Victory Delayed is Sweet When it Arrives

Time for an update on the used mower I bought. It’s a 25-horsepower Kubota ZD326 diesel zero-turn.

I should begin with the mower’s age. I sent what I thought was the serial number to Kubota, and they said it was made in 2015. I thought that was great, because it suggested the mower had well below 1,000 hours. Someone has burst my bubble, however. I have been informed that the number I found is the number for the part it was attached to: the ROPS (Roll Over Protection System). A ROPS is a roll bar.

Kubota likes to put serial numbers all over the place. My deck has one, the mower itself has one, and they even put one on the ROPS.

The ACTUAL serial number is a little more than twice the ROPS number, so this is probably a pre-2010 mower. I have not checked yet.

If this mower was in use for 15 years instead of 10, in serious residential use, it should still come in at under 1,000 hours. Maybe less than 500. But I would rather have a 2015 mower than a 2009 mower.

The first time I tried to start the mower, I failed. I found it would start if I fiddled with things and tried starting it a few times. I was able to mow the yard the first time I tried. On Saturday, three days ago, fiddling didn’t work. I couldn’t mow. Fiddling hasn’t worked since.

I thought the mower wouldn’t start because I had failed to put the PTO lever in the right position. The PTO lever has a safety switch on it so the mower blades don’t start turning when you start the engine. I found out this was not the problem. I’m not sure what the issue is, but I have bought some parts, and I am going through the starting system bit by bit.

I replaced the safety switch on the parking brake, and that didn’t help. I have ordered other safety switches so I can replace them. There are switches on the levers you use to steer the machine.

I eventually learned how to hotwire the mower, so I am able to mow while I go through the process of fixing it.

When I hotwired the mower today in order to mow, I thought things were going great, but then it stalled when I moved the control levers. Through trial and error, I found out that I had to bypass the brake switch in order to keep the motor running. As soon as I moved the levers with the switch installed, the motor died. I don’t know what this means yet, but the mower runs with the switch unplugged, so I will be able to mow until I figure things out.

It looks like I installed the wrong part. The safety switches on this think look alike. Some are open by default, and some are closed. Not a big deal, since the old switch tests fine and can be put back in.

I could remove the switch permanently. I don’t need a parking brake switch. My mower isn’t going to roll across Florida while I try to start it. If I lived in Colorado, maybe I would want to keep the switch. This particular switch is not needed in order to make the mower run. If you remove it, the mower starts and runs fine.

Getting to the PTO safety switch is not easy. The mower’s control panel is on the right fender, and a bunch of things go through the panel. Wiring for the idiot lights. Two levers. A big, stiff knob that controls the cutting height. In order to change the switch, you have to remove the panel, and to get the panel off, you have to remove the knob.

The problem with removing the knob is that it is held onto a thick shaft by friction, and it does not want to come off. I tried doing it as gently as I could, and I broke one side of the knob. I believe the right way to get the knob off is to remove a cotter pin from the shaft, down under the fender, but getting to the cotter pin is hard because…the control panel is in the way. I think it can be done with the right long-nose pliers, which I probably have.

I had to order an $11 knob and the decal that goes on the knob and lists the cutting heights.

Believe it or not, I’m making all this sound a lot easier than it was, and I’m leaving a lot of suffering out.

Oh…hey…I just found out the cotter pin is really a clevis pin. That makes things a lot easier. I don’t have to bend a clevis pin closed in order to pull it out or insert it.

I’ve also had to deal with fluids. The guy who sold me the mower put too much fluid in the hydraulic system, so I had to remove and throw out half a gallon of expensive Kubota SUDT2. He also put maybe 12 ounces more oil in the engine than was needed, so I had to drain it into a pan. I don’t know whether he changed the fluid in the deck gearbox, so I’ll be doing that shortly. It’s not hard, so it will be fast. IF ALL GOES WELL. Always add that.

Today I got the mower going, and I mowed quite a bit. Then the mower started slowing down, as though it were going to die. I thought this might be because I had run one of the tanks dry on the previous outing. This mower has two tanks (don’t ask me why), and you have to switch from one tank to the other when your first tank is empty.

When a diesel goes dry, and you start it up again after restoring the fuel flow, you may find there is air in the system somewhere, and depending on the diesel, it will clear the air out on its own, or you will have to do it yourself via a process which may be horrible. When my mower started stumbling, I hoped it would push the air out without help.

The mower slowed down more than once, and it kept speeding up again, so I thought the air was being eliminated. Eventually, though, I had to switch tanks. Then the mower ran well…until it didn’t. When things got bad, I started heading for the house, and the mower died in the driveway, blocking my car in the garage.

I figured it had to be the fuel filter. I looked it up, and a bad fuel filter can make a diesel with a governor slow down temporarily. It will increase the throttle to try to compensate for the reduced fuel flow, but if the flow gets bad enough, the motor will die anyway.

Does my motor even have a governor? No idea. There must be something in there that keeps the maximum RPM’s down, because this mower is supposed to mow at full tilt boogie.

I read and read, and eventually, I started to wonder if I was the problem. Maybe I had simply run out of diesel on the last tank, AFTER having air problems with the first.

I have looked at the owner’s and workshop manual a lot, but I never bothered to read about the fuel gauge. I figured I was smart enough to read one on my own. That may have been a fateful bit of hybris.

This mower has a fuel gauge on the control panel. It also has a yellow idiot light with “RH TANK” printed beside it. I didn’t really think about what this meant. I didn’t look at it much at all. I figured the fuel gauge measured the fuel in whichever tank I was using, and that if the idiot light went on, I was on the right-hand tank.

It turns out the fuel gauge is only for the port, or secondary, tank. You’re supposed to run on the starboard tank until the idiot light comes on. It means that tank is low. Then you switch to the left tank, and the gauge tells you how much fuel you have left until you’re stranded.

I now think I had air in the lines, switched to the right tank, and then ran it dry while assuming it had plenty of fuel in it. The gauge read full.

The mower sat in the driveway for maybe two hours while I tried to figure things out. I put some fuel in each tank, started the mower, and took off. It did slow down briefly, but it kept going.

The diesel in the tanks looks pure. I don’t think the fuel filters are clogged. I ordered a couple anyway because new diesel filters are always a good idea. Kubota put them in a funny place, so changing them will take at least 30 minutes. IF ALL GOES WELL. I am learning.

Tomorrow a lot of parts arrive, so I will be changing switches, the armrests, and a few other things. I plan to dump the oil but keep the filter, since it’s new. I think the seller used 40w, which is probably okay in this climate, but I want to put synthetic 15w-40 in it, as the manual suggests. The small amount of 40w, if that’s what it is, in the filter won’t be enough to mess up the properties of the 15w-40.

I’m going to check the ignition switch. I don’t see why I need one, so if it’s hinky, I may replace it with a momentary switch I already have.

Everyone who likes stealing mowers knows how to hotwire one in 10 seconds, so it appears the only person the ignition switch prevents from running the mower is me. And a mower with a momentary switch where the ignition switch used to be would be a lot easier to identify for the police. Not that they ever make any effort whatsoever to recover stolen goods.

I was only able to mow about 60% of my yard today. The parts I mowed looked fantastic. The John Deere never saw the day it could cut this well. Or maybe it did, but I didn’t know how to make it do it. The cut is flat and pretty, and I can actually tell where I’ve already mowed. With the John Deere, I had to guess.

I bought mulching blades, but I think I might send them back. I’ve only used this mower 1.6 times, with standard blades, and it has minced my oak leaves. I feel like dropping to my knees and thanking God. The JD simply could not do this. Don’t ask me why.

Those leaves were a source of what seemed as if it would be eternal torment. Gathering and burning them was a job for Sisyphus plus Hercules. Nearly undoable. My John Deere mulching kit made a big difference when the mower actually ran, but not like the Kubota. I am now confident I can end my leaf problem permanently just by riding around on a lawnmower. I’m almost afraid to believe it.

The leaf debris is still with me, but it seems like 80% of it has disappeared. I don’t know where it went. I used to have thick carpets of dead leaves, and the leaf fragments I now have seem to have maybe 20% of the volume.

No one but me could ever understand why having the Kubota disintegrate my leaves is such a big deal to me. You would have to have been there when I bought a $600 leaf blower and tried making piles which I raked and put into a wagon or utility cart and hauled off and burned. You would have to have been beside me when I went to a mower store and nearly let a guy convince me a used 48″ gas mower would do it. I brought a landscaper out here for an interview. I nearly bought a $1,500 towed leaf vacuum.

Nobody ever told me, “Get a big-ass commercial diesel zero-turn, and your leaves will disappear.” This, in a county where you can hardly toss a dwarf without hitting a zero-turn on a trailer. It seems like every third vehicle on the road is a pickup pulling landscaping tools. Why couldn’t anyone give me the answer? Didn’t they know?

The Kubota moves twice as fast as a tractor like the John Deere. That makes a big difference. It makes a 60″ deck mow like 120″. And it turns in place, so you don’t have to sworp out in wasted loops every time you turn around. You just stop at the end of a strip you’ve mowed, turn where you are, and mow a strip next to it. I thought a zero-turn might mow twice as fast as a tractor. No; it’s faster than that. You move faster, and you travel a much shorter distance.

The mower puts a lot of filth in the air, and about half of it lands on me, but this was also true of the John Deere. Nothing can be done. I take my boots off in the garage, and I take my clothes off in the laundry room, which has a tile floor which is easy to clean.

I bought myself a fancy dirt biking mask to keep everything out of my eyes. The manufacturer is a company called Wolfsnout. They also make foam dust masks. I ordered one of those, too. They say you can breathe freely with this mask. Not true. When I put it on, I breathed like Heavy D on the slopes of Everest, and my nose ran into the foam. I can’t make it work. But a stretchy neck gaiter works well with the mask. My eyes use to be a mess the night after a mow. Not any more.

Tomorrow may be the first day I use the mower without major annoyances. I may have to hotwire it again, but I have reasonable hopes it will finish up the yard without dying.

If this thing turns out to have severe hidden issues that make it a horror to deal with, I might actually snap and spend $19,000 on a new one. Life is short, and I can only take so much. I realize I can pay a crew for over three years for that kind of money, but I am utterly fed up with mowing struggles, and I am going to see an end to them no matter what it takes. This is the single most annoying problem I have as a homeowner.

I could get a new gas mower that would do the same thing for $13,000 but I am ALL DONE WITH GAS. When I say I’m not going back, I feel like one of those guys who rushes the police, with two shots left in a rusty .22 pistol he stole from his grandmother, screaming he’s not going back to prison. I understand them. I’m not buying another big gas carb I have to rebuild every year. I’m not dealing with another rusted gas tank. I don’t want to buy any more ethanol-busting additive than I already have.

I’m old. I don’t need this. My son doesn’t need an inheritance. He’s good-looking. He can be a model.

