Last week while working on the truck I broke yet another camera.  My second Lumix ZS7 had a broken viewing screen after I rolled on it working on the truck - had it in my camera case on my belt -inside of a semi-hardshell.  At least this time I had insurance on it. 

Amazon offered me the Square Trade insurance for it and I bought it since I had just destroyed another one.  They fulfilled the warranty even before I sent the camera back in - in fact while I was down sending it in.  I went for the Amazon gift card so may upgrade as I get a new one. 

It seems that an everyday -wear on your belt camera's chances of survival are not so good.....at least if they are taking their chances with me.

According to Square Trade, their insurance may be cheaper if I buy direct from them.  Good insurance if you think you might kill something before it's time.

https://www.squaretrade.com/pages/   Just in case anyone needs it - not affiliated with me.

On another note... using the above Actron Tester, my last needed sensor cleared for smog test today during the first step of the drive cycle .... the Oxygen Sensor Heater circuit.  I muffed it yesterday as I turned the key on and off one time before the test.  That blew it for the day... no more chances.   I had one left (evap) but the state allows one, so I got the truck smogged.  Nice to know things are working right.  It tested extremely clean and well below the state allowances for emissions.  Yea.....

Planted a dozen more cabbage plants in the winter garden today and talked with the neighbor about our shared upcoming fence project.  We will fence his place across the top then we will be ready to share our pastures between our three places.  I have already fenced down both sides of his place and repaired the bottom fence.  He will gain the benefit of using our spring, we will gain the benefit of crossing and using his pasture. 

We will both benefit from improved fire protection by the cows removing the grass and brush and he will be able to get a couple head of cattle too.  He has concerns about the north side of the road as I do so I mentioned that we could fence it also and turn the cows in there to clean it up.  Easier than us working to do it.  [ouch]

Amazon customer service is the best. Of course their catch is they will bill you for it if you don't return it with something like 30 days.


Glad the emissions thing worked out. I'm also glad my county doesn't make me have to deal with emissions tests.

That is probably the deal - this is through the Square Trades insurance and the broke camera goes to them --- sent already and new one ordered already.  Gift card went through fine on the credit through Amazon.

I read reviews of DSLR's but found some who had both the ZS7 and one of the DSLR entry level Lumix's.  He rated the ZS7 better on pix quality than the more high end one.  All I could do was order the same model as the one I broke.....again.

It was a relief sitting in front of the O'Reilly Auto parts when I installed the IAC valve,  started the truck and saw the idle drop from 1200 to 600 for the first time since I got the truck.  Actually the idle went up from about 1000 to 1200 after I cleaned the IAC and related parts of the throttle body.  Once the idle dropped I was pretty sure things were going to get better. 

My new camera will be here tonight. 
I am going to try harder to not break it.....though I thought I was already doing that with the last one.  [ouch]

Tomorrow night the 2011 Humphrey Fellowship group from UC Davis will arrive. 

David has asked if they could tour the Cabin on Saturday before they leave, so we know we will at least have them then. 

Possibly we will get to host one or two of them also,  Depends on if they need us for that or not.  We will soon see.  I understand there will be a Potluck dinner for their arrival Thursday night.  Great to have them coming back this year as we also continue to remain in contact with many of our last years visitors.

OK... got the camera last night - I usually go for Amazon Warehouse Deals......open boxes and such......and save a hundred bucks or so.  This is the first time that did not work out.  They sent me a broken camera complete with the return authorization from the last customer because it was broken in the un-inspected box.  Got a return authorization and am sending it back, but have to wait a bit for the credit.... 

On cool note, one of our past International Student visitors in Brazil has asked me to review her English Report paper for errors and grammar.  She did not stay at the Underground Complex but was one of the group and I stay in contact with her.  Hey, that's what an extended family dad is for. 

Also chatted with Ana in Mexico City of last years Humphrey Fellows and told her of our "this years" group tonight.  She said Hi to all and sent her love to the Mariposa community.  How cool is that. 

Was just talking to Myo from Myanmar on Facebook - he knew we were going to have another Humphrey Fellow from Myanmar visiting this week.  The weather was supposed to be rainy but now it is supposed to be fairly nice 

http://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-home-living/hobbit-house-zb0z11zkel.aspx?newsletter=1&utm_content=11.11.11+GEGH&utm_campaign=GEGH&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email


Ineresting.

Thanks for posting that, Ben.  I saw that home once before and it has always been one of my favorites. 

