15-October to 30-November, 2007
| Friday, November 30, 2007: The tree harvester came today, and I spent most of the day working alongside him to clear away debris. Since they lifted the burn ban (only 5 inches of rain this month) I went ahead and burned all the accumulated debris, and some of what we generated today, although there is a new burn pile location we established. I am going to try to eliminate two of the older locations, because we have now moved so far from where they are. I was also supposed to start getting my hay delivered today, but they called that off because they had to get cattle sorted out and delivered to the sale barn for tomorrow's auction. I still have six bales, so I can hold out until next week, but I think they are going to try to start delivery tomorrow anyway. |
| Thursday, November 29, 2007: I had to go today and get Kay's little Jeep Liberty fixed. The window regulator was bad, making it very hard for us to coax the window to close. This is especially problematic in the winter, and at highway speeds (which are naturally high in Texas). The service guy told me that they "had a problem with the regulators". If the have a problem with them, they should have to fix everybody's windows, instead of only when they break during warranty. So much for quality. Other than that, I have just been coasting. Playing around with learning software and keeping everybody fed are all that gets done when it is cold, although the weather this afternoon is just wonderful. |
| Tuesday, November 27, 2007: The weather has turned fairer in the last couple of days, while cold at night it has been sunny and mild by afternoon. We are now entering the time of year when only small chores attract me out of the house, and those necessary chores such as feeding and putting out hay. On the indoors front, I am exploring the Torque game engine, the torque script language, and miscellaneous 3D animation topics. While The Sims 2 game still has adherents, and I am still actively supporting my contributions to modding it, it appears that most of the active lifespan of the game is now behind it. New faces wanting to mod the game are rarer, and slowly many of the old hands are no longer active. Some are waiting for The Sims 3, others have moved on to who knows what. One thing though, I have a much better starting point for when The Sims 3 is released. I have no doubt it will be very different from The Sims 2, but I do not expect the 3D parts to be as different as TS2 was from the original Sims game. There has been steady but no revolutionary changes in basic 3D technology since TS2 was released. |
| Sunday, November 25, 2007: It has been several miserable wintry days here since I last posted. It has been cold, and we had over an inch of rain, leaving everything sloppy and muddy. So not just slogging through mud, but cold mud. The cattle need to be fed and hay put out on days like these more than on the nice days, so I have to keep on, after all, it was what I chose to do. The continued rains this month have topped off the stock tanks (ponds in non-Texas speak), but where I dug the waterlines in have become strips of soft muddy earth, and where I have to travel through the gate to put the hay out is fast becoming a bog. I am not highly concerned, because I can take a longer route and avoid the mess, but when it is cold and you're driving a tractor, sitting up high in the breeze, the cold just cuts through you. At least while I am putting out feed I stay active enough not to feel the cold. |
| Friday, November 23, 2007: Some people call this Black Friday because it is the start of the big retail Christmas season. I do not like the name, even though the black is a reference to a move from red ink for losses to black ink for profits. Black in all the rest of the contexts we use indicates bad news, not good. Regardless of what I think, the world will continue to do what it wants. I skipped a little journaling here because we had company for Thanksgiving. Pat and Mike, very longtime friends of Kay's drove here from Houston, spent two nights and shared in our Thanksgiving dinner. Mike and I talked over most of the world's problems, and this morning we spent some time target shooting. I used my recently purchased .22 pistol and worked on my aim, but he had brought two .223 rifles, a .22 magnum and a .45 pistol, all of which got a workout. I didn't count, but from the empty ammunition boxes and the size of the pile of shells we picked up, it was several hundred rounds. I continue to have fun learning how to work with the Torque Game Engine. I haven't done anything remarkable, but I have managed to make a number of changes to the demo game that ships with it, slowly learning which parts and commands yield what play effects. |
| Tuesday, November 20, 2007: It is Kay's birthday today. She got her big present Saturday, but of course I got her something else and a card today. But she is working late, so it will be a while yet before she sees it. One of the ladies from our church phoned her birthday into the local radio station, and several people called her at work to wish her a happy birthday. It shows that more people than just me appreciate her. On Monday, I took this wireless data modem I had gotten Saturday back, because i do not like the way it works (or rather doesn't work) and so I do not want to be obligated for the two-year commitment on it. That took the biggest part of the middle of the day, because it is just a long trip to the stores in Bryan. Today the big effort was on getting my diesel truck back in top shape. It seems the problem was just the back tires, though. There was a knot on one of them, and it made everything rattle and rumble. I got a good set installed. Then, after I got home I put hay out in the back, moved a second hay ring into that pasture and put another bale out, so that the cows will have plenty to eat when the expected cold weather blows in tonight or tomorrow. |
