Bob Chill

Thing is, banter in disco thread is totally fine... at certain times that are easy to identify. But that's not how it's been working. When there's a lull, yuk it up. It's fun. When it's crowded with lurkers and disco posters, just shut the heck up man. Critical thinking is a lost art or... people purposefully choose "poor timing" for maximum (emotional) effect. Imho- that's bad faith, period. Not "oopsie sorry". Just bad behavior with a broken moral compass. That drove me out of here specifically. Started getting rises out of me. My post history shows my transition in real time. One day i scanned my post history and was very disappointed in the way my behavior was changing so I had to call it quits being a regular.

Been a busy fall for me. Been running heavy equipment with a buddy doing grading, clearing, private road installs etc. If anyone is interested in before and afters, my buddy has a good Facebook biz page (Fisher Construction and Excavation in Amherst VA). I worked every job since Labor Day. I love this more than anything I've done. Offices may as well be on Mars cuz I'm NEVER doing that again. I'll go bankrupt first because money is never more important than sanity hahahaha I have tons of fall pics but they are a jumbled mess. Lol. Put a couple collages together. Smith Mtn gets hit by sunrise b4 my property. Lights it up the entire mountain while I'm in total shade. Happens every day and steals my heart every time. I mill a lot of wood in my spare time and it's a blast. I'm getting a bandsaw mill in 2 weeks. 30" log diameter and 18' track but I'm always going run a chainsaw mill. Drag into the woods and start making lumber. Hard to describe the experience and what it means to me. Few can relate so I generally quietly mill and don't talk about it. Second collage is a white oak I dropped and milled 2 weeks ago. Just about ready for edging and planing. Using the oak for shed floor and doors.

DM stormtracker and tell him to give me the ctrl-alt-del button on my mini mod panel. 10 seconds and it's all fixed! Lol Jokes aside, human emotional control (of lack thereof) and how it transforms quality discussion into a trench fight has me turned off probably permamently. Some of it is 100% deliberate and some of it is the oil/water nature of group interactions when there is no personal recourse or consequences (other than a ban but that does nothing to fix the global problem way beyond AMWX). I behave identical online and in person. What you see is what you get. There is a core crew here I love who are aligned but things have changed and my tank filled up nearly 2 years ago. It just wasn't fun anymore. It became tiresome. People have become extremely centric and inflexible online in general. My way or highway! Lol. Add in bro-science, conspiracies, ànd persuasive morons leading sheep and it gets REALLY hard to have quality interactions that include facts and other people's points of view. Rational discussion, willingness to seriously consider another's views, and ability to concede or compromise is just about gone from social media. People have much more fun interacting with emotions and drama. For many, its the only reason to engage. Emotional control is something I hold in high standards. If you want to gain knowledge and explore ideas and concepts properly, you need to listen to everything and contemplate. Not knee jerk spew garbage cuz you don't agree or your feelings are dented. Unfortunately there is no fix because the majority doesn't want to "fix things". They like stirring and prodding and poking for entertainment. I can't do that anymore.

238 miles to Rockville. Got a full tank of diesel, half pack of blunts, and wearing visine at night. See ya in 3 hours

It can be easier to visualize by looking at surface pressure. Sprawling HP to the north and west. Forces low pressure to move more lateral than north https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/gfs/2023112518/gfs_mslpa_us_58.png

Honestly, I've been hoping it holds off. Been down in VA working with a buddy having a blast since labor day. Outdoor work though... heh. Developing upper air pattern looks pretty classic for early season snow but we usually cap out at 3-5" type storms front half of Dec and they are nailbiters usually. We'll see in a week. I like my spot near smith mtn. Upslope is real. Smith rises 1300' above my property and it's a very steep mountain. Less than 2 miles away. NE and E flow rain is nasty here compared to 10 miles away. If things line up, I think I'll get mini jacked. Been curious for 16 months cuz last winter was an epic snow fail lol

No matter how long of a break you take from here, nothing changes. Not.one.thing.

