Smooch!
Amanda Hugnkiss
Over a year ago, I picked up an 8 foot diameter satellite dish with plans to make a gazebo out of it. The plans of course only in my head. How I was going to do it, the location etc. constantly change since then. The other day I stopped at Home Depot and bought 6 steel fence posts I plan on using as legs for the structure.
We finally agreed on a location in the backyard. I've got it worked out in my head how to lay out the project so the legs are evenly spaced etc. So the project is starting to actually progress at least in that aspect. Raising the satellite dish and bolting it to the legs will be another issue. After that is done, I'll be pouring a concrete floor.
During the same period of time I've been mulling over what to use the gazebo for. The cook has expressed the request for a hot tub. I tend to agree. But my idea of a hot tub is a little different than what you might expect. I want to build a "green Hot tub".
Im thinking of using a oblong horse trough for the tub itself with insulation around it in a redwood frame. On the roof of the gazebo I'll coil some plastic tubing so it can use the sun to heat the water. Using gravity, it will be constantly be cycling the water slowly into the tank from the top, Using the pressure of the water in the tub and the negative pressure created by gravity fall of the water...it may just keep the water rather toasty on a hot day on into the evening.
For late night I'm thinking of passing the water that comes out of the tub through a copper coil of tubing mounted in the top of a wood fired fireplace. So the heat of the fireplace also can heat the circulateing water. Of course jet pumps would be out but I could hang a portable jacussi pump in the tank that's solar powered likely at least for short periods.
Anyway just an idea...check back in ten years when the hot tub actually works...I'll invite you over.
Nice day today for gardening. Was gonna put in another fence post today or two but decided it was time to put plants in front of the fence at my driveway entrance. I tried firing up the rototiller but it has set too long. So it was a shovel it day instead.
The soil here is red clay. I first ran the sprinkler on it for a while which made it a little easier. It took the cook and I a couple hours of shovelling to get the hole deep enough. We took turns. The hole ended up taking 3cu ft of growmulch and 3 cu feet of topsoil to fil it up.
A couple of years ago I had bought some Rose of Sharon bushes online and some Junipers from a local nersury. All still in pots until today. They finally got in the ground. Until today, I didn't have a clue where to put them.
For the finishing touches, I added some rocks from around the yard and threw down some cedar bark shavings. It won't be long until the Rose of Sharon gets leaves. They are sticks right now. If I remember right the blooms are purple. I spread the loose clay from the hole out in the alley.
Anyway, So I was filthy and decided to take a shower...Lexxy joined me and smells like coconuts now instead of like a regular dog...well almost.
Ok I should have been working but I had my camcorder with me and couldn't resist these pictures. I have a telephote lens on with no filters so it is not as clear as it could be. I am approximately 50 miles from Mt.Lassen from where I took these pictures. I have one of Mt Shasta and a couple misc. pics included.
Mt Lassen Late Afternoon
Mt Shasta in Aftenoon at 70 miles away
Misc Scenery
Went to Medford Oregon today to setup a laptop. Was a beautiful drive. Stopped on the way back and took a couple feet of video of the backside of Castle Craig State Park near Dunsmuir. I didn't have much time to play since it was getting dark.
Friday night I installed VMWARE on my PC and got Ubuntu and Vista Ultimate setup as virtual machines. Slept most of Saturday. Sunday I figured out why we couldn't access data on the Ubuntu Server from a Ubuntu Workstation like we could with Windows. It was so easy it eluded me. But now that is working, we(I) can worry about the printing problem.
Saw tons of snow today. Mt Shasta was under cloud cover but you know it's there when you drive by it as it's fairly ominous.
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I was reading a bit about Vista's Remote Desktop and got to thinking about Ubuntu Remote Desktop. I've been meanung to purchace a new KVM switch because the one I have is not working well with that machine. Anyway. a quick bit of googling solved the problem temporarilly.
The Ubuntu distro ships with a gnome-vnc server already pre-installed and on port 5900 like the default for VNC for Windows server. Took about 2 mintes to configure Ubuntu to allow it and enter a password. And another few seconds to download the free viewer from realvnc.com.and launch it and login.
Now I don't really need the KVM pretty much.
Also for road trips I can access it. but won't be all that usefull as VNC doesn't do file transfers. UltraVNC iz fer Winderz.
We got a second dose of snow yesterday. Kept up most of the day into the afternoon. Looked fairly nice also when the sun came out late afternoon. In the morning I opened up the backdoor and let the camera run while I went back in closer to the fire. By the time I finally left to go fix a computer the sock was almost empty. What you see here pretty much went on all day.
Look close and you can see the curious humming bird checking out the video camera.