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Folks call this a "blog" or "weblog". I can't find good blog
software to run that will obey the site theme, so I'm doing this
manually. Sorry you guys can't comment on it, but maybe that's a good
thing. Haha!
8/31/2007
This is the second day of the Expo, and more Ferguson tractors came in.
Today the count ended up at 68 total tractors, and I'd have to say about
40 implements total. Today's tractor parade photos are on the
site, but as yet no captions. I'm kaput tonight, and perhaps I can
get up early and at least do those captions.
8/30/2007
It's finally here - we're at the 2007 Ferguson Expo at Mount Pleasant,
Iowa. It's great to see old friends again! There are over 50 Ferguson
tractors here at the moment, and we expect to exceed 60 by some time
tomorrow. Today was spent just getting set up and getting oriented to
the show grounds and catching up with everyone. Tractor parade
pictures are in the Mount Pleasant gallery, but I have no captions yet.
I hope to do some of that tomorrow. Some of us went out to eat
together this evening and had a totally enjoyable time, and you will see
a couple of photos in the gallery as well.
8/12/2007
Phew! It's been over 100 each day here for the past week. No
rain in the forecast, and the highs this week are all over 100.
Makes it murder on watering the sod. One final pallet to be done
tomorrow and it will all be over except for the watering... Got
the materials for the walls in the bathroom. For some reason I
don't remember drywall weighing so much. I'm glad I'm not having
to manhandle it and install it... Finally took a new photo which
is on the barn page (button on the left)...
8/6/2007
Got the 2nd batch of sod laid last Tuesday. It's doing well, but
some areas are struggling. I think this is just a fact of life
we'll have to deal with for about the next month. The first batch
has pretty much revived and stabilized - it's now going on 3 weeks since
it was laid. It sure does get OLD going there every day to
water... I started insulating the bathroom but haven't finished
yet. We decided to hire the drywall job. I still have to buy
the materials and manhandle them into the barn. YUK, still.
7/27/2007
The weakest areas of sod seem to be reviving a little...
Hopefully this weekend I can take some photos to put here on the
site... Google still doesn't like pointing to us with the search
term "ferguson tractor", but we're getting a lot of other hits.
7/25/2007
The sod is down, but it is struggling. It was extremely
dry when it was cut to begin with, and the stress on it made
some of it turn brown totally. We're watering it every day
to insure the best chance of it coming back, and we are
beginning to see green again... The bathroom is roughed in
and now we'll start on the drywall (yuk). Fortunately I
have a friend who said to call him when we start drywall.
Personally I'd rather wave my wand and have it magically done,
but the last time I peeked it hadn't worked (where's Hermione
when you need her?). I HATE doing
drywall, because I'm bad at it... The new drive for the HP
desktop I bought has also died, or so it seems. I am
beginning to believe it is a motherboard problem, but I'm fed up
with it at the moment. I went out and bought a laptop, so
we're using that now. A friend here at work is going to
help me get one of the older systems I have upgraded and then I
can take my time working with HP on the desktop LEMON. And
yes, the laptop is being backed up daily too.
6/28/2007
All the dirt work is done, except that now we have some gullies
in the pretty new dirt. Sigh. The sod guy couldn't
get there exactly when we wanted so we are now stuck until week
after next. We'll be repairing the gullies between now and
then and spreading some straw... The septic tank is in but
he also messed up the nice dirt work... We got the
bathroom framed except for the ceiling, and I'm hoping that
the electrical and plumbing rough-in can be done next week
sometime... As far as the web site is concerned, nothing
new to report. I got the ASP.Net for Dummies book but
haven't been able to crack it open yet... Got the home
computer back up after the new one crashed after a month.
HP was responsive but I can't recommend Hitachi hard drives.
The one I took out was labelled "Deskstar" which was how IBM
marketed their drives, so I'm not sure whether IBM or Hitachi
made the drive (or someone else for that matter). I'm
partial to Western Digital myself. Also, now the computer
is doing daily backups of our documents folder, which is where
all the important things are, like the web source, email, and
office documents. I also have photos and music folders,
but these change infrequently, so I have them on less intensive
backup schedules. When was the last time YOU did a backup?
6/13/2007
Our "dirt guy" is grooming several areas at the lake for sod and
seeding, not the least of which is the dirt around the barn.
There will be gravel approaches and main driveway in that area.
We will leave the rest of the driveway until the house is
built... The epoxy on the barn floor is exceptional.
I had a team of 6 people doing it and it took only about an hour
to do. It is hard as nails and looks great and photos are
on the web site... I'm busy trying to coordinate sod and
the septic tank installation, hopefully before it rains again
and messes up the nice dirt work.
6/4/2007
I was reviewing our web site statistics this evening and it
occurred to me that we have gotten hits from every continent but
Antarctica. While Google STILL doesn't show my site when
searching for "ferguson tractors", it DOES point people here for
just about any other search terms in addition to that, such as "ferguson
tractor wiring". I'm satisfied with that for the moment...
I'm at Microsoft Tech-Ed this week and found an "ASP.Net for
Dummies" book with a sample blog application. I ordered
the book and will try to replace this page with a "real" blog
setup after I get the book.
6/3/2007
Along with 5 relatives and friends, we put the epoxy on the barn
floor Saturday. It took a whole hour! I expected it
to take a couple, at least because we were unfamiliar with
working with epoxy, but it went very smoothly. Look at the
Barn page next week to see the results (I'm out of town and
didn't take any pictures yet anyway).