Next Progressive Move: Replace “York” with “Nuremberg”

Years ago, God showed me that when human behavior makes no sense, it means there is a supernatural reason. We think our natural intelligence guides our decisions, but in reality, we are surrounded by demons that push us all the time, and only people who are led by the Holy Spirit are safe. This is why we have seen insane behaviors like the massacre of the Jews by two of the world’s civilized and advanced countries.

Jewish people are generally atheists, and very few know their Messiah or the Holy Spirit. They are also high-priority targets for Satan because God has a special place in his heart for them. As a result, they are under heavy demonic influence, and they exhibit bizarre self-hating and self-destructive behavior. This is particularly true in politics, where they have helped their enemies a great deal. For example, they supported the communist revolution in Russia, and then Jews in the USSR endured decades of persecution.

Here in the US, Jews commit gradual mass suicide in polling booths every year. For a long time, it has been very clear that American leftists have become enemies of Jews, and it is equally obvious that the only powerful friends Jews have in the world are American conservative Christians, yet Jews continue to perceive conservative Christians as closet Nazis, and they hold onto the perverse belief that leftist politicians are their saviors.

The Jews are the smartest people there are. Testing has proven it over and over. Their accomplishments prove it. Natural intelligence hasn’t helped them figure out politics. They are blinded by demons because they can’t hear the Holy Spirit, and many religious Jews think their Messiah, who has made it plain he wants to save Israel, is a sorcerer who boils in feces and semen in hell.

Now it looks like they are going to assure the election of a New York mayoral candidate who hates Israel, supports a movement that drives the beating of Jews by the general public around the world, believes the Twelfth Imam will rise and take over the world for Islam, and intends to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu for some reason or other if he ever visits the city.

New York is a giant leftist bedpan where Democrats have a 6-to-1 advantage, so there is no possibility a conservative will win the race. That makes it a contest among leftists, and Zohran Mamdani has already won the Democrat primary, decisively. Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams plan to run as independents, but if they had any chance of winning, they would probably have beaten Mamdani in the primary.

Jewish voters make up about 13% of the electorate in New York City, so there is no way Mamdani won without widespread support among Jews. This should not surprise anyone. Jews are prominent in the pro-Hamas movement in America, so no one should be shocked that many of them voted for someone who advocates for pogroms.

Mamdani endorses the slogan, “Make the intifada global.” For millennials who don’t know anything, I’ll point out that “intifada” is a term that was used in past decades to describe the practice of attacking, beating, and killing random Jews in Israel.

Deceitful apologists, many Jews among them, claim it describes peaceful resistance, but I was alive back when the term was first popularized, so I remember what really happened. While there was peaceful resistance, there were also riots, murders, beatings, and many acts of terrorism against innocent Jews. This is what people my age recall when they hear the word. This is what we saw on the news.

Calling the intifada peaceful is like using the phrase “mostly peaceful” to describe domestic-terror riots perpetrated by BLM and Antifa. Every riot is mostly peaceful. World War Two at its height was mostly peaceful. When violent conflicts occur, the actual violence is generally concentrated to small areas; 9/11 was mostly peaceful. Calling the intifada peaceful is like having a single huge cancerous tumor and saying you are mostly well.

In Europe, the word “pogrom” is used to describe activities consistent with the intifada. A pogrom is a violent attack on Jews and/or their property. During the rise of Hitler and World War Two, and even afterward, Europeans in Germany, Austria, and even some non-Axis nations popularized pogroms.

This is what Mamdani supports, openly. It wasn’t leaked by a witness to private conversations. It doesn’t come from a “hot mike” moment. He is happy to stand in front of cameras and say it.

He also endorses the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This is literally a call for ending Israel and ridding it of all Jews. Israel stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and Palestine does not.

Antisemites like to claim they oppose Israel’s actions, not Jews as a people. That’s a lie. Intifada isn’t limited to Israel, Israelis, or the Israeli military. It’s aimed at all Jewish people. Random pedestrians in traditional Jewish garb. Anyone who wears a yarmulke.

It’s like the “pro-Palestinian” movement in the US, which has manifested in protesting Jewish (not Israeli) businesses and terrorism against Jewish (not Israeli) individuals in America.

I think Mamdani will win, and it will be a lot like the moment at the 2012 Democrat Convention when, in a voice vote, attendees voted overwhelmingly against including the terms “God” and “Jerusalem” in the DNC platform. Antonio Villaraigosa presided over the vote, and when the crowd voted, he knew what it had voted for. He looked around for help from his superiors, and then he lied and claimed the vote had gone the other way.

To honest observers, this was a pivotal moment, because it put the Democratic Party’s blossoming hatred of God and Israel on full display. When Mamdani takes office, leftist Jews will have their noses rubbed in the antisemitism of the political faction they support as though it were God.

New York should be a shocking spectacle after Mamdani takes over. Battles between ICE and the police. Mobs at tax-funded grocery stores. Real groceries shutting down. Perverts ruling the city even more than they do now. Jews afraid to go outside. White people concerned that they’re next, as they pay taxes expressly aimed at them in violation of federal law. But most Jews will continue voting for Democrats. Of that, you can be assured. Short of building crematoriums, there is nothing the DNC can do to alienate them.

New York City has the second-largest population of Jews, after Israel. If this can happen in New York, how can anyone be safe in our other cities?

Bush-Era Zero-Turn Actually Made Under Obama

I am stuck waiting for very leisurely breastfeeding to be over so my wife and I can run errands. May as well kill time here.

I got new information on the Kubota mower I bought. Kubota says it was made in 2015. This is about 7 years later than I thought, so it’s good news. It has an analog hour meter, not a digital with an LED screen, so I figured it had to come from the early years, which started in 2007. Because it was made in 2015, the old guy who owned it could not have had it for more than 10 years.

Assuming even pretty heavy residential use, the manufacture year puts this mower somewhere under 1,000 hours. The mower doesn’t show a lot of wear, so I don’t think it was ever used commercially. There are appearance issues, but nothing suggesting high hours. I think the owner kept it under a roof where the sun got to vulnerable parts. There is no rain damage, but the plastic armrests are eaten up, and the lever grips are bleached. That’s the most significant damage, apart from a place on the deck skirt where some metal got torn.

Figuring he had it for 9 to 10 years, and that he was able to use it the whole time, and given our growing season, he would have been doing about 30 sessions per yard per year. I believe I can mow my large yard in 90 minutes. Probably 60 once I get used to the mower. The granddaughter’s husband, who sold me the mower, told me the owner’s parcel was not all that big. If that is true, he would not have mown more than I do, so assuming 1.5 hours times 30, I get 45 hours per year. That comes out to 450 hours. I have no reason to think he mowed more than one yard.

A figure of 1,000 is only conceivable if he mowed other people’s yards or something.

I don’t know if he used it the whole 10 years, because he died not long ago, and his granddaughter’s husband looks to be 50. He must have been very old, and he may not have been well during his last year.

I know the meter’s figure of 229 hours is wrong because the meter doesn’t move. It could be that it locked up after the first owner quit using the mower, but that’s very optimistic. So 229 is not plausible, and nothing over 1,000 is likely.

A 1,000-hour 60-inch diesel mower for what I paid would be a dream come true, because it should hit 3,000 with no real problems, and 4,000 would not be much less likely. I figure that even if I clear a lot of scrub so my mowing area grows, I will never break 75 hours per year, and over 20 years, that would keep me in the nice area below 3,000. That would probably get me deep into old age with no more mower buys or major repairs. Then, assuming parts were available, I could rebuild the mower and get myself well into the too-old-to-care years.

My big problem now is that I am itching to kill the bargain by adding appearance upgrades. The sun-ravaged arm rests are costing me a hundred bucks. The bleached lever grips will run me a few dollars. Seat covers are available, and that would mean $300-plus. The seat covers are intact, but new ones would look pretty spiffy. I don’t need any of these things, but they tempt me.

My mulching blades arrived, so I’ll be testing out the built-in deck jack to install them. Based on the way the stock blades chewed everything up, I don’t think I need new ones, but the new ones weren’t expensive, and better is better than good.

It’s always nice to have extra blades in case you hit a rock.

I hope I don’t get any bad surprises, but if I do, I can always bite the bullet and have the mower fixed. Saturday is my next mowing day, so that’s the next opportunity to put it to the test.

Grieve Bad Company Instead of the Holy Spirit

This morning, I prayed for more internal rapturing.

I believe there will be a rapture. I believe God will literally remove his children from the world when he decides the abuse they put up with is no longer acceptable when juxtaposed with the number of new salvations they produce. After that, the tribulation will come. The harshest period of evangelism in the history of the world. People will be tormented so badly, those who can still be saved will drop their pride and pretense and go on to be with God. The rest will prove themselves incapable of changing, and they’ll go on to burn.

Those who belong to God will get some relief. Being around useless people is vexatious.

I also believe people who will be taken in the rapture will be ready because God will have worked inside them to cut their ties to this world. They will be eager to get out. They won’t be popular. They will be disgusted and wearied by the world’s culture. They will love God as a person, and they will love being near him. They won’t just obey rules and hope for the best. To me, this is internal rapturing.

A lot of Christians seem to think God will reach into the seats at porn theaters and filthy rap performances and pull people out just because they participated in altar calls in years past. They think he’ll grab people who support abortion, disgusting perversions, pride, and socialism. They believe he’ll take lukewarm people who are full of earthly ambition. All of that is wrong.

One of the great things about my life is that God has separated me from society. He got me out of Miami, which is a disgusting, sinful, coarse, lowbrow city, and he moved me to the reddest, most Christian county in Florida. He gave me income without work, so I don’t have to network with other lawyers and keep my Christianity stifled in order to avoid trouble. He gave me a wife who knows him. He helped me shed horrible friends who weren’t friends at all, and he replaced them with people who know him.

When I prophesy, I keep hearing him say he is destroying the world’s ways in me. I’m all for it. I can’t change myself, but I do want to be changed. I want more internal rapturing.

Today I prayed about it, and later on, while I was thinking of other things, I started deleting electronic contacts.

My wife and I have a WhatsApp group I created so our friends could keep track of her delivery. We kept the group going, and people like seeing updates on my son’s progress.

I think of WhatsApp as a texting app, and I always say I don’t have social media accounts, but to some degree, WhatApp is a form of social media. It allows you to post “status” updates that vanish after 24 hours. This never appealed to me until recently, but my wife posts statuses, and sometimes my friends do.

I started posting a few things. Then I saw that someone I knew from my last church was looking at my statuses, and she posted a few of her own.

We were friends. She said all sorts of things that made her seem passionate about God. But she was also sexually provocative, and she posted odd things on Facebook. For example, she called her brother her “side piece.”

She and her husband had marital issues, and afterward, she started putting up Instagram photos of herself in bathing suits and exercise clothes. I don’t know if her kids saw them.

I guess things are going badly for them again, because she just put up some statuses of herself, and they didn’t look promising. In one, she was doing a sexually suggestive dance with her teenage son. In another, she was in her car in a bikini and cutoffs, with the zipper of the cutoffs pulled down and spread. She was shaking her breasts. She had a big tattoo on her belly, and it continued under her bathing suit, so it’s a crotch tattoo.

