The History Channel

I love the History Channel, but I'm starting to get a bit irked at 'em. I am no scholar, nor do I bill myself as one, but I am fairly well read on some subjects. I've been noticing a disturbing tendency to "dumb-down" a lot of things lately in some of their documentaries. I've also seen more than one out-and-out mistake/misrepresentation/fabrication. The latest of which was Monday night in their little "Unlocking the Da Vinci Code" show.

Now, I'll admit that their heart is in the right place, because they're trying to straighten out those poor misguided souls who think that the Da Vinci Code is history. Well, it ain't. It's a freakin' novel... with just enough history mixed in to help the story along. Not even good history at that... more like a few centuries worth of rumors and coincidence. But that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I'm actually trying to say is, that if you're making a show to debunk some popular foolishness, shouldn't you have all of your facts straight first?

It may seem like a very small thing, but to me it seemed crazy that no-one caught this. I am NOT by any means a medieval scholar, but even I knew that the First Crusade didn't take Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans didn't appear on the scene for about another 200 years. Those boys were still out on the steppe in 1099. Now, on their way to Jerusalem, the Crusaders fought the Seljuk Turks on numerous occasions, but if memory serves me correctly, by the time they got to Jerusalem, the Egyptians (Arabs?) had come up and ran the Seljuks out of Jerusalem.... so the Crusaders weren't even fighting Turks by the time they got to Palestine. All the Turks were up north in Syria.

I know that sounds like a small nit-picky thing, but my point is, if they made such a glaring error that even I caught it, what else have they gotten wrong?

Elvis

As in my dog, Elvis, not the Elvis.

My buddy Jeff the Farrier came to get some hay Saturday. Thing about Jeff is, he don't like dogs (or cats either, but that's another story) and my boy Elvis knows that Jeff doesn't like him, even though Jeff pets him and plays with him.

I didn't see this, as I was four miles away in another field at the time, but there were witnesses.

Jeff was walking along picking up bales and throwing them on my trailer (he had to borrow mine to move his hay) when Elvis comes along and just casually hikes his leg and whizzes on the bale Jeff is about to pick up. Jeff started in cussing Elvis. "Git outta heah you sonvabitch!" "#%^^@@%Y& blankity-blank=blank dog!

Elvis stopped, gave Jeff a baleful glare, climbed up on the bale, then put his front paws on the ground, squatted and took a dump on top of it (the bale of hay).

For once in his life, Jeff was absolutely speechless. Jeff's buddy Ed, who was watching this event with great interest, turns to my Bride and asked "How long'd it take you to take to train that dog t'do that?"

Of course I had to call him that night. Told him that oughta teach him not to cuss at my hound dog in the future. Shame we don't have video of it.

Hello... is this thing on?

Ok, I'm back, caught up, slowed down or whatever you prefer to call it. I haven't had time to read anyone, let alone do any writing, but I'm done for a day or too at least.

Things went fairly smoothly, no major equipment breakdowns to speak up, several minor ones (knotter problems, lost a tire off one of the wagons, the Ford kept running hot, blew a hydraulic hose on the Gehl, blew a hydraulic hose on the mower... in other words, just normal stuff), but the biggest issue was the weather, well, the weather and the fact that I laid down waaaaaaay too much hay.

I've still got about 10+ acres down that we simply could not get to. We ended up with around 900 bales give or take 50 (I keep forgeting to look at the bale counter), which isn't bad considering. If the rain had held up til today I expect we'd have 2000.

I tried to use the Gehl to roll a few, but only managed to wrap the rollers up with grass and break a chain on the pickup. We finally quit square baling when it got to drizzling rain to the point that the hay was getting to wet to bale. The last twenty or so bales weighed close to a hundred pounds or better. We threw those up on top of the stack so they'd dry down.


My view of the world for the past week.

We didn't get started baling until Saturday afternoon, if we'd got started Friday I think we'd have at least 1200 in the barn. Oh well. It'll roll this weekend. What's left in the field I plan to roll and give it to TC. His cows ain't picky and it'll help him out. As much as he's helped me, I figure that'll be good for both of us. I get the rest of the field cleaned up, get to try out the Gehl and get the bugs worked out and he gets a jump on his hay for next winter.

I just saw an old friend of mine on the History Channel, talking about the Andrews raid. That makes four people that I know who've been on various and sundry History Channel shows in the past two years.

I'm still mowing. Hope to be finished tomorrow... today now I guess. The grass looks good. Waist high or better over most of the field. Orchard grass and Fescue for the most part, some Clover (both red and white) and some Vetch in a few spots. Should be close to a thousand square bales and maybe thirty or forty 4x4 rolls. This is going to be a rough week.

