Free-to-air (FTA) satellite TV fun

Hey, boys and girls. Another one of my hobbies is TV. Not just watching, but finding different ways to get programming without having to shovel out more $$ to a service provider. Yeah, there's some cost in hardware but it often comes in cheaper than what we pay in a year to someone like BellTV (our current satellite TV company).

I download quite a lot of our regular programming using a Mac Mini hooked to the TV, but in doing some research for another satellite reason I learned about some newer recievers capable of picking up digital signals using the big C-band dish we happen to still have in the back yard. Even more interesting is that they can pick up both standard definition and high definition channels. Looking at this page tells me there's actually a lot of free programming being beamed around the world and everything marked with a "C" I could pick up!

So I started studying FTA (free-to-air) receivers capable of picking up C-band signals. I settled on the Openbox S9, an amazingly affordable (as in just $150Cdn) box capable of receiving HD signals and PVR functions (with a separate external hard drive). This box runs Linux software internally and is pretty snappy. It also blindscans satellites really fast so in just a couple of minutes I can see what channels are available on a satellite.

As this box doesn't directly control the motor out on the dish, I'm using our old Uniden Ultra receiver that we originally bought with the old 10-foot dish to move the dish and then we flip back to the Openbox to watch what's on the current satellite. I've ordered another little box called the V-Box 7 that will make dish moving somewhat automatic when we change satellites on the Openbox which will be nice, but it's not too big of a hassle to change inputs on the TV to use different receivers. I remember the days when we had to get up and turn the dial just to change channels!

What are we watching? Well, we're really into all the Retro TV channels on the AMC 3 satellite. I think there's almost 30 of them. Carla and I grew up with shows like The A-Team, Emergency, Knight Rider and now the kids are enjoying them, too! It's way better than all the reality crap on TV now! We've also watched a bit of FX but there's so much out there and I'm just learning the ins and outs of trying to get all the channels to scan in.

I've done a bit of "testing" in the past with hacked FTA recievers but this is so much better because it's legal so there's need to wait for a "fix" when the keys are changed. Just tune in and channel surf!

Techie update

You may recall that I've been working on rebuilding my PC with new parts. I put the parts together a week or so ago and they went together without much hassle. The grate over the fan on the power supply made it a tight fit over a bracket but that was the hardest part physically and a little muscle made it fit!

Getting the machine to boot properly was a problem initially. The machine would power up, indicated by the fans spinning, but the screen remained black. At first I was terrified that I had a dead motherboard or a dead video card. After much testing and switching video connections I determined there was an issue with the new video card but it's caused by the power supply (I think!). I've installed a 400-watt power supply, which I assumed would be plenty as the old one was only 300 watts. But it appears that it's not supplying enough current to power the video card properly. This motherboard has on-board video which works fine on it's own but only if the other card is not installed. When the extra card is installed I get no video from it or from the onboard. So for now the new card sits in a box while I await a new Antec 550-watt power supply putting out a lot more current over the so-called 12-volt rails. I'm not too informed on how a power supply puts out power but it appears from reading online that that's what's needed here. The one currently installed only puts out 16 amps, but the Antec will put out 24 I think. I hope it works!

In the meantime the PC does seem snappier with the extra horsepower in the CPU itself as well as the newer faster hard drive. Windows XP boots much faster! I've got all my drivers and some of my games reinstalled. As my Mac Mini is my primary computer I don't have many applications to install but I did leave a separate 200GB partition free on the hard disk to install Linux at a later date, too.

About the same time as I've been working on my box the kids PC has quit working, too. It's an older 1.8Ghz IBM Netvista box. When it quit working properly I noticed the fans not working and now I'm worried heat has killed it. But it did boot a couple of times before I took it apart to test the power supply which I've replaced once before. It does power up on a different power supply but won't boot. The problem is that a generic power supply doesn't fit physically but I've got one sitting on top of the case powering it so I figure it should still boot though. I haven't looked at it for a few days so may next time I do it will magically boot...right?

Exciting new PC build coming

I admit it. I'm a nerd. I love computers. That should be obvious by now. Though I'm somewhat mechanically inclined, I don't feel competent working on engines and the like. Give me a computer to work on and I'm (usually) happy. I'm mostly running Macs in day-to-day life but I do have a desktop PC for games and the occasional use when something doesn't run on a Mac.

My current PC is a homebuilt machine that currently runs an AMD Athlon XP-M 2200 CPU on an ECS K7S5A motherboard. With stock settings it runs at 1.8GHz but I usually run it overclocked at around 2.0GHz. I have 1.5GB of DDR RAM plugged into the board as well as a BFG Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS AGP 512MB video card. For sound I still use a venerable Soundblaster Live! PCI sound card. There's a collection of hard drives from which I boot Mandriva Linux, Windows XP and even tried Haiku OS (a derivative of BeOS). It's starting to show its age and has always had an occasional bit of trouble booting at the correct CPU speed. I think it's time to move on.

