Chickens

We are really happy w the chickens. They come running out of their warm coop now if they hear us come outside. Todays activities include visiting the town of Bellis, where I bought the chicks, and probably buying more. But mostly going to the farm auction, and checking out an acreage open house.
Sad news on the ol Ranger Diesel, that vid will be up next I expect.

Renovations Have Started

Not on the house, but in the Town of Lamont. My big commercial job has started. The contractor has added a few things and added 10% to my estimate. I am going to go there today, sounds like he he needs some lights rite away.

Nothing else new and exciting. Sunny hot days here now. With 3 chickens and 2 dogs, we have endless entertainment in the back yard. Going to clean the dune buggies up and put them for sale rite away. Here is the vid of the repairs since the roll over.

Does Premium Gas Make a Difference?

I drove Michelle's CM185 the 65km to Vegreville yesterday. I was really impressed it did 100km/h in a full tuck. There was a point that it started doing only 80km/h, and I was messing with the carburetor trying to figure out what was slowing me down. After half an hour on strait roads, holding the throttle flat out with my smooth leather gloves, the grip just slipped out of my grip and decelerated a little. In Veg I topped up the tank w a whole 3 liters of Premium gas for the trip home. And wow the trip home I could do 110km/h and actually keep up to traffic on the little 185cc bike. I have always felt the premium gas difference on my sport bike, but never been able to put numbers to it like the 185 does.

I got invited to be a youtube partner with just one of my videos today. That is exciting, got me even more information about partnerships. This probably also helps my cause to have my whole channel partnered in a month. Yet another lesson to be learned, it is really easy to piggy back off of others success. My "unwrapping the RC car from kipkay" really tapped into all kipkays viewers and got the partnership request.

My latest video is multipurpose. Firstly it will tap in to the huge "davids farm" viewer ship. But also it will put all my buddy Dave's junk out there to my red neck youtube audience, everything is for sale, and I will take commissions on any sales I bring in. Lastly my friends can see the magnitude of junk I have available to build cool stuff with. A quick example is the lawn tractor front tire I blew out. I don't know where to get a new tire, but a tube would be suitable. Everyone is out of stock of 6" tubes, Canadian Tire had 8" tubes, but they are $20, and the wrong size. I pulled in to Daves hoping he had a tire and rim holding air. Yup, sure did, except he would only sell the match set pair together, two tires, on two rims, for $5. Thank You, made another lawn tractor wheelie vid yesterday w my new tire on.

So this video features the sweet "Snow Scoots" that I really want, but have no justification for getting. Then at the end o the video there is a link to the first video of Daves sled junk, and that is all the sleds. There will be a couple more vids w lawn tractors, quads n motorbikes. But check out these sweet snow scoots.

Big News

Michelle received the announcement at work today, along with the rest of the school. The Principal and Vice Principal of her school, Michelle's two favorite Albertans, are leaving the school. That leaves Michelle in the office with Dragon Lady, and guess who is going to take over as Vice Principal. Dragon Lady's son's best friend. So Michelle put her notice in today, done.

I am doing really well with the pre launch of the new Telecom company Omni Net. It has started in Alberta, but there is now offices in Victoria, and soon Toronto, there is opportunity to open Toronto offices. It is all residual income, so it is also an option to collect my pay check in Mexico. You thought I was going to reveille the plan, well I would if I knew.

I should say that nothing new will happen until Sept. Michelle is committed to finish this year at school, June 28 her last day, and then she feels responsible also for coming back in Aug to do year end stuff for "her year"

This weekend I am fixing the rolled dune buggy roll cage, and putting both of them up for sale, videos to come. I received the RC car I won, finally in the mail. This is the video of unwrapping my RC car, I got a lot of subscribers from that giveaway, so this one is for the fans. Looks like I missed muting the video link at the end, makes it a bit confusing, but it took 2 days to get this video up in HD and I am not changing it now.

Youtube

Had some trouble w the weedeater bike, made a quick stand to get it running and never did start it.

Having the "problem" video on youtube was great, because I got suggestions that I would have never thought of for the problem. Its like posting to a forum of people with that specialty, to help you solve the problem. Another Youtube plus.