She is looking for a husband. I posted a status consisting of a photo of my son. Later, I blocked my view of her statuses.

Today I thought about her, and that’s why I started deleting contacts. I have known this lady for 15 years, and I deleted her. She is not going anywhere with God soon, and I don’t need to see her lewd videos.

I’m not angry with her, but what am I supposed to do with a friend like that?

In law school, I had a friend who was very seductive. She told me about her bedroom adventures with multiple people. She loved the perversion series Queer as Folk, and she got me to watch it. I thought it was gross, because it was. She said I was homophobic.

She ended up moving to LA and becoming an entry-level employee at a big talent agency. She borrowed money from me while she was getting established, and I never saw it again. Women don’t repay loans. I visited her there once, and her friends were off-putting. Snippy gays. Shallow people. The kind of LA people who often wake up on other people’s couches and chairs.

She visited South Florida once and took me to lunch, and I told her how I had changed. I told her about my new life as a reformed Christian. She said she could see I had peace, and she was glad for me. She clearly was not interested in making a change in her own life.

On one occasion, she called me and said she was pregnant. She talked about how a child would derail her career. She wanted advice. I told her I couldn’t go along with abortion. When she asked why, which surprised me, I said I was a Christian. That made her angry. She said, “So am I!” She had her baby killed.

She ended up working as a minor network executive. I just looked, and it appears that after that, she became a freelance TV producer. That sounds like gig work. She is credited with 4 shows between 2016 and 2021, for a total of 44 episodes. At present, she is the president of a production company that has been around since 2019 and hasn’t gotten much of anywhere. It was started by a B-list movie star.

She wanted to be a big player. It seems like she sold herself out for a pretty small payout.

I’ve known her for 31 years. I like her. We got along well. We had a lot of fun. I deleted the contact today. It’s final. It would be very hard for her to locate me if she wanted to reestablish contact, and I won’t be looking for her, so she’s gone.

I deleted other nominal Christians. Our relationships had no future, so why not? I won’t see them again here on Earth, and I probably won’t see any of them in the afterlife. There is no point in continuing to invest myself in them.

While I was deleting contacts, I thought about the prayer I had prayed a little earlier. God was granting my request. I was being raptured internally.

The world has gotten so old; so polarized. I can’t believe God will let is wait much longer. There seems to be so little left here for his children.

Kubota-San Bring Honor to Humble Yard

I managed to half-mow with my newly-acquired Kubota zero-turn today. It was glorious, until the rain shut me down.

I wrote about buying the mower yesterday, so I’ll just link to that instead of doing my usual recap. Maybe readers will be happy to bypass the tedium.

I got advice on some forums. The people on one forum were generally congratulatory, except for one sourpuss who somewhat rudely claimed the mower was probably stolen. His evidence was that the seller and I could not find a serial number on it.

I think the sourpuss may have been bummed out because somebody else seemed to have gotten a pretty good deal.

As it turns out, the mower does have a serial number. I found it today. Grok seems to think this mower was made in the late 2000’s. I haven’t been energetic enough to narrow it down.

If the seller were a thief, I would have to give him a D. He advertised the mower on Facebook under his own name, sold it from his own house, delivered it using his own truck, and signed an affirmation that it belonged to him in a bank with lots of cameras.

The more I look at the mower, the more I think I did all right.

I know what wear looks like on power equipment, and I also know what rain and sun damage look like. I don’t see much wear on this mower. I don’t see any rain damage. I do see sun damage. The total package is consistent with a storage method typical of Northern Florida. A lot of people here put tractors and other machines in pole barns with no walls. The sun comes in sideways, but the rain is blocked.

The mower has a few parts that are clearly sun-damaged. The plastic grips on the levers are bleached, and so is the seat belt. The plastic armrests are eaten up. That’s about it. Parts that would rust if exposed to a lot of rain are not rusted.

The first mow went really well. I did take out a couple of shrubs and part of a piece of ground cover, but I’ll get the hang of it. I had to quit because it rained.

Before I could mow, I had to dump a lot of fluid. The seller overfilled the transmission. I had to use an oil sucker. I found out I am no good with a siphon. On the up side, the fluid doesn’t taste that bad.

I would estimate he was off by half a gallon. It hurt to dump that expensive SUDT2 (~$35/gallon last I checked) on a bothersome stump, but I was not able to catch it all in a clean container.

I have trouble getting the mower to crank. At first, I had the PTO engaged and didn’t know it; the relevant decal is gone, so decals are on my shopping list. The second time I had trouble, the mower started when I reduced the throttle. I don’t know if there is a cutout for a high throttle setting or what. I also fiddled with the seat a little. This mower’s lawyer switch (stops the engine every time you get off) is cut, so it could be that something in there is shorting. I would have cut it myself, so I am happy the switch is dead.

People say these things don’t give the best quality of cut, but I guess those guys are pros. I am just trying to hold the jungle back and shred the oak leaves. The cut I got looks fantastic to me. No windrows, no clumps. Nice and flat. I don’t think I need the missing scalping assemblies I mentioned yesterday. I didn’t hit any concrete. I think the first owner removed them deliberately.

I cut my backyard and side yard before the rain came. The deck really blasted cut material out. I am planning to cover the chute to improve mulching, but I haven’t done it yet, so I flung clippings way out into right field. Based on what I saw, I think mulching blades and a chute cover will handle my leaf-mulching just fine. For that matter, as it is, it may be good enough. I have ordered mulching blades, though, and I plan to use them.

The speed was wonderful. Seemed like it took half as long as the John Deere. It would be faster if I knew how to use a zero-turn. I kept slowing it down to keep from hitting things.

The seat suspension is nothing to write home about, but I don’t sit on it all day, so I’ll get over it.

I see why the first owner threw out the deck’s pulley covers. This thing is a bear to clean after mowing, compared to the John Deere. The deck was buried in grass, leaves, and dirt, and it went in under the floorboard. I opened the floorboard hatch and spent a lot of time blowing crud out with a small leaf blower. Cleaning stuff out from under pulley covers would have made the job worse.

I thought the ROPS might be bent because the clamp knobs were mangled, but I got them off with a strap wrench, and the ROPS is fine. I plan to keep it folded most of the time because I have to mow under trees. I don’t know why the first owner kept those twisted, broken knobs. They made it look like he had done something awful to his bar.

I have not opened up the control panel to see if the hour meter wiring is okay, but since the idiot lights use the same wires, I would guess that it is. I suppose I’ll have to get a new electronic meter. The one I have is mechanical.

My online parts cart is filling up. I would go buy this stuff locally, but two big companies have taken over the Kubota business here, and they can’t be bothered to create a decent website. I can go hunch over a counter with a guy who has no idea which parts I need, or I can figure it out myself while sitting in my recliner.

I wish I knew how many hours the mower has, but it is clearly in good shape, and because all of the damaged parts are cheap and inconsequential, I should be able to put it right for under $400. Or I could leave it as-is and get the same performance.

You wouldn’t think a lawnmower would be this big a deal to a man, but I am heavily traumatized by the needless suffering I put myself through with the John Deere. Now I plan to see if I can find a collector to snap it up. I will take his money while holding my hand over my heart and speaking in low, reverent tones. Yessssss, what a wonderful piece of old American iron. Yessssss, it deserves to be restored to its former glory. Yessssss, $2500 is a small price to pay for a piece of history. Get it out of here.

Now I have to decide whether I’m man enough to find a big Kubota tractor to replace the one I have. And I keep dreaming of a 6-ton excavator.

Finally Getting Off the John

The big day may finally be here. I may be getting a “new” used diesel mower to replace the old John Deere 430. I can’t contain my joy. I found a deal I like on the web.

I say “may” because I’m used to getting bitten in the butt with respect to Internet deals. As well as everything else. You know how it is. People buy stuff out from under you. The things you think are good deals turn out to be junk. I will say “may” until the mower is in my driveway.

I still marvel that people love the John Deere 430 so much. Say anything bad about it on a landscaping or farming forum, and you may be challenged to a duel. “They run forever.” “They’re bulletproof.” People routinely pay $3,000 for 430’s in reasonably good shape, in spite of the fact that the newest ones are well over 30 years old. Mine is 34.

I have a lot of bad things to say about my mower, although I can’t complain at all about the smoking deal I got on it.

First, the deck weighs about 350 pounds, and it has to be removed in order to change the blades or the oil. You can jack the mower up if you dare. Personally, I don’t want to climb under a 1500-pound mower with a short wheelbase when it’s reared up at 45 degrees.

Removing the deck is a horrible chore. It’s supposed to be quick and convenient, which it probably was in John Deere showrooms with new mowers that had no corrosion and which had been carefully prepared by mechanics. To get the deck off, I have to remove one deck wheel, turn two other wheels sideways, remove some pins that don’t like to come out, turn a lever that doesn’t like to turn, jack up the front of the mower, probably do some other things I forgot, and drag the deck out by brute force.

Putting the deck back on is just as difficult.

Having moaned about that, I would now like to moan about the unavailability of new parts, which have always been way overpriced. A few years back, Deere started discontinuing commonly-replaced parts the mower really needs in order to function. First, it was the grille. Eventually, they got around to replacing their proprietary, non-repairable hydraulic cylinders. Now the muffler ($450, if memory serves) is off the menu. The deck is also unavailable.

With that behind me, I will now complain about the difficulty of working on the mower. Everything is cramped. Things that should be easy to replace are hard to replace. To add hydraulic fluid, you have to pour it into a tube with an inner diameter of maybe 3/8″. That is simply amazing.

One belt runs the water pump and alternator, and changing it is like doing a heart transplant through a dirty keyhole. While lying on your back. Everything is hard to get to, you can’t swing a wrench, and none of the bolts want to turn. And you have to take the tractor’s whole seat-and-fender pan off.

Finally, I hate the throttly thing. This mower has a hydrostatic transmission, which means you use one control to change the speed and direction. It’s a shift lever on the dash. When mowing in a yard like mine, you need to change speed and direction a lot, and modern mowers use things like pedals and control bars to make it easy.

I guess zero-radius-turn or “zero-turn” mowers got their name from the fact that they use the drive wheels to do all the turning and traveling. They’re like wheelchairs. To turn, you make one wheel go faster than the other. To rotate in place, you reverse one wheel and make the other go forward. You don’t have to move to turn around.

Going from forward to reverse or changing speed with the Deere is jerky and generally no fun. It’s not easy to control, and you have to take one hand off the wheel.

I’ve had to repair the Deere a lot. I have suffered repeatedly. It has broken down in annoying and unexpected ways, it has done it repeatedly, and working on it is on par with laboring in a salt mine. I want to let it go.

UPDATE

I made a deal on the “new” mower, and it’s in my driveway. It’s a used Kubota ZD326S with a nice diesel engine and a 60″ deck. A zero-turn. As my buddy Mike says, a MOWER, not a TRACTOR.

