Crazy Ex Landlords

So we are getting a solid 10 eggs per day now. One of our ducks mysteriously drowned in the horse trough the other day, kind of weird. I did not know ducks could drown. The ducks are very cool.
We are breeding the goat sometime soon so we'll have babies and milk in the spring. More self sufficient.

We had a great thanksgiving at David and Amys, kudos to them for throwing a great dinner party. The kids had fun playing with Nick and Jacob. I had the privilege to talk with Davids dad for a while. What a wealth of knowledge and experience he has.

And just when you think you have seen the last of our psycho ex landlords, we get 3 voicemail death threats from them. We of course have to go down and file a police report. They basically tell us that since he has no business ever coming to our house, if he does, use deadly force to protect our family if necessary. Then the next day, Jason Terry calls back apologizing. A totally different tone.

Now today someone is using my identity to sign up for match.com and datehookup.com. Probably the ex landlords. It is almost humorous, but we are having the FBI investigate them. This would equate to 5 felonies between the death threats, some cross state issues,  and identity theft. These 2 just keep digging their own grave. It is a shame.

Suburban Bits the Dust

Wow, 3 months since my last post. Life is way too complicated right now. I spent 3 weeks in Atlanta with Michael, picked up Abbey from camp, and drove back to Montana with our stuff. This is the last time I want to do that drive.
It has been a beautiful summer here in Montana. We moved to a new house August 30 after our landlords flaked out. Jason and Nicole Terry ended up being a couple of crooks and scammed us for a 1000 bucks. Live and learn. Karma will get them, I am certain of it.

Anyway, the new place is an older house but on 5 acres, so more room for the animals and farming. We got a dairy goat last week, so that makes 2 horses, 1 goat, 6 chickens, 11 rabbits, 2 dogs and 1 cat. Jenny and Josh helped us put up a fence and I built a structure for the rabbits and chickens.

The kids had to switch schools because of the move and are going to lone rock school now. A very small school, the oldest in Montana. The community is great.

After the grueling move, we have settled in to the new house and things are getting back to normal. Nice high speed internet from rocky mountain.


We get a steady 5 eggs per day now and after a few more months, we'll start eating rabbit regularly. We got some pretty good bounty in the garden in spite of having to harvest early. 10 gallons of potatoes, 10 lbs of carrots, a little corn, strawberries, tomatoes, beans and more. Next year is going to be even better.

Just when I thought things were getting back to normal, some guy hit our suburban today at 80 miles per hour while it was parked on the side of the road and totalled it. He launched it almost 100 feet. Unbelievable.

PHP High CPU

So after wrestling with performance issues for over a week on our web server running PHP, I finally found the culprit.

ob_start();

session_start();

These 2 lines of code in our header file were causing the CPU on our web server to run at 100%. I have not gotten feedback from one of my developers yet on what we were using those for, but they were the culprit. I figured I  would post this in case anyone else ran into this issue since we have been trying to solve this for over a week. We read through tons of web posts on PHP and high CPU, but none applied to our situation. The CPU's on our server were completely maxed out.

Summer 2011

I can't believe it has been 2 months since my last blog. The weather has been absolutely amazing. We have our garden planted with potatoes, corn, strawberries, squash, okra, tomatoes and more. The beans are not looking too good, though.

Our chickens are laying eggs now. Yummy. And we should have some baby rabbits in a month or 2.

Abs headed to camp this week. Monica dropped her off. Kelsie is her counselor. Cool.

We hiked Blodgett with the Callo family yesterday. There are some nice walls in there. Can't wait to climb them. Mill creek is very impressive as well. 700-800 ft walls. But the ticks suck out here.

Mikey has a summer job cutting the grass at a realty company. 40 per week.

Montana Spring 2011

Today was the most beautiful day in the bitterroot valley 65 and sunny. The kids got some school awards today. A combination of learning awards and fitness awards. Michael was the most physically fit kid in the school and he got straight A's all year.
Abs got honor roll all year and some fitness awards.
Wyatt got honor roll 3 quarters with some PE awards as well.

Jak got to play at the park with his buddy Angus. They had a blast. I walked into town like normal, 3 miles. I actually biked to the Super 1 this week, 7 miles each way. Trying to stay in shape a little.

So we finally saw Atlas Shrugged Part 1. I thought it was great considering the small budget. What a great story.

Whirlwind Month

Man am I busy. 5 of out 6 sites had record months. Things are moving so fast I can barely keep up. We got 2 rabbits and 6 chickens this month for eggs and meat. Home grown eggs are the best, yummy. Jak is talking more these days and the other 3 are making friends left and right. The weather has been nice all month. Low 50's during the day. A little overcast, though.

I have to keep exercising regularly because my body is falling apart from sitting too much. Volleyball was fun while it lasted, but it is over now.

We are seriously considering moving out of the country again to Chile or New Zealand. If I were a betting man, I would say it is 50/50 that we'll move out of the US within 2 years. Of course you never know what can happen in 2 years. It is just hard to see any future in this country for our kids. Too many government moochers and looters and criminals here. If we do stay, Montana is definitely the place. What a beautiful place.

Out of Wood

Found a great log builder that has a big scrap pile. We have been getting wood from here since we are almost out of firewood. First lesson in Montana, get plenty of wood before the snow comes in because you can't get up in the mountains any more.

Baylee finally arrived out here. She loves it here. She goes for walks with me down the railroad tracks.

Rob Sulli is starting a company to sell proton therapy cancer treatment machines to hospitals. Very cool idea.
Here is Jak playing the drums.

Rabbits 101

We got Abbey and Wyatt 2 rabbits yesterday for 4H club. After talking to the breeder, I am going to start breeding meaty rabbits for food. They only take 12 weeks to raise to eating size and they mate like crazy. The meat is supposed to be very lean as well. It comes out to 1-2 dollars per lb of meat after processing. A very sustainable way to grow your own meat without having a lot of property for cows, buffalo or pigs and cheap too. I'll have to figure out what to do with the rabbit furs. Whoever is reading this better be prepared to get some rabbit fur presents in the mail. We are still trying to find Abbey an Angora rabbit so she can use the long fur for spinning and knitting. That will be cool.

The boys are in robotics and building some cool stuff. We have met several great families as well in the 4H. Lots of great people out here, intelligent, level headed, practical and responsible.

Record month for the sites. Getting there slow and steady.

Happy New Year 2011

Happy to say I made it through another new year. Although I am a bit bored with life right now, especially with this winter being so cold and being inside so much and working so much, I still have a glimmer of hope in the future of this country and world. We just need to change people one by one. Educate kids one by one. And help each other one by one. We can't change the corrupt system all at once, it is too big. Crooks like obama and pelosi and reid are basically power hungry thieves and looters that laugh at the ignorant american people and know they have created a nation of wimps that refuse to stand up for freedom or their god given rights. I think there is an awakening of sorts going on right now, but whether we can avoid the chaos that is coming is another story. Americans are too lazy to read their history and see what is coming and going to happen. This is not the first time this has happened in history.

I need to give a shout out to Abbey, my daughter. She is perhaps the hardest working kid I have seen in my life. If all kids were like her, this country would be a better place in the future.

Locals say this has been the coldest winter in 13 years in MT.