Jay Gaulard

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Archives for July 2008

How Long Does It Take For Fire Wood To Dry?

From what I have been reading, it takes about a “season” for firewood to dry (or season) enough to burn. That’s about nine months. There are a bunch of factors, including temperature, if the wood is covered or not, stacked in sunlight or not, air flow, wood type and a bunch of other things. It also depends on if the wood is split or not. Split wood takes less time to dry.

I read that there is also a debate on whether it’s better to cover a pile of wood or if it’s better to leave it uncovered. Some people say it’s better to cover the wood because the rain water won’t get to it. Others say that covering it will only trap the moisture in and rot the pile of wood. Who knows…I leave it uncovered, except if it’s going to snow. I think the best thing would be to cover the pile with plywood. That way, no rain water gets on the wood, yet the airflow is maintained.

Pile of Fire Wood

The reason I am talking about this is because, as you already know, we are getting a pellet stove installed in the basement. This leaves the fireplace in the living room able to burn regular wood. I am considering putting a wood burning stove into the existing fireplace.

For the past few days, I have been nibbling away at the wooded lot on the side of the house. There is a lot of land there and I think it could look quite nice if it was cleaned out. There are many large Oaks and Hickory trees, but many smaller Maples and Birches as well. I am taking down the smaller trees to open up the area and let some filtered sun come in. My goal is to clean it up to look like a park. I am cutting all the trees into firewood length pieces and stacking it up in back. The photo you see above is the actual wood. I am pretty sure this will not be burnable this season, but next season for sure.


Working With A Dell Precision T7400 Workstation

Well, I recieved the new Dell T7400 workstation yesterday, a day early. I met the FedEx guy in the garage. He warned me that the box was heavy.

I unpacked the box and took the computer out. It was pretty heavy. I brought it upstairs and made room for it on my desk. I set everything up and turned the sucker on. I must say, it is pretty much like my other computer, except 10x more expensive.

I do notice some speed increases with certain things, but I am not really doing anything that requires all this processor yet. Regarding moving around all those files, I would say this new system has helped out greatly.

Here are some photos…

My desk with both computers on it.

Front view of the Dell Precision T7400 workstation.

Side view of the Dell Precision T7400 workstation.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, it’s pretty large too. My other computer is tiny compared to it.


More Hiking At Devil’s Hopyard State Park

Today, we went back to Devil’s Hopyard State Park in East Haddam for what turned out to be a grueling two mile hike. It felt good, but there was a lot of sweat involved. We went uphill and downhill and everywhere in between. You should’ve seen me huffing and puffing like a fat guy at the tops of the hills. All this hiking should get me in better shape though.

We hiked the entire orange trail which brought us up to the vista, which was very nice. Then, the trail brought us down to the river again and past the Devil’s Oven. We walked back up to the bridge and past the falls to the car.

I took some more photos of various areas of the orange trail. I really have to stop taking so many pictures. Laura is starting to call me a tourist. Hey, this is the way I live. I am on my third digital camera because I like to use them so much. Also, somebody has got to like these things besides me.

Here are the pics.

Trail marker showing the orange and blue trails.

As you can see, I like moss.

Arriving at the vista on the orange trail.

The Devil's Hopyard State Park vista.

Looking up through some Hemlock trees.

This frog let me get really close to take a picture.

Looking down the Eight Mile River.

A close up of the river bank.

Walking back up the orange trail along side the Eight Mile River.


Hiking At Devil’s Hopyard State Park in East Haddam, CT

As I have mentioned before, Connecticut is the place to be if you like parks, hiking, mountain biking and recreation in general. We are learning that people around here take this stuff very seriously. When driving around, it’s hard not to see people jogging, riding bikes, playing golf…whatever.

Last week, we decided to drive down to East Haddam to visit Devil’s Hopyard State Park. I looked at this park’s trail map online and it looked good. The thing that really attracted me was the waterfall. As usual, I opened up Google Earth and checked it out from above. Well, all it looked like was woods. I don’t know, after seeing the satellite view, I didn’t think it looked all that great. We went anyway. I am usually wrong about these things.

I was really wrong about this one. I have been to many state parks in my life and I have to say this one was the best so far. The water does it for me. It’s a very low-key park. There are no highways around and it’s tucked back in the woods. The waterfall is great and the river adds a lot to the hike. This park is going to be on our list for a long time. They also offer camping, which is cool.

I took a bunch of pictures and will add captions where I think they would fit.

