Evil Skull Helmet

I have been trying to get an Ebay partnership, but they won't let  me sell Ebay products on Blogger, cause I don't actually own the "code" for blogger nor Youtube.  So if you want a skull helmet, your on your own to find it, I can't put links to them on here.

That said, this is my sick, evil, skull helmet.  I have not seen anything like this in Canada.  I saw the one person wearing one in Mexico, then we found a store that sold these helmets in Mexico, and they were importing them from Bali.

Probably the reason I  don't see everybody wearing these helmets in Canada, is they are not DOT approved.   That means that I can really only wear this helmet in the dune buggy, where we are buckled in, like a car, and really don't need a helmet.

So until I get DOT stickers printed up, I'll be the only guy in Andrew driving the orange dune buggy, wearing a skull helmet.

Ghetto Fabulous Fridge

As previously stated, the way to furnish a home is with free furniture.
This represents decorating problems with the available free colors.

In the Kitchen, the free fridges are always almond or mustard.   We were going for the new black and stainless steel look in our new kitchen.  We did find a free stainless steel microwave, and a free white stove, but we got a mustard colored fridge.

More solutions than problems here, my solution for this was to make the fridge stylish, and add more function to it.  We made it one big note pad, painting it with chalk board paint.  It is fabulous.  The first three months, we didn't even have chalk, so we broke off bits of drywall from construction zones in the house.

Drywall makes great chalk, as seen in the last bit of this video.

The Dune Dune Buggy Fail

Well everyone knows what its like, trying to get ready for spring.

Trying to make the motorbikes road worthy again, and chop my ol Shadow w 45 deg rake.

Putting the dune buggies back together, seems like they were all parked broken, some disassembled.

Doing all the renovations that I have been dieing to do all winter, replacing windows, insulation, bathroom fans, vinyl siding, and exterior doors.

Vehicle maintenance, don't know where to begin there.

The legendary diesel minivan project, and the diesel Ranger project.

Thats just to name a few.  Plus the standard maintenance of owning and paying for two homes.  So I haven't had time to do any exciting videos.  I do have a good Terra-byte of old material, all numerically organized in the order it was filmed.  It is kind of fun and inspiring to go through the videos and play some randoms that didn't make the cut originally.  video quality has been going down hill proportional to time spent editing.  

This is a vid o the ol VW dune buggy, when we hauled it out to Andrew, and the wheel fell off, cause the darn VW lug nuts weren't tight enough.  VW's style of lug bolts is a perpetual problem.  I was surprised the 96 Jetta has the same lug bolts.  

Slow Fill Wall Foam

Installing some bathroom fans in our Edmonton home, I confirmed there is now insulation in the walls.  Until today I expected I would board the exterior walls with 2" insulation, and vinyl siding.  The attic already has well done blow in insulation.

Today I found a unique, and better solution for wall insulation.  I've heard of cutting holes in your walls and blowing in the attic style insulation, but it always settles, and is far from perfect.  Today I realized there is a slow fill rigid spray foam

Not only does this foam fill all the cavities, have the best r value per inch, best sound proofing, never settles, makes a solid thick vapor barrier, but it stiffens the whole structure considerably.  This means less wall cracking, and a stiffer structure for the eventual sketchy basement dig out or house lift, to get our 8' basement.

You can see a video of the slow fill DIY here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCNa6zb6x4U
I expect I can have it done for the same price as ordering the kit, but we will do it from the outside walls.  Then the house will get a new color vinyl siding, our neighborhood doesn't warrant the more expensive labor intensive sidings.

Garbage Issues

The garbage man in the city is really picky.  

When we first got here, they refused to empty the garbage cans.  They took the garbage bags beside the cans, but left the cans.  I double checked them, they were way under the maximum 40lbs, I don't know why they were never emptied.  

So we have been putting the garbage in the alley in black garbage bags. 

I suspect bums were cutting the bags open and going through it, making a mess.  So we wait till garbage day, or the night before.  Thats tonight.  I put out 4 full garbage bags, just before dark.  

9:00pm rolls around and I manage to fill another garbage bag, so I haul it out to the alley.  My four full garbage bags are gone without a trace, creepy.

Wife Tames The 250 Everest

The city is quickly becoming the place to work, wile we get out to Andrew to have fun.

I take care of Michelle here, sending her off in the cold deep snow, on the sled she has never driven before.  This is the ultra reliable 250cc Ski doo Everest, from like 1986 or something.  I should be in the 80's I have trouble letting go.  I am even loving the new 80's metal radio station I found.

Ticket Parking On My Street With Permit

My fully enclosed 16' trailer is so snowed and iced in, on the street in Edmonton, I don't want to think about moving it.  But I got a ticket for having it parked in front of my house, last week.  I got a parking permit for it, clearly taped to the front and all.  It seems there is a bylaw about unhitched trailers in the city, but yet they gave me one of my two, non transferable, limit of two, very strict parking passes, for the trailer.  If I wanted to hook it to the van every night it wouldn't need a parking pass.  So I actually got the ticket "suspended" for 3 weeks, wile they figure out who's at fault, and what the hell is going on.

I completed the Lutron light control course today.  That was really exciting, very high  roller, wow factor stuff.  It is very expensive, but its going into our house in April.  From doing our own house, I can quote new jobs in the higher end neighborhoods, and maybe even get a new dodge minivan, to drop the pre fitted stinky VW diesel into.  But seriously, I made a brief blog post on possumelectric.com, about the Lutron light controls.  You can see it here

Another Ticket On My Street

My fully enclosed 16' trailer is so snowed and iced in, on the street in Edmonton, I don't want to think about moving it.  But I got a ticket for having it parked in front of my house, last week.  I got a parking permit for it, clearly taped to the front and all.  It seems there is a bylaw about unhitched trailers in the city, but yet they gave me one of my two, non transferable, limit of two, very strict parking passes, for the trailer.  If I wanted to hook it to the van every night it wouldn't need a parking pass.  So I actually got the ticket "suspended" for 3 weeks, wile they figure out who's at fault, and what the hell is going on.