The ad said 229 hours at a very low price, so I got excited. I went out to see the seller today, and of course, when I ran the engine, the hour meter did not move. And while the mower looked very good, it was pretty clearly not a 229-hour mower. The seat had some wear, the seat belts were somewhat bleached, and so on.

The seller was a very nice guy. He said the mower had belonged to his wife’s grandfather, who had died not long ago. He said grandpa used it to mow a couple of acres at his home.

He kept telling me he didn’t know much about the mower, so I looked it over fairly well. I had him jack up the deck, I looked in the hatches, and I had him to through all the functions with the engine running. It sounded perfect, and nothing exploded.

He had just put new tires on the mower, plus fluids and deck belts, so he wasted a lot of money before deciding to sell it. The tires cost over $300 for a pair. Insane.

He said he didn’t know anything about the hours. Judging by my own Kubota tractor, which I bought at 1100 hours, I would say the mower is between 500 and 1000, so it should have another 2000 in it, given good care. If anything goes seriously wrong when it gets old, it’s not a complex machine, so most things that are likely to go bad can be fixed.

It was lacking two front scalping wheels, along with the little shafts that hold them. I can get the parts for $210. He says the dealer told him he didn’t need them.

When he jacked the mower up in his driveway, oil dripped from the bottom of the crankcase, and I thought it was time for me to go home. It turned out he had overfilled it and forgotten to clean it off, so when he jacked it, oil ran off the top of the engine. This explained why it ran for several minutes with no drips before the front end was raised.

The underside of the deck looked very good. Still some traces of paint.

He spontaneously offered to knock a grand off the price, and I decided to take it. I got it for around $3000 less than the market price for a mower with a working hour meter and documentation, so unless something is horribly wrong with it, I can’t get burned. I really need a good mower that will last decades, I have been looking for months, and this was no time to let the perfect be the enemy of the very good. Mowing season is here, and I can’t face another session with the John Deere.

If this mower could be had new, it would cost about $18,000. A new really good gas mower like a Scag Tiger Cat II would cost $13,000 or so, the motor would probably fail by 750 hours, it would have to be refilled very often, and I would have to deal with the pitfalls of ethanol.

My best guess is that this thing is a peach, well worth sprucing up. There are a couple of dinged-up parts I can replace. I can touch up the paint here and there.

Because it was raining today, I was not able to run the mower much. I mowed a few yards and then put it out of the rain. I was flabbergasted. The old JD has a 20-horsepower engine, and the Kubota is rated at 25, but it feels more like 20 and 40. The engine ran perfectly smoothly, unlike the Deere’s Yanmar, which shakes the tractor. It seemed to run at a much higher speed. When I cut grass, it blasted out the chute in a shower of startled clippings. The cut it left was flat and smooth, unlike the Deere’s wake of ridges and lumps.

I had thought my lawn’s irregular appearance was mostly due to the nature of the awful grass, but it looks like the mower was the problem. Maybe it was running too slowly to really KO the grass, and I need to take better care of the air filter, or maybe the JD just doesn’t turn its spindles as fast as a Kubota.

Grok thinks the Kubota’s blades turn faster, but it isn’t sure.

The Kubota did all this while moving much faster than the Deere. I should be able to halve my time in the roasting sun.

I’m going to get a set of mulching blades and close off the Kubota’s chute to see if I get respectable leaf-pulverization. If I do, I am set for life. Oak leaves are the bane of my existence.

Kubota makes a mulching kit for the ZD326, but it gets complaints. It isolates each blade in a separate compartment, and this confines the clippings a little too well and makes the mower bog down in heavy grass. I was hoping to get a kit and modify it to make it breathe a little better, but when I looked under the mower today, it looked like it was already set up the way I wanted it. It had curved steel panels that surrounded but didn’t completely isolate the blades. That might work.

I’m getting Gator G6 mulching blades for it and hoping for the best.

If it’s reasonably dry tomorrow, I’ll take the Kubota out for a spin and see how she does. As long as it does what it did today, I will consider myself a satisfied customer.

I have felt wonderful ever since I got the mower home. Relaxed, knowing my old mower will no longer be a source of uncertainty and torment.

Sometimes I wonder if I spend too much, and other times I wonder if God thinks there is something wrong with me for not spending more of what he has given me to improve our lives. The John Deere was a bargain, and it functioned, but it also made me suffer over and over with breakdowns and repairs and maintenance that were extremely unpleasant. Maybe I should have bought a Kubota 5 years ago.

I discussed it with my wife. She thinks I should spend to make things easy for myself. I told her to remember she said that if she ended up getting a job at 60, but she said that would never happen, because God always provided for us.

I think I was pretty frugal, buying a used diesel. I couldn’t touch a new one without coming close to $20,000. Home Depot’s best mower is a gas Cub Cadet that costs $3,000 more than I paid and has a cheesy Kohler engine. Not even a Honda. Its deck is 10 gauge. Mine is 7 gauge. The John Deere’s looks like 10, gauge for that matter. The Cub Cadet is likely to be scrap at 1,000 hours, but I’ll have at least that many more to go.

I love diesels. I wish everything had a diesel engine.

For the first time in maybe 5 years, I am looking forward to mowing the yard.

The Opposite of Peter Pan Syndrome

My buddy Mike sent me a link to a video about Jackson Laux, and I was very impressed.

The web says Jackson, or maybe I should call him Mr. Laux because he is so grown up, is 9 years old. He is Internet-famous for his love of tractors, especially John Deere. He has appeared in lots of videos. He has a spic-and-span shop. He has multiple tractors. He can talk all day about them. Their strengths and weaknesses and so on. He really enjoys what he’s doing.

As a Christian, I find Mr. Laux interesting, because he helps me understand what most parents do wrong.

When I was a kid, my dad made very good money. I should know, because I have all the money he never spent. So we went on vacations to Europe to broaden our minds, right? We had music instruction, tutors, and all sorts of help with interests that could be lucrative and fulfilling later in life, right? Well, no. My dad was cheap. We had furniture from discount outlets in the Carolinas. We had cars we got at cost from my mother’s father’s dealership. My sister and I didn’t have much in the way of toys. Another kid down the block gave me hand-me-down toys and clothes. When we traveled, we went to see my mom’s family in Kentucky or we went to the Keys, which were a short drive away.

My hobby was TV. My dad’s hobby, which consumed hours of his life every day. I sat in front of TV sets and ate ice cream.

I had interests, but it never occurred to me to ask my parents to support them. To them, every non-necessity they bought for me was either a toy or a gift. Frivolous. The only exceptions were books, which they didn’t mind paying for, and two banjos. They would never have bought me tools, a tractor, a welder…no way. They would never have put $10,000 in an investment account and taught me what to do with it. They would never have bought me a rental property and helped me manage it.

You go to school. You get B’s or better. You become a lawyer or maybe a doctor. That’s what you do. This was their limited understanding.

My mother didn’t have much in the way of vision, and neither did my dad, but he was worse, because he didn’t care. He didn’t spend time with his kids. He had no idea who our teachers were or what subjects we were taking. He forgot our birthdays. Once, he came home drunk, with no idea it was my birthday. I was using a music stand my mother had bought for $8.00. When he realized what day it was, he asked me how I liked my gift, and he didn’t buy me anything else.

My mother made some effort to interest me in science. I’ll give her that. She enrolled me in a mail-order program that sent me little science kits. She tried to interest me in coin collecting, which was dull, given that there was almost nothing available to spend.

Here I am, an adult with a thousand interests. Writing. Music. Machining. Welding. Cooking. Science. Engineering. Maintaining my land. Building things. Photography. And my parents never managed to set me up with a single activity. Not one! Yes, I got banjo lessons, but the banjo is a dead-end instrument, and music lessons are nothing if you don’t learn to read and write music.

Photography is actually a very profitable profession if you have the gift, and by now I know I have it. I have taken a lot of excellent pictures. I could have made money with cameras.

My parents failed. Now let’s look at my buddy Mike.

He has two sons, and they started life near where I live. Mike spoke to one of their teachers. According to Mike, regarding his son, the teacher said, “He be real smart.”

When he saw the pickle his sons were in, Mike moved to New Hampshire, where they have better public schools. When one of his sons turned out to be a gifted football player, he moved to the DC area and put him in a famous sports high school. When the time came to think about college, Mike’s son was connected with scouts. He didn’t become a pro in the usual sense of the word, but he did receive a free college education, and he is a happy, very successful adult.

Mike lived across the street from me, and his parents didn’t do much to start him off in life. His mother died when he was about 16, and his dad’s involvement with him dried up. His parents can’t take credit for the way he raised his sons, and neither can his wife, who gave him custody during their divorce and then ran off to pursue her career. Mike’s sons are doing better than he did. Mike had to learn to hustle when he was their age, taking whatever job was available or creating his own jobs.

Mr. Laux did not get a job at age three and save and invest and buy tractors and a shop. No one has told me this. I know it because I’m not an idiot. No little kid does that. Even Mozart had an aggressive manager. Mr. Laux’ parents encouraged him in his dream and also financed it heavily. They paid for everything. They knew the difference between spoiling a kid with toys and investing in his future.

As a result, barring unforeseen problems, Mr. Laux will be self-supporting when most kids are rotting their brains with video games and dope, and he will not have to waste 4 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars at a university where he will be pushed to become an antisemitic, God-hating, emasculated, demon-worshiping, drug-using, socialist pervert, given a useless degree in English or History, and then relegated to a cubicle farm.

I will have my son’s back with regard to any wise pursuit that interests him. That doesn’t include getting an English degree or starting a band. He can study STEM fields. He can start a business. He can learn to invest. I’ll help him learn instruments and languages. I will never tell him things I buy that are related to his wise pursuits are frivolous or that he should think I’m generous for buying them. That would be like telling him I’m generous for paying his pediatrician.

I wish I could go back in time about 50 years and give my autopilot parents a good talking-to. It might have given my mother ideas. My dad wouldn’t have paid any attention, because he didn’t care. I wish I could go back and talk to my young self, but I was underdeveloped and hardheaded thanks to my parents, so I don’t know if I would have listened.

I might have listened. I remember a few times in my past when appalled strangers who knew my parents were blowing it told me things that stuck.

My parents didn’t know God. They never heard from the Holy Spirit. We didn’t pray together. I rarely saw the inside of a church. They imparted virtually no wisdom to me. They didn’t cultivate a single useful habit in me. I didn’t have the natural character to raise myself properly. It’s a wonder I’m not living in a refrigerator box.

Abraham Lincoln, or Rudolf Diesel?

I have put around three hours on my tiny Chinese excavator, but I have to report I haven’t made it to China yet.

I wonder if millennials will get that. “What does digging have to do with China?” “I don’t know. Should we be offended or just go somewhere quiet and invent a new gender?”

I put $5,000 into this new machine, figuring it would be very handy around the farm. As of today, I think it will be useful enough to justify keeping it, although it has some problems.

