Tractors
Tractors aren't what they used to be.
Last night I was outside doing some yard work after supper. The wind had died down so it was nice and quiet. A few birds were chirping, but that's about all.
Except for a tractor in some cornfield to be some ways away. But it wasn't the familiar POP, POP, POP of my uncle Earl's John Deere Model A. Nor was it the distinct firing of Dad's Allis Chalmers WC or Herb Peter's Farmall F-14 or, later, H, all of which had four cylinders.
This was more of a roar, almost like a turboprop airplane spooling up. Not pretty at all to these old ears. But that's the way they do it these days: big fields, big tractors, big noise, big bucks.
Can you imagine planting or cultivating just two rows of corn at a time? And checking it. I can remember the sounds: click CLICK, click CLICK. And I can remember the nice straight rows in both directions.
Although I love machinery, I think I prefer the old way. Certainly I favor the old sounds.
A Bad Day at Black Rock
Today is a real downer for this geek. First, some spammers used my domain name in the "From" address on thousands of spam messages they sent out last night. As usual, hundreds if not thousands of those messages were addressed to none existant addresses so they bounced.
And where did they bounce to—my email box, of course, because it appeared that they had come from my domain and server. Anyway, that shut my email down in early afternoon and it is still down. The server people say they have found the problem and that it will be working in 2 to 3 hours.
This also caused my server to go down, taking about a dozen websites with it. That was fixed around supper time today.
Tonight I was going to work on the new program which will be used for The Lime Springs Page. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could put these article on it and release it to the world tonight.
But now it is broken and I'm not enough of a geek to fix it. At least not yet.
It's not been a good day, computerwise, to say the least. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better. Much better
Dale Kitchen Back in Iowa
Dale has returned to Lime Springs. His home in Lime Springs is the former George Lovell place.
Their last visit to the CA doctor did not provide the news they had hoped for. The tumor had actually increased in size. Dale will begin local treatment with a visit to doctors in LaCrosse in a few days.
Remember, you can still track Dale's progress and, most importantly, leave a message of encouragement at CaringBridge: http://caringbridge.org/visit/dalekitchen