noise."Big Ole' Blog Post · 1:48am Jun 23rd, 2017
So, I bet y'all are wondering what the Admiral's been up to in the last month or so.
Well, I'll tell you. Grab on to your favorite beverage and pull up a seat.
This picture will make sense in a little bit.
As I've mentioned in a few comments, I kinda got really busy with IRL stuff over the last two months. See, my insurance company sent an inspector around, which I guess is something that they do every now and then to make sure that you haven't turned your property into a sanctuary for feral cats or a makeshift junkyard or something like that.
Well, I kinda had one of those going on, and it wasn't the cats.
Of course, they're reasonable—at least inasmuch as insurance companies are—and they said that I just had to get things cleaned up and squared away in the next year, and there wouldn't be any problems at all, and I thought to myself, self, I'll get started on that as soon as I finish Silver Glow's Journal. Shouldn't be a problem at all.
Well, turns out self was a little bit deluded, as he often is.
Nevertheless, as soon as the backyard had dried up some, I set to my tasks with a will. And I have to say, that it was a good incentive to get some projects done that were 'round tuit' projects: I had a fence I'd bought a few years back that I was going to make into a car corral; I had a nice big shed-in-a-box that I'd put the framework up for, but then not gotten around to putting the top over, which was going to be a nice enclosure for something; I had my back porch sunroom kit that I salvaged from the old mobile home that I was going to build some spring so I could sit out on the back porch and not get eaten by mosquitos when I have an urge to type outside or whatever else you can use an enclosed porch for; I had the roof to fix; and I thought that maybe I should do something about the grapevines that had already half-devoured my Astro van. And a few other little projects, as well.
Of course, as soon as you start planning for something like that and have a schedule of sorts, it all goes out the window.
Which, incidentally, is why two of the followup blogs I intended to write for Silver Glow's Journal never got written, but more on that later. First, have a big wall o' text.
If you want to skip over it, just scroll down until you get to the picture of my back porch.
It turned out to be a fun couple of months, and I use the word fun ironically. Rain seemed to come at the least convenient times, and every now and then I shook my fists at the sky and cursed the pegasi. A large part of my backyard is clay, with about a sixteenth of an inch of topsoil, and when that gets wet, my van can't drive on it. Well, it can, but it gets stuck pretty easily, as I found out on more than one occasion. Luckily, I was able to get it unstuck every time.
So things were going mostly according to plan. I bought a new Craftsman lawnmower and proceeded to void the warranty (I assume somewhere in the manual it says not to chop down trees with the lawnmower). I had my roof done, and when I got back from EFNW, I had a shiny new roof, and a not-so-shiny pile of shingles left to deal with. You see, I'd gotten the contractor to agree to let me pick them up, to save some on the bill.
Of course, the first free day I had to put a serious effort into it, it started to rain. Just the same, I kept working anyways, reminding myself how much great pony merchandise I'd gotten at EFNW.
And if you think he was complaining about lost profit . . . I doubt it. The shingles were so old, most of them crumbled when I tried to pick them up, thus turning a miserable job into a more tedious, more miserable job. I can only imagine that he knew that was gonna happen when he quoted me a price.
Between the shingles, and some other odds and ends I had lying around that needed to be disposed of, I ultimately filled a twenty yard dumpster. By myself. In two days.
That left only the removal of a few vehicles to deal with, and that actually went pretty well. My old diesel Suburban started right up with a fresh battery (only one, because I was being cheap) and a couple hours on the block heater. It has one kind of draggy brake, but the solution to that was more throttle, and while it did leave a hundred foot long burnout mark in the backyard, I got it parked up where I wanted to.
I moved several vehicles with the Grand Caravan, because it's awesome. Got some trees chopped down, and discovered that I have no future as a lumberjack. I even managed to pull a tree down on myself (protip: don't pull a tree that you're cutting down towards yourself); between my catlike reflexes and mostly the fact that it was the skinny branches on top that came at me, I escaped without a scratch, and also remembered that it would have been much smarter to have pulled it over with the minivan. That thing's got airbags for safety, yo.
I got my 78 truck out of hibernation with the same battery that motivated the Suburban, as well as a jury-rigged gravity bottle of gas. Turns out it takes about 32 oz of gas to move a 78 Chevy off-road for five hundred feet (although that's also counting getting it unstuck from said dirt in order to get it moving). And I parked it in the new car corral that I'd built with old fence, some boards I had laying around, and fifty feet of paracord as wind stays.
