09:18 – I’m taking a day off writing today to get some work done on the new batch of chemistry kits.
11:17 – Barbara says it’s time to replace the deck. I’m sure she’s right, since the deck was built with the house in 1968 with pressure-treated wood, and hasn’t had much maintenance since then. Yesterday, one of the sides fell off. Hmmm.
So, after Tax Day, I’m going to start researching options. We already know we don’t want pressure-treated wood. We want something that’s as low-maintenance as possible, like vinyl or composite. We also know that we don’t want or need a new deck as large as the old one. We seldom entertain, and when we do it’s usually just one or at most two other couples. We need room for a gas grill, a small table, and four to six chairs. Barbara and I just went out with the tape measure, and we decided a deck 13 or 14 feet (~ 4 meters) by 8 or 9 feet (~ 2.5 meters) would suffice.
I do want to have room for one special feature: a pivoting trap door in the floor above a tank of piranha, with a squirrel feeder positioned such that a squirrel would have to step on the pivoting trap door to reach the feeder. We have squirrels year-round, so the piranha starving to death won’t be an issue.
If you’re only doing a small area, and don’t need it to be raised off the ground, why not a concrete patio? Little upkeep required, and concrete lasts a very long time. The concrete need not be plain and ugly. Stamped patterns and various colors can be added to create some pretty good facsimiles of real stone.
It does make the trap door a bit more difficult to do, but my money was on the squirrels circumventing it, anyway.
We had the plastic boards (made out of recycled milk jugs) for our deck at the last house. The boards look kinds weird (dark color) but no splinters, long life, etc.
Squirrel soaker
And Youtube has several videos on squirrel catapults, squirrel slingshots, and the like. Now it seems to me that, as the writer of science education books, you might be able to find some way to make use of such devices…
We have a concrete patio. But what do you expect in Vegas. We also have a lot of chipmunks that live in rock piles and underground.
My chihuahuas don’t like them. But there isn’t shit they can do about it being chihuahuas
RBT wrote:
“I do want to have room for one special feature: a pivoting trap door in the floor above a tank of piranha, with a squirrel feeder positioned such that a squirrel would have to step on the pivoting trap door to reach the feeder. We have squirrels year-round, so the piranha starving to death won’t be an issue.”
Make that trapdoor large enough for visiting politicians, Jehovahs Witnesses and such like. May a well build for maximum utility.
Cringely is reporting that Social Security got hacked:
http://www.cringely.com/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack/
I’m getting ready to efile, hope that they will let me.
Geez, what damn Fed agency has NOT been hacked lately? What a joke the whole apparatus is, if it wasn’t such a deadly joke sometimes. But they’re still making us walk through x-rated scanners and poking through our junk. Bastards.
Yeah, forget outwitting the squirrels and that goes double for raccoons.
http://www.photogallerycms.com/blog/inspiration/raccoon-photos/
Not for this racoon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taylor_Momsen_2011.jpg
She’s a protected species as far as I and our host are concerned.
“…on squirrel catapults, squirrel slingshots, and the like. Now it seems to me that, as the writer of science education books, you might be able to find some way to make use of such devices…”
Oh, but the quandary as to whether to include that in the biology labs or the physics labs…
I already have a design in mind. It involves an 81 mm mortar and a two-part clamshell capsule. When the squirrel is captured, it’s forced into the capsule, which is then launched by the mortar to about 5,000 meters. At altitude, the top and bottom clamshells spring open, releasing respectively a parachute and the squirrel. The squirrel plummets 5,000 meters to its death, while the capsule floats safely back to earth.
And no comments about Rocky.
I’d bet that a 5000m fall would not kill a squirrel. Common knowledge from the mining industry from more than a century ago was that after a thousand-foot fall, a mouse would walk away, a rat would be stunned, a man would be killed, and a horse would splatter.
The acceleration from a mortar launch, on the other hand, would probably do it.
I told you.
No comments about Rocky.