5/22/2007 Entry 2
It took quite a bit of work to get the web site to where it is,
and now I find myself just tinkering with it. I feel that
it needs some sort of weekly attention to stay fresh so that you
are rewarded with new content when you come back. However,
I can spend hours just trying new looks and things and that
really isn't a good use of my time. Hopefully I'll figure
out a good balance and be able to keep the site fresh with
additional quality content rather than just tinkering with
things and rearranging the existing stuff.
5/22/2007
I'm totally PO'ed. My new HP Vista computer at home (a
month old) has fried its hard drive. Fortunately I did a
backup last Thursday. I hadn't gotten around to doing
daily backups yet. Circuit City won't do anything for me.
I have to wait to call HP because they wanted me to run a
diagnostic on the drive to prove it crashed. Actually I'm
not too upset that CC won't help, because I want to be sure to
wipe the drive (crashed or not) before sending it anywhere.
I'm going to get a Promise SATA Raid controller to mirror the
primary partition so that (hopefully) I won't have this problem
again.
5/21/2007
The barn should be "live" tomorrow, and I'll post more photos
this week.
5/17/2007
The electrician came and roughed in the barn today. No word on
when it will actually be hooked up... Much to my surprise, the
Google ads have been getting clicks. For me, the very same ads
appear every time, so I pinged them to find out why, and they
said that after several times being crawled by their bot the
variety should increase... The new guestbook is in place and
works well - got an entry today from Jim Nisbet from Scotland,
who we met several years ago in Salem, and it was good to hear
from him again.
5/10/2007
Yesterday I added some web analytics, and MSN and Yahoo are listing this
site. Today we had visitors from Australia, England, Scotland,
Ireland, South Africa, and of course, the U.S.A. Don't worry, I
can't tell who you are or how to find you, it just provides an
approximate location based on IP address ranges. Sometimes it is
wrong. For instance, Comcast headquarters is in New Jersey and the
report says my IP is from there, even though I'm sitting in Memphis,
Tennessee.
5/9/2007
The electrician will be out next week to work on the barn, and then
we'll have lights and power, and can then epoxy the floor and then frame
the bathroom... I finally put the carb back on the TO-35 after
rebuilding it (the carb, not the tractor). It runs pretty good now
without starving, except the throttle response seems sluggish, and it
isn't quite getting up to proper PTO speed using the new mower (which by
the way came yesterday and I used it to mow). If I could get it to
run a little faster it will keep the mower from bogging down quite as
quickly... We have a big fire ant and tick problem. I've
seen more of the critters this year than I've EVER seen before.
5/7/2007
Two weeks ago the electrician said he could do something this week. He
hasn't called, so I will probably call him tomorrow. I did manage
to call the dozer and dirt guy and he is very busy right now. If
we get a rainy day he said he'd meet with us to see what we wanted.
5/4/2007
Our site now is #2 on MSN search when looking for "Ferguson tractors".
Yesterday's Tractors is #1, and that's just fine with me - they have a
great site too. Now, to get Google or Ask to even list us at all!
I must not be holding my mouth right when working on it. Maybe
sunspots are affecting the Google crawler? Thanks to those who
have contacted us or either written in the guest book. Your
feedback will make this site better for everyone. Y'all have a
great weekend.
5/3/2007
It's been a busy week at work so I've just relaxed when I get home, thus
I haven't had time to work on the web site. Frontpage has done
something to the captions (as in they've disappeared) on my development
system so I've inhibited updates to the live web site until I have
restored them from backup or otherwise figured out how this happened.
I may have to abandon Frontpage's photo galleries in favor of something
more stable. *sigh*... I took
TO-35 SN 140647 to Arnett's to get the governor fixed and he about has
it fixed I think. Once I get it back I'm going to stick the Massey
bushhog on it and sell it in the Memphis classifieds...
4/30/2007
It took a few days, but folks are now using the guestbook. Thanks
for the feedback - it will help make the site better... Also today
I found the 2006 U.K. Tractor Challenge. At the bottom of the
resources page, it'll take you to see 2,141 tractors in ONE field...
It sure is frustrating waiting while the concrete cures on the barn.
We're waiting because we are going to put epoxy down to seal the
concrete and to have a nice floor. Epoxy time will be at the end
of May. That drumming sound you hear is my fingers tapping on the
table waiting for the month to go by.
4/28/2007
I got an email this morning from Allan Bare at BARE-Co, an Australian
parts dealer that I had missed putting on the resources page. Like
a lightbulb going on, the realization is beginning to occur to me that
this site is too "U.S.-centric". Ferguson tractors were introduced
around the world and over the next few weeks I will be making the site
more international in its approach so as to appeal to all
Ferguson owners. However, unless someone can tell me how to
translate it on the fly into other languages, I'm afraid it will still
be only in English. Some pages (the Ferguson shows, for instance)
will probably still be confined to U.S. shows, and I will leave the
listing of non-U.S. Ferguson-related shows to those more familiar with
their own locale's interests and customs.
4/27/2007
The barn stage one is complete. Now we have to get some lights in
it so some friends and I can frame up the bathroom... I'm missing
one of the FENA regional events in Oklahoma this weekend, but I can't go
to them all. Our next show will be the Ferguson Expo at Mount
Pleasant this year. Too bad it's so far in the future (it's at
Labor day)... I rebuilt the carburetor on our TO-30 but it still
isn't running right. But at least this time it isn't starved for
gas - the inlet screen on the carb at the gas line was totally clogged
with junk. I think the air supply may be suffering now. Has
anyone ever converted the old oil-bath system to a paper filter system? |