| Sunday, November 18, 2007: Kay and I spent virtually the entire day Saturday shopping for stuff in Bryan/College Station. It is just far enough there that we put off the trip until we have a number of things to get, although one of the main reasons we went yesterday was to allow her to pick out a present for her upcoming birthday. By the time we got home, it had started raining and rained off-and-on the whole evening and overnight. The rain was welcome, but getting almost four inches in a day makes everything pretty sloppy, and this morning I put out hay and this afternoon I fed the cattle, and both time I had a lot of gooey mud to deal with. Oh, well, that is how it goes, you can't raise cattle from your recliner chair. |
| Friday, November 16, 2007: Tree removal was the big event today. My tree harvester came today, and while he cut and removed cedar trees I pushed debris and uprooted all the stubbly small trees and brush. Enough has been done now that the work today made another visible difference in the appearance of the ranch. I can look out across the ranch in the area that we have worked, and look over the creek into the far pasture areas, instead of just being able to see the near pasture and the tree line at the creek. I have this vision of being able to see the entire far pasture the same way, but it will take a while to get that far. I hadn't commented about software recently, but I am still pursuing my learning experiences in 3D animation. I discovered that the meshes and skeleton and animations that will work in The Sims 2 game can also be exported and rendered in the Torque game engine. While copyright alone would prevent me from being able to make any direct use of those game models, studying things I already know in the other game engine (which comes with the source code) should help me understand how the rotations are managed. |
| Thursday, November 15, 2007: The big task done today was to put out hay for the cattle. Before placing the hay, I had to prepare the tractor by mounting the hay forks, and then I had to move some some hay rings into place. These are round metal cage-like devices that the cattle can poke their heads through, but cannot push up against the hay and scatter it, thereby reducing waste. I then placed a couple of large round bales left from last year into the rings. Most of the calves did not know what it was, and except for one of the two older heifers that would have seen hay last year ignored it. But the herd in the back dug right in eating it. With the colder weather that has blown in, it is important for the cattle to be able to eat plenty of roughage, because while they are digesting this it generates heat inside their bodies, reducing the amount of energy needed to warm themselves. Anyone who has ever moved a pile of grass clippings that had been wet and is still damp would remember the warmth generated. Inside the cow's rumen, the effect is no different. |
| Wednesday, November 14, 2007: I drove over to Taylor this morning to the gun shop to pick up a holster for the .22 caliber pistol I bought there a couple of weeks ago. Then back to town, where I had to stop and fill the pickup up with diesel fuel. Diesel is so expensive, about $0.35/gallon more than gasoline. Years ago, before the refiners found ways to change their yields, diesel was always cheaper than gasoline. Nothing I can do to change things, just grin and bear it, like everyone else. After getting clipped at the filling station, I went to the feed store and bought a ton of feed and some salt blocks, and then back home to put the feed away in the storage room. I moved the remainder of the last load I got off to the side, so that it gets used first, and it looks like there was some rodents into it. I have some cats now, but they cannot get into that room. I don't want to make an opening for them, because other unwanted guests, like raccoons, possums and skunks can get in then, too. |
| Tuesday, November 13, 2007: Some progress on several fronts today. This morning, the tree harvester showed up, and so I started cleaning up beyond what he is supposed to do. We worked until around Noon, when his tractor broke down. I helped him get the rear wheel off and he got out the broken assembly and went off in search of another. Later, when he returned, I helped get his wheel back on (we used my tractor loader to hoist it, it is very heavy). I left him work harvesting more trees while I penned and transferred another steer to the front pasture. So I only have one steer remaining in the back old enough to wean. Instead of spending a lot of time trying to corral him, I will just wait, and like the steer today he will go in the pen sometime and I can just close the gate. |
| Monday, November 12, 2007: This morning I dropped my brother off at the airport, after a thoroughly enjoyable visit. It has been years since we spent any time together talking, and I do not think we have spent as many hours together as this weekend even in a single year since we were probably in our twenties (which has been a while). Not a lot of note occurred during his visit. Eating out, beer and fun were the main items. But yesterday we went together to San Antonio and visited the Alamo, and the day before that I got my brother to help while we herded some calves up front and started weaning them (with the usual chorus of bawling between the calves and their mothers afterwards). So I have been trying all day to catch up on emails and message threads and other items that were ignored during the visit. Posting an update here is now checked off the list. |
