Puckaway Motor Club

Tag: Puckanet (page 2 of 3)

Log: December 4, 2017

December 6, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Flying trip! Took advantage of this unseasonably warm (nearly 60° F) day and stopped up a little before 3:00 pm to drop off the summer tires from Lyssa’s car. While I was here and it was so nice out, I took a minute to collect most of the logs and branches from the tree that fell during deer camp. It wasn’t long before there was a pretty big stack in the pit.

There was one more reason for the visit today. I picked up another smartplug, but this one can also measure and report power consumption. I’ll be able to tell remotely whether or not the UPS heater is running. I plugged this in just behind the thermostatic switch and got it connected to Wi-Fi. Once I had the app running on my phone, I plugged the heater into it directly to verify the readings. 68.5 watts. Even if this thing ran 24/7, it would only add $5 to a monthly power bill. We’re supposed to be in for some cold weather, so we’ll find out soon enough. I closed everything back up and was on my way out by 3:45.

Log: Deer Camp 2017 (November 17 – 19)

November 21, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Friday

Pulled in at 3:30. No pooch; don’t want to risk someone mistaking her for a deer. Temperatures were hovering just above freezing with on-and-off rain and I was looking forward to heading into a nice, pre-warmed keep. It was not to be. Apparently, there was a power outage between Tuesday and today; microwave clock was reset and the heater wasn’t running. Lovely. I went to the pole barn to get my propane sunflower heater to kickstart the keep thawing process, but it was nowhere to be found. Frustrated, I headed into the big trailer and saw Dad was using it in the living room. He, Steve, and Sam were already plenty warm and had electric heaters going anyway, so I grumbled, stole my propane gear back, and headed out to the keep again.

With the sunflower heater blasting warmth, I finally unloaded the truck. I carried the water jugs over to the big trailer and had a drink with the guys while the keep warmed up. I didn’t stick around long, though. The big trailer reeks. Pretty sure mice have made some kind of home in the oven. The whole place smells like boiled rodent urine. Not sure how the three of them can stand it. I wandered back to the keep and threw on a movie while I started to rebuild the Puckanet. I replaced the router with a Unifi gateway to give me some more remote control and data. And hopefully, if I ever find a way around Verizon’s NAT mess, I can use the gateway for VPN connections to my home network instead of relying on the Pi. The Puckanet is constantly evolving.

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Log: November 13, 2017

November 16, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Pulled in at 1:30 with Hannah, who was glad to be back again so soon. She tore a few laps around the yard while I went into the keep to check out the Puckanet. It never reconnected to my VPN after the power was restored yesterday so I wanted to see what was going on. Turns out something got corrupted on the Pi and it wouldn’t boot at all. I’ll have to take it home and restore it from backup. Looks like the cameras will be down for a few days. I headed outside and saw Danny and Buck walking in to say hi. Hannah’s come around on Buck. She used to be really territorial and tried keeping him off the property, but now they’re perfectly happy chasing each other around the yard.

I’m sick of fighting this busted thing.

My main reason for coming up was mowing/leaf collection, so I got right to it. I hooked up the blower and the NASCAR trailer and started collecting leaves along the driveway. It was slow going as the trailer filled quickly. After three loads, I decided to change tactics and unhooked the collection equipment. I went around the yard between the keep and the pole barn and just mulched, progressively blowing the piles inward. Twice I was stopped by the front tie rod assembly coming apart at one of the wheels. I’ve had a redneck fix applied to this for the past year where it’s just held in place with a metal hose clamp, but it won’t hold anymore. The mount is just too worn out. I was forced to give up mowing around 4:15 with a lot of yard left to handle.

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Log: Puckaweekend 2017 (October 17 – 22)

October 25, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Tuesday

Home sweet home.

Hannah and I rode in around 4:30. Sunny and in the mid-60s, with no change in the forecast. This is going to be the best weather we’ve ever had for a Puckaweekend. Tools, clothes, and most other supplies are already here, but I brought a cooler full of goodies with me. I stocked the fridge and freezer with chili, beer, pizzas, and hot peppers, then headed outside. After filling the bird feeders, I kept the ladder out to make some modifications to the new outhouse vent. I added a wye with a 1 1/2″ plug to the base of the vent stack to make it easier to add water to the hole. I also installed a vent guard on the top of the pipe to keep leaves and critters out.

Next on the agenda was infrastructure prep. I ran a 100′ extension cord from one of the outdoor plugs on the meter panel to the pop-up camper and powered it up. I also turned on the fridge in the big trailer as we may need it for overflow freezer space.

I needed some more room in the pole barn, so I towed the aluminum ATV trailer out and parked it along the south side of the big trailer where it’ll be out of sight, out of mind. I also took a moment to tow the blue utility trailer up to the edge of the driveway so I can’t miss it tomorrow. It’s still full of scrap tires and needs to get dropped off at Pomp’s in Fond du Lac. I don’t want to forget it again.

Sleepy puppy.

I emptied the gas cans into the ATVs and mower, threw them in the back of the truck, and ran into town at 6:30 to fill them up and get some A&W. Back at the keep, I washed down dinner with a few cheladas as I uploaded some new additions to the media collection. Hannah was passed out on the couch already, dreaming hard. She must know what’s coming.

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Log: October 13 and 14, 2017

October 18, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Friday

Rode in with Jake, Josh, and the pooch at 6:30 pm to some intermittent rain. I wanted to get some time in with my boys before Puckaweekend. I set them up at the table with the dinner we had picked up at Culvers in Ripon, then headed out to unload the truck before the next downpour showed up.

Just look at this thing!

