Here you will find my writings on the things I do. It is not a daily recording but one made up of things that I find interesting and things that I need to do. And lastly, things that I have done.
I am starting to rebuild the deck. Here are some pics I took yesterday after laying down the deck boards. I have a long way to go, but the hard part is done. The hardest part of the project was getting the landscape timbers that I am using level. The pictures don't show it but I added extra timbers below the ones that I screwed the deck boards to for additional support. None of the timbers are touching the ground. The deck I replaced had been there 10 years and was thrown together in a hurry. I expect this one to last 15 plus years.
This is the 4th in a series of tearing down an old fish pond and deck and rebuilding the deck.
As I do every year I had to rake up all the leaves. Now I will sort through the old deck boards I tore out and see if I can use them. So, that's going to be my focus for today.
Here are some pictures of the partial work I have done and a couple of the ponds. As you can see I live right out in the woods.
Today is a post rainy Monday and I am waiting on some more building material that is supposed to arrive this morning. Today is going to be a busy one because besides the building materials arriving the rest of the bedroom furniture is going to be delivered.
Last Saturday I spent the entire day on the bedroom renovation, painting, and putting together some furniture.
Here in the Valley, pine trees are everywhere. And this is the time of year for the pollen to start falling from them—and I mean by the tons. It gets into everything, especially cars. My car is in a carport, but that doesn't matter; it still gets on it. Washing it off doesn't help either because it's going to get back on the car while driving home.
We had rain last night so it has washed most of the pollen away. But I have had to sweep the porch off and inside the screened porch. It is a little aggravating but something I can live with.
My outdoor progress has been stymied, so I have turned my attention to the inside projects. Yesterday, I rewired the ceiling fan in my living room, and today, I will prep the walls in a bedroom for a fresh coat of paint.
So I drove to Home Depot and bought some sheetrock mud and a new set of putty knives to get me started. There is always stuff to do, either inside or outside.
I tore down the fish pond and cleared away most of the debris. As you may see I have started building the patio area. I bought 30 deck boards and 15 landscape timbers. I leveled the ground and used bricks to raise the landscape timbers above the dirt. Next week I will buy 40 more deck boards and 10 landscape timbers. And that should be enough to finish the project. We'll see .....
I have begun tearing out one of my goldfish ponds and turning it into a sitting area for cookouts and leisure get-togethers. Here are some pics of the disaster area that I took today. There is a lot of trash that is from the teardown. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice outside so I hope to get a lot done towards building the new area. Click on an image to open the lightbox gallery.
I know the site isn't producing any exciting news to read about yet but, it's going to get better. Once I can get freed from this constant indoor existence I will be able to start working on the numerous projects that are awaiting me. I hope to add some pictures, videos, and anything I can to make it better.
The cold weather caused the outside water faucet at my daughter's house to break. Well, it didn't break; it came apart at a coupling. When the ice formed inside the pipe, it caused it to separate. Luckily it wasn't as cold outside as it had been the night before.
I was sitting in my office on the computer and heard a knock on the front door inside the porch. It was my son-in-law asking for help. Of course, we didn't have the parts we needed (a 3/4" PVC cap) so he had to go to the Home Depot in Oxford to get what we needed. We cut the water off up the road, installed the cap, and waited til the next morning to turn the water back on. All is well now.
We woke up to snow here in The Valley but it's not enough to get excited about. The roads are clear and no ice on them. I had to get out and go to the grocery store. I usually stay inside on days like this.
When I was in the Air Force I was stationed at Minot Air Force Base for 7 years. So at that time I became used to the cold and the snow. But all of that is gone now.
When I got out of the car at the store I thought, it's not that cold. But when I came back outside and the wind was blowing in a different direction it was cold. So now I'm glad that I can stay inside for the rest of the day. All I need to do now is cook the food I bought.
Rain, rain, and more rain. That's how it's been here lately. And, I haven't been able to get anything done. When it rains heavily and for several days in a row the roof on my shop leaks. It's not a big leak, but every year I get up there and work on it. I have big plans for this year and that is to coat the entire roof. I bought a pressure washer to clean the metal.