| Wednesday, November 7, 2007: Tomorrow, I will pick my brother up at the airport for an extended weekend visit. I am so much looking forward to the visit, as work and life have kept us both from having much time together in the last 30-some odd years. Of course, this means that he will get all the attention, and this website none, but that's the breaks. It is cooler than my liking today, so I only did whatever chores I needed to outdoors today, like trash and a mail run. All the other things will wait until I get to them. |
| Tuesday, November 6, 2007: Mostly miscellaneous stuff going on. Yesterday, I mowed the yard and today I went to town and took care of business. We had a decent rain this morning, the grass needed it but it left everything sloppy and muddy. I also worked on solving a problem getting FBX files with animation into MilkShape and ready to export with my animation exporter. The FBX importer renamed all the bones with "Model::" in front, rearranged the bone order and did not have the values the animation exporter needed stored in the bone comments. So I wrote a plug-in that renames the bones and imports the data from a GMDC copy and uses that to update the joint comments. I have someone that was testing this, and they reported it works. I do not believe that the mesh will be usable, due to the changes made in the bone index order, but the animations were the first concern. I have been thinking about how I might structure some code to put the bones back in the original maxis order, and while I have a few ideas, I need to think carefully about any dependencies besides the bone list and the bone assignment indexes. |
| Saturday, November 3, 2007: Another good day, lots accomplished. This morning I got out my logging chain and dragged a couple of old telephone poles out of the way behind the pole barn. After that I took the box blade attachment off the tractor and mounted the shredder, and proceeded to mow a couple of acres over where I plan to store hay this winter. Then I went down to the road and mowed there alongside the road. The County only seems to ever come by but once each year to cleanup, so if I didn't mow there it would look pretty bad by mid-summer. Kay and I also moved two heifers from the front to the back, promoting them to cow. They are old enough now the bull can have his way with them. |
| Friday, November 2, 2007: Yesterday and today were good days, got stuff done that I wanted to. On Thursday, the tree cutter showed up to harvest more cedar trees. He had an order for a number of posts of a custom size. This was a good development, because he spent his time cutting smaller trees which might otherwise have been burned. I also have been afraid he would get all the large ones cut and never cut down the smaller ones for lack of a market. While he worked I went and removed my backhoe, since my waterline project ended, and put the lift arms back on and mounted the box blade, graded some of the area where I had put the waterline in, and then cleaned some of the small brush where the cedar harvest is being done, as well as clear all the debris form the area of a burn pile that is no longer being used. Today I went shopping for things I have been needing or thinking about getting. I got some new rechargeable batteries for my drill and saws, a pole saw, a new, light-duty (and much lighter weight) chain saw and a new Walther P22, which is a semi automatic .22 caliber pistol. I want the pistol to carry instead of keeping a rifle on the tractor. While a bigger gun might be appropriate for some people, a .22 is big enough for what I want, which is to kill small varmints and deter any larger ones. I am of the belief that even if a .22 won't kill a larger animal, like a hog or a coyote, immediately, several good wounds will cause them to eventually die. Kay and I went for a walk after dinner and shot the pistol some, and I had no trouble getting close enough to what I was aiming for to call it a hit. |
| Wednesday, October 31, 2007: Halloween, Bah Humbug! Actually, we are in a rural enough a location that no one would dream of bringing their children to trick-or-treat. Our driveway is almost a quarter-mile long, the kids would be worn out around here after one stop. I made a lot of progress today. With the exception of some cleanup over in the other pen, my waterline project is done for the year. When I was starting it this morning, I accidentally broke off the capped end of the pipe I was extending, which meant I had to either finish up or rearrange the watering for the cattle somehow. So I just kept working longer and finished it today. The future phases, tentatively next year, are planned to take the water to the back of the property, with faucets installed at as-yet undetermined intervals. This will allow more cross-fencing of the property to be done, which in turn will allow me to manage the pastures better, including planting some small grains and because I can keep the cattle out until they are ready to be grazed. |