As I noted in another post, and as may or may not be true, these machines have gas engines that run very fast, and they are said to be based on diesel machines with engines that run slowly. The actual figures are 3600 and 2050 RPM. The scuttlebutt is that the Chinese did not change the hydraulics to cope with the higher RPM’s, so these excavators pump fluid too fast, resulting in jerky movements that take a lot of skill to control.

Whatever the reason, the jerkiness is there for sure.

The controls allow you to lower and raise the blade, move each track independently, curl and uncurl the arm and bucket, raise the arm, spin the excavator on its tracks, and use the hydraulic thumb.

The jumpy nature of the machine is fairly manageable except when you use the tracks. There is one stick for each track. Moving it forward makes the track go forward, and pulling it back gives you reverse. Moving the sticks in different directions makes the excavator turn.

One of the big problems is that if you try to go forward or back without great care, the excavator may jump. This jerks your body in the direction opposite to the machine’s progress, and that makes you pull the sticks in the direction that makes it stop or go the other way. Then you naturally push to resist the jerking, so you start it moving again. The result is that you bounce. Forward-stop-forward-stop-forward-stop. It’s like riding a mechanical bull.

I’ve looked into solutions.

One is to replace the hydraulic pump with a slower one. The pump puts out around 0.37 cubic inches per revolution at 3600 RPM’s, so moving to something like 0.20 would make it more like a diesel machine running at 2050. But the tracks would be unbearably slow. As it is, it’s almost motionless at full speed.

The pumps are cheap and easy to replace. I should be able to do it for under $150. But if I want to use the excavator at the other end of the farm, it could take an hour to get there.

It would be great to find a little diesel engine that would work, but I think that’s a pipe dream.

I do not like gas engines, and I am sure this excavator’s carburetor will cause me problems eventually, but the price was very good, and I don’t expect to need the excavator often enough or in a big enough hurry to make occasional failures intolerable. Hope I’m right.

As for capability, the excavator is pretty weak. A Youtuber says these machines can lift something like 550 pounds, which is very little. The bucket’s curling cylinder isn’t strong enough to make it dig into dirt unless it’s pretty loose. You have to rely on the arm.

I’ve also gotten the excavator stuck on sandy ground. The tracks flat quit turning. I have read that this may be caused by a bypass valve that protects everything when the excavator is held in place by dirt pressing against the underside, but it’s hard to believe that happened in the relatively flat place where I was digging.

Breaking through roots is not possible if they’re over maybe an inch in diameter. That surprised me.

As I probably said before, it’s like having two men with shovels. It’s not going to move the stump of a hundred-year-old oak, but it will dig a hole in cooperative ground about as fast as two men, and all I have to do is sit and work the controls.

I can’t smooth things out when I’m finished. It’s way too jerky for that, and the bucket is small anyway. I would have to go back over everything with the tractor bucket and probably a shovel.

The earth-moving ability of two men with shovels is good enough, believe it or not. I have been out there with a shovel, myself, and it was not pleasant in 95-degree weather with blazing sunshine, high humidity, and no breeze. The excavator is not as great as I thought it would be, but it is great.

As for other machinery, I tried to buy a used 60″ diesel zero-turn today, but the place advertising it lent it to a customer, so I could not see it. I left contact information, but they have not gotten back to me yet. I wanted a Kubota, and this machine is a Gravely with a Kubota motor. I like Kubotas because they have built-in jacks for changing the blades, but they are hard to find at good prices, and I am tired of waiting. Gravely supposedly makes tougher bodies, and I can always use my floor jack.

I feel better about buying machines because I used Grok and ChatGPT to do financial analyses of the cost and return. Grok said continuing to use a mower would eventually save me $75,000 in landscaping payments, which could actually be true.

I should be able to keep a diesel mower going until I die, and I would guess that would save me $6,000 2025 dollars per year. Call it $150 per week and something like 40 weeks per season. That’s $6,000 per year in labor costs saved, so over 20 years, $120,000. If I live longer, I can always get an apartment.

I could get a used gas mower, which would be much cheaper. Then I’d have the giant hassle of ethanol problems, and I would have to buy and install a new engine every 750 hours, so at 80 hours per year, starting with a used mower, I would have to buy and install at least two engines, at a cost of something like $4,000 2025 simoleons. A used diesel engine should outlive me with no major overhauls.

A used gas mower would be maybe $2,000 cheaper, but it would cost me $4,000 to replace the engine, so an eventual net loss of $6,000, and it would be a horrible product I would hate, compared to a diesel. And it would burn a lot more fuel.

New gas mowers cost more than used diesels, which makes me wonder why anyone buys them. I don’t even understand why professionals buy them. Of course, I can’t assume every man who cuts grass for a living knows a lot about smart investing.

I know this is the kind of thing people say in order to rationalize impulse buys, but here it is anyway: AI helped me realize I would be throwing money away if I did not buy a diesel mower. Of course, I could keep the one I have running for maybe 5 more years, but I just can’t face doing the maintenance, and this mower is very slow. Changing the oil and sharpening the blades are torture, and a new mower should be able to shave off over a third of my mowing time.

This mower may die for good unexpectedly. The hour meter was frozen when I bought it (Surprise!), so for all I know, it has 4,000 hours on it. Important parts are rapidly being discontinued, it has already broken down three times, and I could find myself presented very suddenly with fast-growing grass and the need to buy a mower quickly.

Given how hard it is to find a mower at my leisure, I know that would be unpleasant.

I looked into mowers a few years ago, and I decided to be smart and keep my old mower going. Guess what happened? Prices of new mowers went up maybe 30%, and the value of my old mower dropped by around $2000. And I got to continue suffering needlessly. All that time, I could have been riding a better mower.

AI also thinks a real excavator, like 11,000 pounds, would pay for itself. I could do a lot of beautification and repair, and I would get a tax deduction. And it would be fun.

I could get something pretty good for maybe $25,000. It’s not that hard to make $25,000 worth of improvements on a farm with an excavator.

The final idea AI liked was getting a bigger tractor and a flail mower, but I didn’t point out that I already had a tractor which is adequate. My tractor will do most of what a bigger one will do, but it will do it a lot slower, and I will have to help it by getting off and doing more manual labor.

People like to say a small tractor will do anything a big tractor will do, slower. Not actually true.

You know who says that? Guys with small tractors. Especially guys who couldn’t afford, or were too cheap, to get bigger ones. The 50 million guys in the US who bought 25-horse John Deeres and Kubotas. Some made the right decision, because some properties don’t require big machines. Others doomed themselves to unnecessary misery and failure.

I can wait instead and make the most of what I have. And of course, the cost of a new tractor will go up, and the value of my old tractor will go down.

I’ve also realized that machinery expenditures are not lost. A good used machine is an investment. You can sell it if you have to. It’s not like a trip to Singapore or a year’s worth of restaurant meals. It’s not like a new machine, which depreciates off a cliff the second you buy it (12-25% for machines with top resale value). A used machine may depreciate, although the way things are going, it may not. Many appreciated during the Bidencaust.

It probably won’t increase in value like a piece of real estate or shares of stock, but it should beat rapidly-shrinking cash by a wide margin.

I believe that if I pick up a couple of useful machines that will enable me to keep my property up without dying of heat exhaustion, in the end, I should be way better off than if I had paid tradesmen or spent thousands on rentals. My property will look a lot better and possibly be worth more. My own suffering will be greatly reduced. It sounds pretty good.

I’m glad I bought the small excavator. It is already proving useful, even if it’s rough around the edges. If it turns out I’ve overestimated its usefulness, I’ll be able to get every penny I paid back out of it. Not bad.

Pinch Yourself

I belong to a shooting forum, and understandably, there are a lot of conservatives there. Conservatism is the dominant culture on the forum.

Yesterday, I saw something there that reminded me that antisemitism is a supernatural, not political, disease. Conservatism doesn’t prevent it. Only the Holy Spirit prevents it. Antisemitism is the preferred stance of the left, to the extent that leftists nearly own it, but there are also a fair number of nutjobs on the right who have it in for the Jews.

Here is what someone on the forum posted:

It’s a great deal like the Nazi propaganda posters of the last century; here’s one telling people to vote for Nazism:

This person considers himself conservative, so he’s not an Antifa terrorist or other type of leftist kook who happens to love guns.

On a side note, one of the sad things about belonging to gun forums is that in addition to people who love hunting, enjoy firearms and shooting, care about their civil rights, and want information on self-defense, there are always a fair number of dangerous, hateful idiots who look forward to the day they get to shoot someone. Gun forums are packed with rude, conceited, hostile people, just like fishing forums, Christian forums, leftist forums, food forums, and fitness forums.

I don’t know why fitness and bodybuilding (different things) people are so obnoxious and arrogant. Wow, you’ve been exercising and dieting for a while, and maybe drugs have made you look like a comic book character. That’s wonderful. See if you still feel superior in 5 years when you’ve quit going to the gym, your doctor has scared you off the drugs, and Reese’s cups are back on the menu.

The condition of your body has no bearing on the respect or disrespect other people should give you. If you’re in great physical shape, good for you, but I don’t respect you for it, especially if you’re malicious and you have so little self-awareness you think people should admire you for something trivial,self-serving, and fleeting.

Leftists are openly calling for wiping out all Jews in Israel. That’s what the “river to the sea” chant means. Many of them are rooting for Iran in comments on videos. And we all know about Queers for Palestine, which is sort of comparable to Antifa Rioters for Pepper Balls. Conservatives generally support Israel, and we don’t do antisemitic marches, rallies, or riots. But then there are the freaks who think Hitler was conservative and Nazism didn’t get a fair chance.

Sadly, the baboon who made this meme has tried to claim all right-thinking conservatives as his allies. He has used the revered “Chad” cartoon to voice his Satanic view, suggesting the rest of us agree.

In the thread where this meme was posted, this idiot or some other like “mind” claimed Jews wanted to run the world and so on. That canard is one of the most obvious proofs that demons cause antisemitism and that it’s a form of insanity.

Let’s recap. Let’s start with the premise that Jews are immensely powerful as a people and the rest of us are their puppets. Okay, they’ve had around 4,000 years to run their global empire. During that time, they had no homeland for 2,000 years because they were forced out by weak, inferior gentiles. They were abused and tormented by many of the countries where they sought shelter. During the last century, around a third of them were murdered by gentiles. They were so widely persecuted, the rest of the world had to give them a homeland in order to prevent them from being annihilated, and they got a tiny sliver of then-worthless desert with no oil, surrounded by hostile Muslims who attempted to exterminate them as soon as they could. The Muslims got a huge chunk of the world’s oil reserves, so they have lots of money to fund antisemitic genocide. Which they have never stopped doing.

If the Jews are running the world for their own benefit, they’re doing a very poor job. They have made some very bad choices.

Me, I would take Europe. Hands down. America is nice, but the climate is terrible over most of the country, and we can’t match Europe’s natural beauty. I would also take as much of the world’s oil as possible, along with a big fraction of the best farmland. I wouldn’t have let gentiles have atomic weapons. That’s for sure. I’d corner the market on those. And I’d own all the stuff Musk and Bezos have.

I might also take over some pleasant vacation spots in the tropics.