Had a scare tonight. Came in from the field around dark-thirty, Sweetie was up at the barn and asked me to come help her worm the foals. As we took care of the last one and were walking out of the stall, the mare hauled off and kicked at the horse in the next stall. Unfortunately baby (little man #2) was right behind her. Sweetie thought the mare'd killed him. He hit the ground and lay there with his legs sticking straight out and twitching. His breathing was pretty ragged and I was sure he had some broken ribs, but he just had the wind knocked out of him. He's going to be ok, but she did hit him in the head, close to his eye. I don't think anything is broken, but there is a lot of swelling, so it's hard to tell.

He did not like getting his eye flushed out, but after a while he quit fighting and let us clean him up. His eye is intact, which is damned lucky. A blow like that could've easily ruptured it. He was up and nursing when we came to the house, so I'd say he's going to be fine. I'll know more in the morning.

Stallions

Both of the boys are out of this guy. One of the mares (little boy #1) is out of an Appendix Quarter horse mare, while the other mare (Little boy#2) is a Thoroughbred.

You can see a larger photo (and more horses) here .

Girlie, on the other hand, is out of this guy and a Thoroughbred mare.

Many more pictures here .

More Baby pictures

Sorry I took so long.

Here we have the as-yet-unamed little boy #1.


And the newest arrival, little boy #2.



I'm still trying to figure out why a bay stud is throwing sorrel foals out of two different mares. Little boy #1 I can see, since his mother is a sorrel, but little boy #2 is out of a bay mare. You'd think bay+bay would give you another bay.

And last but not least, a not-so-great picture of girlie, who seems to have grown camera shy since her ordeal.

Hay, Hay and more Hay

The weather is looking pretty good for next week. The temptation is very strong to lay it all down on the ground... but just as sure as I do, it'll set in raining about Tuesday morning and not stop for a month.

I ordered new belts for the Gehl yesterday from the nice folks at Excel belting. They seem to be pretty knowledgeable and are pleasant to deal with. I called them last week with questions and they put me on the phone with the President of the company. That may not seem like a big deal, but these folks are OEM suppliers for a couple of major baler manufacturers... so naturally having a head honcho who will take the time to speak to a customer with a small order is bound to impress me.

I'm going this evening to get some spare blades for the disc mower. If it's dry enough tomorrow afternoon I'll start mowing. Sweetie is gone to a horse show all weekend, so I'll be eating PBJ and bologna for a couple of days... unless I get a wild hair and go to Krystal for some gut-bombs or I may go to the grocery store for some supplies and have fried Spam and biscuits for breakfast tomorrow...

Anyhooo, still no drivel for a while.

Settling down

Things are calming down slightly. I'm slowly but surely whittling away at the big side project and hope to be finished with it completely sometime in the next couple of weeks.

I installed Tiger earlier this week in hopes it would fix an annoying habit my G4 has developed of crashing for no apparent reason and taking everything down. Funny how Apple touts the stability of OS X so much. I've had nothing but problems. It doesn't seem to be any more stable than OS 9.

When I made the upgrade to Tiger, the workaround I had been using to keep my ixMicro video card working in OS X wouldn't work anymore, so I spent a couple of days working in OS 9 and was shocked at the difference in speed. It's been so long since I've worked in 9 that I simply didn't realize how slow OS X was. I don't see a whole lot of difference between X and using a Windows box. I started out using Windows (went through college running Photoshop on a 386 DX40 with 8mb of ram and 170mb HD), only to get away from it when I realized that a Mac was much faster at the kind of work I was doing. With X, they've killed the speed edge without giving me anything I can really use. Sure the interface is nice, but it doesn't do a damn thing for me productivity-wise.

As to why I can't just go back to OS 9... well, Photoshop CS2 is sweet. I can do things with it that are impossible with Photoshop 7. Since 75% of what I do is in Photoshop, I'm stuck with X whether I like it or not.

New arrival, Volume III

Little man appeared sometime today or early this morning without any assistance from anyone save his mother.



He's the last one for this year and probably the last one for several years to come, as we are getting away from this madness for a while at least.

Better photos tomorrow, the batteries in the camera were nearly dead.

Update:
Howdy to all the folks that Glenn sent this way. We actually have three foals, just scroll waaaaaaay on down (past much dreck and drivel) to see 'em.

I quit writing for a few days and get an Instalaunch from the All-powerful, All-Wise and All-Knowing Blogfather. I had already noticed the ole' sitemeter stats were up since I haven't written anything in a week. Wonder what that says about my writing?

Anyway, thanks Glenn!

I will try to have more pictures of newest boy up tomorrow night. Would've already done it, but I've been covered up at work and even more covered up with side projects.

An explanation of sorts

My writing, or lack thereof, is going to Hades in a handcart right now. Things seem to be picking up in more ways than one. I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row because I need to be mowing hay in the next week or so. I have tedders to repair, a wagon to re-floor, two wagons loaded down with lumber and scaffolds to unload, a barn to clean out and a whole bunch more that I can't even think about right now.

I did sorta-semi repair the brakes on the Deutz, but I still haven't figured out anything to do with the pto running at 1000rpm all the time. Still waiting on bigger brother to bring the Ford home and I guess I'd best get on the stick and order those new belts for the round baler. I highly doubt if the one's in it will last more than a bale or two.