Now what's a bit funny is that I trace the history of this box back to a store-bought Pentium 166 machine I bought way back in 1997. Over the years I've replaced bits and pieces along the way until really there's nothing left of the original machine. I think the last piece left was the 3.5-inch floppy drive which I only just pulled a few months ago to slide in another hard drive. Yes, even the case and power supply aren't original.

I think the current configuration is nearing five years old now and it's time to rebuild. Now, I'm on a budget so some of the parts I've purchased are used bits from eBay. The heart of the system will be an ASRock N68-S motherboard fitted with an AMD Athlon II X2 240 CPU which is a dual-core chip running at 2.8GHz. Another used item will be the video card. In this case I've chosen an Asus Nvidia Geforce 9600 GSO 512MB PCI-Express video card. New products going into this build are a 500MB Seagate SATA2 hard drive, a CoolerMaster 500-watt power supply and 2GB of Corsair dual-channel DDR2 RAM.

Hard-core gamers would probably roll their eyes at this build but I'm not going for all-out speed. I'm spending the least amount of money to get something quite a bit faster than what I have. I don't play games that often and the games I currently have will keep me busy for a while yet so I don't plan to get any of the newer system-taxing games.

What do I play? I like my combat flight simulators and racing simulators, though I mostly tend to play the rFactor racing mods since it's easy to just jump into the game and drive, but then it's complex enough that I can still adjust anti-roll bars, spring rates and wing angles to get better car control and lap times.

So anyway, now that I know all my new goodies have shipped, I'll be keeping an eye on the post office! I can't wait to get started on building my new beast!

So we got the milk, what do we do with the cream?

I'd like to nudge you over to Carla's blog to see how we turned cream from our milk (now that we have some) into butter! Click the link below to find out all about it.

Got milk?

Our milking has slowed a little as the Momma cow's calf became sick. I feared it was getting pneumonia as it was breathing heavy. I gave it a dose of Micotil (an injectible antibiotic for respiratory illness in cattle) and hoped for the best. Despite it getting quite cold out about the time Dot got sick (-23C one night) she seems to have recovered well. For now I'm leaving it all the milk Momma has and had an opportunity to milk Daisy the Dexter who actually cooperated quite well. So I might just stay with milking her instead. We shall see how it goes!

Revisiting Cow Milking

Last fall when we purchased a couple of Dexter cows (a miniature dual-purpose breed) we tried our hand at milking. The experiment lasted only a couple of weeks when Daisy decided she'd had enough. A couple of weeks ago we had another cow have a late calf and Carla asked if it would be possible to milk her. After some thought I figured I'd give it a try as this cow has a very quiet temperament. We've had her from birth and she's a full size cow, half Angus (mother) and half Hereford (father). She has no name as we usually don't name our cows, but her tag is 4D15. As you might be able to tell from the photo above, her calf has been dubbed Dot. It's a little heifer calf.

The cow hasn't gotten quite used to the whole milking procedure yet. She began very concerned for her calf. When we began I was putting her into a so-called "maternity pen" designed for assisting cows at calving time which didn't quite work for getting her into a headgate properly restrained. Even with a tub of grain in front of her it was hard to convince her to cooperate. When I found an opportunity I setup our portable cattle handling system in our barnyard (it spends the summer setup at our pasture corrals). Look it up here. It's a big long green thing with wheels. This machine is specially designed for cattle flow and restraint and is working far better. Another thing which helps is that once the cow is in the headgate, she is looking at the corral she came from where her calf is, so I think she's less worried. Over time she will get used to the process I'm sure and remember she's getting a tasty treat.

Anyway, once she's in, she's happily eating her tub of grain and stands wonderfully for me to milk. So far I'm milking every morning and can usually get 2-4 liters of milk from her, depending what the calf has left me. It has usually cleaned out 2 of the four tits before I get there. During the short time I was milking the Dexter cow, we got very rich milk, at times probably 30% cream. This cow is the complete opposite. It's Milk Lite! Carla's a little disappointed as she was hoping to make butter and ice cream. Sorry, not for a while yet!

As a child my dad milked cows and we drank raw milk so I have no reservations about it. Is it healthier? I don't know, but there's a certain satisfaction to eating and drinking our own production whether it's dairy, vegetable or beef, that's for sure. I hope to do a Part 2 soon to show the milking and de-creaming and all the other fun household parts of the job!

