Garden Patience...

...I really didn't have much. Seems like it took forever for stuff to grow, but in the end, unless it freezes here in the next few weeks (not likely), WE'VE GOT TOMS! I mean honestly though, it's almost October, talk about slow! I've been picking tiny cherry toms for a coupla months, but it's not the same as a thick sweet red Brandywine. Here's a coupla shots of the whole mess of toms.


Peppers have been AWESOME, the pics below are even after I picked a few dozen. Last year they were not so prolific, this year we have tons. What I'm going to likely to is pick them, grill and chop them up and freeze.

Crap in my yard

And by this, I don't mean Dog Logs, I've got plenty of those. What kind of crap do you find in your yard? Mine?!? Me?? It's tons of nails, staples, screws and nuts as seen below. That handful took me 2 minutes of looking around. The staples I'm not sure of, maybe used to put up insulation? The nuts are from the foundation, and I've literally tossed hundreds of them. Why can't the reuse them? Why can't they throw them away. Nah, much to easy to just leave them. Good thing we don't run around barefoot much.

Mover update

Just again when we thought it had gone away, Friday afternoon came and there's an email from the moving company. (See, they like to do this, send an email about mid afternoon Friday to make us worry all weekend. I am not kidding, every single email from them comes on Monday, or Friday, it's the Friday ones that are after a silent period of weeks.) This time it's been since Friday 8/1, and they are making an addition "goodwill adjustment" for $300.

Three Hundred?

We have already told them they owe *US* near Three Thousand, and they are now only wanting us to pay THEM a little more than that. They make it sound like they are losing money, with no regard for how much we've paid, much, much more than they ever told us we would. All the areas we point out are us paying for their mistakes, but that doesn't seem to matter. Once again I outlined how we were overcharged, and Friday is just around the corner. Man it's lovely.

eBay stock sell off

eBay announced another change the others day, and again not in the Sellers best interest. They are no longer going to permit the Sellers to accept money orders, cash, checks or cashiers checks, ONLY PayPal. Get this: eBay *owns* PayPal! This means when you list an item, they are guaranteed basically double commissions, because eBay charges 5% and PayPal gets 3%!!! Now, on one hand I prefer PayPal over money orders, especially for small items, but when I list an expensive item like I have in the past, say a $4000 game, why should I be FORCED to pay an additional $120 to have Big Brother eBay launder the money? In this case, it's only better for eBay, not the Buyer, not the Seller. This doesn't mean the Buyer has to have a PayPal account either, they can use a credit card and it's filtered to the Seller via their PayPal account, still with the same fees. I can tell you this isn't great. A customer of mine didn't recognize my name that showed up on their credit card statement, and thus they filed a dispute, my money was seized instantly. I do mean wham bam gone. $93 in limbo. When I emailed the customer, they realized the mistake and retracted the dispute, but here it is almost 30 days later and it's still pending, PayPal says it can take up to 90 days. They blame the credit card company.

Bull SHIT people!! You should put my money back as fast as you took it.

Just another example folks. I'm getting out. eBay can stick it up their ass.

Gimmee Dat STICK!

Super shorty, Abby got the stick. Last month in the heat in the Truckee River. RRrrrrrrroooooooowwww

There are some good customers....

A number of weeks ago, I sold a dish receiver on eBay.... for 99 cents. Yippee. It was a normal transaction, I got paid, I shipped, that was it. Then I got the weird feedback:

"WILL SEND $20 MORE. EMAIL MAILING ADDRESS TO @NETZERO.COM. THANKS"

Huh? Describing what I thought is hard to put in to words, but I just smelled some sort of scam. I mean, the person could contact me in a variety of ways, why through feedback. Curiosity got the better of me, I emailed back asking what was the comment, and the reply was in essence, they expected to pay more, so they'd like to send me more money.

Yeah right!!!

I was very surprised when I did get a check for $20 in the mail a few days later. Thanks Kris, very cool. I guess there are some decent people out there!

Sidewalk project

Here's the next project, in compacted form. This below you is a flagstone sidewalk. It's 3.5 tons, yes tons, of rock, that I get the pleasure to move and lay out in my already rock and dirt covered yard. Why? I'm not sure. And I paid for this! Oh, and those are peppers.

