Another day, and they are still busy catching nothing. They don’t even look alive in this picture.
houston
Freeloaders
Can you guess what these cats are doing?
NOT EARNING THEIR KEEP!
I took this picture today, and it is their typical M.O. I got them to destroy pests, but instead they lay around, eat food, and get stuck in odd places.
El Diablo is the gray tailless one. He was so named to scare away predators and rodents. It hasn’t seemed to work. The younger cats are named Double Naught and Scarface (AKA Bandit). Double Naught is an allusion to the Beverly Hillbillies in which Jethro Bodine wanted to be a Double Naught Agent (like Double Naught Seven) and have a license to kill. The other was named Bandit by the previous owner, but he has since scratched his face climbing around inside of my pool table. Hence, Scarface.
So far, El Diablo (the gray tailless one) has a meager 1 1 /8 recorded kills over the 5 months of our acquaintance. I’ve tallied this as follows:
- 1/8: Lizard (Only counts as 1/8 of a kill because lizards kill bugs, I like lizards, and the lizard was distracted by chasing a bug.)
- 7/8: Bird (Only 3/4 for the kill because it wasn’t a pest and +1/8 extra credit because he ate it.)
- 1/8: Dragonfly (1/8 because it wasn’t really an animal, and I like dragonflies. On a side note, El Diablo got +1/8 because he shared and let Scarface play with it. That was cancelled by the -1/8 because of his anger when Scarface ate it.)
Double Naught has yet to touch anything living, and I can’t decide if Scarface scores any point for eating the dragonfly. I am leaning towards not.
I will update as they move towards self sufficiency and providing for themselves.
Not Enough Power
So no luck with the chicken coop. The solar panel I was using was labeled as 5 Watts. However, it only put out about 20 mA (.24 Watts) in direct sunlight. That wasn’t even enough to run the power supply. I assumed that it would put out more than that in the shade. I guess I need to buy a better panel. More money, and I don’t even have any chickens yet.
On another note, I’ve been struggling with sorting a Buick Grand National for some time now. Today, I figured out that the previous owner had installed an adjustable boost actuator at over 20 psi. I never noticed how high it was set because I had a big crack in one of the headers. I welded that up last week, and it started blowing off vacuum/boost lines. I guess someone’s solution to low boost was to crank on the actuator rod rather than fixing the problem. I used my air compressor and a pressure regulator to open the waste gate (pictured), and it didn’t fully open until almost 25 psi! I cranked it back down, and I have a Manual Boost Controller on order. I can’t wait! Once I get it tuned back down and running predictably, I can start cranking it back up and spinning the tires!
1st Post: Chicken Tractor
This is my first post, and I do not know exactly how this will show up. We will see.
So I decided I want some chickens. I don’t like being up early in the morning to let
them out or being home early at night to lock them up, so I decided to automate the opening and closing mechanism. It has turned out to be more of a pain than I predicted, but tonight is the inaugural run. I programmed it to close 1 hour after sundown, so we will see if it works in about 39 minutes. Anyway, here is a picture of the haphazard wiring from today. If it works, I will try to get some pullets this weekend.
With all of the problems I’ve had with this, I’m not putting much faith in it. Perhaps sourcing ebay components from China wasn’t the best idea.