Mitchell's new toy

A couple of weeks ago, Mitchell bought a quad. This is something he's been dying to get for ages now. Last year he bottle fed a calf and at the time we told him when it was big enough to sell he could keep the money and buy something with it. Since then the only thing he's wanted is a quad.

A short time ago, we heard from my sister that they might be interested in selling their oldest boys quad, which was a small kids size machine, with an engine probably around 50cc. It's not a name-brand machine, just something made in China. Around here people call these machines Chondas (China/Honda). Their son was getting a little too big for this one so it would be perfect for Mitchell who's a couple of years younger. They only wanted $200 for it which was a lot less than we expected to be paying for something like this. As Mitchell got $550 for his calf he still had lots of money to spend on a helmet.

Before picking up the quad we went shopping at Canadian Tire, something of a department store in Canada, which sells auto parts, sporting goods, hardware, etc. Mitchell's "problem" is that he has a big head and we ended up having to spend $100 on a Adult Small helmet to fit his head. As you can see in the picture despite the fact he's only eight years old, it's definitely not too big for him!

Anyway, finally the day came to make the deal and bring the quad home. Mitchell went for a little spin and we promptly had a little problem with the brakes. It appears a brake pad broke and jammed up the rear axle. My sister's husband rushed out and fixed it for Mitchell and here he is roaring around. Thanks Uncle Tim! Mitchell loves it and happily spends hours cruising around the farm!

Sometimes I hate being tech support

Those of you who are knowledgable about computers have been there before. Someone you know (friends, family, coworkers) is having trouble with their computer and ask you to fix it for them. I have had two recent occasions that have left me with headaches.

I should start by saying that I help family out without question or or monetary compensation. My sister and her family take our kids when Carla and I go to the annual homeschool conference And my mom, well, she brought me into this world and she can take me out! But for everyone else I usually charge something. If it's a matter of "My computer is running slow" and it's not infested with malware, I do the basic maintenance and send it back with a bill for $20-$30. These last two were something more, though.

The first one was a newer box running Windows XP that was thoroughly infested with malware and after beating on it with various antivirus and spyware apps, I gave up and reinstalled Windows. The previous scanning and deleting just couldn't get rid of everything and I tried AVG and Avast antivirus software as well as Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware. I also ran an app called HijackThis which spit out a log for me to look for suspicious stuff. Unfortunately as I said, I was still getting detection warnings after trying to clean things up with those apps. So I backed up what I could and went on to the reinstall

Reinstalling Windows also turned out to be problematic as the installer wouldn't work properly so I had to create a custom XP install disk with both Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 built into it to get around the install problem. But once I got that figured out and Windows reinstalled the machine seemed to be nearly cured. I ran a couple more scans and cleaned out a couple more apps and files that were still infected and sent it back to the customer with a bill for $60.

A job Carla and I are both working on now involved a local business. Due to a staffing change, their office manager is gone and took some computers with him. We were contacted to get another machine into the office with the required apps and then Carla would teach them the software (I'm the hardware guy and Carla's the office software expert). They supplied us with an old P3-500 Win98 machine they hoped would work in the interim.

Well, after struggling at home for a while with this old box I came to the conclusion that it was DOA. Luckily I had a used 1.3Ghz XP box in the basement collecting dust. I dragged it out and it fired up right away so I set to work cleaning the drive and installing software. This consisted mostly of updating it for security and getting QuickBooks 2008 and 2010 installed. Most of the trouble here was with this old box being a little weak. Installs and updates took a frustrating amount of time to finish.

I did eventually get finished with that machine and Carla delivered it. She got it setup in the office and working with the printers. While there she was supposed to instruct the other workers on how to operate the machine and do the various office tasks including payroll through a conference call with the American head office. Unfortunately the never called so that has been put off for now. The local workers would rather Carla became an employee and do that work for them as they aren't computer fans and Carla would love to get back into an office as that was her career previously. That would be awesome if it did happen. Anyway, this job is therefore still ongoing and hasn't been billed but I expect to get a pretty good cheque out of it. Though the last job I did for a commercial enterprise, it took six months to get paid (a skidsteer snow clearing job for a construction company). Hopefully it's better this time!

I want to end here with a word about why I found these jobs to be headaches. I'm not a Windows guru. That's not to say I don't use it, but my day-to-day machine is a Mac and of the eight computers used in our home, five are Macs. I've been a Mac user for about three years and before that I main box was a PC running Linux for a decade. So when it comes to getting down and dirty with Windows and especially Windows malware the stress level goes way up. It's not something I encounter on my machines. I don't even run antivirus software on our two machines running Windows as they are mainly just for games (one mine which is rarely on and the other for the kids) not to mention that I don't mindlessly download crap.