And I built my back porch, which went surprisingly well considering that I'd disassembled it ten years ago and of course not bothered to write down what went where, or number the parts, or anything else that a sensible person would do. I've got one more section I've got to finish, but for now it's staying open because it's more convenient to get tools and whatnot through there, instead of going all the way back and around.
So everything was ready for the inspectors, and I was eagerly waiting for a thumbs up.
Of course, it can't always be that easy.
Suddenly, a week before the policy was set to expire, they decided that a couple of limbs from the cottonwood trees were a hazard, because they could fall on the house.
Now, how they didn't see that before, I can't imagine. It's not like these trees suddenly grew just last year—they're big and old, and have surely been here for decades, if not longer.
So I scrambled around trying to find a tree service that could deal with the branches in question, and as a backup plan borrowed a ladder from a friend, thinking that maybe I could cut them off myself. I could have borrowed a chainsaw, too, but I didn't, 'cause I figured I'd wind up cutting off my leg with it.
Ultimately, I decided that I'd probably kill myself if I tried, or put a tree through the roof of my house, or both. And I did get a professional who said that he'd come out, although he couldn't for a couple of weeks.
[As an aside, as I was was considering various ways of pruning the tree, I came up with the idea of a Sawzall on a Stick, which would be my cordless Sawzall with the trigger zip-tied down, attached to a long pole. I figured the advantage to that was that I'd be far enough away from whatever was happening that I'd probably be safe.]
Meanwhile, my insurance agent had gone on vacation, which left me to deal with a new guy, who came into this crazy mess right in the middle. And I began to think seriously about changing companies, even though I've been using this agency for the last 20 years.
Anyways, long story short (because I'm getting a little bit rambly now), I submitted some pictures of other, minor cleanup work that they'd asked for—mostly trimming trees and bushes that were touching the house and providing a pathway for vermin or something. (Apparently, grass against the foundation doesn't invite vermin, but if a single needle on a yew tree is touching the siding, a steady procession of ants, termites, frogs, and other wildlife will get into your house just like that.)
As a precaution, he also decided that he'd just write me a new policy which took effect as soon as the old one limboed*, and so he did. This all took place over the course of about a dozen e-mails, several phone calls, and so forth.
So the appointed hour came, the old policy limboed, the new one went into effect, and all was well.
The next day—the very next day—he called me back and said that the inspectors had suddenly decided that the cottonwood trees weren't a hazard after all, and everything was good to go, the old policy was back on the books, and I thanked him, hung up the phone, and then banged my head on the desk a few times.
____________________________________
*limboed: According to my temporary agent, while the results of the inspection were under review, the old policy wasn't canceled, but it also wasn't renewed. I couldn't make a payment, nor was there any proof of an insurance policy . . . but trust us, it's still in effect, sort of maybe. And while I don't want to imply that there would be any shenanigans, I had a feeling that if something expensive had happened to my property while the policy was in limbo, underwriting would have failed the inspection and effectively terminated the policy before the loss occurred. Maybe not, but I didn't want to risk it.
New(ly assembled) back sunroom porch thing.
Anyways, moving on to happier stuff!
If you just skipped right to here, the tl:dr is that the last couple of months were stressful and busy.
Add the site update to that, and what it did to a couple of my fics, and it was just piling more onto an already busy schedule.
But the good news is that I've gotten everything fixed that I've been made aware of. Silver Glow's Journal now has the paragraph breaks back in, and the word count is back where it belongs. I also fixed Asylum and Shining Armor has an redacted lasting more than four hours.
I published another half-baked biscuit, and almost nobody noticed. Only 37 of you did, in fact.
I don't remember if this got mentioned in the author's note, but even though it's incomplete, it's in the OPP-verse.
So about those blog posts for Silver Glow's Journal—DreamKistune sent me a PM shortly after I'd finished the story, asking some questions that he wanted to know about it. Mostly behind-the-scenes stuff, IIRC. And I asked him if he'd mind if I used that as the basis of a blog post, and he said yes.
And then, of course, I never got around to it. But I haven't forgotten, either, so that's something.
Then I was going to do one more about research and the writing process, which I may still. If nothing else, it's historically interesting.
Since we're on the subject of things not getting done, as is obvious to everyone, I haven't updated Onto the Pony Planet in a while. Like, a long while.