I spent the day hiking in Yosemite with our Humphrey Fellowship guests.  We have had some great discussions learning about their families and their views on world events, happenings in their countries and how it ties to our country.  A great cultural exchange and opportunity to make more International friends.... that is if you can imagine me with any culture...

We had Hugues from Haiti and Thang from Burma as our guests this week at the Underground Complex.

Here is a shot of Hugues and me headed up the mist trail in the park. 



We are hoping to get him and his wife and daughter to drop in again next month when she comes to visit.

Out of time tonight but hope to get a bit more up tomorrow. 

you would never guess hes from a much warmer climate would you? 

Bundled up just in case. [ouch]

Hugues said he does not want to run for President of Haiti due to the commitments and pressures that are put on the President, but he does want to get back in May as soon as his time with the Fellowship program is completed to help with the elections and to help guide his country in the proper direction.

Hugues wanted to check out the engine of the 1926 Dodge as he is a decent mechanic himself and does not limit himself to learning just the things needed for his professional life.  We had so many wonderful discussions with Hugues.



World events?...... This guy has no problem understanding what is going on in the world.

http://humphrey.ucdavis.edu/fellowship/2011_2012/louisJacques.html     Hugues Bio.

It was an extreme honor to have the entire group come up to visit us at the Underground Complex again this year and once again stretch their planned half hour visit to over an hour of fun discussion, tour and cultural exchange. 

Before we went to meet the others this morning (before their visit to the underground command center) we checked things out at the cabin a bit more.  We had more of the great discussions around the breakfast table also.

Thang had to study over the workings of the table a bit ....checking out how it all worked.  As a child he went to do a bit of logging in India to help support himself and his family.  There he caught malaria and nearly died ... one of two times.  I will get the story up on Youtube so you can listen for yourselves.



http://humphrey.ucdavis.edu/fellowship/2011_2012/zaLian.html   Thang's bio.

Another time he told us about nearly dying of malaria was when working in a jade mine.  Their area is quite similar to the mother lode around us and we do in fact have a few jade areas around here as they do gold, there. 

Thang said they mined the jade digging it out of the serpentine type rock area.  When they found a decent piece, they got half of the money for it and the mine owner got the other 50%.  I believe it was here that he got malaria again and the owner of the house they were staying at asked his brother to take him away from the house because they did not want him to die there.  His brother injected a shot of quinine into his veins and in about a month he recovered.  Whether it was the quinine or the malaria, he had to walk bent legged for a while - kind of cramped I understand, until he recovered his strength.  Thang said he was pretty well down to just skin over a skeleton of bones when he had the malaria.

It was very cool to have another extended family member from Burma (Myanmar) as after Myo was here last year I had studied up on Burma and had lots of questions to ask and things to talk about.  I rode up in the van with Thang this time rather than driving because we had plenty of transportation so we got to share a lot of dialogue along the way to Yosemite.

Stay tuned... more soon.

WOW!I'm still blown away by your visitors and there stories.I hope he can help his country and maybe teach our,ummm leaders a thing or three.

Ben, I always tell them it is such a privilege for us to have them visit because it is like us traveling to a far away country without ever leaving home.

We talked about Haiti after the earthquake.  There are things I will not go into here, but one thing he mentioned is that Bill Clinton and George HW Bush went down there to "help"..... what could I say??? 

Those chilling words of US fame .... "Hi, we're from the federal government (of the US) and we're here to help."  That should have started up the terrorist alarms right there, eh?     

Well, help is not very fast coming, nor does it seem like it is intended to be.

We talked about the UN's world depopulation plans, and Hugues said that from an American viewpoint it seems possibly very cruel and uncaring (paraphrasing), but when you have watched a man who had two sons, but could only afford to feed one, have to send the second one into a life of servitude for a person or family member with money so he could eat and just stay alive, then maybe you would not feel that the plan is so bad.  The second child could literally be sent into a life of slavery for the rest of his life to the person who fed him and kept him from death.

We also talked about how it is such a shame that the US spends billions of dollars around the world supporting places where we have economic interests yet we also have starving children here.  Don't get me wrong.  He is not for a welfare state either.  There is no entitlement or massive bank loan - sell your soul to the banker system in Haiti either at least for the common people.

Here is our breakfast table interview of Hugues from Haiti on Saturday morning.  He is a very well educated and passionate speaker when you get him wound up, and we did that a few times.  Very enjoyable to have the honor to spend time with him and the rest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfneO0IlqCg

Thang thinks getting an investment in his country from the rest of the world could be a benefit for them.  We talked about how it can be good for the people as jobs come in but then again how you sell a major part of your life to pay the bankers interest and sell your life (or the life of the people) at low cost to big industry, so there is no free ride. 