Yes, Macs cost more than PCs. But I'd rather pay the money and never have to worry about malware while having a consistent and reliable operating system. One can also buy them cheaper refurbished from Apple's online store. If you still prefer a PC, please consider Linux if you don't have a requirement for specific Windows software. The Linux operating system is legally free for the download and some places will also send you a free disc. Heck, I'd even send you a free disc! On all the Mac and Linux boxes I run only software I legally obtained for free. For example, our farm accounting is done by Carla is spreadsheets using OpenOffice.

So, well, I'll get off my soap box and wish you all safe computing!

Needing a break

October is half over already and I'm wondering where the time has gone. It's been insane around here this month. Both Carla and I have been working pretty steady both off-farm and on. By the end of this weekend Carla will have had twelve straight days working in town at either the restaurant or the gas station. Up until a few days ago I was helping our neighbor with his harvest and put in about ten days trucking grain from the field to the grain bin.

Of course when we're not working off-farm, then there's work to be done around here. We've been struggling to fit in hauling our hay bales off the hay fields and into the yard, harvesting our own tiny bit of grain and all the other usual house and yard work. Homeschooling has somewhat been put aside for now as we try to keep up with life in general!

Through this time we've let the boys either stay home with Carla or come with me to the field. The majority of my days helping our neighbor had them joining me in the grain truck. Earlier on it was fun, but after the days start to add up, being crammed together all day in a truck loses much of its appeal. There were occasions the boys could get out and run around, but when a combine was around it was time for them to get back into the truck, for safety reasons, to keep them out of the way and to keep them out of the grain dust. But I've been spending so much time with the kids lately (at home and at work essentially) that I'm looking forward to every spare moment to myself!

Harvest time does provide opportunities for learning, too. As our farm is more into beef cattle production, the boys don't get as much of an opportunity to see different grains. Helping our neighbor combine wheat let the boys see where flour comes from. Wack a few kernels with a hammer and it's obvious! Hammer some oats and you see oatmeal!

The pace of work this month has been quite a bit different that most of the spring and summer simply due to the weather being so much dryer now. It's has to be at least three weeks since we last had rain! We haven't seen such a dry stretch all year! There's even salt blowing off Chaplin Lake in the wind today. I didn't think it would dry out that much this year.

I hope the weather holds for a while as there's still so much to do...so many bales left to haul (both ours and our neighbor's which he hires me to help with), corrals to clean (again ours and my neighbor's which I help with, too)...I could use another two months of warm dry weather! Ha! Something tells me I'll be working in cold, wet slop before too long...

I'm moving like an old man today

I admit it. I've got a bum hip. Well, sometimes anyway. My left hip sometimes is very painful and yesterday it started acting up again. I'm not sure why, but while I was standing around watching Mitchell pressure washing the semi, I felt it start to ache. It's not too bad standing and walking around, but certain movements are very painful. Yesterday evening I could barely get off the couch and rolling over in bed was a challenge, though once I got settled into place I wasn't too bad and was able to sleep...until I needed to move again.

It's been bothering me today again and I've been a bit slower getting in and out of the tractor. While swathing an oat field I wasn't too bad but as the hours passed I could feel it starting to hurt more, probably from bouncing around. Luckily (or not) I had a breakdown and quit for the day. Usually after a period of time it clears up and I'll be pain-free for a while. It's been months since it bothered me last and I'm not sure what I did to aggravate it. The day before the pain started I had a busy day hauling bales which required driving the semi and unloading with a tractor so plenty of clutch work with the left leg, but I'm not sure why it took so long to hit me if that's what caused it.

I am fairly certain I know the root of my problem. Many years ago (a dozen?) our cows were bred to calve in the late winter and as they came close to their due date, they'd be brought into the corrals so we could check them often in case they needed help calving. Several times a day I would climb a corral fence and jump down and go and check the cows. It was fast and convenient. Turns out I always landed on my left foot. I gave myself an achy hip that calving season and have cursed myself with it recurring from time to time. I'm much more careful now, always paying attention to what leg I land on when I have to jump and going through gates rather than jumping fences.

No doubt it'll turn into arthritis (if it hasn't already). I'll probably get it in my right thumb joint, too, since I injured that and it bothers me from time to time, too. That one got jerked in a rope when I was catching a calf that escaped into a neighbor's pasture. Come to think of it, cattle related injuries are taking their toll on me! I nearly had my nose broken by one of the Dexter cows last November when she hit a swinging steel gate which caught me right where my glasses sit. A few years ago I got kicked by a calf on my left temple which caused my glasses to go flying and get trampled under the feet of the calves in the corral. And once I broke a finger in an accident with the post pounder.

Maybe I should have stayed in the army. It might be safer!