Greetings and welcome!
I have a couple of quick weekend notes to update you on.
First up is that the fall colors made huge strides in the past few days. A lot of the maples are starting to come into color, and a few other species as well.
Item two is that we had a lot of rain last night. The USGS gauge by Kosirs says that we saw about 1.5″, bringing this week’s totals to about 3″. That could be very easily understated. It will be a little muddy in places.
That brings us to my third point, the prediction of the Peshtigo River being prime for rafting this weekend. I predicted a level of +12. We blew through that running away last night. It is probably about +14 right now and the gauge is going almost straight up. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t 16″+ tomorrow. The weather will be nice. Call Kosir’s.
The jury is still out on the cell phone booster.
Don’t forget about the Country Fling at Fisher’s Camp Saturday.
BTW, it is Friday the 13th and the full moon is just after midnight.
Gotta zoom. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB
Tuesday’s Update..
9-10-19
Greetings and welcome!
My apologies for missing my updates last week. I have been so busy that if I had a clone it would take a month to catch up.. and the phone keeps ringing. It is good to have plenty of work, just not all at once while I am trying to do pre-winter chores.
We had a lot of rain last night. The radar returns estimated about 1/2”. No. Not even close. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s says 1”, bringing our one week total to 2”. That is closer, but I will insist that it was over an inch. There were a lot of waves of really heavy rain. There was a lot of thunder and lightning too.
This morning was dreary, windy and damp. It was a classic wet fall day. It reminded me of a lesson that I learned the hard way many years ago. When I have a couple of weeks in fall to do outside work above 50 degrees it is really a lot less. Between the short days and stormy weather a couple of weeks is really a lot less.
The fall color show is getting started. It seems late this year. There is one species of early maple that is full blood red right now. Otherwise the maples in my yard, mostly silver maple, are getting a branch here and there that is changing. A lot of the trees are getting a lot lighter green, indicating that they are getting started. The ferns are yellow and the sumac are starting their change too.
For now there is not a lot of color. My thought yesterday driving home was maybe 5% of the show is there.
The wet fall weather is not lost on the local whitewater rivers. The Peshtigo is running at about a +6” and is on the way up. Normally it would be about zero. I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see it go to +12 by the weekend. Yes they still whitewater raft after Labor Day. The crowds are smaller, but they raft for most of September. If you are lucky you will hit it when the fall colors on the river are in their full glory.
I have two events for this weekend. In Lakewood they are having their Festi-Fall weekend. https://www.ocontocounty.org/events/?i=festi-fall-2019-09-14&d=2019-09&view=l
Also Fisher’s Camp is having their Country Fling this Saturday.
The County Fling started at Parkway Inn many years ago when Augie & Eveie owned it and Ron & Karen kept up the tradition. They are in the process of being sold and went to an end of summer party. Augie & Eveie’s grandson Evan runs Fisher’s Camp now, and he is continuing the Country Fling tradition. There will be several bands and the cookout and all of the fun stuff that goes with it.
Something that a lot of people want to know about has been the subject of a lot of my research lately. That would be cell phone boosters. The girlfriend’s new house is in an area lower that some areas between it and the tower, and the signal needs some help.
Most people around here have Cellcom phones, and those run off of Verizon towers. ATT based phones work OK by Hwy 32 & 141, but when I tried them in between the highways I had very little success. Our phones run off of the Verizon/Cellcom towers so that is what I am dealing with.
My surveys show that most areas run off of band 13 700mhz frequencies. I did get a band 4 in Crivitz. I would guess that the band 4 is the ATT offering.
I can buy multi-band boosters, and Wilson Electronics or We Boost are the ones to have. The bad news is that they start at about $400. I have one of those set up at the GF’s old house now and it works good.
The hook is that I only need one band and I really don’t want to pay another $400. I bought a single band booster ($200) that just does the channel 13/700mhz bands. As soon as I get the chance I am going to see if it works out or not.
It has a yagi directional antenna that works much the same way as cupping your hands over your ear to hear something better. With that antenna outside and up on the roof it gets a much stronger signal to amplify (8Db gain). The price of that is that it needs to be pointed at the cell tower very accurately. Overall it could potentially do up to a 65Db gain. We will see.
Something that I found out along the way was that they are going to phase out the 2G/3G 1900mhz early phones possibly as soon as the end of the year.
There has been a lot of utility construction in the ditches around here recently. They have been on Hwy A, Hwy C, and down Parkway Rd south. Some of the pipe that they are laying is orange, indicating telecom cable. Some of it is just a normal black cable. They are also installing quite a few termination or frame boxes along the ditches.
So what is going on? I am not sure, but if I had to guess I would say that they are running lines for cable TV/Internet. It could easily be just the phone co doing upgrades, but they put a new cable down Hwy C about 10 years ago. I just don’t know.
Could Silver Cliff finally be getting a high speed internet provider? It would be nice to get off of that $94 a month satellite habit and the 4G cell phone internet that clogs up on weekends. I will try to get a straight answer.
That is it for me today. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB
