Trimming Shrubs

One of my “to do” items for the summer is going to be ripping out the barberry bushes in front of the house.  But until I can get it done, I need to get them at least trimmed back.  Right now they are totally out of control, so I spent about 5 hours today with the shears cutting them back (and the yews and arbor vitaes too).  WOW!  I got two yard bags full of branches.  And I also found out that after cutting some of the stuff back, there are a lot of dead spots, and now that I cut things back, they are pretty visible.

There must have been a rabbit that was living under one of the arbor vitaes because there is a great big spot with missing boughs/branches that you can see now.  It makes me wonder if I should really dig out the barberries now.  Overall, the trimming they got is the equivalent to giving a hippie a crew cut.  Now I just need to block out some time to cut them off at the trunk and dig out the roots.

Patchwork

In my ongoing efforts to preserve my driveway, it was time to get out the crack and hole patch and start filling in spots before attempting to reseal everything.  This year, in pulling out all the loose chunks of blacktop, I managed to open up quite a few large holes.  I just use the trowel grade hole filler, which is really nothing more than a sand mixture in some sort of oil that will allow it to be spread like peanut butter.  One year, I may just do the whole driveway in that stuff.  Or… Maybe it is time to rip the whole thing out and replace it with concrete.  Next year will be 20 years that I have been working at trying to patch it up good enough to make it thru another winter, and one of these years I am just going to have to suck it up and tear it out.  But for now, I will try and get another year out of it.

Samsung Sucks!

We started having trouble with our TV a couple of months ago.  It has progressively gotten worse.  In an attempt to troubleshoot, I went thru all of the online FAQs and help menus, read thru the manual, and found nothing.  So I turned to Samsung directly.  I clicked the "Contact Us" link from the help page and sent them a long email describing in detail what the problem was that we have been experiencing.  The site said I would receive a response in 48 hours.  Well they lied.  I even waited an extra 48 hours before trying to contact them again, and again I got no response.  I even went to their community forums on the Samsung website and posted my problem in the help forum, hoping to get a reply from someone at Samsung.  Nope.  Nothing.  For purposes of shaming the company, this is what I wrote:

I have a Samsung 55" LED TV, Model UN55D6420 that was purchased in 2012.  About a month ago I started experiencing an issue where the power would suddenly turn off and then back on.  At first it would shut off, and then try to turn back on, making the "clicking" sound when the TV is normally turned on, cycling a couple of times, eventually coming back on.  It would happen intermittently but usually would only last 20 seconds or so.  Recently is has been happening more frequently and for longer periods of time (today it took roughly 6 hours for the power to come on).  When it is going thru this "cycling" the only way to get it to stop is to pull the power cable and let the residual power drain as it cycles another 2 or 3 times.  Usually I will let it sit unplugged for a few minutes and then plug it back in, where it may come back on, or it may continue the "cycling".  When ti cycles, the red LED in the corner when the TV is off, will click and go off, then after a few seconds, it flashes a couple of times, then clicks and starts the process over again.  I have let the process continue as long a 30 minutes without the picture ever coming back on.

I have tried all the suggestions listed on the forum, changing outlets, unplugging all other peripherals (cable box, Blu-Ray, etc.), left the TV unplugged for some time (as much as 4 hours), made sure all the software was updated, reset to the factory settings, etc.  and yet the problem persists.  Also, when the TV is going thru this "cycling", none of the other buttons will work, either on the remote, nor on the side/back of the TV, which is why I have to pull the plug to give it a rest if it doesn't come back on right away.

I have tried searching for solutions online and don't see many simple options, and I really don't want to crack the back on my own and start poking around.  I really like the TV, and other than this powering off and on, I have had no problems with it.  Any suggestions short of having to spend more money on a new TV?

Pretty straightforward right?  And not even a reply saying they didn't know, or they would need to have the TV brought in to a service center to be reviewed before making a guess at what might be wrong.

I even took to Twitter to try shaming them, and got no response.  Maybe that is why they are losing market share?  If this is how they treat people who already have purchased their products, how do they ever expect to win over people who haven't purchased a Samsung before.  I can tell you I won't be buying another Samsung product... EVER... AGAIN!  YOU SUCK SAMSUNG!

Donating Blood

One of the things I like to do is donate blood whenever I can.  I have been blessed with pretty good health, so as many chances as I can I will sign up for local blood drives.  We don’t have many opportunities to make a difference in this world but this is one small thing I can to do help people.

