What are You doing right now?

[duncvis]

Switching to Etch, are you?

Yep, I've gone back to the original again. I used the daily snapshot build with KDE, and have added the Sid repositories to apt already. 

[Callaway]

I may have to resort to to some hot water, though, Callaway, just so I don't have to pay a fine, but I have no place to put the foul stuff.

We put the snow on our sidewalk back into the street.

[DirtDawg]

I may have to resort to to some hot water, though, Callaway, just so I don't have to pay a fine, but I have no place to put the foul stuff.

We put the snow on our sidewalk back into the street.

Now that would be nice, but, here, we have a city ordinance against that and I could probably get away with a few barrels of light snow. This stuff is almost solid ice, though. It won't go away for a while, especially considering that it's two below out there right now and only supposed to reach the low teens, today. The chlorides are no longer doing much to melt anything. Does it sound like I'm already defeated? It's mainly that I am very leery of using water to blast ice when it's so cold that it re-freezes before it can drain away. It's pretty flat here, too. Drainage is not good, any day.

[Litigious]

Recovering from digging the trenches ..er paths that are needed to allow the service people access!  And of course clear the ground around my birdfeeders, which are attracting quite the crowd or should I say flock.

What kind of birds do you have? We have various kinds of tits  , blackbirds, one robin, one or two wrens, nuthatches, bullfinchs, chaffinchs, magpies... 

[Litigious]

This is the real issue for me. Our clay is calcium chloride heavy, limestone dust. It takes a lot of compost to offset that. Adding more salts to the mix is going to raise the pH to the point of toxicity for many of my prizes. I don't do grass, except for a small run in the back yard, for the kids. I have planting beds right up to the sidewalk. Even though we have only recently moved here, I've been maintaining this house since about '92. The garden has become quite special to me.  I can't just pile that salty ice on top of my beds and cross my fingers, hoping that we get a fast thaw that will melt the snow and keep the ground frozen, so that it won't leach into the ground.

I may have to resort to to some hot water, though, Callaway, just so I don't have to pay a fine, but I have no place to put the foul stuff.

I think magnesium chloride is better One neighbour always used that, and he was very environmentally concious.

[DirtDawg]

That is not bad, but it is too expensive, here. I have been using a potassium chloride and urea mix that is actually beneficial to plants. It's not quite as fast acting as calcium chloride based products, but the urea is acidic and it sustains the ionic action (heating) over a longer period. Plus, it doesn't destroy concrete.

BTW, if the city used calcium chloride based products, there would not be ice on the sidewalk at two below zero farenheit. It actually gives off heat as it dissolves. The problem is that it absorbs moisture from the air and it won't feed through their salt trucks very well, because it clogs them up.

[Litigious]

That is not bad, but it is too expensive, here. I have been using a potassium chloride and urea mix that is actually beneficial to plants. It's not quite as fast acting as calcium chloride based products, but the urea is acidic and it sustains the ionic action (heating) over a longer period. Plus, it doesn't destroy concrete.

Magnesium chloride is pretty cheap here, since it's pretty near Norway. They have the largest factory in the world for making magnesium chloride out of sea water. Couldn't potassium nitrate do? It's additionally a good fertilizer. Or ammonium nitrate? Or is that hard to get and/or expensive too?

BTW, if the city used calcium chloride based products, there would not be ice on the sidewalk at two below zero farenheit. It actually gives off heat as it dissolves. The problem is that it absorbs moisture from the air and it won't feed through their salt trucks very well, because it clogs them up.

The towns and cities here use sand and fine gravel. The Road Department uses calcium chloride, though, it's even commonly known as "road salt". That's what I washed away from my car yesterday, together with dust and dirt.

[odeon]

Switching to Etch, are you?

Yep, I've gone back to the original again. I used the daily snapshot build with KDE, and have added the Sid repositories to apt already. 

The daily snapshot of KDE 4? You like living dangerously if that's the case.

But apt-get dist-upgrade is really a way of life.

[duncvis]

No, relax... the daily snapshot of Etch, not Sid. I'm daft, not mental. 

I prefer to start with testing as a base, add the unstable repositories, then use Synaptic as an apt front end for those helpful warnings like 'upgrading this program will fuck up half your system'.

[ozymandias]

Recovering from digging the trenches ..er paths that are needed to allow the service people access!  And of course clear the ground around my birdfeeders, which are attracting quite the crowd or should I say flock.

What kind of birds do you have? We have various kinds of tits  , blackbirds, one robin, one or two wrens, nuthatches, bullfinchs, chaffinchs, magpies... 

Goldfinches., chickadees, blue jays, junco's, Downy and Hairy woodpeckers, nuthatches, wild turkeys, red polls, and a couple of other types of finches, mourning doves, etc.

[Litigious]

I think robins (and Swedish robins are the same specie as the English, not the American robin) and wrens are among the funniest small birds. They really seem to have some kind of personality. 

[Litigious]

We have Wild Turkeys here too, but in the liqour store. 

[Litigious]

I'm tracking an IP adress. Weird. It seems to have two different geographical locations.

[DirtDawg]

Cleaning up some LPs in preparation for ripping/encoding them to my computer.

[ozymandias]

I think robins (and Swedish robins are the same specie as the English, not the American robin) and wrens are among the funniest small birds. They really seem to have some kind of personality. 

Yes, the American Robin is quite different from the European version.  We're not due to see them in another month.   Another species we get at my feeders is the Tufted Titmouse!