Yep, superman found his Kryptonite in Ware & Miller I think.....

Yea, Ware was on it! Isn't he 40 something?

Wait until 50 starts creeping up on you.....

Age has something to do with your health, but I'd have to say it is more a function of your attitude.

Exercise, then diet is the key along with adherence to a few key scripture verses

A determined attitude will keep you working out. If you do that you continue to get all the benefits of a good circulatory system and heart. That vital system is the engine that powers the system which knows how to repair itself and remain very useful for all of it's days.

I was over 50 when I tested out for BlackWater and on that day beat the young Marines who showed up to be vetted as well. Beat guys more than half my age. They were now smoking and riding the coat tails of earlier victories. I had just been walking and running and lifting. On Friday nights, in miserable weather in the cold and when others were partying. It made the difference...in my life it has always made the difference.

Turning 50 is relative with respect to your condition, based on how much time you spent keeping your carcass in condition. Do what you read about Bobby doing, but do it ten and even twenty years past the time the popularity fades and I promise you turning 50 will best most other guys turning 30.

At 61 I worked out yesterday, and Friday, and plan one for tomorrow morning. I have expectations to still be doing it 10 and 20 years from now. And I'm not trying to say I'm anybody, far from it I'm just a fat old guy, but I can still do it! Take heed of the death knell of health, youthfulness and vigor...It sounds like this: I am so busy with work and family these days, I no longer have time to workout!

^^^Ruthless!!!

Don't get into a fluid change here!

Well I got all three sheets of cammo in

I think the harvest moon would look right at home on the Chevy and I'd have to go along with the crowd here, the black snake skin would look best on the Tiger.

Maybe that brown shakes kin will look the part on the DR650 when Mike gets the Tank molle cover done

That's what I'm afraid of!

You boys talkin' about a gen-u-wine Kintucky Barn raisin'?

I feel the urge to throw my two cents in to the DOT collection plate. Don, rather than acquiring and using an auger to create the holes for the recommended pylons, I think it will be more fun, and educational for the pre-rangers, to use cratering charges. If you calculate the charges correctly, and tamp them properly, you will get perfectly suitable holes with much less effort and time invested.  ;) It will also be a good learning step in the crawl-walk-run methodology to introduce calculating and designating demolitions training for the boys. By the end of the day they will be able to confidently blow a nice crater across your driveway to slow the bad guys attempting to overrun your perimeter. Or, maybe lay an abatisse across the road. Or blow a bridge, or any of a number of good ways to impede your enemies and channelize them into your kill sac!  8)

Or just blow some stuff up for fun!

Funny you should mention that Sean!

The county Attorney has offered me a blasting license. Wants me to blast out the pond...so he can watch!

Foundation problem solved!

But gonna auger in some holes up over the existing home site. I think I'm going to throw up a home built on piers. Maybe get it framed by years end...

^^^Dang!!!^^^

The big point here that everyone missed is this is not my job! I hired the building out. One cannot simply come into the middle of someone else's project and "Throw up some piers." :o

Second point: No matter how you spin it, it's one to two thousand dollars that I don't have right now! :(

Yea I know how to do it myself. But buying an auger or renting one, then boring all those holes, which would have to be set exactly to what the BUILDER needs, then all those 6X6 posts, then a couple tons of sack-crete, and what do you have? $1,000-$2000 and a bunch of work to achieve a foundation which may or may not meet the builders requirements! ::)

(But it was the chevy)

OK, latest topic for discussion is the foundation.

Duane (Remember him?) and I were talking this morning. The shed is built to set on concrete blocks, and in this case, a lot of them! It's a practice that I can see clearly demonstrated already on my property, in the barn. That stack of logs is resting on stone piers which are just resting, well sank a bit into the ground.

Talking to Mike, the builder, he says his building will resist a 70mph wind as is, and when filled with all the stuff one puts in there, quite a bit more. So my concern about it being a big sail up on top of a ridge is quieted a bit, however my farm did see a tornado just last summer.

Added to the wind load thought is the fact that I'll bet that the cinder blocks will settle in a bit over time, and it is likely that I'll need to re-level the building over time, perhaps more than once.

Now the obvious solution to all that is to just add in piers and bolt the building to those piers. Mike is looking at that possibility at the moment, although he cautions he would be looking at around 30 piers sunk 36" in terra firma and concreted in place. But that would then comprise a forever structure but, it would raise the cost of the building $1500 to $2000.