| Tuesday, October 30, 2007: All I have to say is "hey-la, my calf is back!" [turns off singing voice]. This afternoon I spotted the formerly missing calf resting under a tree near where his mother was grazing. I feel a lot of relief, not only because there was a not inconsiderable amount of money involved, but also because I felt guilty that it would have been my fault. Lessons have been learned. Monday was frustrating because I hunted for him with my neighbor over on their property. There were just too many woods and nooks and crannies to search everywhere for it. Of course, as it is wary it would just hunker down and stay put when you were looking. So I was frustrated yesterday, and happy today. I went to town today and took care of some business, then I got my trailer hitched and went to the supply house and got some more PVC pipe so I can finish my waterline project (at least what I planned to get finished this year). In the evening a truck came and delivered a pair of nice wooden rocking chairs for our front porch, a gift from my mother and sister. Kay was very pleased with them. I am too, but mainly because they are comfortable even without cushions, and I can rock while I sit. Since the weather is now more conducive to sitting out in the evening (cooler and fewer bugs) I can enjoy them. |
| Sunday, October 28, 2007: What could have been a great day turned into a mess. This morning I hear gunfire from the back, and suspected someone was trespassing. I took the truck and went back (before I went to church) but the gunfire was on the property behind me. Seems they were sighting in their rifles in anticipation of opening day of deer season, which is next Saturday here. Unrelated to that, I noticed a cow I have been watching showed signs of having recently calved, and I followed here to where the calf was at. Usually, I can walk right up to the calf and check the gender, but when I approached this one, it ran off like scared deer, and went crashing through the fence onto the neighbor's property (the same one, the one behind me). I went on to church, and afterwards we had a fellowship dinner. After I got home I went to see of the calf had come back, but the mother, as well as the rest of the herd, thought it was time to be fed, and all came to the pens. So I fed the cattle, and then waited for the mother to finish and go back. She, like her kind, was in no hurry, and I had to wait a couple of hours while she grazed some until she decided it was time to find her calf. She went right to the spot I had found the calf at, and sniffed it. She looked this way and that for a while, then made a few calls to the calf that went unanswered. She then went further toward the center of the pasture with the rest of the herd and started grazing some more. I decided to wait until tomorrow morning and see if the calf hears her and is able to find its way home. If not, then I will get the property owner and we will look for the calf on his property. I suspect if it doesn't find its own way home that it will find his herd and be looking for its mother there. |
| Saturday, October 27, 2007: The cedar tree harvester failed to show today, so no more got done on that project. One thing that did get done was working some cattle. One calf that had not been worked got castrated, ear tagged and some shots. This would be a nice calf, but he has some sort of skin lesion on his shoulder that he rubs or licks raw, although it is not as bad as it was. I gave him some penicillin as well as the regular pour-on Ivermectin, maybe that will help. If it doesn't heal nicely, he will be worth a lot less than he should have been. Perhaps I will keep him and fatten him. I also moved two steer calves and a heifer calf to the front pasture, where they will stay until next year. So that means they are being weaned, and we have that two-way bellowing going on between the calf and their mother. Fortunately, it only lasts a couple of days and I get used to it, after all, it is part of what we do here. |
| Thursday, October 25, 2007: Today I was planning to work on the new pen project, but the man that has been cutting down the cedar trees came and worked. I went and used my tractor, too, to move the felled trees out and push the trimmings onto a burn pile, as well as also uprooting the small brushy trees and moving them to the pile also. We got several acres all cleared and looking pretty good, and he loaded a whole trailer load of logs and hauled them off. I was pleased with the amount of work that was completed. The plan is for him to be back Saturday, so that is what I am putting on my schedule, too. |
| Tuesday, October 23, 2007: Yesterday I went to the cattle sale and again prices are barely worth chasing after. I probably would have made a lot more money by keeping that steer until next year and selling him then. He would likely have brought as much per pound, and may have weighed twice as much. After the sale I bought a number of portable panels. The man selling them lives in the house we rented a few years ago when we first moved to Texas and were looking for the right property to buy. Just an odd coincidence. This morning, after going to town to take care of business I moved all the panels into the back pasture area, and then I set many of them up as an extension to the existing pens. Tomorrow I plan on adding a watering trough, moving some feed bunks in there, and start feeding in there also, so that the cattle get used to going in there. The objective is to have somewhere I can keep cattle confined for a little while and still have the main pen available to use for loading and working other cattle. |
| Sunday, October 21, 2007: I guess I had the release on my hog trap set to be too sensitive, as the trap closed for no apparent reason during the night. The good or bad news there is that nothing appeared to have disturbed any of the bait, inside or outside of the trap. But I have it reset and we will see if anything happens. When I fed the cattle I decided that one of the roping steers (a longhorn calf) was pretty much ready to market. So I herded him to the pens and loaded him up. In the process, I ended up with another heifer placed in the back with the bull, and the Jenny there too. Easier to just leave them go than to try to herd them to the front. I got the calf safely down to the sale barn, and tomorrow I will go down and watch the sale, and pick up my check in person. |