After eating my own burger and starting a movie for the kiddos, I got to work unpacking. I stocked the pantry for Puckaweekend, then decided to hang my new sign. My wonderful wife got me an amazing anniversary gift this year: a custom-made, LED-backlit steel sign in the form of my Puckaway Motor Club owl logo. It’s huge, too: about 30″ in diameter. I love this thing.

It came with four post mounts for hanging it on the wall at the proper depth for the backlight, so I picked a spot right by the door and screwed it into the paneling. I was able to hide the wire for it behind the trim between wall panels, so it’s a really clean looking installation. I lit it up and the boys were thrilled to have a new Puckaway nightlight to watch over them.

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Log: September 22, 2017

September 25, 2017 / / 1 Comment

It’s a scorcher today. Almost 90°—way too hot for late September. I usually check in on the cameras up here throughout my work day, but I lost my connection to the Puckanet around noon without any warning that the battery backup kicked in. I was worried something bad might have happened with my equipment, so I left work early, stopped home to grab the pooch and a few items I had planned to bring anyway, and headed up. Got here a little before 2:00 pm and quickly determined the issue was with Verizon, not my gear. The modem had no data signal. Same story with my phone. At least I was able to make calls; Verizon support confirmed that there was a data outage and that they had already dispatched a repair crew.

Satisfied that the battery backup hadn’t melted and started the keep on fire, I unloaded my truck and grabbed a water out of the fridge. I headed back out and checked out the newly depleted brick pile. One of my craigslist brick lovers came back for more earlier this week. I moved a few around to minimize the pile height and took a quick tally. We’re down to about 600 yellow bricks and maybe 800 or so blue firebricks. Last year, getting rid of these bricks seemed like such a monumental task. Now almost 75% of them are gone and I’ve hardly had to do any of the work.

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Log: September 15 – 17, 2017

September 20, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Friday

Hannah and I got here around 2:30 pm with an empty ATV trailer in tow. I’m done hauling scrap for a while but will be using this tomorrow to help my dad clear out the garage in Mayville. The pooch sniffed around the grounds while I unloaded the back of the truck. I brought a cooler full of frozen pizzas, four 24-packs of bottled water, some seasoning, mixer ingredients, Ty Ku, and three different craft beer six packs. The Puckaweekend prep begins.

Two guys competing to take away these bricks for free was a beautiful thing to watch.

I spent some time putting everything away, then went out back to drain the IBC holding the keep’s water supply. It’s gotten pretty scummy and smelly. This didn’t seem to happen to the 55-gallon tank (that I noticed, at least) but that was drained and filled a lot more often throughout the year due to its smaller size. I brought up some pool shock treatment, figuring that a large tank of water that we’ll never drink but want to be able to use safely on our bodies has a lot in common with a swimming pool. I’m planning to overtreat a full tank, dump it out, clean it out, then refill it, At that point I’ll add the proper amount of pool shock to prevent anything from growing and living in it.

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Log: September 2 – 4, 2017

September 8, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Saturday

Lyssa, the boys, and I enjoyed a late Aunt Judy’s breakfast at 11:30 while Hannah waited in the truck. With no other plans for Labor Day and a promising weather forecast, we’ve decided to spend a night at Puckaway. We pulled in the driveway around 12:15 and had to stop about a third of the way in. A huge fallen birch was blocking our path.

This beast was almost two feet in diameter at its base.

I let everyone out of the truck and backed out of the driveway, turned around, and backed in up to the tree. I walked up to the pole barn, fired up the green ATV, and hooked it up to the small yard trailer. We used it as a bellhop’s cart, filling it with our bags, the cooler, and my tools from the back of the truck. Lyssa started unloading and preparing things in the keep while I gathered some tools to clear our path.

I was filling the chainsaw with gas and chain oil when Lyssa’s parents came walking down the driveway. It’s been a few years since they’ve last seen the place, so we showed off some of the recent improvements. Peter gave me a hand clearing the megabirch from the driveway while Lyssa and Val kept an eye on the boys and filled the bird feeders. We used the ATV trailer for all of the smaller branches and threw the trunk sections in the back of my pickup. After about 45 minutes, we had just about everything collected and enough room to let our vehicles pass.

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Log: June 15, 2017

June 16, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The extent of our wind damage.

Drove in around 3:00 pm to check on the place after the huge system of storms that blew through yesterday. The power was knocked out for about 20 hours and I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a disaster waiting for me in the freezer. Surprisingly, everything seemed fine aside from the big bag of ice being fused into one big block.

We’ve already had two fairly lengthy power outages up here this year. Both times, the Puckanet has run on battery backup for about three hours before gracefully shutting everything down. And both times, everything came back up and the Pi reconnected to the VPN like it was supposed to. I wish I had a better means of battery backup for this stuff. As small as the draw is for everything, a DC-to-DC converter would probably last it for a whole day or more. For now, I’m just glad that it can come back online without intervention.

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Log: May 5 – 7, 2017

May 9, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Friday

A boy and his (tolerant) dog.

Jake, Hannah, and I came up in the truck around 6:15 pm. Jake’s been asking for an overnight up here—just him and me—for a while now, so he’s pretty excited. We unloaded the truck, unhooked the blue trailer, and opened up the keep while Hannah ran her laps around the grounds. I started the heater right away as it’s only 50° right now and the temp continues to drop.

We called Hannah into the keep and Jake and I headed into town to fill up the gas cans and get some dinner at A&W. We ate once we got back and spent the rest of the night inside relaxing and watching How It’s Made. Jake fell asleep on the couch around 9:30 and I carried him back to the bedroom. I stayed up messing with some automation scripts on the PuckaPi. I let Hannah out one more time for the night, then joined my snoring kiddo around 11:00.

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