Sledgstone

I haven't been active on the site lately. My dad's health issues became much worse over the last few months and he passed away 10 days ago. I took a couple trips to Ohio during that time and I'm glad I got to spend multiple days with him before he passed. RIP dad. I miss you.

I just noticed this photo editing site that actually looks quite functional. I have add-block on so I don't know how heavily advertised it is, but it really does look like a photoshop program right in your browser:

https://pixlr.com/editor/

Not bad.

I lucked out with slickdeals this weekend. I got a couple 2tb hard drives from Walmart for $35 each and 20 bags of garden soil for $1.50 a bag. now i have a 2tb hard drive on my ps4 and a bunch of games already redownloaded. That old 500gb hard drive was full all the time. And that dirt was the best deal. Regular $8 a bag. I got $160 of top soil for $32... only 800 pounds of dirt in my car i had to unload.  my rear shocks were almost completely compressed down.

Here's the link to the Walmart hard drive deal. It varies by store if they have it in stock and on sale or not. Online its $69.99. It's an in store only clearance.

https://slickdeals.net/f/14740055-wd-black-2tb-p10-portable-game-drive-35-ymmv-b-m

I made a legendary greatsword today in Guild Wars 2, Sunrise.. and then I combined it with my Twilight and made the most expensive greatsword in the game, Eternity.

I ordered new RAM for my PC. 16 GB = two 8 GB chips. Its not a major name brand, but I bought it off amazon. Timetec brand RAM. Seems to have good reviews and it was $57. My PC uses DDR3 RAM and some of that seems pretty costly to me. Amazon seems to have everything counterfeit lately, so when I ordered, I chose, ship from Timetec directly instead of "fulfilled by amazon" I figure I'll get an unopened, unreturned, non counterfeit product that way. Good news is my PC has not crashed a single time for a solid 2 weeks so it was definitely my RAM. I re-installed a bunch of games and I'm enjoying my PC again.

That was like 6 months of bullshit with driver updates, windows update issues, crashes, hard ware tests, etc. I will never trust a memory test again. All results of the tests were completely fine. Those 2 sticks were definitely bad since I pulled them and never had a crash since. Running on only 6 GB right now compared to the 12 I was using, does seem to affect loading times. My PC is a little slower for booting and games take just a bit longer to boot up, but I haven't tried any games lately that require a decent amount of RAM, only Starcraft Remastered and GW2.

I ordered some stuff from amazon last week and signed up for the free month of amazon prime, mostly because "prime day" is tomorrow. I remember prime day last year.. I missed nothing.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/15/news/amazon-walmart-prime-day-customers/

and granny panties:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/only-on-amazon-prime-day-half-off-on-55-gallons-of-passion-lubes-2015-07-15

I saw this article on my local news this morning stating that Trump is losing NY by 30 points now. He says the media is corrupt and hes only going to lose if the system is rigged. The thing is tho hes really loosing NY because he has no presence here. I've seen numerous Clinton commercials over the last month and I've gotten 3 phone calls from the DNC asking for donations and support. But there has been absolutely zero pro Trump commercials. Nothing from super pacs or from his own campaign. And those commercials against trump are pretty damning to his credibility. I know Trump says the media is corrupt but unless he actually pays the media companies for commercial time hes setting himself up for a loss. I'm actually starting to think he wants to loose on purpose at this point. If he has no interest in even trying to win his home state I don't see how hes going to win this election at all. Its so odd to see more commercials from my local republican representative trying to win his re-election and not see a single commercial for someone running for president.

http://www.syracuse.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/08/ny_poll_hillary_clinton_surges_to_30-point_lead_over_donald_trump.html

I want to strangle the person and/or people who installed the deck at my house. They did everything wrong. x_x I think two more weekends of work and another $100 more in wood and hardware and I'll be done fixing its supports for this winter. They installed the deck right to the concrete blocks that act as a skirt around the house. These blocks do not provide any structural benefit to the house, its just a wall for the crawl space.. but these blocks are just stacked on each other and stucco'd so it all looks like a normal basement wall.. well the deck settled over the years and caused the back wall to start collapsing.

