Zombie

I get it, SV. Personally, I don't have a cell phone (*reasons*) so my camera is kinda important to have. Be it painting/maintenance projects to post here or for work (pics of flowers etc). Anyhow, got my 2 new batteries the other day. Put them on the charger which took quite a while to get to full, but I can report I'm back up and running now. - Zombie

I did a little troubleshooting on my camera the last few days. Read the manual, not really much help there. Sometimes a battery will work, and then after a bit will blink that the charge is too low. I checked both batteries on a multitester and they appear ok. Stuff them on the charger for a bit and then put the battery back in the camera, may work for a bit though that low charge thing rears it's head eventually. Not really sure what's going on there. Couldn't find a replacement battery from WalMart even though it's listed on their website. Talked to a tech in the electronics dept and he mentioned that battery hasn't been in the store in years. Um, ok. Checked at BetteriesPlus but their batteries are something like $60. Hello? The camera itself isn't even worth that anymore. AliExpress has them but will not ship to the US - kinda don't blame them for that with Lithium Ions though. Found a 2-pack at Newegg so we're going that route for now. Will probably be another few days before they get here though due to the Memorial Day weekend. You (and I) aren't missing anything. All I've been doing lately is bleaching buckets and cleaning the cooler. Had a lot of funeral work this week and next week it's a wedding and more funeral work. If I can stay ahead on the buckets that's the main thing (I cleaned about 80 this week and 100 last week and still have a stack to do from Mother's Day yet). - Zombie

Yup, the stuff wears like iron. The edges of the table get the brunt of the damage normally when we put deliveries and such on the top. Or it gets bumped into when I move the tables around to sweep under them. Other than that, the tables really only see cardboard boxes full of flowers on it a few times a week and those don't do any damage. - Zombie

I was doing a little cleanup in the front cooler a couple weeks ago and noticed the fan guards were caked full of dust. Here's what one of them looked like: And this is what it looked like after cleaning: Much better! There's some small spots of rust forming in areas so I'm planning on spraying them with paint this summer sometime. In fact, I'm going to take down the entire drip pan assembly again, clean that off and possibly repaint the inside. There were some chips of paint that broke off the edge of the rolling tables so I touched them up with some primer: I also found a few more areas on the tables in the greenhouse which needed to be scraped and primed too: I was looking for the gray polyurethane to apply over the primed spots on the rolling tables. Couldn't find it. Maybe I'm out? Going to have to search for it soon. Anyway, found an old can which felt like it had something in there yet. Popped the lid off and the paint was a chunk of rubber - hard. I was able to jam a stirring stick under it to grab the blob and pull it out. There was a tiny bit of paste at the bottom yet. Not enough to paint with though. In a last ditch effort to get the job done, I added a splash of Xylol and swirled that around the bottom. It looked somewhat ok so I applied it to the spots with a brush: While not perfect, it at least covers up the white primer spots. I was a little worried that this concoction may not dry so I put a fan on it overnight. In the meantime, I touched up the white primer spots on the tables in the greenhouse: That's going to have to be good enough for now. I'll repaint these after the planting season is over. I was working on cleaning out the small garage to get some space in there for Mother's Day deliveries and noticed that some of the cardboard boxes on the shelves in there were wet. Took those off the shelf and grabbed a flashlight to investigate and found that there were leaks along most of the west wall (it had just rained). Not sure what caused the leaking. I think water was getting under the top cap of the wall and getting behind the flashing. So the roofers are going to have to come back to address that. With flowers coming for Mother's Day I filled up a few buckets in the backroom: My camera pooped out after this sometime. I think the battery is dead. Going to have to get a new battery soon otherwise you'll be left in the dark on what I'm up to. I think Mother's Day was a success this year. Not too many leftover flowers. We were short a couple delivery drivers though. Normally by 2pm on Saturday we are wrapping up deliveries, but not this year. I took out a load at 4pm to speed things along and we got them all out somehow. This past Monday was a mini-Mother's Day too - plenty of deliveries. I think we are kinda getting back to normal around the shop, still busy though it's tapering off. - Zombie

