A new game... Post pics from your cel phone V.1.0

[94touring]

It's hellishly dusty, yesterday in particular with a cold front rolling in.  You kind of stop caring after awhile but people make an attempt to keep the dust out.

[Jims5543]

I saw online where people were putting copper in their skimmers of their pools and it was cleaning up the water in the pool.

I decided to give it a try and I am amazed.  I am no longer using any algaecide in my pool. I was having a problem with some algae growing in my pool, I was applying algaecide every weekend and was still having a persistent problem with it.

Once I dropped these in the skimmer, the algae disappeared. I bought copper level test strips to work out how much copper I needed in the basket. I started with about 2X what is in the pic and my copper level was too high. These few is all I need. My pool water is crystal clear too, clearest I have ever seen it.  I mentioned this to the clerk at my corner pool store, he sheepishly admitted all algaecide is is copper in liquid form. 

If you have a pool, this is worth a try.

[94touring]

Picture in a hotel in Singapore

[94touring]

Cool find of the day

[Jims5543]

Due to the rigorous demands of owning a small business it is very hard for me to take any significant time off, a week vacation is VERY hard to pull off.  We are limited to long weekends here and there.
My wife and I love finding small towns and spending weekends in them.

Last month we spent two nights in Naples Florida, having lived in Florida over 30 years I never visited there. We are on a kick to not go back to places we love like Key West, St. Augustine, St. Petersburg or Savannah Ga where we have visited many times over. We are trying to find small towns we never visited and go there instead.

It was a 3 hour drive to Naples, I could have blasted down the interstate to Alligator Alley and shot across, I was tempted as I have never driven Alligator Alley (I-75 between Naples and Ft. Lauderdale) I was not in the mood for the Ft. Lauderdale traffic so I stuck to 2 lane back roads through the middle of the state. The time difference was 10 minutes.

This is one of my favorite roads the trees are like a tunnel through here, I was heading west toward Lake Okeechobee, I would eventually get to Lake Okeechobee then drive around the north side of it. Around it and then down to Naples.



Naples was not really our scene, we packed nice clothes to wear, as we know the place was posh, I would put it on level with Palm Beach.  Just not our style we are more flips flops come as you are types. The hotel? Star of the weekend!! I didn't realize it was such a tiny boutique hotel, I just knew my wife would love it so I surprised her, she didn't know where we were staying. According to her I hit a home run.

This was the portico where you check in and unload your car, no valet, self parking.







The M5 tucked in with the rest of the guests, only 10 rooms in this hotel, 8 were booked that weekend as I found out from the front desk when checking out.



This hotel was built in the 50's, it had a lot of character. The pool area was so serene and with 16 guests in the hotel we never saw more than 6 people at the pool at a time.





I didn't snap too many car pics. That place is on another level of wealth.  BMW's Mercedes are for the pours. I saw so many Ferrari's, Lambo's, McLarens it was insane.  There were two Aston Martin's parked  along the main drag, by the time I was across the street to snap a pic, one left, I love Aston's I think they are gorgeous.

The only car pic I snapped all weekend.  LOL



Would we go back there? No.. I loved the hotel, the city was just not my scene. Way too snooty.

The M5 was a blast making passes on the way over.. I was stuck in a long line of cars, trying to be polite and let some of the 20 or so cars in front of me pass the old guy driving close to 20 under the speed limit.
There had to be another 20 cars piled up behind me, we were on a long straight, I noticed a Pickup from the back attempting to pass the entire line of cars, I peeked ahead when I saw what he was doing, nothing coming. I let him fly by he was in a Ford Raptor, I then jumped behind him and floored the M5, I was on his back bumper in a matter of seconds flying right behind him, we passed the entire line, then settled in, I back off him and we cruised at a really nice speed for a while. Made up some lost time. It is so effortless making a pass in this beast. I am really going to miss it, I cannot bring myself to sell it off and know I should. Its 12 years old now with 55K miles, while I just did all the preventative maintenance on it, that was purely to help with selling it off. Then I think, maybe I should keep it a couple more years, what could go wrong? LOL!!!