He also understands that, but considers that it may be a better option than starvation and so many poor people.  We talked about how the bankers loan money... build things up and then pull the rug out from under everyone also and then gobble up everything in sight as people lose their property as we recently have seen here.  After that the cycle starts over again ...unless they have other plans.

I wonder though... is bringing in big business and modernizing the lives of these people adept at the old way of doing things really better?  Tractors do not fertilize the rice paddy as the water buffalo do... commercial fertilizer from the corporate giants must be brought in.  Soon the patented seed will take over and Monsanto or Cargil or some other corporate entity will own another part of their culture.....if that hasn't happened already.

Here is a little video Saturday morning from Thang.  Interesting stuff if you care to have a listen.

http://youtu.be/3foM4yTBr6A

I realized I have been making a mistake in some of this.  I have interviewed our house guests but failed to interview the rest of our Humphrey fellows.  Sorry.  I will try to improve next time. [ouch]

One more time... I have to conclude that the people of any country... the good ones... just want to have peace, get along with their neighbors and survive.  Universally, our guests nearly always invite us to come and see them in their country.  The quest for power, greed and control is where the trouble starts....

It is an honor and great pleasure to be able to offer them a home away from home and to invite them to become part of our extended family. 

Saturday morning with the entire group of UC Davis Aggies here, I thought it was only proper that we go down and have a look at the cows... right...?   

So we took the extended tour... messed up David's half hour estimate again....everybody goes... half hour, yeah right.  So David said, "OK...5 minutes then."  That got a good laugh.

Harriet and Huguette were down by the corral when I shot this pix.  Huguette was only in the states for a little bit when she found she was not alone.....



Yup... she has a hitchhiker who is supposed to join us as a US citizen next month.  What a bonus that is for us.  Two for the price of one.  Someway we will get to see the baby before she goes home.  We are already trying to get them to make a second visit... or more...

http://humphrey.ucdavis.edu/fellowship/2011_2012/ngilambiNzebiIgebe.html

She works on monitoring the Congo Basin in the Satellite Observatory of Central Africa Forest.

Huguette is from the Congo and she speaks eight languages..... [ouch] ..

I do two and neither of them well....



Harriet hiked on up with us to about mid point of the falls then we decided to head in and go see my buddy, Ben in the Indian (native American) Museum in the valley.  Shuttle bus trip is about 15 minutes from the base of the trailhead.

Harriet is a District Natural Resources Officer for the Government of Uganda.

http://humphrey.ucdavis.edu/fellowship/2011_2012/saawo.html

Danny runs not only a 200 hectare (about 500 acres as I recall) College farm to suppliment the school income,  in the Philippines but has his own farm to run too.    A happy friendly live wire, he was off up the mountains of Yosemite way ahead of me, so I didn't get many pix of him.  I was able to pull one off where he was taking photos of the others.  Danny is going to send me a link to some info from his college about terrace farming in the Philippines.



http://humphrey.ucdavis.edu/fellowship/2011_2012/ga-as.html

As the Director, Office for Resource Generation, Caraga State University, Butuan City, Philippines, Danny is busy quite often day and night keeping things going that just won't wait for regular working hours.

Always smiling and willing to share information. 

Marina from Brazil.... the Boss.......

She also is a jolly one, full of smiles.  It was fun to listen to her stories of her work in Brazil as well as to answer her questions about the crazy things I do.  I was amazed I could hold her interest with my stories but I managed and I have to say it was an honor to have her and the rest of the Humphrey fellows share a bit of their time with us simple country folk....

Coordinator, Agriculture Certification Program
IMAFLORA  São Paulo, Brazil



http://humphrey.ucdavis.edu/fellowship/2011_2012/piatto.html

Smiling all of the time but I'll bet she could be a really tough inspector, eh? 



Had to add a picture of Hugues daughter who will come to visit us next month.  She is so cute I couldn't resist...ummm borrowing a picture of her....

I forgot to mention that Marina said the Underground Complex tour was (almost?) more fun that going to Yosemite.   






She had lots of questions about how the house was built and fortunately I was able to answer her question about how I got the logs.... No, I was not an evil de-forester    .... These logs were from bug kills, thinning operations to improve the health of the forest or in J's case, fire kill salvage, using trees for shelter that would otherwise rot....[ouch]

Many of the Internationals in the Humphrey Fellowship work toward preventing deforestation or preventing desert encroachment and saving the environment.  Once it is gone, many times it will not recover.....