And this is the point where some of y'all are probably already feeling your hearts sink, 'cause you know that sometimes authors move on to other things or quit the fandom or whatever . . . heck, I've read those blogs before. And you might even be thinking right now that I'm hiding this here in the middle of the blog to be clever or something like that
But you're wrong. I am, in fact, working on the next chapter. Slowly, because I'm out of practice and it seems whenever I finally have some free time something comes up and whacks me in the knee but by golly I am not going to let that stop me. I've got a weekend coming up, and I just mowed the lawn even so I won't have to do that.
I can't give you a prediction just yet on how soon the next chapter will be ready to go, but know that it's in the works.
New topic!
I've been thinking of getting a new car (well, new to me, anyways), since the Grand Caravan is showing its age, and also the mountains of abuse I've heaped upon it in the last two months. Technically, I've been abusing it since I got it, but those were just hills of abuse.
I figured a pickup would be a good choice, and I'd even found one that I was thinking of looking at. It was a little bit more than I wanted to pay, but it looked pretty solid, and it was a ¾ ton truck, which of course means that it can take abuse like a champ. Also it was four wheel drive, which is useful when you've got a lot of driving around in the backyard to do.
And I was going to go look at that truck on Saturday. But then on Tuesday, my boss said that the lady next door was going to take her Caravan to the junkyard unless we knew someone who would give her $200 for it.
Without even driving it, I got out my wallet—best case, I've got a replacement for my white van; worse case, I've got parts on wheels for my white van. It's one trimline higher and one model year newer, but it's got 240,000 miles on it.
And it turns out, it drives better than mine, and the air conditioning works. Now that it's all licensed and insured and stuff, I'm going to take it on a longish trip tomorrow and see what happens.
So now I have two Grand Caravans.
Now kiss
And finally, THE SECOND LINK to the aforementioned blog post.
Write the next five chapters of OTTP. Don't take a break from it until you have at least 4 chapters of buffer.
You sure it wasn't Silver Glow raining on your parade for not writing her follow-up posts?
Home Depot had a $80 electric pole saw (chainsaw on a stick) that I got for my wedding anniversary (33rd anniversary is the Chainsaw Anniversary, which I bet you didn't know). Thing goes through limbs like a lightsabre, and keeps me far enough away that I don't breathe wood chips. I bet I've saved at least three times the cost of the saw in tree service over the last few weeks, and since it's electric, I'm not nervous about having gas drip down on my head. (Just oil. Seriously, oil the holy heck out of the chains on these things.) And with an inverter, you can use it out in the woods. Wonderful invention.
Don't worry too much, at this point we are used to OTTP chapter taking month. As long as we know that the next one will come, there is still hope. Yet.
Jeez Admiral you've been busy.Now I feel even worse that the shirt you gave me vanished somewhere.
1.) yay! I missed your blogging and presence.
2.) you got too many dang cars
3. Insurance companies are the succ
4580551 Silver Glow has clearly been relishing her return to full-powered Equestrian glory by sabotaging her creator.
But they're siblings!
4580549
Yess. This is a good plan.
TheyWe can all wait for greatness! I certainly won't mind.Shipley? That explains so much, Admiral.
Unfortunately, they're right. Damn climbing vines. Don't ask me how I- *swat* -know.
I have $236.48, some lint, and a bag of three week old carrots. Are you willing to sell me anything road legal?
I was wondering if you were ever going to post that. I knew you were busy for awhile so I figured I'd wait until the end of the month to PM you about it.
don't worry about taking a long time, i'm still catching up on your fics (currently reading some other stuff).
Love that typing pony gif.
4580626
Yuuuus.
Done, and done. (also no homo)
You had a lot of shit to do. More than me, I imagine, but I feel your pain. I've been remodeling my late grandfather's house the past 3 months or so, and I'm finally (almost) finished! Monday, I spent literally the entire day cleaning up all the garbage (mostly lumber) and shoving it into my 3500 Chevy Express van. Filled the whole van, but it took it like a boss. On Tuesday - my birthday, incidentally - I took it to the dump and went across the scales, it was just over a ton... of fucking garbage. And mind you, very little of that was construction debris, because for the past 3 months I'd weaseled all of that into the one city garbage can the house is allotted. This was shit that was just in the 2 car garage for Celestia-knows how long. And that was after two scrappers each took a truckload of scrap metal away, AND after the estate sale, wherein I sold hundreds of things. FUCK. So... much... garbage.