We parked on Helon Cone Rd., right off of Hopyard Rd. This was the enterance sign to Devil’s Hopyard State Park.

Chapman Falls on Helon Cone Rd.

Stone bridge on Hopyard Rd.

Random photo of stones that make the stone bridge.

Nice rock I found.

The beginning of the unblazed trail heading towards the bottom of Chapman Falls.

Continuing down the unblazed trail.

Chapman Falls at Devil's Hopyard State Park.

Field down near the picnic area.

The covered bridge at Devil's Hopyard State Park.

Beginning to walk down the orange trail towards the Devil's Oven and the Vista.

Eight Mile River at Hopyard State Park.

Cool picture of some moss.

Sign leading to Devil's Oven.

Devil's Oven at Devil's Hopyard State Park.

The perfect camping spot along Eight Mile River.

Lake at Devil's Hopyard State Park.

Like I said, it's a really nice park.


The Search For The Pellet Stove Begins

I know it’s only July, but believe it or not, that’s about two months too late when someone is trying to get a pellet stove installed.

I stopped by the local pellet stove store the other day to pick out my new Harman P68 Pellet Stove. This is top of the line and has everything I want in a stove. There is a thermostat and auto light and everything else I can think of. You can understand my excitement about this after I received a “price lock-in” at $4.85 a gallon from our heating oil company. As it turns out, a lot of other people are excited about Harman stoves as well.

I walked into the store and told the sales guy that I wanted a…He said, “If you are going to say Harman, you aren’t going to see it for a while.” He explained that all the Harman stove models are way back ordered and I wouldn’t see it until way into the season. While this annoyed me, it also gave me a chance to look at some other stoves.

I looked around and picked out a St. Croix Prescott EXL. This has the thermostat option as well as auto-light. When it gets too hot, the fire goes out. When it gets too cold, the stove automatically fires up again and cooks until the whole thing happens again. I am telling you, these things have come a long way.

I put a deposit down on that stove and they are going to come do a site visit, just to make sure the whole thing is going to work out, permit-wise. I think it will.

I also looked at some wood stove inserts for the fireplace upstairs. They look really good. I told the guy that I really wasn’t all too attracted to bringing wood inside again, since my childhood was filled with that. Then, he showed me the bio-brick. A bio-brick is a two pound brick made out of compressed saw dust. Basically, it is a big wood pellet. You can order them by the ton, just like pellets. I though this was wicked cool and now plan on getting a regular wood stove insert for the fireplace next season.

I will let you know what happens with the site visit.


A Night Out At Evergreen Walk in Manchester

Last night, after we went to Circuit City, we stopped by The Promenade Shops at Evergreen Walk in South Windsor, CT. It’s near Manchester. We had to visit Pottery Barn to get some plates and napkins and things like that.

I am not even sure how this turned into a blog post, but since I did have my new camera on me and the night was just perfect, I started shooting away. Leave it to me to suck the romance out of anything. It was quite romantic. It was dark out and there were so many couples holding hands. Just as I was mentioning to Laura that everyone was holding hands, I realized that I wasn’t. I grabbed her hand and made a night of it. Of course, she looked up at me with that big smile.

I told you I took some photos. These aren’t the greatest, since I was dark, but they’ll do.

This is a photo of Evergreen Walk in South Windsor looking in one direction.

This is a photo of Evergreen Walk in South Windsor looking in one direction.

I kept telling Laura that this area is reminding me more and more of when I lived in Atlanta, GA. Everything is new and very nice.

And this is Evergreen Walk in South Windsor looking in the other direction.

And this is Evergreen Walk in South Windsor looking in the other direction.

I snuck this shot without too many people seeing me. I have a feeling they would’ve called me a dork.

This is a photo of Burtons Grill in Evergreen Walk.

This is a photo of Burtons Grill in Evergreen Walk.

Just in case you ever wondered what the inside of a Pottery Barn looked like. Ahh, the joys of a new camera.

This is Pottery Barn in Evergreen Walk.


Windows Vista 64-Bit Operating System – Freezing Up

This is a very aggravating post to write. It’s a wonder I am sitting here and not in a mental hospital right now.

Let me offer some background. For the past few weeks, Laura’s computer has been showing the signs of hard drive failure. The computer is about 6 years old and has a 30Gb hard drive. It’s time to upgrade and get a new one. Last night, we ran out to Circuit City to pick one out. Upon looking at Circuit City’s selection, I was shocked to see about 95% of the computers now come with Windows Vista 64-bit. I asked the very new salesperson about that and he told me that’s the way they were coming now. Since I put my utmost trust in Microsoft, I figured that this is the way things were going to be and everything was going to work out fine. We picked out a HP Pavilion a6500f Desktop PC (KQ495AA#ABA).