Barky Dog, Episode IV

We've turned in paperwork and met with the Animal Control officer, and the neighbors gave statements, one which was KILLER, see below (click to enlarge):


See? It's just not us! Thanks Rod.

Things are changing for the better, finally a little silence when we're outside watering or have the windows open or pleasantly taking a morning dump. The Animal control people seem to act quick, and this has been observed at least twice to my knowledge:


That's Officer Heidi's (she's about 4' 9") truck. Go get 'em Heidi!! Amy the mail lady has been spying for me :)

The only other thing to mention is that last Saturday, while watering on the hill, a dog was yipping on the OTHER side of the Yippee Dog's house. The Teacher Beacher was out there and saw Tracy on the hill and yelled over (but actually nicely): "I just want you to know that's not *MY* dog that's been barking!!"

Yeah, we know. Amazing you can tell the difference though, ain't it? Why can't you hear your own dog bothering the neighborhood!?

PS: Did anyone catch the Star Wars reference?

Lawsuit coming?

Well, after more than a year, Gr. Moving has laid down the line and given us until the end of the month to pay them an additional $3900. We've bantered back and forth in emails and while never agreeing 100% with our logic, they've backed down from $6100 due to mistakes they made. We finally time-lined it out and put some figures down and without getting nit picky, we feel they owe us $2400. What's so frickin' frustrating about this whole debacle are a number of things:

1. I made the mistake of thinking that the branch manager was a friend of mine, he has never returned my calls.
2. I made the mistake of trusting the verbal and handshake contract.
3. The blame is often laid on me, I said this, wouldn't do that, wanted this, moved more than I said. All lies.
4. The amount of money we paid already is double the initial estimates, with money paid to Gr. Moving and PODS.
   
5. And lastly that this has caused a lot of stress and sleepless nights for the both of us.

Will I move again? You bet! Will I ever hire a moving company? Not likely. I've learned a lot, but the biggest thing I learned was it doesn't cost $30,000 to move.

Will I have to bail Tracy out of jail?

Good neighbors! Since we've moved in to this house, we've been battling a little shitty Jack Russell terrier and it's owners. The dog is a yipper, and they leave it outside and it yips from sun up to sun down if allowed. Because of the triangular property layouts, they live in the next cul-de-sac, but the corner or their property meets the corner of our property, so there's really one house and very little space between us.

The first problem was partially resolved. Many months ago, the dog would just walk through their fence (bar type, not wood or chicken wire), cut across the three feet of the other property (which is a neighbor that also complains), and lands on the top of our hill and comes down and barks at my three quiet dogs and me whenever we were out. Apparently we are a threat. No exaggerating, if I opened the back door and my dogs went out, the yippee dog could somehow hear them walking and the barrage of yips were on. It kept getting on our property, and when it took a crap on my patio, I had enough and went over and had a little chat. They put up chicken wire, which stopped the doggy trespassing, but didn't solve the yipping.

Fast Forward to June. YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP!!! At what time? 11:30PM!!! Tracy was heated, she was looking forward to sleeping in and was about to go to bed. Not now, a dog is barking! In her robe, she stormed over and pounded on the door. No answer. Chicken or no one home? 6Am the next morning: YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP!!!! Oh man is she pissed now. Walked over again, pounding on the door, no answer. She's had enough. Calls to the HOA, calls to Animal Control; yeah, they know the house. Letters would be sent, etc etc. Not good enough for Ms. T. She started a petition. On the Saturday before Father's Day, we walked around their cul-de-sac and attempted to get signatures. Of the two people that answered their doors, neither wanted to get involved (spineless people!). One guy said he didn't hear it (wha???????) and an immediate next door neighbor said "I don't want to go there". Regardless, the lady got word of it. Sunday while I was talking to my Pop wishing him Happy Father's Day, I hear yelling. Seems that Jennifer thinks it's our problem, and has come over to bark at Tracy herself! The conversation went something like this:

Are you the lady with the three Golden retrievers?

You must be Jennifer.

What do you do with YOUR dogs when you're not home?

What does THAT matter?

If you've got a problem with my dog, you need to come TALK TO ME!

*I DID*!!! I came over TWICE! AT NEAR MIDNIGHT AND at 6AM!

Well I wasn't home, I was whoring myself out at a bar! (Note 1)

You need to control your dogs. I'm tired of them barking and waking me up!!