And then on Wednesday, I spent the entire day loading all my TOOLS into the van. So... many... tools.
Tomorrow, I'm heading back out there just to clean up and finalize a couple things.
Speaking of roofs (rooves? O_o) I patched the leaking garage roof, and it has 2 layers of asphalt shingles. Upon removing the damaged shingles, I found that the old layer underneath has crumbled into tiny pieces. It was a messy job just to replace 10 or so tiles. Bah.
Also, the only thing better than one Grand Caravan is two Grand Caravans! Hey, you could weld one on top of the other and be like Fury Road. WITNESS!!! *sprays silver paint on mouth*
Also, also, is it really your birthday on the weekend of Bronycon? Fuck, I'd love to do the bar crawl, but I never get there early enough. We'll see, though, maybe we'll meet up and get fitshaced.
For lumberjacking and general home maintenance, see if there's any local tool library programs.
We have one in Minneapolis and I'm planning on borrowing a carpet cleaner and maybe a pole-chainsaw sometime this fall.
4580593
Do you think you'll use it often enough to justify buying your own? As for old shingles, they can be good for the soil, so I would attach a sturdy power rake/mulching blade to the mower and grind them up.
But does it have distinguishing zip ties on it!!!
Yikes. At least the insurance rigamarole is over. For now, anyway. Hope to see you at Bronycon!
You clearly needed one of these: oldglorymtb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/fiskers-pruner-trail-building.jpg
Would've taken care of your problem in a few short minutes that it would.
Did the roofing guys ever consider sticking them shingles on a tarp?
4580876
If you want your arms to feel like they're going to fall off and having to pull it down and coat it with oil to keep it from sticking every 30 strokes.
4580883
Never had that problem
4580886
I suppose it depends on the height and thickness of the branch and the angle of the cut and density of the wood.
Raising the arms up to the sternum or higher and pushing up and pulling down while pushing the blade into the groove would quickly fatigue the arms of Paul Bunyan himself.
4580934
Still wouldnt know, and I made that golfcart a mobile tree hide when i was done the last few times I did that
I suggested one or two times that the default view when clicking on author's Stories should be "updated" not "approved" (or add an option for it in the preferences at the very least).
IMHO it is the best option as it helps authors make their older stories more visible - thus better chance they will finish their older fics.
Otherwise authors tend to write new stories and the old ones get abandoned easily...
Oh shit! Reminds me that I should get started on. . . well, you know what.
4580549
Five completely written chapters might be a little too much to hope for, unless y'all are willing to wait until next Christmas for the next update. . . .
4580551
It's entirely possible. Although she's not a particularly vengeful pony.
4580593
I didn't know that the 33rd was a chainsaw. I presume that comes from the old tradition of being tired enough of your spouse that you're willing to try a battle to the death?
I might have to invest in one of those one day. Although I manage to hurt myself enough with normal things, so the thought of a powered polearm is somewhat worrying. In fact, one of the reasons that I don't own a chainsaw is that I'm fairly sure I'd find a way to accidentally cut off one of my legs if I had one.
4580595
Even at my now unexpectedly reduced typing speed, I have high hopes for writing time tomorrow.
4580599
If you're at Bronycon this year, I might be persuaded to give you another one.
4580605
Only like ten. That's not too many.
Yes, they are.
4580626
Heh, probably. Silly pony.
4580630
Vancest is wincest?
4580635
Supposedly, there are historical markers around the Baltimore area with that name on them.
The former owners of this house decided to plant trumpet vine out front, which is basically the same as kudzu. It's trying to get into the house.
4580671
Does your state have any kind of safety inspections or emissions inspections whatsoever? Because if the answer is yes, I don't own anything road legal.
4580677
I hadn't forgotten, just got really busy with other stuff. I should write myself a note to publish it later this week.
4580681
It was kinda prophetic, too--now I'm typing like that.
4582402
No one man should have
All that
Horsepower
4580753
Back in the day when I was demolishing my old mobile home, I overloaded my poor Astro van a time or two. Chevy vans can really take abuse.
Happy belated birthday!
I got rid of all the singles off the addition that way--filled one of my trailers with them, and then put a little bit at a time into my curby until they were all gone, nearly a year later.