I completed the Lutron light control course today.  That was really exciting, very high  roller, wow factor stuff.  It is very expensive, but its going into our house in April.  From doing our own house, I can quote new jobs in the higher end neighborhoods, and maybe even get a new dodge minivan, to drop the pre fitted stinky VW diesel into.  But seriously, I made a brief blog post on possumelectric.com, about the Lutron light controls.  You can see it here

Ranger Gets New Mag Wheels

Sort of spring cleaning.  It was above zero Celsius today, so I worked on getting rid of the 2001 Ford Explorer, that I bought for the mag wheels.  Its priced for a quick resell, at $200, same as I paid for it.  The Explorer just needs a new reverse gear, and back window.  Some one was supposed to come out for it today, but never did.

The Brand New Diesel Generator First And Last Start

As many know, Direct Energy, and others electricity retailers in Alberta are absolute criminals.  As if our rates aren't already the most expensive in Canada, they add an apx $80 monthly "distribution charge" to the bill every month.  Since we now own two homes, we cut the bills down by shutting off the electricity at the "cottage".  We have been running the cottage off 12v car batteries, and the little 1000w generator.

The 1000w genny has been really efficient.  I can't get over that it runs for 8 hours on $4 of gas.  Wile running it is working to power all the lights in the house and battery chargers for the car battery lights.  Video of them to come, no I don't have headlights duck taped to the walls.  There is an old vid of the generator here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K6jGNRNBhE

I really bought that generator for work, so I almost need to replace it with something.  I have always wanted one of those 10hp diesel motors they sell at Princess Auto.  They cost about $800, but go on sale for $500, and I keep thinking I will buy one to power my tank track garden tractor, as seen here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HAMf_rgfZA

So when Princess Auto put the diesel generator on sale, powered by my beloved diesel engine all for $800, there was no losing.  I have a new generator and my much wanted air cooled diesel!  I could make the tank track garden tractor a "diesel electric" like the 400 ton heavy haulers, and trains.  In the summer when my tank track diesel electric snow plow (thats a mouth full) isn't needed, I pop the generator off for work.

Wow was I wrong.  Maybe I got the one bad unit, but it didn't work right.  Besides the somewhat expected ridiculously hard to start in the cold.  I had to recharge the starter battery so many times I didn't turn the camera on for the time it actually started.  But I did get some of the madness on film.  It makes me sad editing this video together, I really wanted this generator.  Put I am really happy I got it from Princess Auto, because I know they will take it back with no problem, unlike like Canadian Tire, and a lot of other retail bee-otches out there.

The Edmonton Back Yard

Just another look at our back yard in Edmonton, from our bedroom window.  Everybody thinks this bottle depot is bringing our neighborhood down.  They do have plans to rebuild but who knows if or when that will happen.  We spoke to a neighborhood zoning planning guy, on a dog walk, who was most disgusted by the bottle depot.  He even said "I would set the place on fire, but the building is made of concrete."

I finally got into an early morning fender bender. Very minor, the street wasn't wide enough for 2 w the snow piled both sides, and we made contact. The woman, and her insurance company tried to blame me. Fortunately I took pictures, and you can see she could have moved over another 8", putting her out of harms way. So as I expected from the beginning it's 50 50 blame. We both got dents, prolly $2000 each for repairs. I wasn't even going to mention mine but if your going to hold me 50% responsible, her company can pay for half my damage, and we go home even, just call it even, in my world. But no... The other company wants to come assess the, very small, dent and scratch in my van. They have told me my van will most likely be a rite off, once they see it, and decide it's worth more to fix than it's worth, they report it to the government and it can no longer be registered until it gets a "rebuilt" inspection. A little over the top don't you think. I never really liked the van much anyway, but do I take all the stuff out n let them haul it away? Do I pay for the inspection and have whatever bs fixed? Or do I say "I'm not claiming any damage to my van?

Sent from my iPhone4

Canadian Picker

The TV show Canadian Picker, airs in April.  Canadian Picker is the show that found my Youtube vids of Daves sleds, and wanted to film an episode at his farm.  Dave, turned 48 today, is looking to me for help making himself  "findable" after the show airs.  Because blogger is free, and his youtube videos are among my most popular, I offered to make him a blog.  This way I have a gallery to display all my up and coming Davids Farm videos, and he has... his home phone number on the internet.  It can only add to the pennies a day I make from add revenue too.  I thought the advertising would take off like the doubling penny, but been doing this family blog for a few years now, made a total of $24.  I have had $0.20 days recently though, in the beginning that was unheard of.  Be the first to see and comment on my new blog at
http://canadianpicker.blogspot.com/

The Car Dolly Rescue Fail

A quick video of my evening project, trying to get the car dolly out to bring the VW to the city.  Yes I was going to ask before I used it, Guy, I pretty much can't use it without going next door for the straps anyway.  It appears the snow slid off the roof, see previous video of that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR0cTXKr1ZY
Then the snow off the roof buried the car dolly, that was sitting neatly beside the drive way, waiting for the snow to melt a bit so my poor 250cc Everest Sled could tow it back over to Guy's house.  The 250 wasn't doing very well on its own in the deep snow this winter, towing the low trailer became impossible.  At least you know nobody can steal the car dolly, wile its in my care.