Oh yeah, what are you, from California? (Note 2)

Huh?

My dog isn't the problem, YOU'RE the problem. And we BOUGHT a bark collar! (Note 3)

It's kinda blurred, but there were a few "F*** you's" thrown in, and then the lady went to the neighbors and started crying "Don't make me get rid of my dogs again". Yeah, it's happened before.

Note 1: I kinda assumed this, I may be wrong.
Note 2: This was really said, help me here.
Note 3: If it's not a problem, why'd you buy a bark collar?

So this is a month ago. It got AMAZINGLY better very quickly. How nice. Wow. But not for long. Whether the dog got used to being shocked, or the batteries went out, or they took it off, I dunno. We also saw it with a muzzle once, but the yipping is back. What we know is they don't care.

This morning at 6:15, it was yipping again, protecting whatever it is it's in fear of losing. YIP YIP YIP! Tracy stormed to the top of the hill and glared over. The Boy-Toy that lives there came out, brushing his teeth (or teefe), and the FOLLOWING ensued:

Tracy yells over "6:15!! It's a little early isn't it?"

To which the BT replies "The problem is... you opinion is one we don't care about"

Nice! More phone calls are being made today. Fun huh?!?!

eBay, you're just wrong

I've been an eBay member since Jan 1999 and nearly 10 years later, I'm about through with them. I'm also a stock holder, having a fairly significant number of shares since 2000. Now I'm considering selling them, all of them. Why? In a nutshell, I no longer believe in the company. It's not the smartest thing to do to look at it that way, as opposed to looking at it as an investment, but I've always kept investments in companies I believe it, and I'd feel like a hypocrite otherwise.

They've done TOO many things in my opinion that are in their best interests, not the customer. And I mean the real customer, the customer that SELLS on eBay, not the one who buys. The seller pays the fees, the buyer doesn't. I'm a renter, I rent space. I pay my fees and I sell my stuff. eBay doesn't care about me anymore, they only care that the buyer has a warm and fuzzy experience, and keeps coming back. They've gotten so many sellers, who cares if they lose a few right? Here's the four points that have gotten under my skin:

1. Feedback: I've bitched about it before. Changed back in May, Sellers can only leave positives for Buyers, but Buyers can do what they want. Example: I listed a video game and sold it to a person in New York. Weeks of no or poor communication, excuses, and no payment, I stopped hearing from him. Can I give him a negative for non payment, wasting my time and making me eat the eBay listing fees? No. Can he leave me a Negative cause he wants to? You bet!
   
2. Net Neutrality: Buyers now also rate my shipping and handling costs and time. Costs are posted up front and they see that before bidding. I ship almost always same or next day, using tracking in most cases, and feel I'm very reasonable on costs and timeframe, better than many. Yet get this. Today I'm rated a 4.3 out of 5 stars in shipping, and since I'm below a mandated 4.6, my "Search Standing is Lowered", yeah, in RED. What this means is if someone searches for something I'm selling, they will see other Seller's items first, even if I'm a direct match, cause I didn't hand deliver, ship for free and kiss ass. This isn't in my best interest, and it's not even in the Buyer's best interest, to steer them towards someone with a better RATING than a better match? Wrong. Equate it to this: "Hey, where's a place to eat around here?" Answer? "Uh... Try Taco Fred's" Fred's brother says. It's 10 miles past 20 other good restaurants. I can't rate the buyer in any way, how quick he pays, IF he pays, how his communication is (doesn't matter does it?) or anything. Sellers need to be able to warn other Sellers about bad Buyers. Nope.
   
3. Guilty until proven guiltier. I've been tagged four times in the past coupla months for violating "Policy Compliance" and/or selling someone else's "Intellectual Property". There is no appeal. Get this, in the first two cases, eBay changed the rules for minimum prices on Buy It Now items. They changed it and I relisted some items (and they ALLOWED IT) and a few days later? BAM! "Policy Violation: Fee Circumvention". Yeah, for a 99 cent item, they think I'm ripping them off. On the 3rd and 4th cases, it was satellite receivers I was selling. They've given the power to companies to say, without question, "this guy can't sell this, it's mine". On one of the auctions, it had been sold and closed for 3-4 days. Yet, no warning given, I'm red flagged again and have two strikes. I don't know for a fact, but if I have one more, even on a closed auction, I'll be suspended.
   
4. Big Brother! This is just enough to bug me. Someone emailed me a week or more ago asking if I'd take $50 for something. People do it all the time, and it can be legit. I could have changed the auction to reflect his price, let him to the Buy It Now, and done deal. But, I just said no. I didn't know what the thing was worth, and as it was, sold it for $31. So last night I get a big long doom and gloom email from eBay, warning me about his email and offer. Yeah, they are monitoring email. Get this! If I DID sell it outside of eBay, they want me to fill out a long form. I would not be surprised if it's so they could get their commission. They go on to mention contacting law enforcement, your credit card company and the US Postal service about mail fraud if you got ripped off. On one hand maybe they are trying to be helpful, but on the other, they're accusing the person asking me a question of breaking the law, possibly. Guilty again.

So again, I sign this: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The year milestone

It seems very hard to believe that exactly one year ago today, at near this hour, I buttoned up the house, loaded up the dogs, hugged the neighbors and looking like the Clampett's, we started our road trip here. One Year!! Man does time fly, even if you're often bored. Do I miss KC? You bet. Do I regret it, no. Not at all. There are times in your life you have to take chances, and this was it for us.

The dogs knew they were home!!


Ah, that first drink of CRISP Nevada water:

Sittin' Pretty in the once empty garage:

Had to explore everything, right?

Happy Anniversary!

Yahooooo it's the 4th!

Yahoo is only slightly embarrassed of the US right now. They show a patriotic banner the first time you hit their site, then it goes back to normal unless you highlight or click on it.



The 4th was pretty quiet here, no neighborhood fireworks (Get Caught, Go To jail), certainly no neighborhood cookouts, and pretty much hill work. It's looking better. Much more work to do tomorrow, and that's when I'm cooking, so more and pictures later.

First Toms of 2008!

I fertilized, and the plants are doing a wee bit better. Needs more I suppose. Regardless, an Early girl and a Supersweet 100 have already borne fruit, we picked the first two last night.

Camping in the Tahoe National Forest

We went spur of the moment camping this past weekend with our new friends Jed & Ayla and had a super great time. Having lots of things to still get done at home, we only went for one day & night, but now knowing what's there, we'll stay longer next time! Only an hour away, and right by the Yuba river. Jed has his own secret place which he discovered years ago, and it's perfect. Lots of woods, right be the river and just nice. Here's a shot of the camp spot:


Before that, we went to a jeep crawl, and it was pretty interesting. Lots of red-necks and whooping it up, testosterone was everywhere. And tattoos! Keystone didn't really seem to like the noise and climbed right up in the chair, his sanctuary I guess.


Picture of one of the crawl areas:


Oops.


Heave HO!


This is steps away from our camp. The river opens up to an Olympic size pool, that's T on the right, Ayla on the left.


Certainly no delay in getting in!



Jed and Sydney.



Another angle:



Abbytail:


Amber-Boo:



The Stone man:



Stones likes getting up on things, especially with Daddy:



In ya go!!



I love this Close up:


Cruise missiles:


No doubt you've heard of the fires in California, it was very smoky:


All of the pictures can be seen here: CLICK HERE

Can't wait to go again!

Growing slowly

1st part of it is being impatient, 2nd part is putting them in the ground late, 3rd is the dirt here, 4th is the weather. Seems like my toms should be three times as tall as they are, but as I look at my blog, it has ONLY been a month, and maybe I expect too much. But then again, it's been a whole MONTH! My tallest plant is maybe a foot tall, I'm thinking it should be three. Sigh. We water every day, and they are mostly planted in a combination of Home Depot bagged stuff, so I don't get why they aren't moving. Certainly plenty of sunshine!!

Looks about the same, don't it?

Is that a bunny? The peppers seem to be happy, much happier than toms really:

An "Ace" and a coupla Early Girls already turning:

Volunteers from the compost, makes me smile!

Today I'll dig through the cabinets and find some fertilizer. I know I've got plenty of STUFF, why not use it? Today isn't windy thank God, so it's a good time.