Man, that's the hard thing about cleaning up a house, isn't it? I luckily missed out on most of that after my grandmother passed away, but helped clean out the attic of my grandpa's house after the auction. Lots of lumber that he'd kept for projects and all sorts of other widgets and doodads. . . .
Hopefully just house tools, and not all your mechanic tools. Last time I had to move my toolbox, it filled up the back of a full-size longbox truck, and now I've got ten years worth of more tools.
My welding skills aren't good enough to stick two vans on top of each other, unfortunately. So it would have to be a ratchet strap job. If I used enough of them, it would probably be reasonably safe. . . .
Technically, not the weekend of--it's the Friday before (I think). But close enough for government work, I always say.
I aim to leave either absurdly early Thursday, or else Wednesday night and then find somewhere along the route to spend the night. Don't have absolutely firm plans yet, despite the blog post implying that I do.
4580795
I don't think that there are, although I haven't really looked around. Some tools you could rent from the local hardware store, but they've changed branding and I don't know if you can anymore. Haven't looked into it.
I've got pretty much everything that I need for normal maintenance, it's just things like felling trees that's beyond the capabilities of the tools I currently have, mostly because it's something I've never needed to do.
I do have friends with chainsaws, so if I had to, borrowing them isn't out of the question.
4580821
Not yet. But that's not out of the bounds of possibility--there are a lot of deer around here.
4580837
I've probably got five to ten years before they do it again, and this time if they suggest trimming the cottonwood trees, I'll just do what my co-worker suggested: 'accidentally' fell one across the house (while I still have insurance on it).
I'll be in Quills and Sofas wearing a genuine Admiral Biscuit t-shirt . . . unless Bad Horse stabs me and takes my shirt again.
4580876
I don't know about a few short minutes--the limbs in question are like a foot in diameter, maybe more. Eventually it would have taken care of the problem.
I think if they were going to do the cleanup, or if I'd provided the tarps, they would have. And I probably should have thought of that, but I didn't.
4581423
That's not a bad idea--I didn't know that you could sort them that way, to be honest.
Yeah . . . .
4581834
4582419
Now I'm morbidly curious how many horsepowers I have. I do know that the total mileage of my fleet is over a million.
4582434
Quote-unquote 'just house tools.' ffs, literally whole van filled with tools. Though I know what you mean, mechanic's tools are fucking heavy. I've never actually had to move my tools, but I've assisted in moving other people's. We've always used a flatbed towtruck. Just winch the box up and strap it down.
4582472
Most house tools (in my experience) are designed to be carried about, whereas mechanic's tools tend to be designed to be put in toolboxes, and then the toolboxes moved as a whole--at least that's been my experience. Yeah, lots of mechanics tools come in blow-molded cases, but those never actually fit in the toolbox, so you've got to empty the case out and then half the time you don't know where to keep it, so you either throw it out or put it in the basement and never find it again.
I've never done the flatbed method before, although I've seen it used. The one time I was between jobs, I had a truck that my whole toolbox would fit in, and we could just use the hoists at work to get it in and out.
I also had to use a U-haul trailer once, and my toolbox broke through the ramp.
Should have seen that coming.
I can't even imagine what my toolbox weighs. It's got to be over a ton.
It wouldn't be THAT hard. Thing is once you are on a roll with it, just keep on a rollin'. Yes it might make a little bit of a break between chapters in other stories, BUT it would get OTTP back to monthly updates at the very least.
4582402 I totally will be and I'd love another! I promise not to get stupid sick sunday night and lose it this time.
Congrats on being busy, double congrats on getting all the busies over!
Are you coming to Trotcon?
4582492
Of all the stories I work on, OPP is the second slowest, just because of all the different plots going on simultaneously. Maybe if I do just focus on it, I could get a multiple chapter buffer written (or at least partially written), I don't know. I suppose there's no harm in trying.
4582702
Yay!
4582711
I'm intending to. I probably ought to get around to getting a ticket and a hotel room, eh?
Just in case anybody forgot to download that Pinkie Pie picture:
pre01.deviantart.net/97d0/th/pre/f/2017/098/4/1/pinkie_s_princess_pie_plunder_by_theowlgoesmoo-db54m46.png
Source
4583960
Yes you should. I imagine Trick Question might still be looking for a roomie-partner there, you could poke her maybe
4585174
Hmm, I could do that. It couldn't be weirder than sharing a bed with Bad Horse.
4585854
Then yea send her a shout!
4586344
Done! We're making arrangements!