So for the last week or so, I have been getting messages from the Red Cross about an upcoming blood drive that was being held at the public library.  I have learned that they usually have spots filled all day and if you wanted to just walk in off the street, a lot of the time you are not able to do so, or you end up waiting forever, so I try to register ahead of time.  This one I wasn’t sure I could do because of work, but a couple days before I found out I wouldn’t have a problem getting there to donate, so I went to the Red Cross website to register.

Well apparently the Red Cross doesn’t want me to donate.  Why you might ask?  Because when I try to log in to register for a time, I am told that my password doesn’t work.  I don’t know why it wouldn’t work since I have used it plenty of times in the past, but I figured, OK, I’ll just click “I Forgot My Password”.  I am taken to a page that says I am being emailed a temporary password however, that email never shows up.  I have been waiting for two days now, and the blood drive is tomorrow, which means I can in no way go donate blood now.  As soon as I finish posting this, I will be sending a nasty email to the Red Cross blasting them for apparently not wanting my blood, and see what they have to say.

Samsung's Last Leg

As has been previously reported, the Samsung 55” has been acting up.  I hadn’t seen any problems for a week or so, but yesterday when I turned it on in the morning, it wouldn’t power up; it just did the on-off clicking thing.  This continued for about an hour and a half until I left for work.  IN that time I must have pulled the plug 5 or 6 times and then tried turning it back on, but never had any luck.  The girls were gone all day and they had unplugged it in the morning before they left, so when Kris got home she plugged it back in, and it still took about 20-25 minutes until the picture finally came up.

Now this morning, I turned it on when I got up to see the news, and after about 5 minutes, the picture went blank and it started doing the on-off clicking.  It lasted about an hour, and a few different cycles of pulling the plug.  The picture finally came back for about a minute, then disappeared again.  After about another 15 minutes, it came back, but by then I was leaving for work, so I just shut it off.  Hopefully it will work later tonight, but I think it may be time to go look and see about getting a replacement.  The only good thing is that a model identical to the one we have now is about 50% of what this one cost brand new.  Though I don’t know if I would go with a Samsung again.  I know that our Amazon Prime Video will not work with it, and with the problems they have had with their phones, it just seems like it might not be the best idea to get another one.  

Summer To Do List

I am starting the summer to do list around the house, and there is lots to do.  Since we got the patio blocks sealed and the fence washed (at least the bad side), the next thing (and probably easiest) is to get the gutters and aluminum trim around the windows cleaned.  For whatever reason, that stuff just seems to pick up dirt like a magnet, and I don’t think I have ever really scrubbed them down.  I may have just sprayed them when cleaning the siding, but never gone all out to get the gutters and trim a bright white again.  Plus, the caulk I used around the windows a few years ago when it was cracking is “paintable” which means it picks up dirt.  Other windows that didn’t need the caulk redone looks like it is silicone and not paintable so it is still shiny white.

Kris looked up the best way to clean gutters and found something that said Simple Green, undiluted, works well.  I also found some “Super Clean” cleaner is even better.  I actually used a mixture of both, and it seems to have worked very well.  It took the dark, dirt deposits right off and brightened everything up.  It also helped clean the mess stuck to the lights and siding on the garage from the robin’s nest that was there for a month.  It didn’t do much for the white, paintable caulk though.  SO I still need to look into how to scrub that.  It may take actually getting some white latex paint and actually painting it.  But that is going to be a last resort.

Creepy Weird Dude Down The Street

Kris and I were driving home, last week (I forget where we were coming from) around 6:00 or so, and as we were coming up our road, I saw this weird looking dude walking across his front yard (I assume it was his house, I don’t know everyone who lives on our street, especially those down the block toward Village Park) toward the street.  My first thought was that he was going to cross the street, so I slowed down a bit to let him cross.  He then also slowed his walk, so I thought he must be waiting for me.  I sped back up, at which point he decided to speed up his gait.  It got to the point where the guy walked out into the street, just missing walking into the car.  I tossed my hands up like “What the hell, dude??!!” and as I passed him, he steps out into the middle of the road and in my rear view mirror I can see he is flipping me off and yelling something.  He then walks back toward the front of his house.

I should also point out, that the guy was not wearing a shirt, had his upper body all tatted up, his head was shaved, and he looked like he was all of about 120 or 130 pounds.  Both Kris and I figured he was high on something.  He looked sort of like a skinhead, or actually probably more like a meth addict, actually.  It was just very bizarre.