How many plants does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Uh-One, Uh-Two, Uh-Three! Three HUNDRED I guess. Jiminy Christmas have we gone a bit nuts with plants? This is pretty much last week's haul from Costco, a local nursery and the Garden Club's fund raising sale, about 25 plants there alone. We've got about 50 others planted (including mostly the toms and peppers, but a dozen plus on the hill too) with all these left to go. Plenty on my plate, tons of holes to drill. Drilling holes sucks, rocks and boulders. More fun when it's windy too, which is most often. I think I can do tops 10 holes a day before I'm worn out. Dig, chip, pry, repeat. My hands are sore, my back is taking it fine.

Sleep Mr. Stone man... Sleeeeep.....

To disclose, I think my pups spend 90% of their day sleeping, and of course we try to make them as COMFY as possible, with at least 6 dog pillows scattered throughout the house (among 27 thousand dog toys). But ain't he CUTE! Don't it make you want to say something like fuzzy-wuzzy? Yeah, it's just Keystone on a dog pillow, but he's ma' boy and I'm proud!

Let the garden grow!!!

I like the look of my gardens so far. They ain't fancy, but I like 'em. The eventual plan for the back wall is to totally cover the cement blocks. Today, things in the big garden are a week old. Once again I probably crammed too many too close, but it's always worked, hopefully here too!!

Things are growing (OK, so three peppers have bit the dust), already got some Early Girls, and scattered other tomato buds. Basil is still teeny in the garage (planted a bit late from seed), but it grows fast. Hoping to put it in the ground in a few weeks.

I still got work to do. Cages, drip line, more rocks, and I have to figure out how I'm going to plant the bunch of onions I have, wasn't thinking of them in my design.

We've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 tomato plants and 20 peppers, which is a lot higher pepper percentage than past years, but last year the peppers were poor and I'm trying something different with them. Lots of herbs around too! Basil, thyme, rosemary, sage. Ah, I love this time of year!

Getting ripped off sucks

May is going to be remembered for me as the month people ripped us off. I hope it's not a trend. If I sit and dwell on it, I get really ticked, mainly at my own stupid self cause I'm smart enough to know better, but also with people. How can some people purposely commit such blatant fraud and live with themselves? Honestly. We're talking 4 instances. The first is the one I'm most pissy about. I got conned, in the parking lot of Costco of all places, for a "We'll fix that dent and make it good as new for $200". Sure ya will. It looks like crap, worse than before, and they even cracked the paint. I fell for the "Ya need to let that white stuff (hiding their crappy work) sit for a few hours before you wipe it off". Yeah, I'm an idiot, and $200 poorer. What makes me doubly mad is that this dent is one I caused due to my own action, while getting fold up tables for a garage sale. The garage sale didn't pay for my dent so far!

The 2nd and 3rd are identical, I ordered two magazine subscriptions via eBay. Months later when I've gotten nothing, I see that neither did anyone else, and both accounts are closed. Here's how they get ya, their disclaimer is it can take 2 months for the magazines to start arriving, and you only have 45 days to file a PayPal claim or it's too late. These people did this on purpose, they set out to steal. That's pure fraud. And maybe it's not over, I was able to file claims anyway, we'll see. I'm also going to write a letter to Consumer Reports, cause ironically one of the three year $34.95 subscriptions I paid for was for them. I don't expect them to do anything about it, but maybe they'll warn others.

The last is "OUCH, I HURT MY NECK!". The insurance adjusters were out today to take pictures of the "damage" to the Ford when Tracy bumped another lady in rush hour traffic a week or so ago. Being third party, I only know it was a bumper to bumper hit and the license plate frame came off, and supposedly dented her bumper with my tow rings. If you look at the Ford, you can't tell anything was damaged. Here's the thing. It was a bump and Tracy got a little upset, enough so that the lady she hit and swapped info with actually hugged. The police didn't see that it was enough to warrant a report or ticket, and everyone went on their merry way. Right? No. Our insurance company says: "she has sought medical care and is now claiming an injury from what appears to be a very minor accident". Yup, let's con the insurance company!! The good news is of course we were insured and USAA has got a spine. The insurance adjuster was out today and wrote up a claim for $12.83 worth of damage, that's the retail price of a license plate frame. He says false claims are up. Maybe, just maybe she just went to the doctor, and she should, she wasn't at fault, but somehow I smell something a LOT different, and I checked my shoes.