These idiots didn't connect the deck hardware correctly and they had the far support beam that all the joists are connected to attached to those blocks.. Because the hardware wasn't secured the board bowed outwards into those blocks causing them to shift.. the weight of those blocks pulled on the board more and the issue compounded itself. So could I just jack up that board? Nope.. because I had to reinforce the corners and connect all the joists to that board first or the entire back of the deck would collapse. And its a big deck, 1,000+ pounds of wood. I fixed the corner, added support pieces, disconnected the concrete blocks from the wood, used these beefy ass clamps that I bought from Lowes to pull the board back into place and secure it to the joists with structural exterior screws.. and now I have to add 3 new 4x4 supports to distribute the weight away from that wall. Pain in my ass. I'm glad I have my 3 ton jack from when I used to do car work. That jack can lift any part of this deck no problem which has been very helpful during these repairs.

Turns out that entire back beam was being secured to all the rest of the wood of the deck with only 10 nails and 4 screws. I can understand cutting corners to save money, but holy f*ck that was dangerous. And deck hardware is expensive as hell. I've dropped $100 easy on 4 boxes of different screws, nails and structural screws. Those structural screws are just over $1 a piece. It all adds up quick. After last weekend that board and the corner its attached to is now connected with 40 additional screws and 14 structural screws. Thats no even counting all the extra nails I put in on the corresponding opposite ends of all the joists. Each joist hanger is supposed to have 8 nails, four 1 1/2 nails and four 3 inch nails. These jack asses used 2 small nails for each joist hanger and literally set all the joists in them without connecting them.. all that weight just free floating. The only thing keeping them all in place was the deck boards we walk on on the top.. of course all of those deck boards were only connected with 4 screws each instead of 8 or 12 depending on the length of the boards. So when I was doing all the work, I had to leave those top deck boards in place to keep everything together while I crawled under there, only a 2 foot clearance, and did all that work. wtf.

I was expecting to get that car this past weekend only to never be called by the salesperson. I called today and the car is delayed again another week. WTF. I don't know if this car is floating on one of those cargo ships off of california, or if there is just no truck driver to actually drive these cars to NY from whatever state they were manufactured. It'll be 3 months since I put a deposit down. My recommendation for anyone that needs a new car, go to 2-3 different dealerships and put a deposit down of $100 to reserve a car at each location, whichever dealership gets the car in stock first then gets the sale. I honestly wish I would have done that.

I went to Ohio to visit my family for Thanksgiving. Yes, there is covid, but we were careful. We did restaurant style rules for eating, masks on when getting plates of food, my brother's familys at their own tables all 6 foot+ away from the other tables while eating. We kept our masks on near my dad because of his immune system being compromised by the cancer treatments. Aside from that we kept the windows open to keep fresh air circulating in. We took our masks off when we'd be 6 feet away from him and each other. Its good that my mom's house is so big, the kitchen/greatroom is literally big enough to have parties of 50 people. Our handful of people was able to keep distances pretty easily. Its been 4 days since Thanksgiving and nobody is coming down with any covid symptoms so I'm guessing we did good.

It was a fun time. Alot of good memories. I hardly ever visit Ohio during winter months because of winter snow storms in NY. We lucked out and its been in the 50s and only raining off and on. I caught a ride back and forth with my cousin who now lives in NY also. He had a covid test done the day before we left which was negative and I quarantined in my house for 2 weeks leading up to the trip. I'll be quarantining again for another 2 weeks just in case, but that doesn't bother me much.

I'm stepping up my manscaping. lol. I bought a "MANGROOMER Ultimate Pro Back Shaver" off amazon. I've only used it once and I already highly recommend it. My back is like a wookie.  And this thing shredded through all that hair and didn't pull a single one. No pain and no red marks or irritation on my back. Link for reference:

https://www.amazon.com/MANGROOMER-Ultimate-Shaver-Absorber-Extreme/dp/B00FULYKG4

Its got a rechargeable battery. I was really impressed with it. I'd post before and after pics of my back, but I don't want to traumatize people with my back hair bathroom mirror pics.

I've been getting ready for spring for the last couple months and its taken up a crazy amount of my free time. We expanded our garden to be really huge last september in preparation for growing fruit and veggies. Then we decided to expand it another 6 more feet in one direction which we finally got finished last weekend. It was alot of work because our garden has an almost 6 foot tall deer fence all around it. We hammered in u-posts into the ground and attached the deer net and buried the bottom of the net so nothing will burrow under it. I should do measurements at some point to figure out its total volume. Its huge. lol.

We have 3 apple trees, 3 cherry trees, and 1 nectarine tree in there. We still have to move 3 of those trees into their permanent locations (they are only 1 or 2 year old trees so its still possible to dig them up) and we have to plant a new apricot tree in there. I prepped the two rows for veggies last month but theres alot of weed whacking to do still and plants to move. We have 4 grape vines, 4 blueberry bushes and multiple raspberry plants to move. I started a bunch of veggies from seed and those tomatoes are still in an unused bath tub in my house with a light over them getting bigger every day. I'm looking forward to getting everything planted and done so all this gardening can give me a break.

