. His guess is that the water is still not leaving fast enought so that it is backing up into the house. 7:00 am this morning a plumber came by to look at the land and see where a new leach line can go, I believe the plan is to circle around the house with it and send it out past the orchard into the pasture land behind. Saving as many trees as possible but it makes a good excuse to clean out some of the smaller trees that have come up in the last few years. Hopefully the apple and pears can be saved, though if it comes down to it, I would rather lose them and start over than have waste floating around the bathroom on a weekly basis.

Status at the end of the week. It doesnt seem to be the coding that is causing the problem. Upgraded versions of the MDAC components and the connection still fails, though it doesnt hang up the machine when it does. Now we are looking at Networking issues. Only problem with that is I suggested that 4 weeks ago as the problem, and I was told it had to be an error in the code that I didn’t write but must maintain. In the meantime I have learned how to use a wide array of performance monitoring tools, and spent a long time reading log files looking for patterns in the occurrrences. I have now sent the network monitorring files off to microsoft. End of week status same as last week, we know a little more about what is not causing it but dont know what is.

All gone at this point.