How'd it go today?

Also, will power, practice, and strategy can have a positive impact on serious mental illness. However, when one is dealing with considerable chemical imbalances in their brain that are legitimately deleterious to their quality of life, oftentimes it's best to fight fire with fire and remedy the chemical imbalance with another chemical (a drug) that can provide that balance.
 
Today was one of those rare days where the temps in NH are in the 90's range AND the dew point is oppressive. Those of us living and working with coronary heart disease find this weather horrible!

Climbed and wrecked out a huge Pine today and wanted to puke the whole time. Just a nasty day.
 
I got an email today from a massive online marketplace offering me a brand deal. In other words, they were offering me money and free products in return for promoting those products and their website in my videos.

At first I was pretty excited until I visited the website and performed various searches for keywords like "arborist gear," "climbing ropes," "carabiners," "tree climbing equipment," etc. Simply put, it was all garbage.

The website was Temu.com, which, after some research, is an enormously popular marketplace similar to Wish or Alibaba. But I also found out that, unlike most major online markets, they aren't registered with the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and they are also Chinese-owned. They also don't have any regulations in place to ensure that none of their products are being made via forced labor, which is unfortunately prevalent in certain regions of China. There were some other red flags, but you get the picture.

I simply couldn't possibly align myself with their brand, so I emailed them back saying I would pass. It's nice to have gotten my first brand deal offer, though. That felt pretty good.

Anyways, I'm putting all the finishing touches into cleaning my apartment before I leave for Boston on Sunday. Really stressed out, but also excited. It all sort of feels like it's not real; hard to explain. Just so much going on in my life right now that it's hard to spend any time really focusing on any single thing, or even the bigger picture. It's just one task after the next so that I can survive and improve my quality of life, and hopefully put my future onto a much happier and more prosperous trajectory.

We'll see how it goes. I'm unusually optimistic for a change.

EDIT: What's really interesting is that tons of other content creators on YouTube and TikTok, etc. promote Temu. You'd have to be either blind or money hungry to support this company.
 
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Temu doesn't have a good reputation. Chinese junk, and shady practices. At least you were noticed. Means people are watching, and the vultures are noticing. You'll get the vultures you want after awhile :^)
 
Seems like I picked up a couple new cats. These are the young ones I was talking about. One's a catch/release for sure. I think the other one is too, but it's hard to see. Both are very timid, and very skinny. I wonder who's fixing cats and setting them free without providing food? Kind of a weird thing to do. I really like the one that's eating now. That's the one that chased the fox away last week. Hope I can get them settled down over time.
 
I've been eying some red oak storm damage for about a week as possible peg stock. I tossed the 395XP in the trunk an hour ago and went after a round. I cut out the best looking piece and was putting the saw away, when I heard a vehicle pull up. The guy got out demanding to know I was, and who I worked for, and that he lived around the corner, presumably the land owner. I had just grabbed an axe out of the trunk to square up the block for easier handling. I turned around and said I was just salvaging some storm damage for peg stock. He said that was fine, and I could take all I wanted. Oh, and what is peg stock? :lol: Apparently he was trying to figure out who had pushed the tree onto his land (the town highway dept), and who had been cutting it up slowly over the last week (local woodchucks scavenging). You just never know what is in the trunk of that VW in front of you.
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What attribute makes the best peg stock? I think I read pin oak is good for that. Dunno. Is that true?
 
Very straight, clear grain. You want to be high enough on the trunk to get away from the taper. Doesn't pin oak have a lot of very small knots in it, even under the best of conditions?
 
Who can tell why it’s eating couplers?
I guess that's an hydraulique pump, so the unbalance can be discarded. Probably not a bent shaft nor a bad bearing.
It would be nice to have a pic of the other parts and some measurements because it's hard to tell what goes where with certainty ( perspective and different pics) and the system looks a bit strange to me.
The pump's mounting looks fine, excepted being trashed in the inside by some of the bolts coming loose. The main suspect for me is that the circular plate is bolted to the engine by two rows of four bolts:
The outside row holds the pump's mount and the circular plate at the same time.
The internal bolts' raw is the problem, beside coming loose: the plate has no support under these bolts against the load created by them. I only guess for the respective diameters, but for me, there's a gap between even the inner peripheral support and the threaded mounts on the casting ( the closest ones to the shaft). I'm not very clear. The plate vibrates under the bolts, so they cant keep their tightening torque and come loose.
What is the purpose of this plate anyway? A dust protector ?
As a solution, if you ask it, I would suggest, either suppress the internal row of bolts (actually I don't find their utility) or reduce the OD of the plate to make it fit in the deepest circular recess. With the second solution, the external bolts' row holds only the pump's mount, the internal row holds alone the circular plate, but with a real tightening.
Maybe...

For which engine is this cylinder head with the giant valves?
 
Very straight, clear grain. You want to be high enough on the trunk to get away from the taper. Doesn't pin oak have a lot of very small knots in it, even under the best of conditions?
It does. It can be almost conifer-like, but perhaps isn't too bad low on the stem. I could also be mis-remembering. Timber framing/wood crafting isn't something I do, so I don't pay as close attention as I could. It's interesting, but not something I need to remember, so stuff I learn doesn't always stick well, or gets jumbled.
 
Having a great long weekend. Besides the normal hiking and four wheeling when we go camping here, we rented a pontoon for the day over at the lake. John and I took all the kids fishing this morning and then the women joined us around noon for some lake time. Fun times had by all. Just chilling by the fire now.
 
That was pretty interesting Dave. Is that drawknife a little big for that? Seems like it might be easier with one a little smaller.
 
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