Stay tuned ... more to come later...   

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.......... [ouch]


SOoooooo.... after about an hour of discussion and touring the Underground Complex, our friends from the Humphrey Fellowship had to move on.......



We waved goodbye...and followed them ........

....down the road a few miles to my buddy J's place to see how the new generation of Underground House is going.


After I helped them get the first layer of dirt on a few weeks ago, they continued to work and got the pond liner on, the second layer of dirt on and got grass planted on the roof to prevent erosion. 





We took our international friends and support group into the u-house and showed them the basic concepts behind the construction.  J made his into a bit of a hybrid incorporating a log cabin into the front half.  It has a gentle sloping fairly flat roof to keep the profile low in the front but he has used the premium EPDM pond liner to prevent any leaks from the slower drainage.  He has also reduced the depth of soil to about half of design loading.




Once we had our friends trapped inside, J and I gave them a fairly complete explanation of the concepts and improvements or changes that were incorporated into his design.  A couple of the major ones would be EPDM rather than poly, and French Drains installed at the start to prevent moisture problems.

Here we have the captive audience as we show them how things work.... no rest for the Humphreys... we had to make it a bit educational too.  Wonder if they get to claim credits for that.....



As you may remember from earlier in the thread, J had to remove a stump with the Bobcat and before he knew it he had dug an entire root cellar under his kitchen.

Note the young human down in the bottom...



Harriet was checking out the great room and kitchen area.  Note the centrally located wood stove behind.  J has given a lot of thought to air movement throughout the cabin and I think his ventilation plans will work out well.




TTYL   

That UH is turning out way different than I imagined it would.Looks great.Way better than these $200,000 1200sqft grid houses being built assembly line fashion around here.

J is keeping track of his expenses, and even with the premium EPDM pond liner membrane, French Drains and root cellar, he thinks he will be complete for $8000.

Included in that would be a couple Bobcat Rentals too besides mine.

Good deal for that big of a cabin.Last longer than these newer houses too.

No lifetime of debt... wouldn't it be nice...

We currently have a couple of new tomatoes on the plants we salvaged from the garden and planted in the hydroponics.  Not doing extremely well yet but it is something.  I have to readjust the formula a bit.  Seems it is still short on nitrogen.  I have some of the old nutrient as well as some tomato formula.  Also I need to mix up some serious organic aphid spray.  Got rid of a lot of them but still some there.  The vegetables are growing but still need a bit more nitrogen too.



Not sure how they will do with the short winter days.  Garden grown ones fail to ripen this time of year usually and I don't have lights but am considering some fluorescent lights to supplement the daylight for a bit.  Some mylar could help too I bet.  Not all that much excess electricity to get too crazy with lights but we have some.

Also - woke up early enough to chase down the tree trimmers and offer them a tip to get me some wood chips here to the complex.  Beats me having to load and carry them here if I can even find them.  There are piles the county leaves along the road but usually in unsafe places and hand loading is not so fun.

We want to improve the gardens and terraces so we are watching out for good natural and unnatural resources....



In the tree to the right you may see a cable attached for a zip line.  Soon look here for pictures of me or various kids smashed into the ground at the lower end....

Those tomato plants were heirloom tomatoes Glenn bought last April.  They sat for a couple months until I planted them in the ground.  The weather had been cool.  Anyway, we never got the automatic irrigation on this year w/Glenn gone so I had to hand water everything everyday.  When I'd be gone 3 days to visit him while he was working, the tomatoes & pepper plants didn't get watered & were totally stressed & wilted by the time I'd get back.

We decided to take a chance that they'd grow in the hydroponics.  Up to this point there had been no tomatoes although there'd been blossoms.  So looks like we might get some tomatoes, yet    Can't remember which variety of heirloom these were.  We did have some volunteer cherry tomatoes this year. 

SAW.....Soap, Alcohol, Water....1 tablespoon cheap lemon/citrus dish soap, 3 tablespoons rubbing alcohol (added last), 1 gallon water.....Mix water and soap in a spray bottle (shake well) add alcohol....for real bad infestations you can add a bit of neem oil or vegtable oil but I have found not all trees/plants like the oil....
TT

Thanks, TT.  I knew there was something they didn't like.  Myo use a mix with EM and hot peppers too.  I didn't check for a recipe and ours was not totally effective.

I'll have to try that recipe - thanks TT!

TT I love those simple cheap alternatives to expensive chemicals.Thanks and