MrGiggles

The post office is a good example of this. In 2010, after the great recession, new pay scales were created for new hires after that date. Pre-2010, part time pay was double or more minimum wage. I believe it went from $20 an hour to $15, at that time. The pay steps for regulars went to taking 10 years to top out, to 13 as well. And that doesn't include your time as a part timer, which can be up to a decade for some. Retirement contributions also went down. The city carrier union spent the better of two years "negotiating" their next contract. They proposed taking three steps off the bottom of the pay scale, and the typical 1.3% raise. Membership voted it down, it went to arbitration, they gave us 1.5%, and just took two steps off. UAW gets 25%, UPS gets 18-20%, dock workers get 62% in their contracts. They got 1.5%.... It's a race to the bottom, seems like. There's a reason why the postal service has gotten so bad.

Yes, I was up there on Wednesday and they had burned quite a bit around the campground and boat ramp.

Last I knew you can only pull doubles in MO if the primary is a 5th wheel.

Pretty slow, tag soup for me. I didn't get to hunt much during firearms. I did shoot at a nice buck on opening weekend, no hair, no blood, no buck. Clean miss, best I can tell. I didn't archery hunt. Hunted quite a bit through muzzleloader, saw a lot of deer, felt covered up by dink bucks at times, but nothing really worth shooting. Best encounter was with this tall 8pt, had him at 80 yards. I kinda regret passing on that one. If he survives the MDC corn piles, maybe I'll see him again. This 10pt didn't start showing up on camera until a couple weeks after season ending, a shame, I'd love to have him on my wall with the one from last year, which I picked up in November. He would probably score the highest out of everything I've seen this year. I can't tell if that's a wound of some kind on his side, or just a tuft of hair. That would've been the correct side and about the right angle as the shot I took on opening weekend, can't help but wonder. Also caught this bobcat on camera, haven't seen one of them around for a long time. This as at another farm, I only hunted it once, the turnip plot there turned out the best out of all of them. Deer activity was pretty sporadic, but there was some good ones passing through there occasionally.

It's an old drag racer's trick, too. Much more common back before ignition systems were as hot as they are today. Also, some engines with flat top or popup pistons don't have the clearance for a ground strap.

I've jumped on the cordless bandwagon (Rapala R12), but prior to that, I had a Mustad from Wally world that kicked butt. Think it was like $20, has a black and green handle. I'm a firm believer in that any knife which may leave the house and costs more than $20, is soon to be lost. I have junkers that are many years old which are still around, and probably a half dozen "nice" knives that apparently didn't like my companionship too much.

How do you get it out of there? Hope to float it off by pouring in some new oil with the plug out? The guy has some trust in those chains, those powerhead bolts would turn his arm into a pincushion if it fell.

Not telescoping, but Midway had these on clearance a couple years ago. I think it's a Diawa. For the fisherman with an on-the-go lifestyle. Have only caught a few fish with it, seems to work fine.

If this isn't a scam, it's a bargain and a half.

Those big gouges in the port opening are the deal breaker, it ate something. If those weren't there I'd say you could probably clean up the bore and throw a piston in it. If you enjoy the tinkering, I've seen a lot of good used powerheads on Ebay that aren't too expensive. If the rest of the motor checks out, being that it's got electric start and a clean title, it may be worth the investment. Or find a good running 25hp with no paperwork and steal the powerhead.

As I recall the bolt circle on those flywheels is quite a bit smaller than your standard harmonic balancer type of puller. Nothing really works aside from the OMC tool. Additionally, don't thread the puller bolts in too far, I see the ones in Wrench's photo have a should to prevent doing so. Stator coils tend to not work so well once they've had a bolt crammed into them.

From the little I know about them, they are pretty expensive if you wreck one. But being able to see the oil level through the cap, and if there's any water in there would be nice. The only experience I have with oil filled hubs is on those older Polaris 4x4 ATVs that had them. No bigger piece of junk ever made, there's a bunch of seals in there, getting one to hold oil after any amount of neglect is next to impossible.

I've got an axle stub welded right to the trailer frame, and have an assembled spare hub/tire assembly with me at all times. Just don't try to use it as a step, it rolls! That's one area where a tandem axle can really be worthwhile. Worst case you can remove the lame wheel, tie the axle up, and limp to where you're going. I've often considered upgrading to an ez-lube style axle. I seem to get about 3 years out of a set of bearings, not sure if it would pay off or not.

Last couple times I've went, I did pretty well. Lots of barely legal fish in the 10.5" range. Not getting as many big fish this year. I was finding them on main lake brush, 25ft or so.