Now I am at budget...so what can I do here. I don't really have the money to do the foundation, however a concreted-in pier foundation is screaming to me as the right way to go...

....must be talking about Cmax. :)

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Could have been Sarge!!!!!!!

Quote from: Flyin6 on February 05, 2016, 08:38:29 AM

Was talkin' to miss Kathy last night about that...paneling the inside of this new shed with that wood. She replied "You're not using that pretty wood in that crappy shed you're building!"

So now I'm building a crappy shed!

I might do it just for spite ;-)))

If you sand it down lightly and put some varnish or clear stain on it to bring out the wood grain, I THINK she'll like it. But then again, I don't know the 6 element, so I can't make a comment.

Bobby, That would be a fail!

You put up barn wood because of it's knotty old character. Sand it down and all you have is a twisted up old board.

Now having said that, planning some thicker beams yields beautiful wood surfaces. But if you have barn wood, best to use it as is. I think If I changed it in anyway then I'd be both stupid AND wasteful in her eyes.

When working with HH6 elements. It's best to just do what you want and ask forgiveness or avoid the subject altogether...or offset it with, Honey, look what I bought for you..."

Other thought is maybe it was used for tobacco? Corn isn't that popular in the tuk where as tobacco always has been. My BIL runs 400 head of cattle over near Louisville & a couple of his barns were solely for drying tobacco......

Tobacco is likely as this was a working tobacco farm until about 35 years ago. Then they hayed it for a couple then it fell into disuse. But the more I look at it, that inner structure is less refined (Round rough hewn logs) then the more square peg style beams used for parts of the barn.

In any event, it will be reused not torched.

I will sell it for operating cash if I can.

If that doesn't work, then I think I could take that apart carefully, then reassemble on another site, chink up the cracks and create a cool cabin space that celebrates the farm's past while providing something useful like animal shelter, to a prayer room, to a cozy one room cabin for visitors...who knows...Maybe even a place to park SquareD or Sarge!

Lions Led by Donkeys


by David French

In 14 years of continual combat, has there ever been a greater disconnect between our warrior class and the civilians who purport to lead them? American politicians still don’t understand our enemy, still don’t understand the capabilities and limitations of the American military, and worst of all, they still seem unwilling to learn.

They come from an intellectual aristocracy that believes itself educated simply because it’s credentialed and they tend to listen only to those who share similar credentials. They've built a bubble of impenetrable ignorance, and they govern accordingly.

During World War I, German general Max Hoffman reportedly declared that English soldiers fight like lions, but we know they are lions led by donkeys. Over time, his criticism stuck, and popular opinion about the war hardened into a consensus that the horrors  of the trenches were the product of stupidity and lack of imagination. Callous generals, the criticism held, safely ensconced themselves in the rear while sending young men to die in futile charges, unable to conceive of the tactical and strategic changes necessary to deal with the technological revolutions that defined the war. This criticism was unfair then, as generals on all sides suffered high casualty rates and dramatically changed tactics during the course of World War I, but it’s entirely fair now.

Just look at the collection of senior talent advising President Obama on ISIS. Stanford and Oxford-educated National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, has no military experience, was part of the team that disastrously botched America’s response to the Rwandan genocide, and is notable mainly for a willingness to say anything to advance the electoral prospects of her political bosses. Stanford and Michigan educated and leftist Valerie Jarrett, by many accounts, President Obama’s most-trusted adviser She also has no military experience, spent much of her life toiling in Chicago municipal politics, and has gained influence primarily through her steadfast loyalty to the Obamas.

Yes, Yale educated John Kerry served in Vietnam, but one of his first acts upon returning home was to turn on his fellow veterans and slander them as war criminals. He has minimal credibility in the military. Perhaps worst of all is Smith College­ educated Wendy Sherman, the lead negotiator of the administration’s disastrous Iran deal. She has zero military experience, started her career as a social worker, and then made her name in radical pro-abortion politics as the director of EMILY’s List. Sherman played an instrumental role in the failed North Korean nuclear negotiations during the Clinton administration, so naturally Obama put her in charge of the Iranian debacle. Incredibly, this gang of cocooned leftists has reportedly aced the Pentagon out of the decision-making process and pushed military frustration to the highest level in decades.

