Fewer Terabytes
I’ve been working on a lot of other projects of late, including a bunch of computer related “stuff”–mainly going through a couple terabytes of media…
Category: Every Day Things
Home Automation, Take 2
Over the years I’ve written about various facets of our home automation setup. First we just had a Sonos that started and stopped at set…
My Own Music
Nowadays most people stream music from services like Spotify or Pandora or Apple Music. It’s easy to just like a few things and have data…
The Talking Stega
One thing that got put on hold when we bought this place was my VO journey. No that’s not Vehicle Ownership or Versatile Opinions–VO is…
Neighbors along the Road
For close to seven years, I and a few other residents along our road have been rolling a boulder up the mountain–the boulder of trying…
The Last Remnants.
When the garage was erected in the 1970s, the Doc hung some cabinetry along the south side and back east walls. The build quality by…
Another Trashy Post
We have had a large number of dumpsters brought up here to take away large quantities of garbage. When we first moved in, the dumpsters…
Composting
When we moved in, we started composting our kitchen scraps. While we had a garbage disposal in the kitchen sink, we soon learned to not…
In Memoriam: Katie
It is with much sadness that we share that our neighbor’s dog Katie passed away due to brain cancer this past summer. She arrived in…
Stega’s Bay Area Bird Photographers Presentation
Earlier this month I gave an online presentation to the Bay Area Bird Photographers group, covering a huge swath of my travels and resulting nature…
Improving Bird Feeder Designs
As mentioned in the previous post, we like the Birds Choice Magnet Mesh nut feeder a lot, but it has a significant flaw when it…
Feeding the Birds: Feeders We Like
There are a bazillion bird feeders on the market and about half them are awful; they’re either downright dangerous and not suitable for their purposes,…
Feeding the Birds: Our Setups
We have turned bird feeding into a mini-industry here at Purgatory, although sometimes it borders on an art form as well. With multiple stations that…
Bird Song Data
For the point-by-point breakdown of the products discussed below, skip to the big table of data here which also includes much of the text below.…
Re-Fencing
As of today, we’re two-thirds of the way through putting in a new 4′ high no-climb fence with an electrical stringer to put a stop…
The Care and Feeding of Sliding Glass Doors
Our rather crazy house has seven (formerly eight) doors to the outside world, six of which are mammoth sliding glass doors. The other two include…
All (or at least most) of the Puzzles
During the pandemic, Agent Smith and I started doing puzzles together. We discovered it is a great use of the big dining room table when…
Check Telephone Line
Our phone line is rather unique. As mentioned in past posts, we have an old POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line to the house. When…
Softener Drips
This is an incredibly mundane story–dare I even say, boring. In late 2021 some of the plumbing junctions for the water softener got very leaky.…
Every July the Valley Explodes
With the exception of “safe and sane” fireworks allowed in some counties and localities, it’s illegal in California to set off fireworks. Big shows sponsored…
There be Race Cars, Part Two: The 002
What follows is a bit of a weird tale, even for here. Before the Porsche 914 was purchased, and back when we were living in…
Painted Birds
A while back, I found some wooden bird figures on clearance at a craft store. They were fairly boring as just bare wood, so I…
Wild Life Part 4: Quail
The state bird of California is the California Quail, a rather chubby ground bird with a distinctive bobbly plume and equally distinctive call. We have…
Wild Life Part 3: Peacock
Following on the posts from October, it’s not just turkeys and lizards and spiders. Back in April of this year, we had a feral Peacock…
Wild Life Part 2: Turkeys
Continuing from the previous posts–in addition to the smaller critters and birds here at the ranch, we also have an assortment of larger birds that…
Wild Life Part 1: Small Stuff
We do not live in a typical suburban environment. We have space. What human neighbors we do have live far enough away that we have…
What to do with old hardware?
When we started buying stuff for the walls of the house, we considered getting one of those big LCD displays that would show random works…
The Pantry Fridge
When we moved in, the place came with three refrigerators–one each in the kitchen, pantry and garage. The listing photos from when the previous owners…
Short Shed Break
A full month passed after the shed was painted before we got to the last big bit of work so that it would be ready…
More Notes on Visitors
The year prior to the pandemic lockdown, we had a rash of visitors–a friend from my days at school in England (they are now married!),…