It was too wet for the fence guys to do a different job, but by us it was mostly all pavement so we were dry. So they expedited our fix. Didn't get a pic of them working on the rolling gate on the parking lot unfortunately, but it was just like I said, replace a length of pipe that was bent (cut out the old piece weld in a new piece), and also swap out the rollers. Tried it out and it works great now, can open it with one hand. As for the gate in the back driveway, they decided to just selectively fix and not entirely replace the whole thing. Makes sense as it's significantly cheaper and only part was damaged. I told the crew I wanted them to straighten up the pole on the left side since it was bent at the bottom (check out the last pic in my previous post). They obliged and got it pretty straight: As you can see, it now sits on top of the pavement, not in the gouge in the blacktop. This was the reason why I wanted to wait till the fix was completed as I didn't know where the pole would end up again. With the repair done, it seems pretty safe to fill that gouge with blacktop patch now. The other side is where all the action was. The post in the driveway was cut off and a new piece welded on. The gate was off for this process, so it made it easy to remove that bent section of pipe from the fence, a new piece inserted and tack welded on. The team also welded on a cross member between the post and the bracket on the wall to stiffen things up. Welded on of course: They also added caps to both poles so water doesn't collect inside. Ditto for the left side: new cap and a cross member added: And this is the final product: More or less good to go I'm probably going to spray it with some black paint sometime this summer. At least it's easier to open and close and the two poles in the middle are nearly parallel. -Zombie

Not much painting going on yet except for some minor touch-up on the delivery table inside. The weather is still iffy - partially good one day, then raining the next. Today was ok so I decided to start filling in some of the holes in the blacktop in the back driveway (the snowplow guy gouged it all up with the plow blade). First up is next to the patch I did by the back door (new patch is at the 3-5 o'clock position on a clock face): After that, I found a low spot by the greenhouse: Can't forget about the area by the garage door in front of the small garage: (Six o'clock position). Also filled another small pothole by the first window of the back garage which I didn't take a pic of for some reason. Oh well, you get the idea at least. Nothing major here, just filling in low spots. The leftover blacktop patch was getting a little bit hard in the plastic pail so I think I probably should have put more paint thinner in there. Still worked fine though. There are more spots I could do, but I want to wait a bit. The plow guy smashed into one part of the gate in the driveway in the back. Took a pic of the damage: The post is also bent. Surprisingly, the gate can still be opened and closed, but it's difficult. This type of damage can't be fixed, it's going to be a complete replacement. Not by me mind you, it's beyond my skill... although I have fixed up this gate too many times to count. The gate on the other side of the driveway escaped any damage, but it too will supposedly be replaced: There are some areas of the blacktop here which need to be filled with patches, but I don't really want to start messing with that until the gate situation has been addressed. Timeframe on this is within 30 days. The plow guy also smashed up one of the big rolling gates in the parking lot. This is going to be a fix to the frame of the fence and total replacement of the 4 wheels (one was also smashed up). The new wheels have nylon bearings which means no more greasing. So yeah, sucks for the plow guy as this comes out of his pay, but at least we'll have functional gates again. - Zombie

It was really cold this morning, not as cold as the last time I took a pic of the home thermometer, but yeah, chilly: On the way in to work I remembered to take a pic of Lake Michigan: Unfortunately, there was a strong west wind which was pushing the vapor out over the lake instead of rising straight up. Maybe that was a plus as you can see the water at least? It was even more interesting this afternoon as there were patches of ice forming on the surface. Supposed to be as cold tomorrow so I'll see what the lake looks like on the way to work. - Zombie

