1st Gen. Lunch Table - General Discussion

We hate hackberry trees around here.

I talked to the people that own this house. She said the county is coming to get it off the road but there are 80 trees ahead of them. Saw another house with a huge limb on their roof.

I thought about offering to help my neighbor but I would actually be creating more work for the tree company that will have to come out and remove it.

 

I hate hackberries too. @JasonC. and I were talking about it recently, apparently they have them in his area of TX also. Only it sounds like they don't deal with all the black soot bullshit they produce over there (well, they don't create it, these recent-arrival Chinese wooly aphids do).

What you pictured - the last 4 times that's happened in my neighborhood we don't waste time. I've had my chainsaw in-hand and out the door ASAP to help neighbors cut it up. I've got one other guy a few doors down who grew up in the country also and doesn't eff around with that nonsense. But it's weird, and I'm not knocking, but we have a lot of people in our neighborhood who've never seen a chainsaw up close. They're always in shock or disbelief that I have this in my garage and I know how to use it, and I can take apart a tree like what you see by myself in 1-2 hours, working casually.

You basically can't wait for the city. You wait for the power company to give the all-clear, then get to work. Else your road stays blocked for weeks or months.

 

@FirstGenVol we're getting even more hail and shit down here. You guys might have another day's worth based on the direction this is all moving.

Glad I have my network and internet setup the way I do, we've already had 3 power outages 3-5 minutes long. Wifi and internet rock solid the whole time. Wife has been on a vidconf call, lights flickering the whole time, we're both still working

 

Man I’d take a tree falling over (one of my neighbors’) if it meant some rain!!

 

We just had a gullywasher. Half of my neighbor's front yard just washed away. We want rain, we just don't want it like that. When you get massive amounts of rain here, with the tree canopy we have, all that water weight brings mature trees down en masse onto cars, people, houses, livestock, you name it.

 

We had a doozy while we were gone on vacation, lots of power outages; we were down for 12-16hrs, MIL was down for almost 36 hours. But thankfully none of our trees came down or broke big limbs. The mature mesquite we have out front(falling distance to the cars) has put up with a bunch of crazy storms and keeps truckin, im kinda sad I missed this last big storm. Some mule tape that holds the shade over the pond ripped, and a potted cactus fell over, that was the extent of our misfortune

 

We've got a couple of monsters within house-devastating mature trees. Most houses in Atlanta are, they don't call us "city in the forest" for nothing. So we kinda keep our fingers crossed every storm and hope for the best.

 

A big saguaro came down at MIL place, and my son got to watch the crane pull parts of it out, operator said one portion weighed 1200#!

 

Now that we've argued cordless tools, how about chainsaws?

I'm in the Stihl camp.

 

i will be the one to inform everyone, the 1998 tacoma is getting JBA headers and powerstop calipers (calipers because it got me to 1000 dollars to get 100 off... so free calipers almost)

 

old school McCullough or modern stihl - all i like

 

We haven't had rain here since the beginning of June, when amarillo literally flooded after 2 straight weeks of rain. Nothing but upper 90s and 100s. It was 87 yesterday so that was nice.

 

UPS?

 

PoE network core, with PoE access points. PoE switch, cable modem, and the NAS running the family Minecraft server are all attached to a 1500va UPS in the data closet. As long as the PoE core has power, it's feeding power to the access points and we have wifi, and as long as the cable modem stays up and the lines on the pole aren't broken, we have internet. We can usually stay up for a good 20-25 minutes, sometimes longer. I've replaced the batteries in the UPS a couple times, and each new pair of batteries seems to vary a bit on uptime.

And that reminds me, I never did answer your question about running a server in the house. I need to dig that post up and reply to it.

 

I prefer the longevity and durability of Stihl, it's what my dad uses, and what I use when I'm out at their place in BFE. I personally own and use a McCullough I've had for a couple decades now, couldn't pass up the price, my dad's hand-me-down got stolen during my move from FL->GA. I'll probably end up inheriting dad's current Stihl when he passes, and the McCullough will go to a new home, I'm sure it'll still be running, it's been rock solid.

Husqies get honorable mention though. I find them ergonomically more comfortable and appreciate how they cut the couple of times I've gotten to use them. Just not impressed enough to buy one. (edit: there's a pic of me wielding a Husqy somewhere here on the forum, IIRC)

 

Crazy story here! I can’t stop laughing at the picture and imagining some outraged girlfriend or wife trying to crash into a house but hitting a ditch and getting airborne into the second story:

https://nypost.com/2023/08/08/car-c...e-left-dangling-from-roof-in-intentional-act/

 

@shifty` Do you have a preference when it comes to a UPS, say an APC or CyberPower or some other brand. I’m in the market for a true sinewave UPC myself.

 

I've always used APC at work and at home.

The few time we've bought Cyberpower or Tripp Lite at work, there's always been an issue. Displays going out. Mystery failures after a power outage where the battery drains completely. Units not booting back up or failing POST after replacing batteries with the exact same voltage & aH batter(y|ies). Enough problems I'd neither want to buy nor recommend to anyone. That's not to say we haven't had issues with SOME of the APC units we've bought. But generally speaking, very reliable. Make sure whatever you buy has a replaceable battery and you've got something that'll be around 10yrs from now.

Although I will admit, Tripp Lite did outlast most of the Cyberpower units. Cyberpower may've improved also, I dunno, we haven't bought any new UPS in a few years. APC is just ... solid.

 

You'd love my DeWalt chainsaw....

 

"Nobody was in the room impacted at the time"

Shows picture of room: Treadmill inside, must be a gym.

Mystery solved, we know why nobody was in the room.

 

Hey I was watching a video on the 13WL upgrade thread, and I saw something that caught my eye. Maybe it only exists on the earlier-face models with chrome lower bumper? I've never seen these side splash guards, and I don't think my skid plate has provisions for them. I don't recall ever seeing these side "wings" or whatever while looking in the parts system.

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My truck had those when I bought it. The plastic holes had ripped so they were not in the best shape. I eventually removed both.

 

Mine has 'em, here's a pic from a while back; they were really faded/oxidized, but I simplegreen'd 'em and hit em with a tire scrub brush and game them a coat of black Rustoleum and they look great. Probably hard to find in junkyards because that skid plate is usually the first thing to come off as folks get at engine/tranny. The holes on mine are also pretty gnarly, PO (maybe factory?) had used what look like sheet metal screws with fairly large washers to hold it on.

 

My 2000 has them also

 

Mine are stashed in the vault with my centercaps.

 

Just a perk of having a steel bumper japanese truck. Before they were further americanized.

 

Yeah, I mean, I think this is they, inside the EPC exploded. But I can't click-through to get a part number in the system, as if there is no such part for the '06...

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You should be able to glue em to the inside of the bumper. Had to unhook em to pull the skid for oil changes.