so waht ya doin today?

[CZ93X62]

Rick et al--

Not to put too fine a point on it.....I have been an insulin-dependent diabetic since late 1980/early 1981. With the possible exception of advances in insulin technology, no single treatment upgrade during this time can compare to the improvement in my health that has been wrought by the Constant Glucose Monitor. My unit is a Dexcom system--I started with the then brand-new Gen. 4 unit in Fall 2014, and it finally died about 3 months ago. I has been replaced with a Gen 6 unit/system.

The Gen 4's accuracy was as good or better than maker claims, which were "Within 10% of test strip values". It is "early days" with this Gen 6 unit, but its accuracy level is INCREDIBLE--within 1% to 2% of test strip values. It also self-calibrates, with the same accuracy level. The only down-side I have found with the new unit is its effective range--the Gen 4 could keep running across my house through several walls; the new unit doesn't like having anything between itself and me. It throws a mope if it can't see you, and does not keep it a secret. The alarms are insistent and loud. ALL RIGHT, ALREADY.

FWIW......

I have gone on a strict diet for the past couple months, and it follows Keith's guidelines pretty closely. I have shed almost 30 pounds during this time, and the size loss is quite noticeable. This weight loss has enhanced my mobility already, which might be its most telling improvement from my point of view.

 

[Rick]

Yeah, I really think the Libre system would be a huge benefit. They now have me on Trulicity, Lantus and Humalog. Test strips did fine until the Humalog was added, in addition to all the testing anyway the Humalog is supposed to be used every time ya eat something. What a PITA with the test strips, averaging 8-10 times a day and thus it usually doesn't happen that often. Got a script for the Libre, pretty sure insurance covers it, also pretty sure Express Scripts is the most screwed up business I have ever dealt with. Just gonna have to see what happens.

 

[Bret4207]

One if our kids gets quite a lot of meds. They have 3 insurance plans- my wifes (her birthday comes first???) then mine, then being adopted they have Medicaid. I have yet to get the meds and have my copay be the same at any time over, say, 6 months. One time it's $3.00, next it's $11.00, then there's no charge, and then it's $7.00, and then it's $2.00. ????????? The pharmacists are nice kids and they've tried figuring this out but it's beyond them. The ancient crone who's been there since JFK was in office was able to fix it a couple times when the copay shot up to $35-40 bucks (for 17.00 worth of pills!) but she's retiring. You'd think there would be a standard that would show up over time.

 

[popper]

Safety wire pliers?

 

[JWFilips]

Jim, I attended the 2 Woodstock "revival" festivals in a professional capacity. I seriously don't see how that can be anyones idea of a good time.

Sorry for the late response for a thread that is obviously a daily thing!
My wife and I had a great time ( mostly since we never have been able to go on day trips or any trips for that matter with my work schedule) Now that I put myself on partial retirement ....that makes things a bit more fun for us because we can be spontaneous with ideas for a quick enjoyable trip somewhere.

After a nice day and a great lunch at the museum restaurant ....we were talking about the modern day revivals of Woodstock as we drove home and we came to a unanimous conclusion that "It can never happen again in this day an age because people now are too violent!"

 

[Hawk]

I'm not sure it's just violence, but more of "it has to be about me and if it's not about me, I'm going to act up till it is about me".
When everyone has this same mindset, they compete with each other for attention and it escalates to violence.
Also, there is no real consequence for the violence. Nobody is worried about being caught and punished.
Was reading today about a woman who smashed a laptop computer on her boyfriends head on an American Airlines flight because he was looking at othe women. When they told her she would be arrested for assault, her response was "whatever".

 

[462]

. . . it has to be about me . . .

Don't have to look any further than driving in traffic. Just a while ago, I was keeping up with traffic that was doing 45 in a posted 40 zone, on a divided four lane street. Guy behind me changed lanes three times, in about 1/3 of a
mile, while trying to pass everyone. Ha, ha, he was't able to pass a single car.
Shortly before that, a van do a U-turn on a two-lane, one-way street because it was going the wrong way.
Then there were two instances of drivers running red lights, and the guy who changed lanes in front of me and almost hit me.
All that happened in 20 minutes driving time and less than four miles from home.

 

[358156 hp]

Around here, it just ain't a day if some other driver doesn't try to kill you. We got a lot of refugees from both coasts lately, and they seem bound and determined to make their new home the same kind of hole they worked so hard to escape from. Some of them don't like it here, no 24 hour Starbucks, or pizza delivery. And for some reason the older natives are not impressed with their incredibly high intelligence, or their obvious superiority.

 

[Bret4207]

The last 2 Woodstock revivals/memorials, whatever they were, were all the evidence in the world anyone needs that todays youth are simply idiots. Everything from people arriving in just the clothes on their back for a 3 day stay to people parking their car "somewhere on a side road" and not having a clue where that was (up to 30 miles away in some cases) to mothers calling the police because they let their 17 year old daughter go and they can't get in touch with them. ( Telling a parent they are a blithering moron and ought to be arrested for public stupidity is difficult to do in diplomatic terms.) When they rioted and stormed the Walmart tractor trailers full of sleeping bags and food, that was a lot of fun. It was like a 3rd world nation. OTOH, I did get to hear Bob Dylan live...from 3 miles away. Kinda cool as I liked some of his earlier stuff. But people who attend things like that are cut from different cloth than myself. Never in a million years would you find me at anything like that unless I was being paid.

Got the 60 year old ( just older than I am) square baler pretty much back together. Got the parts ordered for the round baler and Enos says the machining is a simple job and no prob. I'll try to get his permission to get some pics of his shop for those that can't quite put Amish and machine shop in one thought. Got some welding to do today because some idiot, that'd be me, under estimated the distance between my loader forks and another haybine tounge. Broke the jack right off it! I think I can weld it back on, but my vertical stick welding is not the best in the world. Might change wire in the MIG and use that. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the difference between stick and MIG and how you get penetration. My stick welding is ugly and nothing great, my MIG is nicer looking but I'm way better with sheet that structural stuff there. I'm out of practice on both really.

Also have to take my battery powered electric fencer to the shop. I broke down and bought a decent one last year IIRC. Has a nifty charge indicator. Even with the fence unhooked it just barely rises out of the yellow "marginal" area into the green "good" area. I'm lucky to have an old time electrical shop nearby (25 miles) that works on this stuff.

 

[L Ross]

Ah the lazy, hazy, crazy days of Summer. Last Friday when the heat index was forecast to hit 113, Sue and I bailed and headed for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in search of Lake Superior cooled air. Got up there and found 72 degrees. Back in Wisconsin, that cooler air collided with the muck we had and spawned 9 tornadoes, all EF-0 with no deaths but 550,000 people out of power. Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of the chaos down south, we meandered until Sunday when Weather Underground said it was cool enough back home to return. On our way I caught a glimpse of color that did not belong out of the corner of my eye as we motored down Hwy 141. I u-turned and found a moose. Said moose, placidly stuck around, proving to be a card carrying member of the, "Highly Photogenic Mega Fauna", union.

 

[Ian]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the difference between stick and MIG and how you get penetration. My stick welding is ugly and nothing great, my MIG is nicer looking but I'm way better with sheet that structural stuff there. I'm out of practice on both really.

It's not you, it's the system. MiG is NOT good for penetration and high structural strength root welds because it just can't put the heat into the metal unless you run huge wire and high amps from a machine no home-gamer can afford, think "sledgehammer for a finishing nail" kind of oversized. For structure, get your trusty 6011s and burn the hell out of that root going slow and deep, then make two more passes (three more if a flat, zig-zag a final wide pass down the middle or do it with a Mig). Depending on the angle and size of the weld, you can run cap passes or zig-zag over the top with MiG but you'd better have ALL the flux and rust off of the root weld and adjacent metal or it won't be adding much useful strength.

For really good penetration and strength, 6010 5P+ rods run with DC straight polarity has been working really well for me, they're sparklers but they bite well and float contaminants out really well even on a vertical.

 

[fiver]

god i hate welding up.
it most always looks patchy and over penetrated.
doing a series of stitch welds and one big over weld at a higher speed seems to work out okayish though.

 

[Ian]

Weld down instead. Let the arc force keep the puddle pushed up, sort of float the puddle on the tip of the rod. It helps if you can adjust voltage separately from amperage and are using DC.

 

[Bret4207]

Well, I'm reading this after I got the welding more or less done. I ended up just using the MIG because I have a 50 foot lead cord for that and not for the stick welder. (If nothing else, just looking at the wiring diffence between a 170 amp 220v MIG unit and a 225 amp 220V stick rig is enough to let you know which one has more ooomph!) I ground eveything clean and then discovered I had .035 wire and no .035 tips. I did have .030 tips and a roll of flux cored .030 but I wasn't playing that game. A man has to set some sort of lower limit! So I cranked up the feed and juice and tacked the jack in place with .023 wire that I'd been having good results on sheet stock with. What the heck, it's on there and holding and will last till I get some more supplies. I was going to use 6011 and then grind off the ugly bubblegum and hope rust hid the evidence. I either need to get some 50 foot leads for the stick machine (My late FILs ancient Marquette plug style) or make a 50 foot lead cord for it! Either way, at least the jack won't get lost. Lubed the haybine up and put in a new knife head bolt after Gord fought off at least 3 divisions of wasps that had decided to call the tongue home. Aerosol engine degreaser makes a pretty fair wasp and hornet spray in a pinch. Also got the baler back together. I reset the timing and made one adjustment to the knotter/needle timing. New Holland tells you line up two witness marks and tighten a chain. Well, there ain't no way the marks can stay lined up with the chain in the sprocket. It's either 1/2" before the mark or 1/2" after. I'd had it after the mark and I'd hear an alarming "BANG" every 25 or 30 bales. Any of you that have sweated behind a square baler know that loud "BANG" type noises generally make the baler owner go pale as a ghost and often result in large amounts of money, time and effort to be spent finding and repairing whatever caused the bang in the first place. So I'll ease things along and do some serious checking before I settle down to my normal routine of baling. 60 year old machines that would have been pushed into a scrap heap on any profitable farm need a little TLC to keep them happy. I wonder if those New Holland engineers back in the 50's ever thought some of their machines would not just be around, but still working 60-75 years later.

I also got the fencer up to the electrical shop. These guys are geniuses on anything electric and most things mechanical. So when the guy looking at my fencer gave a, "Huh!" (About as demonstrative as they get while sober in this family! "Stoic" doesn't even come close to describing these guys.) my interest was peaked. Turns out I'm about the sole guy in the area running a 12v fencer and his "outburst" was due to the fact that they actually didn't have any of the parts he needed to test and fix it. I guess he was concerned their reputation might be tarnished or that I might take my business elsewhere (as if!). Honestly, that is as emotional a comment as I've ever heard from any of these guys!

 

[Ian]

Be sure and have a nitroglycerin pill handy when you start pricing 50' welding leads.

 

[freebullet]

Get ya some 45 wire & fugettaboutit. I use 35 on sheet steel, just feeds nice. I won't use less than 35 on aluminum wire either. Too many feed issues, not great penetration.

 

[Ian]

A 175-amp machine should run .045 no problem. You can run a 5/8" bead that way.....only problem is if the machine has a typical consumer-grade 10% duty cycle (or less) at close to max output then you'll be welding 2" at a time and waiting for the thermal protection to cycle back off before welding anither 2".

 

[Bret4207]

I think this machine is limited to .035 wire, the Miller might do heavier. The one I'm using is an Italian job, a Cebora, gifted to me in a trade with the Miller. The Cebora is essentially new, the Miller has a gazillion hours on it and spent 6 months at that electrical shop getting figured out. I will certainly keep these ideas in mind, thanks!

Yeah, a lead cord makes a lot more sense $$$-wise.

Gotta a mess of stuff to do today and the sheep need moving. Sigh...

 

[Bret4207]

My bad, the Cebora is a 155a, the Miller a 170.

 

[Intheshop]

OMGoodness,where to start?

Reckon this falls under "history" but.... seeing as #4 son takes that sheet to the limit (working on a PhD,teaching in Spotsylvania CH).....well,I'm just an innocent by stander. Tripping on back.

Woodstock is over.... but,we's got all these painted up school buses,a bunch of dope,and no real place to go. Not to mention we look like doodoo, longhair, nasty clothes,you get the idea. Cutting to the chase..... most of those mofo's landed in Floyd co. Va. Yes,"that" Floyd co. #1 county in the US for moonshine...... well,if you're intonation aligns with MSM. Just to keep the story going,let's say,yes.... Floyd is ranking in moonshine arrests.

So,all these hippies found a home. Fast fwd.

Floyd fest started a few days ago. It pains me in some ways to say I didn't do a "fly by" down the BRP at least,anything over a ton. That's right,before "those guys" showed up,we were tearing that section of hardpack up with all manor of M/C's. The finest Milwaukee iron ever built traveled this section. Will spare the details on sportbikes other than to say...... the section just south of their encampment is an especially difficult run. Get it right,and you get to have a 1-1 with the man above,get it wronk,you die.

Last 10 years or so,we'd always slow down in that section..... mostly out of,WTF but,gotta add in state police now doing security on our road. They leave us alone for the most part,so it's out of some kind of professional courtesy that we slow down through there.