Happy 2026 everyone! - Zombie

Patrol Vessel (UFO#261) Part 3 It's a couple turns later and we've just spotted a couple of hardened bonesetters to the right of the UFO's main door. They are right next to each other which means they are ripe for training our soldiers with grenades. Mouse will start things off with a lowly incendiary grenade: Lowly is a fitting term as it doesn't do any damage to either. No problem though, Silencer will toss a sludge grenade next: It hits weak spots in both, dealing 92 & 86 damage killing both: Very nice! On the next turn, there's a bonesetter on the other side of the UFO by the wall of dirt. Sorby has a shot at it. Auto shot it is: He missed once, connected 4 times for no damage and the last did 37. Pete, please show this guy how to shoot: Th first bullett was absorbed while the second hit for 27, but that was enough to kill the thing: During the alien's next turn, a bonesetter appears near where the last one was and starts shooting: Oh boy. It hits Sorby but he somehow shrugs off the damage. When it's our turn, MikeTheRed will shoot at it: All the bullets either missed or were absorbed. Loonie, you're next: I didn't catch the kill shot, but it must've done a decent amount of damage with one bullet. That was it, mission complete. EOM report: No soldiers were promoted or wounded or lost, and no aliens captured either. We did gain some more stuff though. There's no way we are going to use 31 positronic beamers right now, so time to sell all but one: While we are here, let's take a look at our grenade inventory: At some point I should probably manufacture some more DG2 (aka Golden Pineapple) grenades as we do use them occasionally. Same thing for Cryo and Incendiary grenades, we use these for tougher aliens since these have different damage types besides the mechanical like the normal grenades do. May as well sell some of the recovered UFO equipment as that'll fund our engineers: Of course, that'll be after this batch of U238 ammo is manufactured. Back on the geoscape and we've just detected a couple UFOs. I send out a couple interceptors from the main base to engage the small recon vessel: Which reminds me, I better get Knan back on the transport with his new-ish kit: I mean, it's not anything new per-se. It's the same "grunt" kit most soldiers carry right now. Gotta have a good supply of ammo (both strong and weak) for training and killing. Plus, grenades are a must, so are shields, a medikit and a spare mortar bomb. With that done, time to send out the transport since the UFO went down quick: Whoopsie, now we detect another recon vessel: It's supposedly headed to Africa for a mining mission. Still, it's concerning since it's kinda nearby. Before the transport could land, another UFO shows up near our main base and the crash site: Now this is really concerning. I don't like to have my transport in the air while there is UFO activity nearby. Another large UFO is spotted over South America. Not super-concerned about this one, but interceptors are scrambled to engage while it's in range of the base defenses: That UFO near the main base has actually wandered into the base's defensive net, so I send 2 interceptors to take it down quicker: And of course, it's time to land at the recon vessel. So join me next time for that one where it'll be an arctic base with Megas and Chemical Monsters. Haven't seen these in a while so it'll be a nice change of pace! - Zombie

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas! - Zombie

Patrol Vessel (UFO#261) Part 2 Back to the mission, we end our turn and the first thing that happens is a Rar comes charging into the hedge maze where Space Voyager is camped out. He's ready and reaction fires: His first shot hits for 60 damage and the second flies off and destroys part of the hedge: The Rar obviously didn't like that, cut in line, charged straight for SV and attacked him with H2H combat. Luckily, it did no damage because SV has good armor: SV takes his final shot at point blank range, does 77 critical damage to the critter which kills it. Phew! Dodged a bullet there. On our turn, we spot the scary central cannon on the UFO. TV will obviously mortar it: The blast hits a weak spot for 188 damage which destroys it: During the alien's next turn, an Iron Rattler is seen wandering along the east side of the map: Not a problem for us as Nook is carefully watching that area. He shoots at it which does 42 damage and kills it: Easy stuff. When it's our turn, we spot a couple more cannons on the roof of the UFO. TV will put a mortar right between them: The first one takes 95 damage and the second is hit critically for 184 damage which takes it out. TV will mortar the first one again: Just to give you an idea where TV is located, he's holed up in a corner of a wall and some crates: These cannons can't shoot back at him because he's in cover. Anyway, this blast does 99 damage and destroys the other cannon: No more cannons are active anymore so we can all breathe a sigh of relief. It's short-lived because we spot a hardened bonesetter where the first two cannons were. Nobody has a clear shot at it and TV doesn't have enough APs left to mortar it. I want this bonesetter gone, like pronto, but what can we do? Well, TV drops the mortar on the ground, then his dedicated protector (and ammo carrier) AT picks it up, loads it and will fire: This is dangerous behavior, but it's a risk we are comfortable with since this Bonesetter can't retaliate by shooting back. The blast does only 22 damage, but that was enough to kill it for some reason: We probably already damaged the thing earlier with all the blanket mortaring around the top of the UFO. No complaints here. Anyway, AT gives the mortar back to TV and a couple turns later we spot another bonesetter on the ground on the right side of the UFO. Silencer is going to toss an incendiary grenade on it: It only does 15 fire damage: Well, that's disappointing. I'm not going to waste a mortar bomb on this one so we let it be. During the alien's next turn, there's a bonesetter up on the roof of the UFO where the first two cannons were: Interesting. When it's our turn again, Silencer will toss a Cryo grenade on it: The combat log says the blast did no damage to it, but something else is hit for 15 freeze damage. Now that's really interesting! That other bonesetter is probably down there too, in the darkness somewhere. Mouse will throw a cryo grenade down there too: The blast does 41 freeze damage to the hidden bonesetter which kills it. The visible bonesetter shrugs off the damage again though: Sorby gets into position to throw an incendiary grenade on it: Plenty of fire down there already, but hey, you can never have too much. In this case it doesn't matter because the damage just rolls off the bonesetter's back: Nobody else is close enough to toss anything on it so we are going to leave it be and hopefully the fire will hit for something. It never does, but we do spot a Trep floating around: DragonHawk is going to take a rather long-range auto shot at it when it's our turn: The first bullet hits for 71 damage which kills it. We also see an Iron Rattler by Mouse and Silencer: Since Mouse is closer, he'll do the shooting. Of course, the Iron Rattler shoots at him while he's getting into position, but the damage was absorbed: His first bullet hits for 62 damage which kills it: Join me next time for part 3 where we finish off the rest of the bonesetters and complete the mission. Then it's on to the geoscape to shoot down some more UFOs. The transport is sent out but in the meantime more UFOs show up which is unsettling to say the least. - Zombie

