Morning Cup Of Coffee And Weather

Yep, we’re going to see upper 40s for a low tonight in Florida.

 

Big rain again here:

 

We have one son in Redlands and another in Studio City.

 

Forty eight hours ago it was -3F and to it hit 42F. On Friday the forecast is for 8” of snow.

 

We are back in MN

 

Uff da!

 

Well said! LOL

 

It took about 5hrs, but the 36yr old JD was up to the task

 

Nothing runs like a Deere.

 

....especially the older ones.

 

...now that's really old!

 

Or an Allis-Chalmers.

600DD786-C419-492A-A370-B44320E61583 by Tour 931 posted Mar 20, 2023 at 12:22 AM

This picture was taken for Valentines Day.

 

Love old tractors...when you could still fix them with a toolbox and a little ingenuity about engines.

 

The tractor in the picture was made in 1953 and it still runs.

 

Yeah, before I got this diesel JD, I had a 1942 JD "A" model. No electric on it, you had to turn the flywheel on the side of it and partially open the petcocks on the cylinders to lessen the compression so you could turn it over. They all had their own idiosyncrasies, which if you figured it out, they would start on the second or third turn, but if you didn't you could turn that flywheel until your hands blistered, and it still wouldn't run. It was dirt simple to work on, but it had a bucket loader on the front, and as you can tell, our driveway has trees all along it, which made places to push the snow difficult, and very time consuming. The blower was definitely the answer. Not quite as simple as the "A" to work on, but not too bad.
The "A" went to my brother in law in exchange for a bunch of sheet rock work when we added the pole garage shop, and a storage room in the garage on the house.

 

Right to repair?

 

Yeah, I'm not sure when JD, Caterpillar, and I'm sure some others made it near impossible to do repairs yourself, by refusing access to the needed info/tools, but it didn't make them any friends. Glad to see some legislation to end that practice.

 

<Rant: On>

I just bought my last iPhone probably my last apple product, because of this. The only reason I did now was that I have 1 (one!) application that I can't get and must have that I use with my parents as they age in place. It's their lifeline app, and it is the one thing I need that I can't do with any other solution.

Every other task --- email, phone, calendar, browsing --- can all be done with free and open-source software on hardware that contains no proprietary parts, so if it breaks you can fix it yourself or pay to have it done by an independent shop. You are not held hostage by a "genius" who just last week was asking "Do you want fries with that?" before they were replaced with a touch screen.

If I can't replace my own battery or a screen....do I really own it? Not really. You're only renting until the part breaks.

All the arguments about "security" are just strawman arguments. Apple, Samsung, Deere, Tesla...take your pick all make flawed products. The flaw aren't the problem. Holding me hostage that only 'they' can fix things is the issue.

<Rant: off>