I think they turned it loose in one of the tanks at Bass pro. Not kidding either.

If you want something that'll make anyone laugh, get yourself some big iron. It'll eat anything from CBs to 22 Mags. I have another with an 8" barrel that was a black Friday deal a few years ago. Both are pretty good shooters, just don't stand beside them. https://www.academy.com/p/heritage-rough-rider-22lr-16-in-cocobolo-rimfire-revolver

They need to start paying a competitive wage if they ever want to staff offices in bigger cities. Pay is the same across the country (aside from Hawaii and Alaska I believe.) $19 something for city carriers and $20.38 for rurals. No set schedule or guarantee of hours, may be 8 or 60 hours a week. Not really a surprise that turnover is so high.

You'd think the guy would know a snake when he saw one....

Been seeing the big horseflies and a new hatch of cicadas this week. Spiders still stringing cobwebs all through the woods. And plenty of those little flying gnats that like to hover right in front of your nose. Seems pretty normal to me.

Social media algorithms are designed to do exactly that. It's scary, the damage it could do in the wrong hands is immense, and likely already happening. The biggest wealth of information that's ever existed is being used to spoon feed propaganda and division. The most red-blooded Americans I've ever met will happily swipe on Tiktok without a thought in the world about where that data may end up.

A ductless heat/AC system. The condenser and evaporator are split up like a central split system, but the evaporator fan assembly is all contained in one unit that hangs on the wall. Pretty common for additions, garages, tiny homes, etc. I'm not an HVAC pro but have installed a few. They're very efficient and a good solution for applications where ducting cannot be installed without significant work. A mini split only needs a couple hoses and a cable ran through the wall. They're great at cooling, heating can be marginal depending on the unit, and efficiency goes down quite a bit. In our climate they're still not a bad choice if you have a source of backup heat available.

I have only done outboards but I suspect boats and trailers are similar. If it is not titled, you will need the prior state's registration documents, and the DMV's bill of sale form. The name and serial number on it will need to match the registration documents, and include the sale price for taxes. You can print the bill of sale form off their website. It wasn't difficult at all for me, but I suspect it can be if all you have is scribbles on a sheet of notebook paper.

Wish I'd have bought a whole pallet of them when they were $29.99 at Bass Pro a few years ago.

You are sure right about the pressure. At any given time it seemed like there was a dozen or more boats out on that little lake. There's lots of bank access as well, and people were using it. The guide that I met sent me a couple musky pictures the next day from Brushy Creek, spoke highly of it.

Unfortunately I have been busier than ever recently, have only been fishing a handful of times this year. However, the opportunity rose to use up some of my vacation days, and I took it. I had about 5 days, my plan was to eventually end up south of Minneapolis to visit my brother for a day or two. Des Moines is about the halfway point between here and there, and Big Creek Lake just to the north of it offers opportunities for good crappie and walleye fishing. I arrived Wednesday afternoon. Fishing was slow with showers off and on. Didn't catch anything, but got to explore and see everything. Thursday morning was more productive, I was able to get four crappie in the boat and one nice bluegill. Unfortunately the wind got very strong, peaking at 35mph and didn't let up until dark. I still tried to fish that afternoon but didn't catch anything. Friday morning was similar to Thursday, but slower. Nothing exciting. Saw the shad busting close to the boat, so I tossed my crappie jig into it. Something large grabbed it and broke or cut my line. Would've been nice to see what it was, wiper or musky I'm guessing. A bit humbled, I decided to load up and get everything packed up to head north. I struck up a conversation with another angler at the ramp, turns out he was a local guide that was wrapping up a musky trip, and about to head back out solo for walleye. He asked if I wanted to go with, don't gotta ask me twice. It was late in the morning at this point, we didn't catch anything exciting, although he did have a very large Musky come after his Rapala, after not seeing any that morning while actually fishing for them. We had some great conversations about the lake, how the fish behave there, and most importantly, everything I was doing wrong. 😅 Walleyes especially are in a very different pattern up there compared to here. While I was very tempted to bring my boat up to Minnesota, I really only had the one afternoon to fish up there, and the Airbnb owners kindly offered to let me leave the boat at their place and pick it up on the way home, which I took them up on. I locked the boat up, unhooked and headed north on Friday. I'm going to try and go back up there this winter and fish it through the ice if the conditions are right. It certainly is a neat area, and a very solid fishery for being so close to a big city. Unfortunately there really wasn't anything noteworthy to take a picture of, so I didn't take any.