I also bought a 16-foot pruning saw and I am going to cut a lot of limbs that hang over the roof and drop leaves and pine needles onto it. So I'm going to have a busy summer.
The last week has been dreary with constant rain here in The Valley. I've just stayed close to home. I can remember the days when it didn't matter if it rained or not, I still had to get out in it. But now, I can be selective as to what I do and when I do it.
I was here on the computer when, all of a sudden, I heard a crash on top of the house. I looked out and a limb had fallen onto the roof. And, it is going to stay there until things dry up a bit. I have a ladder just for this sort of mishap so I am prepared. When you live in the woods with a lot of big trees around you there are some things you need. A ladder, rake, and leaf blower. I have to get on top of the house 3 or 4 times a year to remove the pine needles and leaves that accumulate there. And it's always a big pile to take out by the road for removal. The city comes by once a week and will pick up anything I place there.
This is a small town, with a little over 3,000 residents, and it's quiet. The city services seem to be able to keep up with things. They pick up the trash every Wednesday without fail. The services are a little strange. I am on county water but city electric.
It is supposed to be a beautiful day here in The Valley but the rain will spoil any outdoor activities I could plan. So, I will spend my day indoors working on HomePage CMS. I don't know if that is a plus because I enjoy doing that more than anything else.
But, I didn't get on the treadmill yesterday because I had to lubricate and adjust the belt. That didn't take long, but I wanted to let the lubricant spread without my weight influencing it. So today will be another day to get back on it. Three hours is a lot of time to exercise and after looking at the fitness goals set by the authorities I may reset my goals. I am thinking 3 days a week during the summer because I have so much to do outside. And yard work is a lot more tiring than the treadmill. After I come inside from a morning out in the yard I can wring the sweat out of my clothes. I have to peel my shirt and shorts off before getting in the shower.
Between taking care of business and visitors stopping by, I have been pretty busy the past 3 days. Instead of posting about past events here and trying to remember everything I did, I decided to skip those days and continue fresh from today.
My youngest daughter is pregnant with their third child and this will be their third boy. She and her husband stopped by yesterday to visit, so I decided to drop in and visit her this morning. She is doing well and her youngest son kept me busy the entire time I was there. I had forgotten how much a small 4-year-old boy can talk. It wasn't that long ago when he hardly said anything.
My refrigerator was almost bare. So when I left my daughter's house I stopped by the local grocery store and bought a few things to get me through the weekend. I have heard that eggs have been really expensive lately but I didn't see any high prices. I eat egg whites for breakfast and a box was the same price as it has always been. Right at $7 for a large.
I spent the entire day in the yard. Raking leaves, blowing leaves, and just general cleanup. I also started dismantling one of my goldfish ponds. I have some big plans for the area where the fish pond is now. I want to build an evening lounge area with a fire pit, a couple of tables, and some chairs.
Sunday is my day of rest, but the weather is going to be good on Monday, so I have yard work that needs to be done. I am going to start dismantling one of my goldfish ponds and convert the area into a sitting area with a fire pit and a couple of other features. The deadline for this project is the end of summer.
I have been remodeling my home. It's a slow progress, but I'm getting there. Here are some pictures of the living room. I added the front and back double glass doors. I still have a ways to go. The biggest project left to do is the trim: installing and painting it.
My taxes aren't high. Both city and county are less than $200. And federal is $300. So I don't have to suffer too much paying them. City and county are both delinquent after the 1st of February. So that's my agenda today. I will also close out my exercise stats for January.
I need to finish the changeover from Spectra CMS to HomePage CMS on my daughter's website and add a new feature to the snippets.
As I mentioned in the 01-29-2025 post, I am a little behind on finishing my middle daughter's website software update. I will get that done first today. Then, I noticed a need for the snippets area to be able to scroll. I have been adding snippets to this area daily and don't want to push the other content too far down the page, so I came up with a solution of creating a scrollable area to accommodate them.
An off-subject note. It's raining in the valley today and it's going to be warmer.