[Jims5543]

Due to the super el nino we are having a warmer and wetter than normal October.  I guess that is the trade off for no hurricanes.

Everything is flooded here. On top of that we just experienced a full moon King tide coupled with this weather and 40-60MPH onshore winds that spanned over a week, 40+ MPH winds blowing onshore is a problem all by itself, it creates a "storm surge" despite there being no real storm. Blowing onshore for almost a week straight backs a lot of water up into our estuaries. Then toss is a full moon king tide into that mix and we had a mess on our hands, a perfect storm.




The swales are all full too, so now we have to keep our heads on swivel in the field as these little fellows are venturing into new areas they are not usually in. We normally are very careful, head on swivel when near lakes and canals, to see these suckers in swales is very unnerving.  Someone could be walking their dog in the street and suddenly find a gator charging them. 

[MiniDave]

California is having similar issues, my old town Sandy Eggo has Mission Beach under water several streets back from the ocean......but no alligators!

[Jims5543]

I am sure everyone heard about the record rain in Florida (the Lear Jet crash was due to them trying to fly over the storm that was battering us for days on end)  25" in West Palm Beach in 24 hours after a week of rain, onshore winds, and a King Tide pre-soaking the place. Up my way it varied from 15" - 24" in 24 hours, no where on earth can handle that kind of rainfall.  Although, my coastal community did pretty good despite how bad these pics look. We had barely a home flood here just some roads.

Tuesday Morning last week I set out at 0600 in my FJ to scope out the area and see if we could even send crew out. These are some pics from that and some from Monday when the rain was really starting to crank. I looked at the radar Monday afternoon, and told everyone to head home early at 330 in the afternoon by 4pm the floodgates of the heavens opened up, at 6pm I drove up to the grocery store, to get cheese, LOL!! I also wanted to scope out the area and see how bad it was getting. It was getting bad...

Tues Morning, found lots of disabled cars that tried to drive through flood waters. I am not even sure how the white car got into that ditch, there is a 6" curb that had to run over to get there.


Home Depot Truck bays under water:



This is usually a little creek at the entrance to my subdivision, as you can see its a raging river and came within 6" of coming over the road. In 2010 we got hit my a tropical storm where it dumped 26" of rain in 24 hours, that road was under 2' of water that time.  Only lifted Trucks would get in or out.


This is the Blvd in front of my office, we never worried about water rising to us but the road out front was a river.


About a half mile west of my office the main Blvd was closed due to flooding, it was closed for almost a week. The pic with the white car in the ditch is exactly where these barricades went in.  The funny part is how oblivious people are on the road, most drove past a giant sign that said the road was closed due to flooding. I had to laugh at people, its amazing how they don't look ahead, so many drive within 50 feet before realizing they cannot go through. I guess bright orange barricades, police cars with lights on and a digital sign are really hard to see.



Worst flooding I could find in my part of town, I heard another part of town had houses under water, they are at the bottom of a huge 70' tall sand ridge, in a bowl of sorts, all the water ran down into their neighborhood.



Fire station parking lot, that garbage pail traveled a decent distance to get there.


I had zero problems at my house other than having to drain my pool non stop. My office had a window leak, since the window is brand new and the roof is brand new we realized where the flat roof attaches to the building was the culprit. I spent a couple of hours Sunday up there cleaning out all the dried up caulking, cleaning it up and resealing it. I am giving Flex Seal a try up there, I used a can and brushed it on, I am going to buy the spray and add a second coat this weekend.

Oh and I had to turn my sprinklers back on, my yard is now too dry. I am up on that sand ridge my house is at 30' above sea level heading up my block the house at the end of the street is 55' above seal level.

[MiniDave]

The west coast had it just as bad, my old town of Sandy Eggo lost its beach, and further up the coast homes were just sliding down into the water. The train that runs along the coast was canceled due to mud and debris on the tracks. And yet the southwest is still in a horrible drought....

Here in the middle we've had a LOT of rain, tho nothing like what you experienced, still we had quite a bit of flooding too....