But the politicized Pentagon bears its own share of the blame, beginning with a politically correct culture where discrimination complaints are more harmful to careers than battlefield failures. Yale and Oxford educated Ash Carter is no doubt intelligent (he has a Ph.D.in theoretical physics) and may be an upgrade over Chuck Hagel, but he has exactly as much experience in uniform as the commander-in-chief.

On his watch, the Pentagon has maintained rules of engagement that have so dramatically hampered American forces in the field that terrorists routinely and easily find safe haven from the world’s most capable military.

And while military experience, even experience on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan, is no guarantee of either wisdom or policy agreement (after all, even the most hardened post-9/11 veterans can and do disagree on tactics and strategy), there is a reason why Senator Tom Cotton stood alone in voting against the disastrous Corker bill. He has seen jihad up close, and he knows that it cannot be appeased.

Republicans, while possessing a bit more clarity regarding the nature of our enemy, suffer from similar defects in experience. Not one of the leading GOP contenders has served one day in the military, and this experience deficit could be one reason that they sometimes substitute the foolish pacifism and appeasement of the Left for foolish saber-rattling. The Republican candidates, near-lock-step support for a Syrian no-fly zone (with the notable exceptions of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump) reflects the worst sort of strategic thinking.

Chris Christie’s vow to shoot down Russian planes if they violate such a no-fly zone was an embarrassment.

I do not believe that military service is a prerequisite for the presidency, but lack of service, especially lack of service since 9/11 should lead to a degree of humility and openness to counsel that our political aristocracy self-evidently doesn’t possess.

I know their world. I’ve lived in their world. This is a political class that reflexively distrusts the military, believes the right kind of experience can be gained by attending panel discussions from Boston to Geneva to Istanbul, and claims to gain on-the-ground insight from quick, guided tours of the safest sectors of Iraq and Afghanistan.

They know nothing. Worse, they learn nothing. The American people deserve better. This is a nation that has supplied an all-volunteer military with elite warriors for 14 consecutive years of combat. This is a nation whose sons and daughters keep exhibiting  the courage of the Greatest Generation and the generations of soldiers who came before.

We still raise lions. But alas, the donkeys rule.

You may have stated this already however is this just a large pressure treated base (say like 4x4 or 4x6 timbers or possibly steel? The way HD has them locally) or are you putting down some sort of foundation under it?

I'm going to grade the area some, then set the building onto blocks. It will be built on 4X4 or 4X6 skids. The building requires three longitudinal beams. Mike builds his with 4. This one, we are upgrading to five! That means the building will be sitting on blocks on five points across its width and every 8 feet along its long axis. We did that to decrease the ground pressure of each column to prevent it from settling into the ground too much.

This is all I can afford, so it is what it is. I can say, there are thousands of buildings in this region constructed this way. Would it stand up against a tornado or high winds? Well, would a regular house? This thing was very affordable and gets me in there with tool storage, a lockable area, a washer/dryer and frig along with a place to repair, set up a wood shop to continue to build out the property. The second floor will be emergency sleeping area and added storage

I've seen a guy take something almost exactly like that and turn it into a home.

He broke it down then pressure blasted everything and removed the old nails, then reassembled it on a foundation. He tacked chicken wire in between the logs, then chinked the area with mortar. The result was a great looking home, I was surprised

BTW, this is what 16 wide looks like inside, but that is only about a 5:12 pitch roof in this shot

Sarge made it out of the parking lot? Boy sq D is really feeling left out of the fun now...... ;D

We will get Square D back in the action!

Amazing how things happen!

Just this morning I am standing in Mickey D's getting my quoffee when this guy strikes up a conversation

He was looking at my truck and wanted to know what I thought about the 6.5 chebby diesel!!!!!!

He was going to look at one for sale around here with the asking price of $3500!

What a coincidence. Knowing everything in this area has pre-installed rust holes, I suggested he offer $2500 after a good inspection...

We saw some monster deer when we first drove in. They are easy to spot now since the fields are cut. As you can see, the fields remain in pretty good condition. I have been cutting more of mother nature back during the cool months to get ahead and keep the battery charged in Mr. Deere

Got some four wheeling in! And once again that terrific Grizzly Locker Tate supplied me pushed us right through all that gooey mud

He had some completed buildings sitting on the lot which I toured. The biggest one is a bunch smaller than the one I will be getting

So I visited the assembly area where these things are constructed. Mike builds them in panels, which he carts to the job site, then assembles them into completed structures