I would definitely impoverish the Muslims.

Jews haven’t done any of this, so how can they be running the world?

Antisemitism keeps getting worse. If it’s this bad now, I have to wonder what next year will be like.

Israel is not Ukraine

I remember the week Tucker Carlson was chosen to replace disgraced pundit Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. I was hoping for someone intelligent, like Laura Ingraham. I marveled that Fox chose Carlson, who had a long string of failures behind him, no big successes, an unwinning personality, no evidence of wit, and a clear record of work indicating a less-than-stellar intellect. They had so many other choices. It’s still a mystery to me. It’s the kind of hire that makes you wonder if blackmail is in play.

Carlson went on to be a big success in O’Reilly’s time slot, just as a test pattern would have. There was no way to fail. First time anyone could say that about Carlson, who had failed so splendidly in the past.

As a result of his tee-ball positioning, Carlson became popular, and undiscerning conservatives decided he was the next O’Reilly, which was not true. O’Reilly has his faults, but he is a major media talent, and he built the 8 p.m. time slot for Fox, as well as his own Internet and bestseller empire. Carlson was more like the Kevin Federline or Chet Hanks of Fox, but for his bulletproof time slot.

After being booted for Fox for hypocrisy, saying bizarre things in private communications, and generally being a coarse, nasty person behind the scenes, Carlson was adopted by sugar daddy Elon Musk, and conservatives lacking in critical skills made him an X success. I guess QAnon nuts who only read headlines have to have a hero.

Now Carlson is confirming my expectations by criticizing America’s support for Israel’s attack on Iran’s tyrannical minority regime leaders as well as the nuclear program Clinton and Obama gave it. And he is proving his lack of brains by saying he can’t figure out how the attack benefits America.

He’s talking about a regime that has tried to assassinate our president twice, mind you. Can’t figure it out. The regime that funds Hezbollah. A regime that leads huge crowds of idiots in chanting “Death to America!”

Iran is very open about its hopes of exterminating every Jew in Israel and putting an end to our single most important ally in the Middle East. For a long time, Iran has been trying to put together nuclear weapons to use on Israel. Here’s some obvious information for Carlson and his fans: a nuclear bomb that can kill Jews in Israel can also kill Americans in America and Europeans in Europe.

If the Iranian government were a person, we wouldn’t trust it with matches or pointed scissors. It’s the political equivalent of Charles Manson. How can the United States, one of Iran’s two dream targets, not have a clear interest in keeping Iran from getting weapons that can kill 200,000 people at once?

Here’s something smart, i.e. unlike things Carlson says, which Trump posted on the web today: “AMERICA FIRST means many GREAT things, including the fact that, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.” Whatever support he is giving Israel is necessary in order to protect our future. It may help Israel, too, but he is doing it for us.

Carlson has a beef with Jewish political donors, so maybe he thinks they’re the reason Trump backs Israel. Here is the truth: even if Jewish donors influenced Trump, which may or may not be true, he is still doing the right thing.

Iran has already killed hundreds of Americans through terrorist attacks, and it would gladly bomb London or Paris, but Tucker Carlson is just too stupid to see why we would want Israel to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons.

Or is the problem something else? Carlson has never shown any evidence of exceptional intelligence, but can he really be so stupid he can’t understand that Iran is a threat to the US and other Western nations? I don’t like to accuse people of racism or antisemitism lightly. I would like to think Carlson is not antisemitic. But I have learned that while it’s fine to criticize Israel objectively when you have a colorable argument, a person who goes after Israel with patently idiotic, disprovable remarks is either dumb, uninformed, misinformed, or antisemitic.

On a side note, it’s sad that we have so few truly bright pundits. Thomas Sowell is the only really bright light I can think of offhand.

Sometimes I hate being right about people. I really hate it when I’m proven right and other people I’m trying to wake up refuse to admit it.

Dumping your undeserving heroes is a necessary part of growing up.

Anyway, No, Mr. Carlson, Trump is not hypocritically leading us into a war while posing as the peace president. It is unlikely the Iran mess will turn into a large-scale war, because nearly every nation hates the government of Iran. Even if the war did turn into a major armed conflict, our president never said he would not get us into just wars, because that would be stupid, and it’s much better to bomb weak, ineptly-led Iran now with conventional bombs than to get into a nuclear exchange with immature, inbred psychopaths stuck in the 7th century.

If I ran Fox, I wouldn’t have hired this guy to run a coffee machine. It’s astonishing how fools can fail upward in this fallen world.

The Best Gift Came Months Ago

This is my first Father’s Day as a father.

Why do they call it “Father’s Day”? That always bugs me. Like there is just one father. It should be “Fathers’ Day.” Oh, well.

Now that I am on the other side of the holiday, I think it’s strange that we honor men because God has blessed them. You would think the blessing was honor enough.

My son adores me. When I enter a room, his whole face lights up. The other day I walked by him without saying anything, thinking he was occupied, and he started to cry. When I rub his chest, he grabs my hand and presses it to him tightly while chewing on it and growling with passion. He screams with joy when I play with him.

He’s handsome. He has a very sweet nature. He’s more fun than I can describe. It looks like he’s going to be smart. He behaves well for a baby. But somehow people should treat me like I’m a hero because God gave him to me after I wasted most of my life?

It’s extremely important to honor fathers. I know that. But it should be an everyday thing. If my son honors me throughout the year, Father’s Day will be just another day. We should honor God every day for giving us children.

The Bible makes it clear that a child is a blessing. Consider Abraham, Sara, Rachel, Hannah, and the Shunammite woman. Psalm 127 says, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”

In Genesis, God told Abraham and Hagar he would make their sons great nations. These were blessings.

It’s nice to be appreciated, but I already felt blessed.

I was going to put up a photo of my son climbing over his mom to give me a big sloppy smile, but I have decided against it.

No Kings, but Plenty of Jokers

The children of the Antichrist have come to my red Christian area, hoping to drum up support for the wholesale violation of our immigration laws. In reality, they will just push Democrats into the Trump camp.

The “No Kings” anarchists claim they will be in the town square until noon. They were supposed to start at 10:30. I’m sure they will be annoying, because that’s their stated goal and their nature, but I doubt there will be significant lawbreaking, because they will be few in number, and our governor and our sheriff are not on the side of rioters. The police here are itching to make arrests, and the politicians are not going to discourage them. Here is Sheriff Wayne Ivey to tell you more:

He could be considered the father of the No Jokers movement.

They probably bused in a large percentage of whoever is out there right now trying to intimidate us. I doubt they have the resources to bring in enough criminals to overwhelm the state, county, and city police. The Soros machine has a lot of money, but it has spread itself out over a very large area today. The entire continental US, to be specific. I doubt they will be able to get much done here, in terms of the usual domestic terrorism they are known for.

As the anti-Newsom, and by that I mean as the incredibly competent, proactive governor he is, DeSantis has probably made all sorts of preparations. I would guess the National Guard has been told to get ready to deploy in a hurry.

The preparations DeSantis made for last year’s hurricanes were so good and so smart, I was shocked. You would have to live here to understand. Acres of response machinery, all over the state, waiting to be unleashed. In a state that has a budget surplus, I might add.

Democrats think money fixes everything, but the more you give them, the worse their states perform.

It’s sad to see these paid propagandists pollute my county with their presence, but I am extremely grateful for politicians and cops who are forcing them to bend the knee and obey the law. I would hate to be in a blue city right now.

Well. When would I not?

Associated Press Openly Advises Terrorists on Defeating the Cops

A Florida sheriff has made the news by stating that his department plans to enforce the law. Leftists are outraged. Predictably.

If you haven’t seen the video yet, you will. Wayne Ivey is the sheriff of Brevard County, which is where Cape Canaveral is located. He has caused leftist skulls to pop by going on TV and warning potential rioters about the likely consequences of committing crime in his county. First, he said his department welcomed peaceful protests. Then he said cops would hit back, and he said that if they put officers’ lives or bodies in serious danger, they would be killed “graveyard dead.”

Of course, leftists are saying he threatened to kill people for protesting. The people he explicitly welcomed. A lot of misspelled Internet comments are foaming over with words like “fascism” and “murder.” Internet lawyers who haven’t completed their GED’s are saying Sheriff Ivey should be put in prison for threatening to murder people, and they are claiming that if the police kill anyone in Brevard, his press conference appearance will prove he is guilty of murder.

As always, leftists are cribbing from their father, Satan. The father of every leftist. Satan and his imps want us to think God is unfair for condemning them forever while giving human sinners eternal life in paradise. They love playing victim. Similarly, all the leftist creeps who have been salivating over the prospect of rioting in Florida are now portraying our sheriffs as bullies so they can say that whatever crimes they commit in retaliation are justified.

In a move reminiscent of Kristallnacht, leftists are planning 1800 protests for tomorrow, as part of the 50501 movement. That number means “50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement.” This organization claims to be a genuine grassroots operation, but there is no way that can be true. It started with a Reddit post in January, and organized protests were underway in less than a month. And we have all see the semi trucks dropping off supplies for rioters. Someone is paying for all that.

Prior to Sheriff Ivey’s conference, in which he was surrounded by other law enforcement professionals in agreement, spindly-limbed black-clad putative males who had been busy filling backpacks with weapons were in a position cowards like to occupy: they expected little resistance. Now he has struck fear into their hearts, ruining the fun. Naturally, they’re upset. Each one of them is like a bride who just found out her caterer’s truck lost a wheel on the way to the banquet hall.

I was heartened to see Sheriff Ivey speak his intentions. I’m very tired of having the government hold me down so my enemies can punch me. It’s very heartening to see officials in one state standing up for the innocent against sadistic bullies.

My sheriff is just like Ivey. It comforts me to know that someone in power is willing to work to force malefactors to leave my family alone.

Tomorrow’s planned riots have a collective name: “No Kings.” The idea is that no one should have the kind of power Donald Trump had. Mind you, these are the same lily-livered characters who were so afraid of coronavirus, they stood up for Gretchen Whitmer when she had people arrested for not wearing ineffective masks while mowing their yards.

They didn’t seem upset when Obama went crazy appointing unelected “czars,” and they didn’t mind Andrew Cuomo forcing old people into nursing homes so they could infect each other with covid. They didn’t complain when the IRS tried to hire 89,000 new agents or when it started providing them with guns. It didn’t bother them when Mark Zuckerberg and Google censored half of the country, but they were infuriated when Elon Musk gave our voices back.

They were thrilled when Biden and governors tried to force all of us to take shots that were unnecessary and even deadly. Shots the manufacturers themselves admit were not properly tested.

They’re just fine with fascists, as long as they’re leftist fascists.

It’s a shame so many people think “fascist” is a term that only applies to the right wing. Not true. It’s a very neutral term that can be applied to Stalin just as easily as Mussolini. Look it up. Rioters don’t read dictionaries. These are the people who will loot every sneaker store, Best Buy, liquor store, and Apple bar in a city and leave every bookstore untouched.