I was able to get the fence fixed where idiot-boy tore it down, so at least I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Oh yeah, I need to bushog too. Luckily the batwing seems to be functioning normally (at least as normally as it ever runs) so, in theory at least, mowing shouldn't take too long.

My time to do all of this is limited because I'm tied up at the computer right now. We've got a lot of stuff going at the salt mines and I've got three side jobs going that I hope will turn out to be fairly lucrative.

We'll see.

a rodeo romance that ended before it began

Ya'll done went and shamed me into writing something, so I'll relay a story that DR told me tonight.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but DR used to rodeo back in the day. His brain finally grew in and he quit that foolishness, but he's still got plenty of stories from those days.

He was at a rodeo once with an old boy named Bill Mooney and they happened to run into a couple of gals that Bill knew. Well, it was getting on up in the evening so the four of 'em found a fairly secluded spot (as secluded as you can get at a rodeo at least) underneath some trees back away from the stands a mite.

Well, it commenced to sprinklin' rain. They still set there and visited in rain until it got rainin' a little harder. Bill jumped up and said "I'll be right back." and disappeared. When he came back he was jinglin' a set of keys in his hand.

They trooped off towards where all the participant parking was and climbed into this great ole big nice four-door dually pickup what belonged to one of Bill's friends.

DR said that Bill got in the front with one of the gals, whilst he and the other one climbed into the back.

I'll tell the rest in his own words as best I can...

Now, we weren't 'zactly rippin' one anothers clothes off, but we weren't sitting on opposite sides of the truck neither, if'n you know what I mean. 'bout the time we started git'in real friendly I seed this big ole boy that looked like Lou Ferrigno come walking by in front of the truck leading four horses, two in each hand. I pointed him out to that gal and said "that guy looks like he's big enough that them horses could ride him 'stead of the other way 'round."

The gal looked up and said "oh, that's my husband."

He didn't say so, but I'm willing to bet he (DR) needed a clean pair of drawers about then.

"Your what?"

"My husband..... we've only been married about a month and a half, I'm about tired of it now."

.........................

"ummmm, Bill... I need to git goin"

DR said he made his excuses as quick as he could and hied himself back home as quick as his truck would carry him. Although the gal might not have been too keen on the marriage business, DR was smart enough to know that her husband might just take a dim view of her activities and he didn't want any part of him.

I am

entirely too busy to write anything right now. My apologies to all three of you. I will be back up and running in a couple of days.

I hope.

Speaking of Moron Projects

Big Daddy Possum thinks we should found an Axis of Idiot. I asked why we couldn't call it the Axis of Moron, but Terry convinced me that Axis of EEEEEEEEdeeot just plain sounds better.

I'm in on the ground floor as a charter member.

And speaking of idiots, Steve from Hog on Ice has been tormenting everyone's favorite idiots, the Nigerian spammers. He inspired me to torment an Ebay scammer who had a JD 6120 with MWFD (four-wheel-drive), a loader and a cab for a buy-it-now price of $4950. That's about a 40 or 50 thousand dollar machine. I tried to mess with 'em, but they didn't take the bait. Too bad. That would've been fun.

More four-legged idiot tricks

I spent all day Sunday finishing the fence, y'know the one the idiots tore down last week?

New 39" page wire, one run of bob-wire on top of that and a hot wire on top of that. Good lookin' fence. One of best I've ever built.

Now it consists of broken wire and bent posts. Thanks to a little bull-in-a-china shop rampage by a big DUMB idiot warmblood.

The end result was an idiot three-year old standing in the barn eating away at a 55 gallon drum full of sweetfeed. He's so big and dumb, the hot wire never fazed him. He apparently just rode the fence down and stepped over it.

My sweet bride, who thinks the electric fence isn't working, finds out the hard way that it is. She also discovered that the human body will conduct electricity. Sooooo, instead of putting the tires back on the bushog, fixing the steering on the Ferguson and maybe going with TC to look at a little Moron Project (JD 650 with belly mower) I get to redo what I spent all day Sunday doing.

#$%@%^&@@$ing Warmbloods.

Big Moron Project on hold

Maybe next year. Or later this year. It seems I only run across these things I want/need when I'm not looking for them.

Or when I'm broke.

I figure I need to wait a while anyway. I shall instead concentrate on baler belts, fences, getting the tedder operational, fixing the pto on the Deutz and finding something more reliable to mow the yard/roadside/fencerows with. So, although the big Moron Project™ is on hold, there may be a small Moron Project™ in the works.

And, as my Daddy used to tell me when I was a little feller, I'm big enough that my wants won't hurt me.

Overheard at the barber shop

I reckon if if'n yer planin' t'run off these days y'need t'call the Sheriff an' tell 'im "hey I'ma leavin' town, but don't tell nobody."

This was, of course, in regards to the chick in Duluth.