DCA: 11/11 IAD: 10/25 BWI: 10/26 RIC: 10/31 BWI Oct -1.1

Painted the wheels on the ole Massey. Pretty close to done with the restoration except for mechanical wear parts that haven't failed yet. Diesel motor should be good for another 3k hours b4 rebuild is needed. Everything works including power steering lol. Massey Ferguson purists will hate the paint job but I'm not a purist and it looks cool to me

Well... I was doing a really slow uturn in a driveway down the road and there was a nice gate that was open. No problem except I bumped the steel gate by the lower hinge on the post and it ripped out like tinfoil. Lol. I mean I barely felt it. Hahaha Eta: it was no hit and run either. Folks were standing there complimenting my tractor. Yea... it wasn't too fun

Lol. It was a major upgrade from the previous... ummm...unwalled hole in ground. Zero to hero. I was called the "#1 of #2s" during the inaugural weekend. I was going to buy newer/smaller tractor but the emissions and electronics are a nightmare. Smartest thing I've done since randomly buying 25 acres of forest is buying that Massey tractor. Spent its whole life running hay bales around just 30 miles from where it's parked. Well cared for. Cost me 5 grand... newer tractors anywhere close to that power is 25k or more lol. I'll be under 9k all in for full mechanical restore and a machine that will rarely stop for any reason for 50 years. It weighs more than a honda accord. Don't bump into ANYTHING no matter how slow ur goin..... don't ask....

Hey wx fam! Been a nutty year for me. Been wantin to update longtime wx geek friends but time keeps slippin.... until today I spend 75% of my time in sw VA now lol Became good friends with the contractor who did the initial clearing on our tract of land. We started working together and it clicked immediately. I've had more fun running heavy equipment in the last 4 months than I did my entire 20+ office career lol. Wife and I are aiming to sell Rockville in mid spring and we're building everything in VA ourselves. Buddy I'm working with has his homebuilders license so we're going to do it together. Have plans now but need a VA architect for mods and final. PM me if anyone knows a fair one. And by fair I mean it's a simple plan with simple mods. Don't be thinking new BMW cuz I already talked to you and laughed behind your back hahaha I've done so much chainsaw milling in my free time I'm ready for a bandsaw mill with 20' of track. I'm allowed to mill my own hardwood beams for construction framing. So cool. Can't wait. House will be framed with the red oaks i haveto clear for the home site. I built an outhouse entirely with a chainsaw mill and basic tools in my spare time lol. Dropped every tree and turned it into a building. Lol. Never in a zillion years would i have guessed this path 5 years ago. I've been slowly restoring the 1967 Massey Ferguson diesel tractor I bought last winter. That thing is bombproof. Runs perfect and I beat on it all the time. Chipping, hauling, grading, and dragging stuff is a typical week. Never complains. I'll be done painting the wheels within 2 weeks. Everything works like it did out of the factory. Prob another 50 years of hard service ahead. What a trip lol

Getting warm after huge storms is pretty normal. Especially with Archambault events. Our biggies favor the flip from neg to pos NAO. Hard to stay cold on the heels.

I've been rippin and readin a little lately but have no thoughts other than climo enso stuff so lurking only. Since 2015, it seems remarkably hard to NOT get heavily modified continental air in here. Models keep showing the express 7+ days out but the carve slows down and by the time the cold pool gets here, it's west or even sw flow in the mids or uppers. I can't even count how many times really. We all know how well stale air works here with a synoptic system lol. Imo- it's just a cycle. We see it all the time. Train tracks set up and don't want to leave no matter what the euro says hahaha. Imho- much of our winter's snow fate will depend on things nobody can see beyond a week. Digital cold air does not make it snow. We need a fresh feed at the start of synoptic development. Elusive as hell last few years... always sloppy stale mixed messes with no feed when it matters. Iirc, vast majority of "rain when it should snow" lately is likely a byproduct of slow moving stale air patterns with blocking. The brunt of the cold keeps focusing on the MW and hanging around. The MA can't survive like that. We need a banana. Especially in a Nino. When those show up during snow season, so will I. I'm done trackin mix lines other than real time.

Man, I found pics of the first cut back in July. Trees getting shredded by a machine must be watched live to appreciate. Top 2 pics are hard to recognize but it is the same place as the gravel pics. Lol. We ran a trackloader for 6 days straight after the mulchers finished. It was in the 90s every.single.day. We chose mulching over excavating because it creates a mountain of composting biomass out of the gate. Excavators just knock everything down and move it to the side. Which is totally fine but we plan of having large gardens and a 3 acre pasture to attract wildlife. The mulch is nearly soil now and man we have A LOT lol

We'll see how many years I have left first. Lol. Crazy things keep happening. I'll be running a 12k lb excavator around on weekends here shortly. I have to build bridges that support 15k lbs to get across 2 drainages but I can't build them without the excavator. I'm going to be a single man road/bridge crew. Those pics will be really wild. Or scary. I've never done this b4

This should make some laugh and others feel a little bad for me. Right before the "monster truck event" fiasco, I actually had the driveway bed graded and crowned. Lol. Was just going to pack rock as it settled then gravel. Wasn't supposed to rain much that week and certainly not 2" in 30 hours lol. 2 trucks had to get up. No choice. One weighed over 8k lbs. Lol. We were so wet and muddy and intermittently stuck... Words can't describe that night (it was dark lol). I went back to Rockville laughing kinda because I couldn't tell how bad it was. My neighbor shot the 2 pics the next day and texted me "you got a little bit of access problems goin on". Then I saw the pics. They only covered half of the mess. There was plenty more So my wife and I got to work. Mud dried and I graded it all off. Could drive up and down dry no prob. Wet? Truck up the hill before first drop. Then we farmed rocks (mostly quartz) in the woods with the tractor. Packed in the bed where needed top to bottom. Then I leveled and crowned. During the 2 months, every truck or piece of equip that went up and down was instructed to drive over all rocks at all times lol. Pack em in real good. It works great and it's all free. The rocks in the pics looking like they are laying on the surface have at least 3-5 buddies underneath holding them up permanently. Dump truck went over them and didn't budge. Pics show lower 2/3ds of the drive. After all the hell the gravel went down smooth. Only took 3-4 hours to get it just right. Best tractor ride of 2023 coming down the gravel. Will be hard to top.

Looks like snowless winters turned me into a philosopher. They used to turn me into a bit of an A hole. Life progress has unlimited metrics if you keep your eyes open. hahaha I'm going post some pics of what I went thru with out driveway. Lol. The first couple will be pretty amusing when things unwound on me in Dec but the reality of what was in store for me kept smiles away more often than not

I'll see what I can do about PMs lol. Been a problem for years now I think I can't explain it but my intuition tells me who I align with and who I don't. It's a feeling and not a thought. I feel aligned with you. Who how why and all that stuff? Beats me

It all sounds so logical at the starting line right? It's just math. Do good math and check out. Simple... but that's not how it works here. It's near impossible to win the math game early because everything in the DC metro is designed to make sure it costs too much to do it along the way. Lol. My father gave me advice right before we bought our house in 2002. He said this area has a way of robbing you blind right under your nose. He also said that I will almost certainly increase expenses as my income grows so most months will look the same no matter how much goes in. He was 100% right and I'm certainly not a lavish spender. He was speaking from experience and also was 100% supportive of all of our early marriage decisions. He asked me in 2009 when he was sick if I had had enough yet. I didn't get the magnitude of question until 7 years after he passed. My answer to him was a resounding "nope i'm good" but that changed dramatically in the years following. By 2016 I had had enough but our family life was deeply woven into the fabric of the DMV's pick pocket action that there was STILL no way out without causing hardship on the people I love the most. Ugh See what I'm getting at? It's not really an equation or free will choice once your in and the grip has a hold. The emotional burden of packing up and leaving can be a titanium wall keeping you in too. Just be self aware and honest and make sure you put your heart and intuition first and not your wallet. That's a REAL blurry topic tho...

I'm all in now. I hopefully have 15+ solid years of good phys health. I'm finally light and strong for an old guy. That was harder than my driveway and I was already light and strong once lol. Everything a young person hears about getting old is true. They need to just accept that. I'm getting back to work here this spring with the contractor who did the initial clearing on our tract. 1 man show will become a 2 man show with machines. We're buying a 12k lb excavator and we both have trucks/trailers trackloaders already. I'm in for my love for the outdoors and also machines (lifetime gear head lol) I need to earn but my ambition doesn't have a single $ attached. I have a feeling it will all just naturally work out. The realtor who sold us our lot set us up to clear a 2 acre build site for a lot he sold. All I did was mention I'm buying excavator in passing. He lit up and here we are. Life is a GD trip sometimes. Nothing I'm doing is pre-planned. Just rollin downstream seeing what happens.

No doubt friend. I figured that out 3 years ago when I took the blinders off