Ivey is right to threaten to kill violent rioters who endanger others. This is exactly what the law calls for, and people planning to hurt the innocent need to be put in fear.

He also pointed out that blocking traffic is not peaceful, meaning it’s not Constitutionally protected expression. He said people who tried to swarm cars were likely to be run over, as they should be. Ron DeSantis agrees. It is the state’s official policy not to prosecute innocent drivers who drive through mobs that surround their cars and put them in fear.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. It is consistent with self-defense common law going back to ancient England. If someone puts you in fear of serious injury or death, you can respond with deadly force, and having a crowd of worthless people hammer on your windows and prevent you from leaving certainly qualifies as putting you in fear.

In Florida, carjackers can be shot dead without consequences, as can arsonists and kidnappers. That has been the law for years. If one person trying to enter your car unlawfully is carjacking and kidnapping, you surely have the right to use your car to flee when two hundred people surround your car.

Unfortunately, the press is doing its best to demonize decent people and praise 50501. The shamefully-biased Associated Press calls 50501 a “grassroots movement” of “everyday people.” Those are the phrases it uses. Only the wicked would fight a grassroots movement and fight back against everyday people!

Rioters aren’t “everyday people.” In fact, “everyday person” has no definition. It must be one of those new terms leftists made up to distort reality. I guess it’s a contrived response, created and propagated via conspiracy, to the fact that conservatives have been exposing professional rioters. It must mean “ordinary local person not paid or trained to riot or bussed in by Alex Soros and Christine Walton, who just happened to show up at a riot with 500 other people at the same time, wearing the same face mask.”

AP is supposed to be an organization that reports only facts, but we all know better. It’s a disgrace to see them using “grassroots” and “everyday” just like the hordes of externally-coordinated leftist talking-points artists all over cable and the web.

If you’ve been reading my blog for years, you remember me correctly telling everyone that real blogging was dead. Corporations took over and produced sites like The Daily Kos and Pajamas Media that only pretended to be blogs. Well, now rioting has gone corporate. Same thing.

The Associated Press is now HELPING people riot and defeat the police. Check out this item from a “protest” checklist AP provided:

Face mask or bandanna, hat and sunglasses: Useful for helping to shield your eyes from pepper spray or tear gas, can also protect you from identification by law enforcement or online doxxing if that’s a concern.

Can you believe that? They’re telling people how to avoid identification by law enforcement. Here’s another:

Many organizations advise protesters to leave their phones at home to protect their privacy as they can easily be tracked. If you must take your phone, keep it turned off until you need it and, before you go, disable Face ID or fingerprint security and stick with the 6-digit passcode instead. You may also consider buying a cheap secondary phone to use.

I wonder why this isn’t a big story. It should be. One of our major news organizations–one which claims not to provide opinion pieces–has openly advised rioters in order to help them escape justice.

Ivey had to point some obvious things out. Burning cars isn’t peaceful. Blocking roads isn’t peaceful. It’s amazing that leftists need to be told these things. They seem to think that unless they’re shooting people in the face, everything they do is protected expression. Most of what we see them do these days is not protected by the Constitution, as well as illegal under federal and state laws.

What we now call “civil disobedience” has another name: crime. It’s also a tool for destroying democracy. We are supposed to use the polls to decide what happens here. Taking over buildings and blocking roads are not legitimate ways of agitating for policy change. If the democratically-elected government disagrees with you, it means you lost, fair and square, and you have a legal obligation to comply. You don’t have a God-given right to burn a store or throw pee at the police just because things didn’t go your way. You get one vote in the booth, not one in the booth and another one running up and down the aisles at Louis Vuitton with your arms full of stolen purses.

When crowds of semi-literate buffoons and enemy aliens get to run the country, democracy will be dead. Your vote will be worth as much as an Obama promise about your healthcare.

Civil disobedience has always been a stupid idea, except for cases in which the government is completely out of hand. Arresting illegal aliens in accordance with federal law does not meet that standard or come anywhere close to it.

For a long time, I have been predicting that idiot mobs would take over, using the web as their nervous system to help them gather and attack. I hope this weekend isn’t the time when it starts in earnest. Sooner or later, these morons will realize the police alone can’t handle them, and that will give them confidence to take over. When that happens, the only group large enough to take them on will be ordinary citizens with rifles. So civil war of a sort.

The black pajama kids, the enemy aliens, and the ghetto looters can handle the police, because they have overwhelming numbers. They will not be able to handle ordinary civilians. There are millions and millions of armed civilians in the US, many with police and military training, many with very sophisticated long-distance weapons, and they are not bound by the same rules of engagement the police follow. If the domestic terrorists get cocky and start playing guerrilla, they may die by the thousands before they realize their poor grasp of math and the law have made them fish in a very tight barrel.

They really need to go home and go back to civilized means of promoting their agendas before something terrible happens. They don’t understand whom they risk provoking. It’s appalling that leftist politicians, journalists, and entertainers are encouraging them to walk into a meat grinder. No one on the left has thought this through. They’re too busy virtue-signaling and committing shameful acts of racist and political sadism to think.

I am extremely grateful to live where I do. When the water starts to rise, it’s better to be on high ground than down in a swamp. Whatever happens, at least people in my area will get more time to deal with it, and this county will not be an early target because domestic terrorists, in addition to being stupid, are very lazy and always start their tantrums in their own cities.

Think I’ll Paint Winnie the Pooh on it for Nose Art

With some trepidation, I am making a third effort to write this blog post. The first time, I started and then drove to Walmart, and when I got home, the Notepad window I was using had disappeared. Ironically, I have gotten used to using Notepad because my power used to blink while I was using a browser and WordPress. Notepad saved a number of essays. But it only does that when you save your work manually from time to time, and I quit doing that a long time ago, probably because I developed some faith in my backup power supply.

The second time I tried to write this post, my wife knocked the cord out of the back of my PC with a mop after I wrote maybe 500 words. I’ll bet they were great.

One more time, from the top:

I am pleased to say that I now have an excavator of my very own.

I have wanted an excavator for years. My farm has a lot of problems excavators are the best tools for fixing. Tree stumps. Not-quite-buried rocks that dent my mower blades. Holes that need to be dug. Trees that should be pushed over instead of being felled with saws.

An excavator is an amazing thing. You can use one to make beautiful, very deep holes with clean vertical sides and flat bottoms. You can dig long trenches with them, and you can fill the trenches in very quickly. You can tear unwanted trees up. You can dig up and lift boulders.

For digging, an excavator is like a number of sturdy potential deportees armed with shovels, fresh from the parking lot at Home Depot, except it won’t case your house and come back later to steal your jewelry and oriental rugs. And it won’t try to vote in your elections.

Why didn’t I buy an excavator sooner? Because I am cheap. I would rather watch my property deteriorate than part with a sum I wouldn’t really miss.

That sum is around $25,000. That’s about as little as you can hope to pay for a 6-ton excavator that isn’t ready for the scrapyard. You can go cheaper, but you should expect to have a lot of down time and repairs.

I didn’t spend $25,000. I spent $5,000. For a brand-new excavator. How did I pull that off? Well, I compromised. A little. I shaved a little bit off the desired tonnage. About 80%, give or take. And I went Chinese.

For some time, the Chinese have been making little-bitty excavators weighing as little as 1500 pounds. Real manufacturers make small excavators, too, but theirs are fancy and have diesel engines. The Chinese go bare-bones, and they use the sort of engines Briggs & Stratton makes. Like big lawnmower engines. Gas-powered.

I used to see tiny excavators going up and down the road on trailers, and I thought they were silly. I couldn’t believe they were worth buying. I was sure a 1-ton excavator couldn’t pull a tree over, for one thing.

Recently, I saw a video that changed my mind. A huge Youtube star bought a used Chinese excavator for $3,000, and he loved it. This is a guy who owns huge track loaders, dump trucks, bulldozers, skid steers, and diesel excavators. He knows all about the real thing, but he enjoyed a Chinese toy.

He did things with it that surprised me. He lifted a tree that had to be 40 feet long, and he drove off with it.

I thought that was pretty neat. I started thinking I had made the perfect the enemy of the good. So what if I ended up with an excavator that couldn’t take a tree down? It would still be great for little stumps and digging out rocks. It would work for digging holes, like the one I need to dig to fix my gate’s car sensor.

I looked around, and I found out Chinese baby excavators started at around $6,000 for the bare minimum. But then I got lucky. I saw an ad for a brand-new excavator with 15 horsepower and a hydraulic thumb. Price: $5,000. The manufacturer charges $8500, including shipping.

How was I supposed to say no to that? The excavator in the video had 12 horsepower and a stationary thumb, and it was still wonderful. The one in the ad was a lot better, and because it was new, it probably wouldn’t fall apart for at least a year and a half.

Incidentally, these machines used to cost more. For some reason, the market is flooded with them. I don’t know if Trump scared the importers into dumping them or what.

A Kubota the same size retails for about $29,000. A Kubota is a WEE bit better, and by “WEE bit,” I mean “a lot,” but it’s not $24,000 better.

Today I drove out and looked at it, and a couple of hours later, it was in my yard. Here’s a photo.

It’s a monster, isn’t it?

It really works. It’s not quite as strong as I had hoped, and it doesn’t break through roots the way it needs to in order to dig fast in Northern Florida, but on the other hand, it digs much faster and better than I can, and while it digs, I don’t get dirty or sweaty. I don’t get sore. I don’t strain my back. I can dig all day. In the past, I used to go a couple of hours and then quit and expect to feel sore the next day.

This machine can go down 65 inches. That’s really something. I believe the deepest hole I ever dug in my life was about 30 inches, and it was a horrible experience.

I have a couple of partially-buried rocks I really want to get rid of. The tractor couldn’t do anything, even when I used a subsoiler to go around it. I am planning to use the excavator to go down 65 inches, and if that isn’t enough to loosen them up and allow me to pull them out with the tractor, I’m going to rebury them and paint the tops bright pink so I quit running over them.

Actually, I might use the rotary hammer and wedges to break the tops off of them. That would be good enough.

It’s not fun to use. Yet.

The controls are not intuitive. It appears it will take me a day of practice to get to the point where I’m not doing things like lowering the bulldozer blade when I think I’m curling the bucket. Also, the machine’s movements are very jerky. You push the levers carefully, trying to ease into motion gradually, and at first, nothing happens. Then the excavator leaps into action. It’s like riding a mechanical bull. Hard to predict. You can actually throw yourself out of the machine if you aren’t careful.

I have read that these little excavators use the same pumps diesel excavators use. Gas engines run at higher RPM’s, so supposedly, this results in too much fluid pressure. I don’t know if it’s true.

A guy who claims he sells these machines says the problem is that the manufacturers don’t adjust the pressure well at the factories. He says you can fix it with a simple gauge and an Allen wrench.

I’m going to improve my skills and see if that fixes the problem, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll look into pump adjustment.

Some people think cheap Chinese hydraulic fluid makes the machines jerkier than they should be, and they also say it should be changed right away anyhow, because it’s no good and may also have bits of metal in it after the machines have run a few hours. I plan to hit Tractor Supply tomorrow and buy real fluid.