When we got home, I started it up and did the things you do to a new computer. Then, I shut it down and put the old Linksys wireless card in and tried to run it. It didn’t work. I decided that I needed to find the Linksys 64-bit version of the adapter driver. Nope. No where to be found. Apparently Linksys hasn’t yet realized that this version of Windows is being sold to the masses. Oh well, I did some research and found that trying to find a wireless adapter for a 64-bit operating system is not all that easy. I finally narrowed my search down to a D-Link DWA-552 Xteme N Desktop Adapter. I chose this because it was available at Circuit City and the clock was ticking. We had work to do. We were now backed up a half-day. Also, the only reason I knew about this wireless adapter card was because I read about it on some forum discussing the issue. D-Link doesn’t officially support the 64-bit driver, yet they offer it. I had to download it from their website.

I ran up to Circuit City this morning to get the card, which wasn’t a problem. I came back and installed the card and had to call D-Link tech support for assistance installing the new driver. As I was on the phone with tech support, the computer froze. I restarted it (by physically pushing the on/off button) and continued to set up the driver. Everything set up fine without further event. I was able to connect to the network. Then, the computer froze again. I told tech support about this and she said there have been a few problems with this and I might need to update the BIOS. First of all, I don’t even know what a BIOS is, nor do I think I need to. It has nothing to do with my line of work. I tinkered with the computer for a few more hours and then called HP tech support. By the way, the computer kept freezing up (or crashing, whatever the difference is) about 25 more times during that few hours. It seemed to do it more when I was shutting down the computer and sometimes it got stuck on the welcome screen. The lady on the phone was nice and suggested that we burn some backup CDs and re-install the operating system. I told her thanks but no thanks. I really don’t think I will be re-installing the operating system of a 12 hour old computer. Seriously, this is not my problem.

I brought the computer back to Circuit City this afternoon and traded it for a less expensive (and slower) HP Pavilion A6400F Desktop PC. I just finished configuring it and (knock on wood) everything is good. It has the 32-bit version of Windows Vista. What a pain in the $%^&.

What is the moral of the story? Stay the hell away from Window Vista 64-bit, unless you want to sit there and try to get it to run. Can you imagine if I tried to install two things?


Going For A Nice Long Walk

We had to wake up extra early today because of a few chores that needed doing. The first thing was to drive Holly to the vet. She has been there a few times since we arrived in this part of the world. Apparently, she got some wound on her tail that needed tending to. She went in this morning to get a little operation, but when the vet looked at the tail, she decided not to go ahead with it. She thought it would heal by itself. That’s good for Holly and good for the wallet.

After that, we ran up to Super Stop and Shop in Glastonbury for some food shopping. Laura’s family is stopping by for a visit in a few weeks and that is going to require an entire Costco ordeal. In the meantime, the local food store is good enough to hold us over.

I stepped on the scale yesterday and noticed that I weigh 190lbs. I am not sure what the ideal weight for a strapping 6’3″ genius is, but I feel like I am five pounds overweight. I am really going to have to hit that indoor tennis center in East Hartford soon. After all, that is about 90% of the reason I wanted to move over here. It’s the little things with me. I am serious about the tennis though.

Since I am waiting for the cooler weather to come to join the tennis club, and possibly because Laura thinks I am getting fat, we decided to go for a nice long walk down the road today.

In general, I usually have no complaints about walking down the road, except for the hill. The hill is where I usually begin to sweat and I hate that. The reason I hate sweating on the walk up the hill is because I cool off on the way down the hill and that usually means another shower for the day. If you are anything like me, you understand multiple showers per day during the Summer.

I thought we could beat the sweating today because it is cooler than it has been lately. Unfortunately, with all the rain, it is also very humid. I didn’t beat the sweating. Either way, I did take some nice nature pictures along the way.

Slow river near walking trail in woods.

Larger river down the road.

Same river at the other side of the street.

Walking trail in woods.

Water in marsh near walking trail.

Road approaching the hill.


Planting Blue Prince Holly, Rhododendron and Mulching

It has been pretty dry here lately. It just rained this morning, which is good, but up until that, we haven’t had any substantial rainfall in quite some time. I have been watching many plants wilt because of the dryness. The neighbors are getting used to the guy with no shirt standing out front with a hose in his hand.