I am in a good position to be partnered and get adsense revenue on my videos. I can apply again in 1 month, if I am denied then, 3 months for sure. I was going through Kips email to get the tracking # for my RC car, wile he had sent me all the correspondence to the RC people to explain the delay. When I reach the traffic that he is getting, on kipkay.com, that is success. Kip stated his traffic stats, click through and all. The line I liked was something like "I will not only give away your $600 RC car, directing traffic to your site, but I also offer banners on my web site for $500". The RC car offer by the way, gave Kip another 5000 subscribers to his youtube channel, so everybody wins there. I have to come up with something clever to get the half million subscribers Kip nearly has.

I finally put some tracking HTML on this blog, so I can know my traffic, the youtube vids didn't really tell me, because it seems unlogged in user views don't count. So there is no difference in views between posted and not posted vids, especially now I have 100 subscribers. Hopefully this doesn't mean a tracking cookie, I know many people don't allow those and some websites wont work without them. Let me know if anyone has trouble.

Got Chickens

Don't tell the Village office, but I went and got 3 chickens again. First day, Gus Gus tried to eat them. They are still babies, one month old, already traumatized. Anyway its cooler today so I locked them in their little dog house chicken coop. If you remember it was retrofitted w a 4" diameter round hole when its door was open. Keeps coyotes out and warm in. This morning I look out the window, and their coop was forced open, wile you see Gus Guses tail hanging out the door. I'm thinking these chickens didn't last very long, had them for a whole day. If I wasn't so busy yelling at Gus I would have filmed it, it was just bazaar. Gus was happy to just be sitting in the coop, staring at the chickens, wile they all huddled in the corner peeping, "get this monster out of here." He knows better now, so he sits on the back deck and stares at the chicken coop some 30' away from him. A quick video we made on the weekend of Chrisses RC car and Gus.

Backed Up

Once a week isn't working. I do lots of cool stuff video it all and it never goes up. The original idea was to make a nice back log of material, so if the unexpected happens and I can't do cool stuff for a month or 2 I still have videos to put up. As I learn more about editing, and youtube changes, allows new things, the pre made vids are no longer my best work. So they end up not going up. So I am back to the random schedule.

I figured some interesting stuff out on Youtube. Firefox has an add on that refreshes your screen every 5 seconds. People use that to give a video lots of views. But what I found interesting is that youtube views only count if they are from logged in youtube members.

I got this weed eater from the dump, 4 years ago. I always had the intention to put it on a bicycle, but only got around to it now. It was really easy, just took a few hours, but the planning took 4 years.

Done w 2009

The initially overwhelming chore of Taxes is done. We did alright for 2009, but this year is going to be a big year. Lots of work ahead of me.

I got my hands on Sony Sound Forge, and Acid Pro, so look forward to some sketchy tunes in my future youtube videos. I probably won't sing, but Michelle might sing for me. She made me a cute little intro, which is on this weeks video.

Small Town Awesomeness

With work and all going on now I am just going to post a video every friday, to youtube. I am going to give the blog the same day, although I might write the stories during the week, as events happen, for now I will just post once a week.

Today was awesome. Small town awesomeness, we went to the insurance broker and insured the 185cc Honda. I couldn't find the papers for it anywhere, but in Alberta a bill of sale is good. So I wrote a bill of sale and sold it to Michelle. The Vin number won't come up cause it isn't from this province, so I double check the VIN and it is all correct. She says well we will just have to over ride that. Then Michelle has a ticket she needs to pay, we weren't prepared to pay it now, so just put it in my name. OK, so I insured and registered an out of province bike without the out of province inspection, with a bill of sale I wrote selling it to myself. Awesomeness!

Hopefully I can do the chopper up in another month the same way. With a bike that is worth more, and could easily be stolen, I don't know if they would be so quick to over ride the system.

Then Larry, really my favorite, and most successful person I know out here, invited me to a "meeting" tonight. It was about a new telecom company, that is just opening up, offering reasonable prices, and marketing entirely with a MLM type structure. I am sold on it, its exactly what I have been looking for, for internet service, cell phone, and business opportunity. They are also offering home camera systems, that alert your Iphone when there is motion in your house, and you can bring up your home camera, AND MOVE THE CAMERA WITH YOUR IPHONE, to see if there is anybody in your house. So not only are there prices better than anybody on the market today, and I get 20% commisions on the monthly services I can sell, but they will need installers too.