| Saturday, October 20, 2007: For the last two days, working at some additional land clearing has been the main focus of my efforts. I have been taking out the small trees and brush in the areas around the creek. The guy that is clearing the cedar trees is unable to work until next week because his tractor broke and he is waiting on parts, but I cleared between the cedars. While I was rearranging the old stumps in the burn pile I am working on I uncovered and killed a copperhead snake. I have no tolerance for the poisonous ones near where I live. I also moved and baited my hog trap. I took it up on the hill, near where they have been rooting, in the pasture opposite where I currently have the cattle in. I went to the tack room to get the deer corn, and it had sat there so long insects had eaten nearly all the insides of the kernels, leaving these hollowed out husks. But I found an old bag of sweet feed and some horse treats, and baited the trap with that. I would suspect the scent of the sweet feed would appeal to the hogs. Then again, I never caught anything with this hog trap before, although I would place the blame on the user and not the trap. |
| Thursday, October 18, 2007: Yesterday I went and bought cattle cubes. I get a ton at a time, but what I bought this time was a higher protein grade, based on cottonseed meal. The quality of the grass here is dwindling, and by supplying a better diet to the cattle I can help them to maintain their body condition for the start of Winter. we still have some cows nursing calves, and those whose calves have been weaned need to put some of their weight back on. I burned a huge pile of debris from tree removal in the morning, and cleared an area where I started a new burn pile, closer to where removal is going on. After all the ashes cool, I will clean up the old burn location. After finishing there, I went down and picked up the mail and went to the house. In the mail was a copy of the local weekly newspaper. I looked at it, and saw the county had declared a burn ban. After the rain that came Sunday and Monday, it looks like the county officials are out-of-step with reality. But also, I was fortunate not to have been caught violating the ban. At times in the past, honoring the ban has not been a problem, because conditions were too dry for safe burning. This time, they are a little off-beat on declaring the ban. |
| Tuesday, October 16, 2007: This morning I dropped our dog, Shadow, off at the animal clinic for a grooming. The gals were just loving on him and he was suitably thrilled at the attention. It was a dreary day, so I just stayed in and worked on my fragMOTION animation exporter plug-in. I had a lot of success, and while the arms are rotated incorrectly, for no apparent reason other than fragMOTION and MilkShape are different programs. The values presented to my exporter software for the arms are different between the two programs, again, for why I do not know. Another learning opportunity (oh, joy). I picked up the dog this afternoon. The groomer told me how nice he is to work with, with his easy-going personality all she has to do is put him the way she wants him and he stays while she trims his hair. He also gets his nails clipped, a job I do not like because if you cut the nail too short, it bleeds. Well, a single nail on one of his rear paws was cut too short, and bled some on the way home. I am not mad about it, I am thankful I didn't trim it and do that myself. The dog looks very nice, and has lost a couple of pounds since his last trip there. We are trying hard to keep his weight down, to keep him around as long as possible, because Kay will be devastated should something happen to him. He is over eight years old, well into middle aged for a dog, so a good diet and exercise are important. As a house dog and a little bit gimpy (a bad rear knee), he does not get to run so much. |
| Monday, October 15, 2007: I went to the cattle auction today and bought two more bred cows, again, at a good price. I just refuse to overpay for something because I want it. We had rain last night and today, so far it totals a bit over three-fourths of an inch. Not a lot, but very welcome regardless. It is still cloudy and overcast, so maybe we will have some more rain before this weather system has finished. Because I had it all dig up, part of the back yard is just a mess. I left some ruts and scattered gooey mud all over getting into the pens to unload the cattle. My boots felt like they weighed sixteen tons each until I got all the mud off them. Then I let Shadow (our dog) out for his potty needs, and by the time he got done his paws were coated with mud. I had to carry him back to the bathtub and wash his paws, and then carry him back to sit in "jail" for a while. This is really just that he has to stay in the laundry room until his paws dry, but he always looks at you like you were locking him in prison. Last weekend, a neighbor had brought me a half-dozen kittens. About that time one of the two tomcats we had here up and disappeared, who knows what happened or where he went. Of the half-dozen, four are left, although it may be possible that one is merely being careful to avoid me. I know one passed, as I found his poor little carcass one morning. I saw no trauma to his body, and he had been slow moving and had little appetite the day before, so I assume he was ill and died from it. |