It was snowing just 2 weeks ago and now it's practically a heat wave with multiple days in the 80s. I got my window air conditioners in, but the outdoor support for my big one broke when I was testing it. The window I need this AC unit in is extra wide and can't support the weight of the unit so last year I used an umbrella stand with a metal fence post with a welded pipe on the top. It worked great, but the umbrella stand just not have been good for the weight and it snapped during my test.

So I spent today making a new support brace out of wood. I used a 4x4 and some scrap 1x6s I had from deck work I did last weekend. It's working good, I just need to fill dirt under the bottom of the base boards and then place some of my huge ass rocks all over the base for extra stability. It's all pressure treated wood so it should last for years.

Probably hard to tell from the pics but that's like 40-50 pounds of wood.

Its finally warmed up around here. It snowed earlier this week and we've had over night freezing multiple days. And then abruptly it was almost 80 yesterday. now it's back down to the 60s, but at least it looks like winter is finally over. Now I can get some more yard work done without freezing my ass off. Lol.

And wtf.. we have gifs again? I thought it was disabled. Lol. Maybe ipb re-enabled it at some point and I never noticed.

Lmao. I haven't logged into my Uplay account in over a year and the first thing I notice is the friends list... My avatar looks so happy to #1 among my zero friends.

Looks like hundreds of users are browsing AC in waves.. the ip#s are all almost the same, coming out of Singapore. It started like 3 days ago. Either somebody posted something very popular in Singapore, or theres some weird Singapore search engine that just wont be content until it searches through every single page on the site.

Search engine bots running through the site:

MAD TV spoofed President Donald Trump years ago..

Trump's composure is pretty much the same as "drunken president"

Me and a buddy made some bulk sausage last night. It was a fun experience using a meat grinder for the first time. I have enough sausage in my freezer for almost a year now. Only cost about $20 for this amount. My friend bought way more pork butts than me and we made sausage for hours. Lol.

Mosquitos here have been a bastard the last 3 weeks! Ravenous assholes that don't even care that I have deep woods off sprayed all over my body and citronella candles are burning everywhere. I even sprayed some cutter bug killing spray onto part of my yard and those bastards keep coming for every time I walk outside. x_x Its times like this that I don't mind winter because it kills every last one of them.

My mattress has been killing my back and sides for over a year now. I kept adjusting how I was sleeping, got a mattress pad, etc. Screw this thing. I bought a mattress in a box from walmart.com for cheap. $140. I thought about getting a memory foam one but I read that they trap heat too easily so I went with a Slumber 1 brand coil spring.

Sure as hell this mattress showed up in a box. It was vacummed sealed in a bag, folded and rolled up. When I broke that plastic seal it inflated so damn fast that it made a whistling noise thru the plastic bag as I was cutting it open. lol. It feels pretty comfortable so far but I have to let it air out for "full recovery" for 48 hours. I'd have rather gotten an expensive really nice beauty rest mattress or something else from a mattress store, but I'm tight on funds. This seems decent enough for now.

My neighbor next door is moving so he had a full house sale over the weekend. I lucked out and bought his snowblower for $150.  Its got some years of use on it, but hes kept it in amazing shape. A new gas one like this is around $800+. I hope it works great this next winter. It could save me all kinds of time shoveling.

Ok.. I just realized that if you type a colon and start typing the letters of a smilie, the post will auto pop up a list of smilies you are typing.. ":astonished:"  😲

It doesn't work for smilies that start with a letter like "XD"

":nosebleed:"

Smoked some ribs last night and they turned out amazing.

The alternator on my car died yesterday. x_x I'm getting quotes today to see how much to get it fixed. fml. I still have an exhaust issue with the car to but the two places I've gotten quotes from of course don't want to patch the hole, they will only replace my entire exhaust system. wtf.

The first presidential debate is this monday. I can already predict the winner..

Fox News: "Donald Trump crushed Hillary in the debate!"

MSNBC: "Hillary easily won this debate!"

NPR: "There was a heated debate between the two presidential candidates with opposing views on tax reforms and Syria."

lol. NPR is so boring compared to the other networks, but at least it's news. After the debate, and all future debates, everyone who has already decided who they want to vote for will feel reassured with their decision and feel more substantial hatred to that person's opponent. I'll watch fox news and msnbc the day after the debate to see what each party's commentators believes are the positives and negatives.