I don’t know if this excavator will be of any use with my big stumps. Maybe if I’m patient. But I have a bunch of little ones, and I also have a lot of shrubs I want to rip out. It will be great for those jobs.

Just about all the parts that may go bad are available on Amazon, and they are cheap. I don’t have a warranty, but at this price, and given the simplicity of the machine and the cost of parts, I don’t care.

If I decide I don’t like it, I can probably get most of my money back out of it, so there is not much of a down side. I might lose two grand, but I’m sure I can do more than two grand’s worth of work before I do.

Today I realized I needed to think more about machinery that does work for me. If I’m going to continue living in the country, I mean. I’m strong now, but old age is just about here, and people don’t stay strong forever. And my time has some value, even if it isn’t much. There is a lot to be said for turning a hard two-week job into a one-day job you can do sitting down, especially when you have a wife waiting for you to finish and move on to the next chore.

I could just pay people to do things. I would hate to feel helpless, though, and paying people isn’t always cheaper than buying equipment. For example, I can buy a used diesel mower for $9,000 and use it until I die, with only only routine maintenance. I can’t find anyone who will charge me $9,000 to mow my grass for that same period. I would go through that in a couple of years.

I am considering upgrading my tractor for $30,000 minus whatever I get for the old one. That would include buying a flail mower that could probably replace my garden tractor for lawn work. A bigger tractor would make things go much, much faster and easier. If I had to pay people to come out and cut and move trees instead of using a tractor, I would probably end up spending more over time. I was quoted $800 for felling one tree and then walking away.

I like the idea of showing my son how to do manly stuff. I once competed in a fishing tournament on my dad’s boat, and his partner hooked a sailfish. The drag was loose, and he needed to turn the drag knob to tighten it. It was a spinning reel with a knob that had a right-hand thread. I told him to tighten it, and he had to ask me which way to turn it.

My son will never have to shame the family like that. Imagine a grown man not knowing which way a screw turns. Willy Loman said it best, to another character who marveled that Willy had put up a ceiling: “A man who can’t handle tools is not a man. You’re disgusting.”

My son’s dad will be able to teach him welding, machining, basic electronics, painting, forestry, how to run and fix a tractor, how to run a diesel yacht, fishing, shooting, reloading, how to run woodworking machines, how to make a real pizza, and how to run a tiny Chinese excavator. Maybe a bigger excavator some day. I’ll be able to teach him basic car repair, so he won’t have to pay people to change his oil or do his brakes.

I keep hoping my son forgets about college and starts a business that begins with a trade and ends with a fleet of trucks or machines and a stable of employees.

My wife gets annoyed with me sometimes because I don’t like to pay people, but I can’t believe what some tradesmen charge. Home Depot wanted $200 to install two blinds. That’s 4 holes and 4 screws. A chimney guy charged me almost $400 to go up on the roof and give me an estimate.

She practically begged me to hire painters, but when we did our own painting, she had to admit our work was better than the pros’ who came before us, and it was free. We probably saved $3,000, and we still have to do two stairwells, two baths, and the kitchen. Imagine what that would cost.

I can’t believe what painters charge. I used to paint entire apartments for $300 plus materials, and I did good work.

I started working on one of my buried rocks today. Tomorrow I’ll get back to it. I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get it out; for all I know, I’m digging around a tiny projection on a rock that lies under the whole neighborhood, like a wart on a whale’s butt. But at least I’ll be able to say I found out and didn’t chicken out like a soy-eater and pay a big strong man to do it for me.

Pairs Nicely with Word Salad

I guess it’s time for another “boiling frog” post. Once again, I am struck by mankind’s general failure to comprehend the level of evil in the world.

Man’s most impressive quality, to me, is our seemingly-unlimited ability to get used to things and be content with situations that are objectively very bad. There are happy quadruple amputees. There were surely moderately happy prisoners in the Nazi death camps. This is just how people are. As things get worse for us, many of us establish new baselines.

You start out thinking happiness is a huge income, a beautiful family, good health, and a fine house. If you go broke unexpectedly, it changes: happiness is a beautiful family and good health. If you get a horrible disease, happiness is a beautiful family. If things get bad enough, happiness is getting to trade the wet, soggy refrigerator box you sleep in, alone, while waiting to die, for a dry one.

There was a time not that long ago when women weren’t supposed to show their ankles in public. There was a time when a bikini was considered scandalous. Now you can walk around naked in major US cities, and the police will back you up.

“On a Slow Boat to China” was once considered too risque to be used in a movie, but now children repeat a song a famous and likely illiterate slut wrote about her vagina, and a public high school held an assembly to let an even worse slut speak. The latter slut can’t complain about being called a slut, because she appears in a video for a song called “Slut me Out.”

Your kids probably know it by heart.

We have also become used to childish pettiness and sadism, even from people in positions of great political power.

Los Angeles is being torn up by the usual suspects right now. Our federal government is obeying the law, rounding up and deporting illegal aliens, and Californians as well as hostile foreigners are rioting. They have tried to kill feds and random individuals by slinging concrete through car windows. They have burned cars. They entered a federal building and destroyed vehicles. What is the press calling this dangerous, ominous uprising? “Peaceful.” Even Fox said it.

What does “peaceful” mean now? How many car-burnings, attempted murders, and government-building invasions does a public gathering have to have before we admit it’s not peaceful?

The governor of California, a failed presidential candidate, and a US representative are blaming the victims. Imagine this happening in 1980 or 2000.

Gavin Newsom claims Donald Trump is at fault, saying he is intentionally fomenting disorder. Like a battered wife who burns her husband’s English muffin, I guess. Kamala Harris also blames the government, of which she nearly gained control. A representative named Norma Torres told the feds, “Go the F___ home!” on the Internet!

American law enforcement officers should “go home,” but hostile foreigners in the process of committing felonies in our country should stay here?

We should be astonished by the state of our country, but we’re not. We have escalation fatigue. We’re used to things being bad, and we’re used to them getting worse.

The icing on the cake is that Kamala Harris nearly won the presidency. It shows that America is in terrible shape. She is the dumbest, most transparently dishonest, least charming candidate the Democrats have fielded in my lifetime, and she nearly beat the man who gave us the glorious years of 2017 through 2021, during which our nation at least had the illusion of recovery.

Since Trump won, conservatives have been strutting around like Mick Jagger doing his chicken dance, proclaiming the end of leftism and the permanent ascendancy of the right, but the truth is, we are still losing. Trump squeaked by; there was no landslide. We have tiny, fragile margins in Congress. Americans are becoming more cruel and childish. Yeshua is becoming even less popular. The truth is held in even more contempt than it was in 2020.

Christians are being pushed into smaller and smaller safe zones. It seems like we are headed for a scenario in which we have no books to read, no shows and movies to watch, and no music to listen to, in addition to all our other limitations.

In 2021, I started watching the TV show Clarkson’s Farm, in which British comedian Jeremy Clarkson tries to make a profit running a thousand-acre crop and livestock operation. I mean he tries to make a profit other than the pallets of cash Amazon provides for his efforts.

It’s an extremely funny show, and I can relate to some of it, having worked on my grandfather’s farms and now living on a sort of farm of my own.

The other day, I was watching, and Clarkson called Yeshua “JFC,” and by that I mean he used a course term for copulation as thought it were God’s middle name. I was disturbed. My wife, who was walking through the living room holding our son, was disturbed, although she didn’t mention it until later.

I sat there thinking, “Should I turn this off, or should I just accept this as a momentary bit of unpleasantness of a sort which is unavoidable in the world in which I now live? Will I be held accountable?”

Clarkson is very smart and very funny, but he’s also one of Earth’s most conspicuous and perversely proud fools. He has no interest in God, and he doesn’t know he and his family are cursed because of his choices. He is not a good role model for people who want to lead blessed lives and avoid hell. People who are successful from the long perspective.

My wife brought the JFC outburst up last night, and we talked about it, wondering what we should do. It’s not just about Clarkson. It’s about the culture of the entire world. Are we supposed to remain enganged, let ourselves be subjected to commonplace filth and blasphemy, and get over it? Are we supposed to get rid of Starlink, hole up like lepers, and have groceries passed over our front gate?

This must be what Israel was like during the periods when the Jews served Baal and other evil spirits, or when the Tribe of Benjamin was busy raping men in the street.

People say lots of vile things these days, as a matter of course. They say “holy s___.” You probably say it. You definitely associate with people who do. Have you ever thought about what it means? You’re saying feces are like God. Do you think he likes that? Do you think it will never affect your future?

Nonetheless, it’s considered acceptable. I have probably heard it said 50,000 times, and I have probably said it myself, although maybe not, since it always sounded stupid to me. I’ve heard Christians say it.

I’m glad “oh, my f___ing God” isn’t as popular. That one always makes me cringe.

Last night I asked my wife where we were supposed to go once America became too disgusting for us. This was the big sanctuary country for Christians. The place where persecution was mildest. It’s crumbling fast, so where do we go? Africa? There is poverty and boredom, but least African countries fight perversion and put Yeshua in their constitutions.

I don’t want to move to Africa, but it would really be something, walking around and going about our business in a country where anyone who persecutes Christians or criticizes prayer gets ripped into by the general public. It would be fantastic to live in a country where a perversion parade would be grounds for mass arrests, and where witches, though common, have to hide.

When I prophesy, God keeps saying he is ridding me of the ways of Satan. That is excellent news, but when God clears you of the customs and beliefs of Satan’s world, you necessarily become increasingly disgusted with Earth and more aware of what mankind is missing by insisting on doing things its own way. No matter how nice your life is here, you feel a stronger drive to go home. You crave God’s presence. You want the tribulation to start so reform can begin.

The earth is a toilet that hasn’t been flushed in a very long time.

I love the county where I live. I love it 10 times as much as I hate Miami, which is saying a great deal. I wish the whole country were like this place. I love Tennessee. I love Singapore. I love Switzerland. Why? Because I love places where people at least superficially resemble Christians.

The Swiss are conceited leftists who have no interest in God, but they are polite, responsible, accomplished people who treat each other well and refrain from violent crime. The most popular religion in Singapore is Buddhism, which came from Satan, but again, the people act a lot like Christians. Tennessee is full of actual Christians. Parts of it, anyway. Definitely not Memphis.

My feelings about these places stem from my desire to get away from America’s deteriorating ghetto/junior high culture. I want to live in a place of peace and prosperity, where people aren’t constantly putting their filthy ways before my face.

Even though I know Singapore and Switzerland aren’t Christian countries, I can’t help loving them irrationally, just because of their peoples’ outward resemblance to Christians.

I don’t know what kinds of adjustments we will have to make regarding things we expose our family to, but whatever they are, our resulting situation will not be an adequate substitute for the Messianic Age or heaven. In order to come as close as possible to feeling as though we have been moved to a better place, I think the best thing we can do is to soak in God’s presence as much as we can while we are stuck here among the children and savages.