The bid went out verbally for the commercial project in Lamont today. I have to confirm we will be ok with just two fixtures in the chemical storage room, cause they are $1500 each for explosion proof fixtures.

My video this week is kinda lame. When I got back from Mexico I replaced this belt on the truck, and it made a huge smoke show when I started it. I shut it down quick and took the belt off. I have been thinking for a few months I should have filmed it, so I reinstalled it. It didn't make as much smoke this time, and it snapped quick.

Awesomeness

Yeh, check this machine out.

If I get lots of response from youtubers I will totally build the thing. If nobody cares, I won't bother. It was just fun mocking it up.

Yesterday I went to town to get a disk drive, and had a little adventure. To be expected driving a van with well over 300,000km on it, the alternator failed. I walked 25 blocks to the subway, took the subway to a store to get a battery, and walked the 25 blocks again w the battery. Plus I made an extra subway stop at an auto parts store, but they wanted $350 for an alternator, and there were 2 different ones in my van. So I drove home w the new battery, and no alternator. When it dropped below 11 volts I gave it a little boost with 18v drill batteries. Now with 4 good car batteries, and 2 drill batteries I will drive to the wrecker and get a $35 alternator Monday, complete with spair belt.

24 Hours Of Fame

I left the house today, first time in a couple o weeks. The list of stuff I needed from town was growing, but most of all I ran out of mig welding wire, and broke my Tig welder nozzle. Whats a guy to do without a welding machine.

I Dropped Michelle off at the school, at 9am, and a contractor called me, so excited to find an Electrician in Lamont. He was a kilometer away from the school, goto love the prairies and my big van letters. Anyway this guy was great, and he has all kinds of work for me in Lamont, including but not limited to a $200,000 commercial renovation. That job alone will get more than $20,000 in electrical work.

My youtube partnership has been accelerated ahead a few months with winning this RC car, i got a lot of publicity. In fact for 24 hours I was getting over 200 views an hour, and a lot of comments. There were a lot of haters too. I expect it just comes with being famous. It was really a small percentage, just way out of line comments that get noticed.

I don't think I ever put my carburetor video up on the blog. So for those without a youtube account, you can see it here:

My Victory Video

Sounds like it will be months before I get my new RC car, Kip hasn't even got it yet. He has to wait for the company to send it to him. Sounds like it was free to him the publicity that he got the RC company. Very cool. I might just have to give it away again after I get some use out of it. It is getting my latest video a lot of views. I think I should have spent more time making it now, I just did it in one take, no audio editing or anything.

The goal, for a guaranteed youtube partnership is one million views. Giving myself lots of leeway I will be there in 12 months. My views double every month since I started posting to youtube. This month I am due for 4000 views, next month 8000. This month will likely exceed my expectations, since I figured out the video links, I added a link to my entry, and doubled the views, as virtually everyone wants to see the winning video after they see my victory vid. If that didn't make sense to you watch my victory video:

The results don't make any sense since my entry went in when there was only 300ish enterys, but I am not arguing, here is the confirmation that I won from Kip Kay:

I Won

Pretty crazy that I even mentioned it in an earlier blog post. It is the kind of thing I wouldn't normally even enter. But this was an excuse to make another video, and "be creative". Checking here at the end of the contest, Kip Kay got 4800ish new subscribers to his channel, but only got just about 900 video response entry's. So I don't know how that worked, like 4 out of 5 people subscribed with the intention to make a video response. But none of that really matters, fact is I did another video for fun, and just got an email saying I won the RC car. I kind of shrugged off the RC car when I entered, thinking "why would someone pay $600 for an RC car?". Now I won it I had to check it out, the thing is cutting edge. It has, by the looks of it, a three phase, AC, frequency drive motor in it. They just started using those in electric street cars a few years ago. You can check out my new RC car here
http://www.hpieurope.com/kit-info.php?partNo=10554
Hopefully the link works this time. But you can also check out my video response that I won with.

