Finally have the tree off my house and even have someone lined up to fix the hole in my roof. Had someone stop by to offer to haul away the debris, for a price of course. Plan on letting the city pick it up with the clam truck, eventually.
Round here it seems easy enough to find people who will pay for fallen trees to use as firewood. It's nice work if you can charge someone to take their fallen tree away and then charge someone else for the tree.
Yeah, we and others who have the equipment will cut up the fallen tree and either stack it or take it, without charge. We have local, pro tree people who will safely remove the tree from the roof, if need be. Heavy winds and sub-zero last winter brought many down.
That reminds me, my IEM cable just started turning green. Ah well, they're not any worse for it. That's the thing with equipment... pay for high-end whatever and it works with X genre but not Y and suddenly you're wondering what the point of life is. 'Good enough' is 'end game' and these 1990s are that for me. Maybe we'll save away some pennies for the 1770 Pros (closed back) and be happy for the next few decades.
No doubt about that! I'm always concerned about reboots or sequels, but man, they knocked it out of the park with 2049...
All I can tell you is "big." No hint it was going to fall. Fortunately it mostly missed the house. If anyone wants wood feel free to come and get all you want. It's sitting out in front of the house.
We seem to be getting some of that global warming, it's been pushing 50 degrees here today. Not bad for January. I had hoped to escape the really cold weather this year but later this week and next week we're supposed to go down into the teens.
Yep, you get to decide what counts as "good enough" largely based on how much the system you want to upgrade. I like speakers that can kick out a decent volume without crackling but there's really no point paying extra for sound purity and then playing thrash metal through it.
I got out for a walk around town today. I had thought to go hike in the woods but didn't fancy dealing with 25-30mph winds and 50mph gusts in an area surrounded by trees. So I walked a variation of the loop I often walk with my wife, adding an extra loop and then another little twist at the end because it wasn't as long as I'd hoped it would be. Today I felt like my legs were all but unstoppable, at least until the very end when I had to walk up the hill to my house. I maintained a good speed up the hill but my legs weren't thanking me for it. It still felt good to get out for a decent walk. Looking at the map there's another bit I might add on next time - what I did today was such a short distance under 5 miles I walked a couple of lengths of the driveway to get the last sliver. The elongated version should nudge it up to maybe 8 miles. That would be good.
Vageries of the timber industry. Our mill closes in April and operations will combine in a sister- mill, 90 miles southeast. Announced reason: Log sales caught up in litigation, mostly brought by environment groups. An irony, in that we let 1,000,000 acres burn in 2017 - fire conditions that could have been ameliorated through forest management, which includes harvesting. My job is not affected though retirement looms. About 70 jobs on the line after transfers.
Downturn in the industry here as well - mainly due to decreased US housing starts, but also a decrease in logging feed. I think they've finally burned through all the pine beetle kill wood that's laying in the forest. We had those really bad fire years in 2017 and 2018 and while there is a lot that forest management can help, its also not so simple that the logging would be the primary solution to the mitigating fires. The fire service here had simply never seen the speed at which the fires moved, especially in 2018. I think they saw one fire move 40km in a 24 hour period. Hard to fight something like that.
Logging isn't primary but as a large Forest Service project nearby demonstrates, removal of fuel and the creation of fire- lines by harvesting, followed by comprehensive replanting, abates uncontrollable wildfire danger to a measurable degree, and helps to restore healthy diversity, thus forests more resilient to fire, beetles and disease. My point is that while environmental groups seek to stall timber commerce with endless lawsuits (and pounding spikes in trees), the trees are burning anyhow. If we have a future it will feature a comprehensive and exhaustive culling and grooming of woodlands.
But those forests have to burn. Lodgepole pine requires it to reproduce. Fire suppression is partially why the fires are worse - there is no clearing of the deadfall and dry fuels on the ground.
Not the traditional cinematic take on the name, "Joker" reminded me of the psychosis-heavy non-culture of the streets of San Francisco - a painful, miserable realm where paliative drugs are administered by an over-burdened array of public docs. Joachin Phoenix is certainly one of the greats and this movie serves as an unsettling message.