Patrol Vessel (UFO#261) Part 1 Where was I? Ah yes, this patrol vessel! So we land and almost immediately spot a Rar nearby. Kret is going to start things out by tossing a cryo grenade on it: The blast only did 31 freeze damage so Sorby files out to toss an incendiary grenade on it: This bast didn't do much better, only managing 26 fire damage. Just like Lemmings, Loonie comes out to toss a cryo grenade: That did 36 freeze damage which finally kills it: Nothing happens for the next round even after we spread out to take defensive positions. The round after that, we spot an airborne hardened bonesetter milling around the UFO (which is in a hole). Nook is going to take a rather inaccurate auto shot (61%) at it: His first bullet hits for 28 damage while the second misses. Before he could get his final bullet in, the bonesetter shoots back: Oh boy, this may be bad. Luckily it missed, and Nook's last bullet did 50 damage which killed it: Nice! MikeTheRed scouts forward and spots a Rar which he'll throw a cryo grenade at: The blast only does 15 freeze damage. Worse still, he doesn't have enough APs left to withdraw fully. Huge mistake on my part! We try to save face by moving DragonHawk up in order to throw an incendiary grenade near it: It only did 12 fire damage: That's all we can do besides maybe nuking the area (which would really be a bad idea since it would destroy too much terrain we could use as cover). Fingers crossed as we end the turn. As expected, the Rar bolts forward during it's turn. I can only watch in horror as it appears right next to MTR. It's out of APs though. When it's our turn again, MTR will take a point blank auto shot at it: He hits for 56 & 74 which kills it: Crisis averted! On the next turn we spot an airborne hardened bonesetter to the west of us. Loonie is going to attempt a very long-range aimed shot at 80%: It hits for 75 and kills it: Incredible shooting there! We forget to look around after the kill, assuming that region is clear. Nope, far from it. During the alien's turn, a Rar appears a couple tiles away from Space Voyager. He reaction fires at it with his photon beamer hitting for 66 damage: Not a kill. But like the other Rar from earlier, this one also is out of APs. When it's our turn, SV will take an auto shot at it: His first blast hits for 46 which kills it: I started thinking that maybe the game needed to be reloaded at this point so that's what I did. Next round we spot a Trep which DH will shoot at: His first bullet hits for a paltry 14 damage, but his next hits a weak spot and deals an unbelievable 135 which obliterates it to the next dimension: We also spot one of those scary UFO cannons so TV will mortar it: It only did 50 damage so he blasted it again. This blast did a decent 125 which destroys it: Good! That's one less thing we have to worry about. Join me for part 2 where it's honestly going to be more of the same. Yup, more mistakes, more close calls, more nuking of UFO cannons, more superb shooting by our soldiers and more luck. You'll see. - Zombie