My middle daughter Briana was using Spectra CMS on her website but I am phasing Spectra out on the websites that I manage. So I have been adding HomePage CMS to replace it. I could have finished the project today but I had to slide my 3-hour treadmill activity in. So that is pushing the finish until tomorrow. Her website is Pretty Escape. My son Michael has a website but I have already changed his. It is Inkdbyclaus. Michael is a tattoo artist and lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
Anything that I find interesting during my day may be added to The Valley News. There is no specific category that I focus on. In general, you may see anything from politics to yard work to going on a trip. I just started this site in Jan 2025 so as things get moving forward I hope to add more interesting things to the site.
I have several projects that need to be done this summer. Some of them are:
- Roof Repair
- Goldfish Tank Rehab
- Roof Painting
- Yard Work
To these, I want to add pictures and talk about what is being done.
The Democratic party as a whole is going to buck everything the Trump administration tries to do because that is what they are supposed to do. Yep, keep the political infighting going regardless of the effect it has on the country. Most of us are born with the inherited gene of picking people apart. It's just who we are. But, if you do not see the bad in everyone then you're just soft.
I don't know about you but for me, I like the fact that illegals are being sent back home. Especially the bad ones. I do however sympathize with the families. But there is a right and wrong way to do everything. To enter a country rules have to be followed. The USA isn't the only country that has immigration rules and laws for proper entry into the country.
I have once again updated HomePage CMS with new features. I haven't had any downloads yet but I'm not concerned about that. I just enjoy working on it.
I find myself supporting the Republican Party's goals. The reason is the Biden administration's destruction of America and its foreign policies. Biden was a total disaster in so many ways. I often wondered, who was running the country?
I have lived through several Democratic administrations in my 70 years but never had I seen anything like this. There is no way that anyone can convince me to ever become a Democrat. The woke and DEI agendas are laughable.
The last week of September 2024 I bought a cheap treadmill and have been getting on it every day except Sunday. All of January 2025 I have been doing 9 miles. Today I did 10 miles. I got into a good movie and when I looked I had already gone past the 9-mile mark. I don't run on it but I do walk pretty fast. I can cover 3 miles in an hour so it takes me 3 hours to do 9 miles.
I also work with light dumbells and incline pushups. Usually, I can do over 100 pushups at a time. One day I did 300. Trying to get fit and stay fit takes a lot of time out of my day. Every day I do the same routine, up at 4 or 5 am, make coffee, eat breakfast, watch the news, at 10 am eat lunch, and at 12:30 I get on the treadmill.
If I work in the yard one day I don't get on the treadmill because I usually work twice as hard in the yard than on the treadmill.
RavenNuke was once a worthy CMS. But for years, it's been dead on the vine. For some strange reason, I can't describe, I picked it up and tried to make something out of it. It's a complete waste of time. RavenNuke was a fork of PHP Nuke and there have been a lot of people writing code for it so needless to say it is code-heavy. When you look at PHP8 and compare it to PHP5 the difference is night and day.
To resurrect RavenNuke would require a complete rewrite. The core of the security relies on a function that has been removed from PHP altogether. So, occasionally, I think about RavenNuke and the team that worked on it and how they all abandoned it at once. It's kind of sad in a way.
Today I am going to add some new features to the HomePage themes. It is a long process and many files have to be changed but it needs to be done. I will add 4 new variables that allow for styling the index page footer area with either a background image or a gradient/solid color. Right now, the option exists if the admin wants to add content in the footer area. But, this new feature will apply to the copyright area.
I'm moving the "Valley News" and will start using these snippets to record the daily events. They will be aligned by date.
President-Elect Trump is to be sworn into office. Look for a busy day in Washington today. In other news, here in The Valley, it's cold and dreary outside with the temps between 20 and 30 degrees F.
In regards to the contact form, I have been getting a lot of spam through it so I decided to only allow active members to use it. This is especially true on the HomePage CMS website.
This was a very productive day. I got a lot done on the site, including adding several articles. I did not have to go anywhere, and nobody stopped by. So, it was a very nice day all around.
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