I have had a few goals. One of them was to finish the rhododendron line across the front of the property. I have been looking at Home Depot for rhododendrons, but none can be found…anywhere. I guess they are a Spring time seller. I actually had to dig up and few that were already planted on the property and the ones I planted earlier in the season to finish the row. It’s done now, so that’s good.

I also wanted to plant some sort of a perimeter around the patio area near the basement doors. I decided to go with the Blue Prince Holly that I have been buying (it’s the only thing left), along with some that I planted earlier on. Earlier in the season, I had no plan and I was just sticking these things in the dirt. Now, at least I have a plan.

I did make a nice discovery yesterday. For a few months, I have been dismayed at the price of mulch around here. I used to pay $20 per yard at the other house. Here, these crooks are charging about $50 per yard. I need to get some of what they are smoking. It’s funny because when I call somewhere for a price, I always sense a little hesitancy in their voices as they tell me how much they charge. They know what they are doing.

I called the local hardware store and found out they sold mulch by the bag. They had 3lb bags of pine mulch for $4.49 per bag. I didn’t think that was too bad, since I just paid almost $5 per bag at Home Depot for that dyed junk. I stopped by the store and picked up 10 bags. That’s 30 cubic feet (a little over a yard) for about $45. I beat the system, you see. Now, I can go back and get 10 bags at a time only when I need them.

The mulch is very important, not only to me and my mulch addiction, but for the plants as well. The whole reason for the plants wilting is because the ground wasn’t holding in any of the moisture. I kept watering them, but the sunshine was just too strong. Now, since I mulched and gave each plant a nice soaking, I think the plants will grow nicely.

Mulched Colorado Blue Spruce

Rhododendrons in mulch.

Blue Prince Holly planted for a hedge line.

The holly bushes really don’t need any mulch because the grass is nice and moist in the back yard.

Speaking of grass, I don’t know how I did it, but the back and side lawns are like a nice thick green carpet. I now mow the lawn on the highest level the mower will go and I think it made a difference. I also overseeded with the Vigoro Contractor’s Mix, so there is some good warm weather seed in there. The reason I mow with the higher setting now is because the grass I planted holds most of the water it absorbs in its leaves. If you mow too low, you are actually cutting off all that water. Also, a short mow exposes the dirt so it gets baked and weeds start to grow. Mowing at a higher level will give you a greener lawn.

Here, check it out…

Green grass in dry conditions.

Hand in grass showing height of mowing.

See, I’m not making this stuff up. Now, if I could just get rid of the brown crispy grass in the front and replace it with this stuff, I will be in good shape. The seed is down, so a bit more rainfall should do it.


Using Milky Spore To Control Grubs and Japanese Beetles

So, I did it. I jumped on the Milky Spore bandwagon.

Yesterday, I was thinking about how much I hear about this Milky Spore stuff. You know, Milky Spore is the thing that causes Milky Disease in grubs. It’s powder that you sprinkle onto the ground in a grid that takes years to work. Some people say that too many conditions need to be met and that because of all those conditions, it doesn’t really work. You can read about that here.

Here is how it works…First, Milky Spore comes in two types, powder and granules. The powder is more concentrated, but the granules are a heck of a lot easier to apply to a larger property. I can’t even imagine putting a teaspoon of powder down every four feet to create a grid across the entire lawn. They have applicators, but still…

I prefer the spreader method. Even if you need to apply the Milky Spore more often, it sure is a heck of a lot easier.

Back to how it works. Milky Spore gets placed on the dirt by you. It gets washed in by either a hose or rain. Grubs (when they are feeding) eat the Milky Spore and get sick. Before they get sick, their bodies turn into Milky Spore factories, creating a bunch more Milky Spore. When the grub dies, they release all that new Milky Spore into the soil. This goes on year after year. The only thing you have to remember is that you need to apply enough to build up a certain level of bacterium in the soil to do any damage to the grubs. Also, if it’s too cool when they eat it, it will pass right through them without damage.

Like I said, I like the granule method better.

20lb bag of Milky Spore granules

The bag says it is safe for other insects, birds, pets and man. I am not sure about women. It didn’t mention anything about them.

Scotts spreader with Milky Spore granules in it

I bought two 20lb bags this afternoon during a rain storm. When I got home, I waited for the rain to stop and spread both bags. I think there is supposed to be more rain tonight, so it should get washed in. Now, I just have to apply every year. They recommend three times a year, but that probably won’t happen.

I sure would like to get some people’s opinions on this stuff. Does it work?