The 10 Most Recent Posts

Whoo Hooo!!! The call I've been waiting for for about eight months finally came! My contractor has been doing a lot of work, but for some reason, never returned my calls or in any other way, kept me up to date on his progress. Oh well. It has been very frustrating, but it now looks like the outhouse/shed will be up in another week or so.

He said he will be here on Wednesday with the walls and the floor and on Thursday with the roof. I hope all goes according to plan.

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Oh well. It turns out my joy will be temporarily put on hold. My contractor called me this morning and told me he couldn't make it today, but that he would be stopping by tomorrow instead. Time will tell.

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Today's Photos

My contractor showed up today, not at 9am like he mentioned yesterday, but closer to 1pm, but at least he made it. He brought his Case International Uni-Loader Skid Steer, sort of a mini-bulldozer. He spent about 2 hours preparing the area where the shed will be placed. He said tomorrow he will bring the floor (maybe the walls also, but I'm not sure).

Because of the grade of the property, he roughed out a "trough" which is intended to direct rainwater away from the shed to minimize any damage to the area directly under the shed. After it is completed, we'll put skirting around it which will also help keep the water away from the shed.

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Yesterday my contractor said he would be here at 9am today. Oh well, he showed up at about 3pm. He said there was an accident on the road to my place, and he was stuck there for two hours.

I thought he was going to be bringing at least the floor for the shed, but I guess he'll be doing that on Monday (10am?). Instead, he fixed the door to my shed/cabin. On two occasions, there were some pretty high winds and I wasn't paying close enough attention as I opened the door. The wind ripped the door right out of my hand and pretty violently slammed it to full open. That damaged the door jamb, which left the door misaligned and it had been very difficult to close since then. Today, he took out the 1" screws and replaced them with 3" screws and did some other minor adjustments and now it is back to working like it did when it was brand new. Nothing on the shed, but it sure is nice to have the door working normally again.

We'll see what Monday brings.

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My contractor hasn't shown yet and he may not be able to make it here at all today. He called and said he is having some legal disputes with some property he owns. Hopefully he will show up tomorrow, but that remains to be seen.

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Today's Photos

Today is my normal day to make my once a week trip into town, so I put the chain around the gate, but didn't clasp it. I also used a bungie cord to be sure it didn't open accidentally. When I returned around noon, my contractor had dropped off the floor of the shed and put in it place. The shed will be 8' x 8' square. He also brought the walls, but left those in the trailer for now. Check out the pictures.

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My contractor got here later than planned due to truck problems. No pictures today. We put some more screws in the 5/8" plywood floor panels. Tomorrow we'll be putting another layer of 5/8" plywood panels at right angles to the ones already in place.

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Today's Photos

My contractor got here later than planned (10:30am instead of 8:30am). But once he arrived we got to work. We placed (and screwed down) two more 4'x8' sheets of 5/8" plywood at 90° to the first layer (8'x8' = 64 square feet). Then we put all four walls in place and screwed them to the floor. We quit around 2:30pm. Tomorrow we'll finish connecting each wall to the ones next to it. Hopefully we will also get the rafters in place and the metal roof. Definitely the most work I've done since moving here.

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No pictures today because my contractor didn't show at 8:30am or 9am as we agreed. He sent me a text at around 10:30am to let me know why he couldn't make it. I'm hoping Monday will work.

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My 21-day free trial of Blink cloud storage has expired. No video clips are being stored. They are not even being RECORDED (or more likely recorded, but not stored anywhere so they can't be reviewed). The cameras are basically trash now, unless I pay a monthly fee (either $4/month or $12/month). Either that, or I can make a one-time purchase of a 64 GB USB flash drive (for $15) for storage in the Sync Module I already have. That's a no-brainer decision. I'll order one tonight. I doubt this will give me all the options that a monthly subscription will give me, but after I get it I'll find out.

EDIT: I just ordered and almost immediately, cancelled my order for the USB flash drive. The price was fine, but there were too many bad reviews. The one and two-star reviews were bad enough, but even a lot of the 3-star reviews noted how basically useless the cameras were unless you paid the monthly storage fees. Sure, video clips will be stored on the flash drive, but you have to pull the drive from the sync module and then insert it into your computer to view the clips and delete any you don't want. And the app doesn't connect to the flash drive, so there is no display of how much storage space is left on the flash drive. If you don't stay on top of it, you will lose video clips because the flash drive will eventually fill up and the app will not tell you. And to make matters worse, when the official Blink flash drive is installed, there is only about 1/4" or less sticking out to grab onto. It looks almost like a pair of pliers will be needed to pull it out. Not user-friendly at all. I'll try one or two of my own flash drives and see if they work. Blink may have some sort of proprietary formatting that means their official flash drive is the only one that will work. I'll find out one way or the other.

If none of my USB flash drives work, it will be time to start looking for another security camera system, one that is designed to work without a cloud subscription.

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