Keep in mind he was looking for a creative entertaining response to "why I need the RC car". If the above link doesn't work, I believe you can double click on my video response, which should pop the video out to a youtube page. In the youtube page it will say somewhere this is a video response to... kipkay, and you can click on that link to check out his RC car give away video, and in the end of his video he gives the link to the RC car site. Wile you are on the youtube page, on my vid, be sure to comment, how sexy I am and give me a thumbs up.

A friend laughed at me, wile pointing out, my Possum Electric van reminded her of the Red Green Show. She said, "isn't his last name Smith, and isn't the show out of Possum Lodge?" I had no idea, but it turns out, at least his "stage" last name is Green, but he was on the Smith & Smith show, before the Red Green Show, and I didn't catch his last name on that show. Anyway the Red Green Show is out of Possum Lodge, on Possum Lake, and Red drives a Possum van with a Possum plate. Red Green had no influence in the naming of my company. If I make some comedy videos however, he probably will have some influence, cause he is a funny guy.

The weather network says one more sub zero day, and then it should be up to 17 degrees C here in northern alberta. That means all the new snow should melt fast, and the grass will probably come up rite after.

I think it was years ago a biodiesel plant was in the works of getting approved east of Edmonton, and I think I must have applied for the construction phase of it. I am interested to see how the big corporations refine it, compared to how I make biodiesel. I am especially interested in the alcohol recovery process, which I have never bothered to do, which is why my biodiesel has a cost of $0.33 a liter for the Alcohol ingredient. But that is off on a tangent, my point was that they emailed me yesterday, some 3-4ish years later asking me if I would like to apply for a 5 month gig, Monday to Friday, 10 hours a day, wiring the new biodiesel plant. So I will be applying for that on Monday. I don't know how many people they need, but I expect it to get the job, because of my location. They made it clear they are not going to hire outside of the reasonable area. I believe I am closer than Edmonton to the sight, and if they need a lot of people they won't find them.

Big Snow

I just took the chains off the lawn tractor plow, and we went for a little tractor romp last weekend

But last night we got about 6" of snow. A regular ol blizzard. I'll steal a clip from the weather network here.

Buggy Roll Over

I wasn't going to put this on the blog, but I don't have anything else to put up. Plus this is some of my best editing work. I didn't really break my arm, though it looks like I should have.

Michelle Teaches Herself To Ride A Motorcycle

I spent the day today fixing 5 carburetor. Of the 10 carburated machines I own 5 had leaky or dysfunctional carburetors. So today I pulled the 185cc motorbike carb, the 340cc sled carb, the chopper carb, the 110cc buggy carb, and the third lawn tractor carb. Here is a Vid o Michelle riding the 185 after I fixed it.

Happy Truck

Still no flat deck on the 57. Snow has melted enough to access the yard that has my new flat deck, but I haven't been able to reach the owner yet. This important modification had to get done before the flat deck goes on anyway, or it would be really awkward crouching under the deck. See the video:

RC Car Give Away

Everybody asks me if Youtube is paying me. Nope. The vids are all for fun. I wanted to post an interview with, in my opinion, the most talented guy on youtube rite now. But StirfryTV doesn't allow embeding their vids by the looks of it, so you would have to check out the interview here


I am fascinated by the potential success of a give away promotion Kip Kay is doing on his Youtube channel. Post a video response and subscribe to his channel for a chance to win a $600 RC car. The contest is open for 12 days, I can't wait to see how many more subscribers he gets. I found myself telling Youtubers I know to post a response even, why not. When I get my first 600 youtube dollars, maybe I will do the same.

Until then, I am fixing lawn tractors again. We went for a 40 min romp, got it all on video, and the battery died on the camcorder. Well the camcorder doesn't save anything when the battery dies, so no lawn tractor off roading videos until possibly tomorrows romp. I did however get video fixing michelles tractor today.

Birds living in our house.

These birds have been living in our house soffet for at least 3 years now. When I put the spy cam in the tree for the fence construction Michelle suggested I turn it around and catch the birds on cam. So here they are one early morning. They don't eat the cherios like the mice, so they can stay as long as they want there. They don't have access to the attic, or any more than the 1/4 square foot of real estate they sit on in that corner of the roof.