Yeah, it's been one long cold snap for the last week. Supposed to get 6-10 inches of snow tomorrow too. Then another cold snap for about a week more. That may be it for painting unless we get a few days of sunny warm weather. The paint has been pulled and is waiting at the ready. With all the cold weather, I figured it would be a good idea to get the small garage sorted out. Swept it out over two days, put some more stuff away, and pulled one of the delivery vans inside to protect it from icing over. There's more to do yet, but it's shaping up. I made a huge mistake with the watering can actually. I just assumed I knew where all the cracks were, taking someone else's word for it without leak testing the darn thing. Did that today and found that it still leaked due to a crack in the side near the bottom: Did my best trying to zipper weld it, but the plastic was pretty thin. Just melted some sacrificial black bucket plastic into the spot to button it up: Leak tested it and found no wet spots on the outside. Should be good enough, if it fails again I can always melt some screening over it. - Zombie

Me too, in one of the pics I posted you can see the gap is the width of a brick. I picked up some Big Gap Filler at the hardware store the other day. Just haven't got around to trying to fill the gap yet.The main reason being that the weather has been rather iffy lately. Starts out good, but by the time the afternoon rolls around it either rains or stays clear overnight... which means really chilly mornings - today it was 25F (-4C). I did manage to prime everything the other day though. Here's the south side of the wall: And here's the north side: As you can see, I cleaned up all the crumbling brick and mortar and swept everything up too. I maybe would have had a chance to apply a top coat over this, but it was getting late in the day and I was afraid it wouldn't dry before the temps dropped below freezing. Better to play it safe. Didn't do anything to the crack, I just put some chunks of brick in front of it. Had to do an emergency repair on an old plastic watering can today since it was leaking water all over the place. The designers had put duct tape over the handle ages ago (like that will be a fix, right?) so I had to pull all that off and cleaned up the crack with lacquer thinner to remove some of the residue. Then it was just a matter of zipper welding all the cracks and smoothing it all out: The cracks were along the center line since that is a natural weak spot. Underneath the handle was all cracked up too. I plastic welded what I could, and just filled the rest in with melted sacrificial bucket strips. That was kinda rough so I sanded it smooth: I told the designers that if it leaked again to just bring the can back by me so I can fix it again. Don't want them to continue using it and making a future repair job more difficult. -Zombie

I think it's a bit of both actually: bad mortar and a long time since it was originally done. Oh gosh, where do I start on this project? Well, I glued up the broken brick with Gorilla Glue yesterday so I had to scrape off all the squeeze-out. That went really good - a sharp putty knife is where it's at. So then I went out to the wall and dry-fit it in place, no problem there. The issue was all the bricks underneath it were all loose. Once I started pulling on them, it all came out. Spent a bit of time cleaning off the old mortar from the bricks, then dry-fit them all in place again: This is turning out to be a bigger project than I anticipated. I started it, may as well continue on. Took everything back out to show that it's hollow in between the two walls and there's hardly any mortar in the joints on the other side: Probably should have tried to tuck point some of this but it would have been really difficult to work in there effectively. Maybe could have used one of those frosting bags for cooking and loaded that up with some thin mortar and then squeezed that in the joints. Meh, this had to get done pronto. With all the bricks cleaned off, I arranged them so I knew what went where: And then it was all mortaring. That took a long time, but in the end, got it all squared away: Mixed up 3/4 of a bag of mortar for this job in multiple batches. Had a little leftover so I filled in the crack between the walkway and the wall. Figured that crack was probably one of the reasons the mortar was failing there, with it closed up, that should prevent water from getting down in there as much. I'm having a little trouble filling in the last crack though: I can't push mortar in there because it's hollow behind it. Hmmm. Suppose maybe I could stuff some steel wool in there. Or maybe that expanding foam? Got any other ideas? -Zombie