Holy Cow Tractor Pulling Team

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

We changed Internet Providers
Our old ISP, Globesurfer, as a helpful gesture added spam filtering. What that did was essentially block all incoming e-mail, at least sporadically. Repeated calls to him only resulted him is justifying why every one who sent us mail was doing it wrong and deserved to get bounced. So we bounced him. Tonight we signed up with a new ISP and switched everything over. Same e-mail addresses, only they should work reliably. If you have any problems, let us know.

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Tornado!
The excitement for tonight was watching tornados form and get sucked back up into the clouds. I was in the shop working on a car and, other than being a little overcast, it was basically a decent day. My neighbor across the street started yelling at me and said his wife called on the phone and said a tornado was headed towards Russiaville and was due to hit at 5:48. It was 5:42. I thought he was yanking my chain, but he stood in his yard and started pointing at the sky. They I heard the Forest, IN sirens go off. I ran into the house and asked Stacey, who was on the phone, if the weather radio went off. She said it just did. I said it was for a tornado in Clinton Co and she look out the window and said "there it is." So, like the dumb asses with 4 teeth they always interview on TV, we went outside to watch. She rounded the pets up in the basement and I secured stuff as best I could outside. There was dark clouds little tails would drop down, start spinning together and then suck back up in the clouds. It rained briefly, We just watched for about 10 minutes the little tails and the cones pop in and out of the clouds. Then, we heard a crash across the field and I saw what I thought was a flock of birds take off from a cluster of trees. It turns out that was pieces of a barn roof. Next we could hear strong wind, like standing in the shoulder of the interstate. We started running back to the house and looked to the east and saw debris flying across the road. Suddenly, the road went brown. I don't know if it was branches, or corn husks, maybe even dirt. In a few seconds, it was clear again and we heard another crash. Then as quickly as it came, it was gone. The sky cleared and the sun came out.

Soon thereafter, there was a flurry of emergency vehicles and rubber neckers. We knew something at our neighbors a mile away happened, so several of us went over there. They have a house and had a few barns. Some barns they rented out to neighbors. Other than a bent piece of aluminum on the house, it suffered no damage, but the barns were gone. There was an RV upside down on top of one of the barns. We worked for about 2 hours with about 20 other neighbors peeling back stuff to move the equipment that was stored in the barns to a new location. What a night. I don't think anyone was hurt, but they did lose a sheep and maybe other will need to be put down, and a few chickens.

Saturday, April 10, 2004

Updates
Wow, it has been over a month since I blogged. I have been so busy, time is just flying by.

Progress is being made on the tractor. Everything is apart. Some parts are out getting machining or whatever done to them. New parts are either here are should arrive shortly.

Next was my second trip to Paris. This time I took Stacey with me. I had a week of hardware and software design reviews at our client and Stacey had the day to sitesee. Her cousin, Melissa, came along as well and they had a great time. After work, the three of us went out for more. I then extended the trip 4 more days of vacation. As of Friday that week, I had spent a total of 2 weeks in Paris and only got one day of siteseeing in daylight. In four days we went to Versailles, Watched some of the Paris Marathon, the Pompadeau, Toured Notre Dame during the Palm Sunday Mass, a Pipe organ concert at St Eustache Church, the Louvre, a siteseeing cruise, Vincennes, the Concierge, St Chappelle, and the Catacombs. We ended the frenzy with dinner with an artist that works for our client. He took us to Chez Jenny which is a famous Parisien restaurant serving food from the NE region of France, his home area. It is very German. I had sausage and sauerkraut with a fruity white wine. Fantastic!

I also updated our schedule. When I got back, a new Wolverine schedule was waiting in my inbox (along with 165 other e-mails). It looks like Michigan is not going to co-sanction any HSTPA mod hooks. In addition, there are now numerous conflicts between HSTPA and Wolverine. So, we opted for not buying a Wolverine license this year and will stick to HSTPA pulls. There are also several conflicts between HSTPA and NTPA RN II, so as far as a points race goes, it will only be HSTPA this year. We are planning on hitting all the RN II hooks after the Enderle Pull Off to get points for 2005 in case scheduling allows us to run RN II next year.

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