Then as we were driving down Jacobson past that house again with the girls in the car, I happened to mention something about it to Sarah because her friend’s uncle lives down there and I wanted to know which house was his and she told us that the same thing happened to her.  The creepy guy in question lives next door to him, and one day as Sarah was coming home, the dude came out into the street, almost running at her car.  I told her that I didn’t want her driving down that way anymore, because who knows if he’ll actually run into the car and get hit, or attack her car, or something even worse.  The guy’s house (again, I assume it is his house) is something like you would expect in white trash heaven.  Cars parked on the lawn in the front, grass is never cut, if there is any grass because the cars and other crap that is always on the lawn kills it all.  I am not sure if anything can be done about it.  I don’t think I can call the cops or report anything to the Village.  I know I wouldn’t want to live down there for sure, because he’d definitely drop my property value.

Air Force One

My mom came up to WI today to pick up my niece and take her back to Florida with her for a week or so.  But this also meant she needed to be picked up from the airport.  A couple of weeks earlier, we had coordinated going to get her after work, and then my brother would come down to pick her up from my house.  Well that was all before I knew that the President was going to be in Milwaukee on Tuesday. 

He was out in Waukesha at WCTC touting technical skills education so it didn’t dawn on me until we were leaving for the airport that there may be roads shut down for the motorcade.  After his appearance, he was driving downtown for a fundraiser, but still didn’t think it was going to be a problem until we were going thru the Marquette interchange and a Sherriff’s car/SUV drove past as we were getting onto 794.  It pulled over to the side just before the exit that would have taken you downtown.  So apparently they were getting ready for the motorcade.  Then later as we were going down 794 toward Layton, the traffic report on the radio said something about traffic being tied up along the President’s route (they couldn’t say where exactly for obvious security reasons).

When we were driving around the airport to get in line to pick up my mom, I looked out over the runways and thought, oh yeah, there’s Air Force One.  Kris pooh-poohed me, but it was the President’s airplane.  Yeah, I know it isn’t a big deal, but that is about as close to the President as I’ll ever get, so it was sort of cool to see it sitting on the tarmac. 

As we were leaving for home, we did drive past a few police/sheriff’s cars with their lights on and barricades near the entrance ramps back on to 794, so it looked as if they were starting to prep for the motorcade coming back to the airport from the fundraiser.  Luckily we didn’t have to deal with the President’s motorcade, or that would have really gotten us in a traffic mess.

Feral Cats?

While I was busy cleaning the fence I managed to find the carcasses of two more dead birds.  They were in the same general area as the one I found a couple of days ago, so many they were all killed at about the same time?  They were both sparrows too, which makes me think that they were all whacked at once.  Just like the original one, it looks like something got at them because their heads were pretty well beat up and their necks looked twisted almost all the way around.  Maybe someone has a cat that they are letting roam the neighborhood.  I did see a cat in the backyard last fall that apparently belongs to someone a couple of blocks away.  At the time it was crouching watching the birds at our feeders, so maybe it finally figured out the best place to sit and stalk them.  Now I will have to keep an eye out, because I really don’t like the idea of a stray, or some other cat roaming around in my yard!

Washing The Fence

Since I am getting caught up with all the items on my to do list around the house, it was time to finally wash the fence.  I had done the side facing the house and yard a couple of years ago, and it took me a whole day to finish, which may be why I put it off as long as I did.  The side of the fence facing the neighbors on the original length we put in has never been done, or at least never been fully done.  I tested out some fence cleaning spray a couple of years ago on the first couple of sections.  But the remainder was still a mess.  There was dirt, moss, and mildew (at least I think it was mildew, maybe it was mold?) all over the panels.  So it really was about time it got done.  A bottle of simple green, and the remainder of the fence cleaner along with a scrub brush and about 3-4 hours took care of everything.  So now the neighbors don’t have to look at a disgusting panel of blech!  It could be worse though, because there is a house behind us that actually had a couple of their panels rot totally thru, which is another reason I am glad we chose to go with the vinyl fencing instead… It doesn’t rot and cleans rather easily.

Happy Anniversary

Today marks 22 years since Kris decided to be my wife.  In that time we’ve had a several cats, raised two kids, sent one off to college, had loved ones pass away, had and various job changes, some voluntary, some not, and other ups and downs.  It really has been “for better or worse” over those 22 years.  It has been some time since I posted a Happy Anniversary message, mainly because Kris doesn’t like them.  But this year, it is just going to be a “Thank you for being my wife”.  I wanted to get a picture, but that meant having one of the girls take it, and since they were both too selfish and whiny to do it, only the message gets posted (and a public shaming of my children).

Happy Anniversary!  Thank you for 22 wonderful years!

Last Day Hooray!

Today is Alison’s last day of Freshman year.  It was pretty good for her.  She ended up getting mostly A’s (She has one B+ in Biology) and she got to go to Nationals for cheer.  It is weird though only having her picture to take, and not Sarah.  I had completely forgotten to tell her to make sure we got a picture, so it is a good thing that Sarah was home to take one for us.  Only three more last days to go!  

Dead Bird

I was going around in the backyard making sure all the bird’s suet feeders were full and I came across the carcass of a dead bird in the back corner of the yard.  It was a small bird and at first I thought it was one of the baby robins that had just flown out of the nest last week.  But as I got closer I realized it was too small to be a robin.  The next thought was that it was a baby that fell out of a nest, so I looked up and there were no branches hanging over the spot where it was laying.  I went to get a small shovel to scoop it up (because I didn’t want to handle a bird carcass with my bare hands) and I realized that it was a sparrow.  As it was sitting in the shovel, I could see that the bird’s neck was turned around sort of ripped open and a little bit bloody.  Based on that, I thought it must have been a cat.  But it also makes me wonder, if it was a cat, why wouldn’t it have been torn apart, or half eaten?  Strange.  I’ll have to keep an eye out and see if we do have a cat roaming around, or if it might be something else.

Trampoline Is Up

After a lot of nagging by Alison, I finally got the trampoline set up for the summer.  One of the problems had to do with the wet spring we had this year.  Once the trampoline goes up, I have to move it around every couple of days so it doesn’t kill the grass.  But on top of that, when Ali and her friends bounce on it, they drive the legs/supports into the ground.  With the wet spring, this would have cause some serious ruts in the back yard.  You wouldn’t see it per se, but when cutting the grass, it would be like running the mover over a dirt road with all the bumps.  So I try to wait until the ground is drying out a little bit before assembling it.

So with that being said, it went up pretty easy, and I even dragged Alison into helping me put it together.  I did have to run and get a few new sheet metal screws and external star washers for keeping things together, but once I did, it was went together pretty quickly.  I had made a note of some things that I will need to replace on it, such as the pad that goes over the springs, and the foam pads that go on the supports.  The padding on the supports I can replace with pool noodles and just cut them down to the size I need for about $1 each rather than paying the cost of replacements from the manufacturer.  I also need to replace the safety net.  The year before, a squirrel managed to fall on the mat and was unable to figure out how to get out, so it chewed a hole thru the netting.  It will work for now, but I will eventually need to get it replaced.  I also noticed some of the springs are starting to get stretched out and should probably get replaced when I have a few extra $$$ to get them.  Over all I don’t think they are too expensive.  They come in packs of six, so as long as I don’t replace them all at once, it shouldn’t be too expensive.

Resealing Bricks

It was a rough winter last year.  What that means is that I have to reseal the patio blocks again.  There were a few that due to shoveling snow and ice forming in the low spots ended up scraping off the layers of sealant that I put on last year.  I also don’t want to let them go to the point where, like last year, I have to pull all 150 blocks out, scrub them to remove dirt and moss, and them lay them back down before resealing.  I did make an effort to pull a few blocks up that had settled and formed some low spots.  I also wanted to make sure all the ones up against the garage foundation were graded so that water didn’t pool.  Finally, I wanted to make sure that the gaps on the retaining bricks were consistent.

That only took a couple of days this year. As opposed to a couple of weeks last year.  So once that was done, we got out the sealer and went to town.  Oh, and I should also point out that I also needed to replace A LOT of the locking sand between the blocks.  For whatever reason, we lost a lot of that over the winter.  Although some of it was also gone last fall.  The ants sure do a number on that stuff, even after having it sealed with the patio blocks.

Of course, I notice after everything is done that there are a few spots (about 4 or 5) where it looks like water is going to pool. If it weren’t for the fact that it would be more of a pain in the butt to rip everything out and just have grass there, I would just rip everything out and try planting grass.  Maybe I can rig up some sort of drainage system to get rid of any standing water.  Come wintertime, ice and snow are going to settle there and just make everything as bad as it was this year and I’ll be ripping them up to try and re-level them again anyway.