Random crap with Uno.

[Buster's Uncle]

Looking good, UnO

and durn, Kyle's 6' now??  How they've grown...

No kiddin' 'bout THAT.

[Unorthodox]

There's more space between the house and the fence then I thought from the plans you showed earlier.

I couldn't remember if there was 25' or 30'.  Whatever the minimum code said, but there's clearly 30.  Of that, the circle, with stones takes up nearly 22'.  Once the trampoline slides back between those two trees to the right of the patio, there won't be much grass. 

[Unorthodox]

Been ruminating on...not a REPLACEMENT of Vera, but a companion.  Vera now broken for anything automagic, been thinking about an automagic camera to make it easier on vacationing and stuff. 

A sister to Vera is available for ~$100, where as the absolute top of the line I would ever need/want is hovering at $450.  That latter has wi-fi capable direct upload potential.  There's also a slew of step upgrades along this price range, but all moving towards upgrading my actual lens library. 

I could also explore moving on to a brand jump.  I'm rather fond of Sonys at work, and have enough Nikon experience to not totally hate that concept, but both those options have difficulties in specific scenarios. 

[Unorthodox]

So, been doing digging.

As far back as 2012, I have been keeping an eye on the pentax K-30. 

It remains the absolute top of the line low light camera.  It also contains most of the modifications my K-10 has to work with the manual lenses, and a few tech features I presently lack.  Plus simultaneously would allow me to upgrade to automagic D lenses. 

Downside is it wouldn't have wifi and still would require the photoshop processing I currently have to do where the newer ones wouldn't. 

Presently priced around $200.   Definitely on the birthday/christmas possibility list. 

[Unorthodox]

Finally got the concrete collar poured around the stones.  Over the last few weeks the tall ones had slipped several inches.  I will feel a lot better in a few days when that’s all cured.

Running a pressure test on the gas line to confirm no leaks.  Then we’re ready to rock. (Pun intended).  Maybe two weeks, weather depending.  No eta on the patio though. Too much water still.  The fire pit area isn’t as sensitive to that.

[Unorthodox]

Haven’t been wanting to jinx anything. And I’ll get more specific when I get everything in writing later but, boss, I’m told it went through on Friday.

[hEtErOdOx]

🤞🏻

[Unorthodox]

And, presto.  Officially official. 

The step promotion is done  (I can’t be bothered to figure exactly, less than 25, more than 20 percent raise)

Lots of technical stuff as well but that’s more difficult to explain.

[Buster's Uncle]

So - a certain boss of not not-hEt-or-competent sort displaced, perhaps?

[E_T]

Nice,... now to see how much more cr@p they will want to put on you now...

[Buster's Uncle]

...All the cr@p...

You can say crap here, I think.

[E_T]

I'm trying to be sort of PC'ish...  :p

[Buster's Uncle]

[Unorthodox]

Finally got the concrete collar poured around the stones.  Over the last few weeks the tall ones had slipped several inches.  I will feel a lot better in a few days when that’s all cured.

Running a pressure test on the gas line to confirm no leaks.  Then we’re ready to rock. (Pun intended).  Maybe two weeks, weather depending.  No eta on the patio though. Too much water still.  The fire pit area isn’t as sensitive to that.

So, in engineering my circle, I took a two phased approach.  I looked up how they did it in the past, and I went to the local modern formations (of which there are a few).  Here's the closest. 



I had wet cats in the car, so couldn't get out and get detailed pics, but you can still see a few of these stones cracking. 

They poured a concrete pad, cut the bases of their stones, drilled them, and ran rebar up the stones to hold them steady.  A couple have fallen and many are cracking to various degrees.  Sandstone out of brown's canyon. 

This was clearly NOT the way to go about this. 

Traditional menhir that stay standing have 1/3 of their length underground.  That was impractical. 

Thus my hybrid concrete collar burying the actual stones. 



We'll hide the collar under some decorative cobble later. 

[E_T]

Kewl