Bob's Eyes

Saturday May 26, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Forest ride

I heard something outside this morning. It was Barry with his dirt bike, so I got my stuff together and joined him for a ride up into the hills.

 

Waterfall

We rode up to the water fall and got off the bikes to check it out. It has slowed up a lot, but is still beautiful and makes a nice soothing sound.

 

The falls is in a nice area, real lush as we  hop back on our bikes.

 

Ridge top

We rode around for awhile then headed up to the top of the ridge to our break area. It was a bit overcast today. It must of rained a bit last night as we got pretty wet from the bushes on the roads we had to ride through.

 

We rested up for a spell before taking off again.

 

Getting wet

Then we rode through another area with lots of brush on the road and got our pants real wet, so we cut it short and headed for home.

Warming up and a booboo

Barry took off and I rested up a bit after getting a fire going in  my wood stove.  Eventually, I realized I was supposed to feed my brother’s chickens and gather the eggs while he was out fishing in the ocean.  Better late than never.

 

Making videos

After I fed his chickens I rode the bike on up into the hills with a purpose.

I stopped here to get a longer black water pipe for the spring I was working on, the newest one, Redwood Spring.

 

I was taking the longer pipe and a one gallon paint can up to the spring to make some videos on how to do a temporary tap and how to measure the flow of water out of a spring on a hillside.

 

Redwood spring

I rode on up to the spring.

 

Measuring water flow from a spring

I installed the new pipe and measured the water flow of the new spring which was 6 gallons per minute which is good for springs around here. This one will slow up as the summer progresses.

Making videos

Then I shot videos of the whole measuring process with three different cameras, my video camera, my phone and my new 360 camera I just got and need to figure out how to use it.

I spent quite a bit of time doing that so I can make some new videos for YouTube about tapping springs.

I did quite a few retakes, and was finally satisfied I had enough clips to put some stuff together for the videos.

Interesting camera

I was testing the new 360 camera and it will be interesting to see what I got with that camera.

After I got what I needed and a drink of water, I headed on home.

It sled again

On the way by this spring I’ve been working on, I noticed the hill had slid some more, so I have  more to dig out. It’s just as good it slides now so I can deal with it and get it over with. Each time it slides, my odds increase on it not sliding again.

 

Memorial Spring

I think I’ll name this spring, Memorial Spring as some of my family is buried near by.

Chickens

Back home the chickens were eager to get into the front yard, one of their favorite spots to graze.

 

Nice day.

Thursday May 25, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Scammed twice

Last night I was trying to get a new camera to connect to my cell phone , an Instant 360 X3 camera, and had a time of it. The problem was the app that goes with the camera wouldn’t play with my old phone. Worse than that, when I went to the play store to get the app, they knew it wouldn’t play, so didn’t show the right app, but didn’t tell  me, so I tried the app that was suggested by them which turned out to be a scam. But since no one told me about the no play problem with the phone I thought it was just me so I did it twice. I realized something was wrong after the first time, a forty dollar charge, so I called the people that the scammers were using for billing which was a legit company and canceled everything, not really knowing what was going on. After much research and trying different things to get the bogus app  to work, I tried again and eventually realized my goof, when the web page finally said my phone couldn’t play the app I wanted.  I had to go call the billing company again and cancel everything. It wasn’t the billing companies fault and they were good about fixing stuff.

Fraud email

Then this morning, I got an email from my debt card fraud company saying they detected something fishy and put a shut down my card. The scammers had put a 3.95  charge on the card. I didn’t lose any money on all this, only a lot of frustration.

Activation

I really needed to be able to hook the new camera to my phone with the app, so I could get the new camera activated so I could use it.

I went over to my neighbors to try her phone with the right app as I knew her phone as newer than my old one and got the camera activated.

I’d had a problem getting my drone to use the drones app a long time ago that wouldn’t play their app, so I’d had enough.

New phone time

I haven’t gotten a newer phone because the cell phones just barely work at my house because of the hills and all the big trees so the only time I can use it is when I travel.

But enough was enough. I drove on over to the shopping center to see about a new phone and maybe a new phone plan, no matter what the cost.

As it turned out, all the phone plans were more than I wanted to pay, since I can’t use it at my house, so most of the time, the phone is useless.

I talked with several phone and phone plan stores and told them my problems. They were good and didn’t just try to sell me stuff that wouldn’t be useful, but at least I was learning about all this stuff. They did work on education me on what’s what on cell phones these days.

I went to Costco as I was going there anyway and checked on the phone guys there. I didn’t mind the high cost of a new phone I would need but I did mind the monthly charge for using it when it wouldn’t work at my house anyway.

I headed for home thinking about all I’d learned about phone stuff and decided maybe the best thing to do was check out the phones they suggested on Amazon.

The guys at the phone stores said the newer, more powerful phones might do a better job connecting at my house.

Time for a new phone

So, after much research on Amazon, I bit the bullet and ordered one of the better ones for around 800 bucks, which, despite the high cost, the fact I didn’t need the higher priced monthly access fees, worked out a lot cheaper in the long run. I paid extra to get it delivered in two days so I’d have it for the trip that is coming up next week, so it’ll gave me time to get it set up. I think it has a smart transfer app that will transfer all the stuff from the old phone so that shouldn’t be too hard, maybe. :O)

The rest of the day, I spent chair hopping around the yard with the chickens.

Nice day.